Chapter 15

“The extent to which evasion is there practised is incredible; five-sixths of the letters from Manchester to London do not pass through the Post Office.”[173]Similar evidence was received from Glasgow.[174]Mr. Brewin, of Cirencester, reported that—“The people in that town did not think of using the post for the conveyance of letters; he knew two carriers who carried four times as many letters as the mail did.”[175]Further evidence, equally weighty and equally striking, came in from other quarters.[176]Various devices, now doubtless forgotten through disuse, were then in constant requisition; thus letters for travellers and others in the trade were habitually enclosed in the parcels sent by the great London booksellers to their customers in the provinces; similar use wasmade of warehousemen’s bales and parcels, and of boxes and trunks forwarded by carriers; as also of what were termed “free packets,” containing the patterns and correspondence of manufacturers, which the coach proprietors carried free of charge, except fourpence for booking. In the neighbourhood of Glasgow recourse was had to “weavers’ bags,” that is, bags containing work for the weavers, which the manufacturers forwarded to some neighbouring town, and of “family boxes”—farmers having sons at the University forwarding to them once or twice a week boxes containing provisions, and the neighbours making a Post Office of the farmer’s house.[177]Colonel Maberly, however, did not attach much value to all this evidence, knowing “from long experience, when he was in Parliament, that merchants and interested parties are very apt to overstate their case,” and his view was supported by some of his subordinates, though strongly contradicted by others, especially by the late solicitor to the General Post Office, Mr. Peacock, who “apprehends the illegal conveyance of letters to be carried to a very great extent at the present moment, and has no doubt that persons of respectability in the higher, as well as the humbler walks of life, are in the habit of sending letters by illegal conveyance to a great extent.”[178]The same general opinion was strongly expressed by the solicitor to the Irish Post Office who represented even the drivers and guards of the mail-coaches as constantly engaged in the illegal traffic.In relation to letters going abroad, the following is the summary of the evidence:—“The evasion of the postage on letters sent from different parts of the United Kingdom to the out-ports, for the purpose of being put on board of ships bound to foreign parts, especially to the United States of America, is yet more remarkable than the evasion of the inland postage. It is thoroughly known to the Post Office authorities; but the practice appears to be winked at. Colonel Maberly speaks of that practice as one known, and almost recognised.”[179]The following curious fact was stated by a witness from Liverpool, Mr. Maury, president of the “American Chamber of Commerce.” When arrangements had been completed for the establishment of regular steam navigation between that town and New York, the postmaster, expecting to have a large despatch of letters to provide for, was careful to furnish himself with a bag of ample dimensions, but, “to his astonishment, received only five letters in all,” though “by the first steamer at least ten thousand letters were in fact sent, all in one bag, which was opened at the office of the consignee of the ship. Mr. Maury himself sent at least two hundred letters by that ship, which went free.”[180]These extraordinary statements were strongly supported by the evidence of Mr. Lawrence, Assistant Secretary to the London Office, who “states that, from what the Post Office have learnt, the American packet, which leaves London every ten days, carries 4,000 letters, each voyage, which do not pass through the Post Office; that he is aware of the existence in London of receiving-houses for letters, to be forwarded otherwise than by the Post; the Jerusalem Coffee-house, for instance, receives letters for the East Indies; the North and South American Coffee-house, for South America, the United States, and British America; that almost every ship-broker in London has a bag hanging up for letters to be forwarded by the ship to which heis broker; and that the number of letters for North America so collected for several ships in the office of one ship-broker have been enough to load a cab.”In short, the committee came “to the conclusion that, with regard to large classes of the community, those principally to whom it is a matter of necessity to correspond on matters of business, and to whom, also, it is a matter of importance to save the expense of postage, the Post Office, instead of being viewed as it ought to be, and would be, under a wise administration of it, as an institution of ready and universal access, distributing equally to all, and with an open hand, the blessing of commerce and civilization, is regarded by them as an establishment too expensive to be made use of, and as one with the employment of which they endeavour to dispense by every means in their power.”[181]They also became convinced that if it were possible, by increased rigour, to put a stop to the illicit transmission of letters, a vast diminution must take place in the number of letters written; and that the suppression of correspondence already caused by high rates would be greatly magnified. One witness had “made a calculation some time ago among the poor manufacturers, and found that, when one of them in full work could earn forty shillings a week, he would receive, on an average, thirty orders, which, at fourpence a piece, if they went through the Post Office, would be twenty-five per cent. on his earnings.”[182]While, however, illicit correspondence was found thus prevalent, there was abundant and striking evidence to show that “high rates of postage deter the public to a vast extent from writing letters and sending communications which otherwise they would write orsend;” that “even those who have the means of evasion within their reach reduce their correspondence greatly below the standard which, under other circumstances, they would think expedient;” that “suppression of correspondence on matters of business takes the place of evasion in proportion as the transactions to be announced or performed are moderate in amount, and the condition in life of the parties is humble.”[183]Were it not too tedious to enumerate even the heads under which suppression was deposed to, the reader, accustomed to the present state of things, would be astonished at the extent and variety to which movements would be restricted by a return to the old rates. Some few instances are all that can be noted. Who would now divine that high rates of postage could have any relation to the prevalence of small-pox? And yet it was found that “Practitioners and others in the country do not apply for lymph, in the degree they otherwise would do, to the institutions formed in London for the spread of vaccination, for fear of postage.”Again: “Sixpence,” says Mr. Brewin, “is a third of a poor man’s daily income; if a gentleman, whose fortune is a thousand pounds a year, or three pounds a day, had to pay one-third of his daily income, that is, a sovereign, for a letter, how often would he write letters of friendship?” ... “The people do not think of using the Post Office; it is barred against them by the very high charge.”[184]“Mr. G. Henson, a working hosier from Nottingham, had given his wife instructions not to take letters in unless they came from particular persons; it would take half his income were he to pay postage.”[185]The following statement, showing at once the desireand the inability of the poor to correspond, is taken from the evidence of Mr. Emery, Deputy-Lieutenant for Somersetshire, and a Commissioner of Taxes:—“A person in my parish of the name of Rosser had a letter from a grand-daughter in London, and she could not take up the letter for want of the means. She was a pauper, receiving two-and-sixpence a week.... She told the Post Office keeper that she must wait until she had received the money from the relieving officer; she could never spare enough; and at last a lady gave her a shilling to get the letter, but the letter had been returned to London by the Post Office mistress. She never had the letter since. It came from her grand-daughter, who is in service in London.”[186]Struck by this statement, Mr. Emery made further inquiries. The following statement he received from the postmaster of Banwell:—“My father kept the Post Office many years; he is lately dead; he used to trust poor people very often with letters; they generally could not pay the whole charge. He told me, indeed I know, he did lose many pounds by letting poor people have their letters. We sometimes return them to London in consequence of the inability of the persons to whom they are addressed raising the postage. We frequently keep them for weeks; and, where we know the parties, let them have them, taking the chance of getting our money. One poor woman once offered my sister a silver spoon, to keep until she could raise the money; my sister did not take the spoon, and the woman came with the amount in a day or two and took up the letter. It came from her husband, who was confined for debt in prison; she had six children, and was very badly off.”[187]The following was reported by the postmaster of Congresbury:—“The price of a letter is a great tax on poor people. I sent one, charged eightpence, to a poor labouring man about a week ago; it came from his daughter. He first refused taking it, saying it would take a loaf of bread from his other children; but, after hesitating a little time, he paid the money, and opened the letter. I seldom return letters of this kind to Bristol, because I let the poor people havethem, and take the chance of being paid; sometimes I lose the postage, but generally the poor people pay me by degrees.”[188]The postmaster of Yatton stated as follows:—“I have had a letter waiting lately from the husband of a poor woman, who is at work in Wales; the charge was ninepence; it lay many days, in consequence of her not being able to pay the postage. I at last trusted her with it.”[189]Mr. Cobden stated:—“We have fifty thousand in Manchester who are Irish, or the immediate descendants of Irish; and all the large towns in the neighbourhood contain a great many Irish, or the descendants of Irish, who are almost as much precluded, as though they lived in New South Wales, from all correspondence or communication with their relatives in Ireland.”[190]As the postage between Manchester and most parts of Ireland was then about double the present postage (1869) from any part of England or Ireland to Australia, the separation between the Irish in Lancashire and their countrymen at home must then have been, postally considered, not only as great, but about twice as great as is now that between the Irish at home and their friends at the Antipodes.Of the desire of the poor to correspond, Mr. Emery gave further evidence, stating:—“That the poor near Bristol have signed a petition to Parliament for the reduction of the postage. He never saw greater enthusiasm in any public thing that was ever got up in the shape of a petition; they seemed all to enter into the thing as fully, and with as much feeling as it was possible, as a boon or godsend to them, that they should be able to correspond with, their distant friends.”[191]Much evidence was also given as to the extent ofmoral evil caused by the suppression of correspondence. On this point Mr. Henson speaks again:—“When a man goes on the tramp, he must either take his family with him, perhaps one child in arms, or else the wife must be left behind; and the misery I have known them to be in, from not knowing what has become of the husband, because they could not hear from him, has been extreme. Perhaps the man, receiving only sixpence, has never had the means, upon the whole line, of paying tenpence for a letter to let his wife know where he was.”[192]Mr. Dunlop believed that—“One of the worst parts of the present system of heavy postage is, that it gradually estranges an absentee from his home and family, and tends to engender a neglect of the ties of blood, in fact, to encourage a selfish spirit; at the same time he has known very affecting instances of families in extreme poverty making a sacrifice to obtain a letter from the Post Office.”[193]Mr. Brankston said:—“I have seen much of the evils resulting from the want of communication between parents and their children among the young persons in our establishment; I find the want of communication with their parents by letter has led, in some instances, to vice and profligacy which might have been otherwise prevented.”[194]It was also shown that one effect of suppression of correspondence was to keep working-men ignorant of the state of wages in different parts of the country, so that they did not know where labour was in demand. Thus Mr. Brewin said:—“We often see poor men travelling the country for work, and sometimes they come back, and it appears they have been in a wrong direction; if the postage were low they would write first, and know whether they were likely to succeed.”[195]Mr. Henson stated as follows:—“The Shoemakers’ Society at Nottingham tell me that 350 persons have come there for relief.... Very few of those personswould have gone upon tramp if they could have sent circular letters to a number of the largest towns in England at a penny to receive information whether a job could be got or not.”[196]It may be observed that one of the main facts now urged in favour of Trades Unions is, that they collect and circulate the very information here spoken of as so much wanting.There was evidence to show that the difficulty of communication aggravated—“The remarkable pertinacity of the poor to continue in their own parish, rather than remove to another where their condition would be bettered.”[197]It was also stated that—“The consequence of the high rates, in preventing the working-classes from having intercourse by letter, is, that those who learned at school to write a copy have lost their ability to do so.”[198]Mr. Henson adds that—“There are many persons, who, when he first knew them wrote an excellent hand, but now, from their scarcely ever practising, they write very badly: one of these persons is so much out of the habit of writing that he would as soon do a day’s work, he says, as write a letter: they are so much out of the habit of writing that they lose the art altogether.”[199]Mr. Davidson, of Glasgow, thought—“That additional opportunities of correspondence would lead the industrious classes, the working-classes, to pay more attention to the education of their children than they do now, and that it would have a highly beneficial effect, both upon their moral and intellectual character.”[200]So strong was the sense entertained by some of the witnesses of the evils inflicted on society by imposinga tax upon postage that they expressed their doubts whether it were a fit subject for taxation at all. Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd (now Lord Overstone), said:—“I think if there be any one subject which ought not to have been selected as a subject of taxation it is that of intercommunication by post; and I would even go a step further, and say, that if there be any one thing which the Government ought, consistently with its great duties to the public, to do gratuitously, it is the carriage of letters. We build national galleries, and furnish them with pictures; we propose to create public walks, for the air and health and exercise of the community, at the general cost of the country. I do not think that either of those, useful and valuable as they are to the community, and fit as they are for Government to sanction, are more conducive to the moral and social advancement of the community than the facility of intercourse by post. I therefore greatly regret that the post was ever taken as a field for taxation, and should be very glad to find that, consistently with the general interests of the revenue, which the Government has to watch over, they can effect any reduction in the total amount so received, or any reduction in the charges, without diminishing the total amount.”[201]Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Brown, and also Lord Ashburton, strongly supported this opinion, the latter saying:—“The communication of letters by persons living at a distance is the same as a communication by word of mouth between persons living in the same town. You might as well tax words spoken upon the Royal Exchange, as the communications of various persons living in Manchester, Liverpool, and London. You cannot do it without checking very essentially the disposition to communicate.”[202]I pause here in my narrative to bar an inference that might very naturally be drawn from my citing the above passages, viz., that in my opinion even the present rates constitute a tax, and may therefore be wisely and justly abandoned in favour of lower ones,or indeed of absolutely free conveyance. Certainly, if it could be shown that some other corporation could and would manage the whole correspondence, with all its numerous and extensive rootlets and ramifications, on lower terms than the Government, and this without any sacrifice in speed or certainty, then the difference between such lower rates and the present might fairly be termed a tax; but I am not aware that such capability has yet been conceived, still less seriously maintained; and indeed I cannot but believe that, taking the duty as a whole, the Post Office, so long as it is well managed, is likely to do the work on better terms than any rival institution.Another opinion erroneously attributed to me, and connected with the above, is, that so long as the department thrives as a whole, its funds may justly be applied to maintain special services which do not repay their own cost; whereas, from the first, I have held that every division of the service should be at least self-supporting,[203]though I allowed that, for the sake of simplicity, extensions might be made where there was no immediate expectation of absolute profit.[204]All beyond this I have always regarded as contrary to the true principles of free trade, as swerving into the unsound and dangerous practice of protection. Whenever, therefore, it is thought that the net revenue from the Post Office is too high for the interests of the public, I would advise the application of the surplus to the multiplication of facilities in those districts in which, through the extent of their correspondence, such revenue is produced.To return to the evidence. With regard to theamount of reduction that it would be expedient to make, the witnesses generally, whether from the Post Office or otherwise, were of opinion that it must be large; illicit conveyance having become too firmly established to be effectually dealt with by any moderate change. The Secretary indeed was of opinion—“That to whatever extent the postage is reduced, those who have hitherto evaded it will continue to evade it, since it cannot be reduced to that price that smugglers will not compete with the Post Office, at an immense profit.”[205]It has already been shown that a very important, indeed essential, part of my plan was uniformity of rate. To this various objections were raised, some of which would now seem frivolous enough. As an instance, I may mention the statement—“That in certain cases extra rates are levied, and are applicable to the maintenance of certain roads and bridges, undertaken with a view to expedite the mails which travel over them.”[206]An objection the more frivolous as the total amount of the rates thus levied was less than £8,000.Some witnesses from the Post Office regarded the uniform rate as “unfair in principle.”[207]Dr. Lardner, while he regarded it as abstractedly unjust, yet thought it should be recommended on account of its simplicity. All the other witnesses were in its favour, provided the rate were as low as one penny; and nearly all considered a uniform rate preferable to a varying one, though the rate should somewhat exceed one penny.[208]Mr. Jones Loyd observed that the—“Justice of the uniform plan is perfectly obvious. You are not warranted in varying the charge to different individuals, except uponthe ground that the cost of conveyance varies; so far as that varies the charge ought to vary; but it appears to me that that which consists of a tax upon individuals ought to have no reference to the place of their residence; it should either be equal, or, if it varies at all, it should be in proportion to their means of bearing the tax.”Being asked whether, if a uniform rate of twopence were imposed on all letters, and if a person at Limerick got his letters for twopence, a person at Barnet would not soon find out that he ought to have his letters for a penny, Mr. Loyd answered:—“If such be the fact, he would soon find it out, I presume; if it was not the fact, of course he would never find it out.”[209]Mr. Dillon made the following remarkable statement:—“To show how little the cost of transit sometimes enters into the price of goods, I may mention to the committee, in the way of illustration, that we buy goods in Manchester; they are conveyed to London; we sell them in London very often to dealers resident in Manchester, who again carry them back to the place from whence they came, and after the cost of two transits, they will have bought them of us cheaper than they themselves could have bought them in Manchester. In this instance, the cost of transit, as an element of price, has become absolutely destroyed by the force of capital and other arrangements.”[210]Colonel Maberly would like a uniform rate of postage, but did not think it practicable. “Any arrangements which, in the great details of Post Office matters, introduce simplicity, he looks upon as a great improvement.”[211]Most of the other Post Office authorities liked the idea of a uniform rate, as “it would very much facilitate all the operations of the Post Office.”[212]The feasibility of payment in advance, now the almost universal practice, was the subject of muchinquiry. Most of the witnesses from the Post Office recognised the advantage of the arrangement, though some of them doubted its practicability. Part of this difficulty, it must be admitted, was, in some sort, of my own creating; for, perceiving that the costly system of accounting rendered necessary by payment on delivery could never be entirely set aside unless prepayment became universal, my first notion had been to make this compulsory; and though, to smooth the difficulties, I recommended that in the outset an option should be allowed,—that, namely, which exists at present,—I certainly looked upon this as but a temporary expedient, and both desired and expected that the period of probation might be short. Doubtless it was a mistake, though a very natural one, so to clog my plan; my aim, however, was not to establish a pleasing symmetry, but to attain an important practical end.The Postmaster-General and the Secretary were both of opinion that the public would not like prepayment. Being called on to reply to objections on this point, I showed that the question for the public to determine was between prepayment at a low rate and post-payment at a high rate; and I ventured to predict that, when so considered, the objection to prepayment would speedily die away; the more so as the difference proposed to be made between the two modes of payment, viz., that between one penny and twopence, was not adopted “as an artificial means of enforcing prepayment,” but arose “out of the greater economy to the Post Office of the one arrangement as compared with the other.” Nearly twenty other witnesses were examined on the same point, all supporting my view, some going so far as to advise that compulsory prepayment should be established at once;and, indeed, the ease with which prepayment became the general, nay almost universal, custom, must make it seem wonderful that its adoption should ever have been considered as presenting serious difficulties.Supposing prepayment to be resolved on, the question remained as to the mode in which such payment could be most conveniently and safely made; and this inquiry of course brought the use of stamps into full discussion. It must be remembered that in proposing by this plan to supersede the multitudinous accounts then kept in the department, my object had been not merely to save expense, but to prevent loss through negligence or by fraud. In relation to this, the committee found important evidence in the Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Enquiry, as appears by the following extracts given in the report of the committee:—“Upon the taxation of letters in the evening there is no check.“The species of control which is exercised over the deputy postmasters is little more than nominal.”Upon this unsatisfactory state of things it appeared by the evidence of the Accountant-General of the Post Office that very little improvement had been made since the issue of the Commissioners’ Report.Another matter of anxiety relative to the use of stamps was the risk of their forgery; and on this point Mr. John Wood, the Chairman of the Board of Stamps and Taxes, together with other officers of the department, was examined at considerable length. Mr. Wood wished to superadd to the use of stamps that of some paper of peculiar manufacture, forgery being more difficult when it requires the combined talents of the engraver, the printer, and the paper-maker. Specimens of such a paper had been laidbefore the committee by Mr. Dickinson, and such a paper, with lines of thread or silk stretched through it, Mr. Wood regarded as the best preventive of forgery he had ever seen. I scarcely need say that this is the paper which was subsequently used in the stamped envelope, though its use was afterwards abandoned as unnecessary.The Post Office opinions as to the use of stamps for the purpose of prepayment were, on the whole, favourable; though the Secretary was of opinion that, as regards time, labour, and expenditure at the General Post Office, the saving would not be so great as “Mr. Hill in his pamphlet seemed to think it would.”[213]He enumerated nine classes of letters to which he thought stamps would be inapplicable.The task of replying to these objections was easy, on some points ludicrously so; thus solemn reference was made to the class of letters which, not having found the party addressed, had been returned through the Dead Letter Office to the sender. The additional postage so caused could not be prepaid in stamps. Of course not, but luckily no such postage had ever been charged.[214]Another class of letters presenting a difficulty (here I am careful to quote the exact words) “would be half-ounce letters weighing an ounce or above.” I could not but admit that letters exhibiting so remarkable a peculiarity might present difficulties with which I was not prepared to deal.[215]“The ninth class,” said the Secretary, “is packets improperly sent through the Post Office. You may send anything now if you pay the postage.”What could be more obvious than the answer? Igave it as follows: “The fact is, you may send anything now, whether you pay the postage or not.”[216]But the Secretary continued, “The committee is aware that there is no prohibition as to what description of packets persons should put into the Post Office; the only protection to the Post Office at present is the postage that would be charged on such packets.”[217]My answer was easy: “The fact is, that ‘the only protection’ is no protection at all. The Post Office may charge, certainly, but it cannot oblige any one to pay; and the fact of there being a deduction in the Finance Accounts for 1837, amounting to £122,000, for refused, missent, and redirected letters, and so forth, shows that the Post Office is put to a considerable expense for which it obtains no remuneration whatever.”Among the advantages claimed for the proposed use of stamps was the moral benefit of the arrangement; and this was strongly urged by Sir William Brown, who had seen the demoralising effect arising from intrusting young men with money to pay the postage, which, under the existing arrangement, his house was frequently obliged to do.[218]His view was supported by other witnesses.It seems strange now that it should ever have been thought necessary to inquire gravely into the expediency of substituting a simple charge by weight for the complicated arrangement already mentioned. But the innovation was stoutly resisted, and had to be justified; evidence therefore was taken on the question. Lord Ashburton being called on for his opinion,thought that the mode in use was “a hard mode, an unjust mode, and vexatious in its execution.”[219]On the other hand, though the Secretary admitted the frequent occurrence of mistakes, which indeed it must have been impracticable to avoid, viz., “that a great number of letters are charged as double and treble which are not so, and give rise to returns of postage,”[220]and though Sir Edward Lees thought “that charging by weight would, to a certain extent, prevent letters being stolen in their passage through the Post Office,”[221]yet most of the witnesses from the Post Office were unfavourable to taxing by weight. The Superintending President described an experiment made at the office, from which he concluded that a greater number of letters could be taxed in a given time on the plan then in use, than by charging them in proportion to the weight of each letter. The value of this test was pretty well shown by the fact that in this experiment the weighing was not by the proposed half-ounce, but by thequarter-ounce scale, and that nearly every letter was put into the scale unless its weight was palpable to the hand.[222]The probable effect of the adoption of my plan on the expenditure of the Post Office department was a question likely to elicit opposite opinions. It was to be considered, for instance, whether the staff then employed in the London Inland Office, viz., four hundred and five persons,[223]would suffice for that increase of correspondence on which I counted; or whether, again, supposing the increase not to be attained, it would, through economy of arrangement, admit of serious reduction. On these questions[224]there was muchdifference of opinion, even within the office. Thus, while one high official stated that payment in advance, even though it occasioned no increase of letters, would not enable the Post Office to dispense with a single clerk or messenger,[225]another was of opinion that four times the number of letters might be undertaken by the present number of hands.[226]Again, as to the sufficiency of the existing means of conveyance, the Superintendent of the Mail-coaches, after stating “that a mail-coach would carry of mail fifteen hundredweight, or one thousand six hundred and eighty pounds, represented that if the letters were increased to the extent assumed, the present mail-coaches would be unable to carry them;”[227]while Colonel Colby stated that the first circumstance which drew his attention to the cheapening of postage was that in travelling all over the kingdom, particularly towards the extremities, he had “observed that the mails and carriages which contained the letters formed a very stupendous machinery for the conveyance of a very small weight; that, in fact, if the correspondence had been doubled or trebled, or quadrupled, it could not have affected the expense of conveyance.”[228]To determine the question the committee directed a return to be made of the weight of the mail actually carried by the several mail-coaches going out of London. The average was found to be only 463 pounds,[229]or little more than a quarter of the weight which, according to Post Office evidence, a mail-coach would carry; and as it appeared, by other evidence, that the chargeable letters must form less than one-tenth of the weight of the whole mail, it was calculated by the committee that, with every allowance foradditional weight of bags, the average weight of the chargeable letters might be increased twenty-four fold before the limit of 1,680 pounds would be reached. It was further shown that the weight of all the chargeable letters contained in the thirty-two mails leaving London was but 1,456 pounds; that is, less than the weight which a single mail-coach could carry.[230]Though the amount to be recommended as the uniform rate was of course a question for the consideration of the committee, yet, as my plan fixed it at one penny, most of the witnesses assumed this as the contemplated change, making it the basis of their estimates, and counting upon this low rate for turning into the regular channel of the post various communications then habitually made by other means—such, for instance, as small orders, letters of advice, remittances, policies of insurance, and letters enclosing patterns and samples, all of which were, for the most part, diverted into irregular channels by the excessive postage. Similar expectations were held out with respect to letters between country attorneys and their London agents, documents connected with magisterial and county jurisdiction, and with various local trusts and commissions for the management of sewers, harbours, and roads, and of schools and charities, together with notices of meetings and elections to be held by joint-stock and proprietary bodies.[231]The mere enumeration will surprise the reader of the present day, accustomed as he must be to send and receive all such communications by the post alone. Nor will it seem less strange to learn that at that time the post had little to do with the circulation of prices current, catalogues of sales, prospectuses, circulars, and other documents issued by public institutions for the promotion ofreligion, literature, science, public instruction, or philanthropic or charitable ends; all of which, so far as they could then be circulated at all, were obliged to find their way through channels more or less irregular.[232]The committee, however, “also took evidence as to the increase that was to be expected in the posted correspondence of the country from the adoption of a uniform rate of twopence;” but on this basis they found that much greater diversity of opinion prevailed. Some important witnesses, however, with Lord Ashburton at their head, “were, for the sake of protecting the revenue, favourable to a plan founded on a twopenny rate.”[233]While, however, Lord Ashburton thought the reduction to twopence, rather than to a penny, safer as regards the direct revenue of the Post Office, he was strong in his opinion that reduction of postage would act beneficially on the general revenue of the country, saying that there was “no item of revenue from the reduction of which he should anticipate more benefit than he would from the reduction of postage;” and adding that “if, under any plan of reduction, you did not find an improvement in the Post Office revenue, you would find considerable benefit in every other way.”[234]Although it was obvious that the establishment of a low rate of postage would of itself have a strong tendency to the disuse of the franking privilege, the committee had to consider how far it might be desirable to retain that privilege at all. It was found that the yearly number of franked missives was about seven millions; that those franked by members of parliament,(somewhat less than five millions in number) might be counted nearly as double letters, the official franks (about two millions in number) as eight-fold letters, and the copies of the statutes, distributed by public authority (about seventy-seven thousand in number), thirteen-fold letters.[235]In respect of the official franks, indeed, supposing their contents to be always in genuine relation to the public service, there was a mere formal difference between their passing through the Post Office free, and their being charged to the office of state from which they were posted; but such a supposition would have been very wide of the truth, for, as is justly remarked in the Report, “it is liable to the abuse, which no vigilance can effectually guard against, of being made the vehicle for private correspondence.” The Report continues:—

“The extent to which evasion is there practised is incredible; five-sixths of the letters from Manchester to London do not pass through the Post Office.”[173]

Similar evidence was received from Glasgow.[174]Mr. Brewin, of Cirencester, reported that—

“The people in that town did not think of using the post for the conveyance of letters; he knew two carriers who carried four times as many letters as the mail did.”[175]

Further evidence, equally weighty and equally striking, came in from other quarters.[176]Various devices, now doubtless forgotten through disuse, were then in constant requisition; thus letters for travellers and others in the trade were habitually enclosed in the parcels sent by the great London booksellers to their customers in the provinces; similar use wasmade of warehousemen’s bales and parcels, and of boxes and trunks forwarded by carriers; as also of what were termed “free packets,” containing the patterns and correspondence of manufacturers, which the coach proprietors carried free of charge, except fourpence for booking. In the neighbourhood of Glasgow recourse was had to “weavers’ bags,” that is, bags containing work for the weavers, which the manufacturers forwarded to some neighbouring town, and of “family boxes”—farmers having sons at the University forwarding to them once or twice a week boxes containing provisions, and the neighbours making a Post Office of the farmer’s house.[177]

Colonel Maberly, however, did not attach much value to all this evidence, knowing “from long experience, when he was in Parliament, that merchants and interested parties are very apt to overstate their case,” and his view was supported by some of his subordinates, though strongly contradicted by others, especially by the late solicitor to the General Post Office, Mr. Peacock, who “apprehends the illegal conveyance of letters to be carried to a very great extent at the present moment, and has no doubt that persons of respectability in the higher, as well as the humbler walks of life, are in the habit of sending letters by illegal conveyance to a great extent.”[178]The same general opinion was strongly expressed by the solicitor to the Irish Post Office who represented even the drivers and guards of the mail-coaches as constantly engaged in the illegal traffic.

In relation to letters going abroad, the following is the summary of the evidence:—

“The evasion of the postage on letters sent from different parts of the United Kingdom to the out-ports, for the purpose of being put on board of ships bound to foreign parts, especially to the United States of America, is yet more remarkable than the evasion of the inland postage. It is thoroughly known to the Post Office authorities; but the practice appears to be winked at. Colonel Maberly speaks of that practice as one known, and almost recognised.”[179]

The following curious fact was stated by a witness from Liverpool, Mr. Maury, president of the “American Chamber of Commerce.” When arrangements had been completed for the establishment of regular steam navigation between that town and New York, the postmaster, expecting to have a large despatch of letters to provide for, was careful to furnish himself with a bag of ample dimensions, but, “to his astonishment, received only five letters in all,” though “by the first steamer at least ten thousand letters were in fact sent, all in one bag, which was opened at the office of the consignee of the ship. Mr. Maury himself sent at least two hundred letters by that ship, which went free.”[180]

These extraordinary statements were strongly supported by the evidence of Mr. Lawrence, Assistant Secretary to the London Office, who “states that, from what the Post Office have learnt, the American packet, which leaves London every ten days, carries 4,000 letters, each voyage, which do not pass through the Post Office; that he is aware of the existence in London of receiving-houses for letters, to be forwarded otherwise than by the Post; the Jerusalem Coffee-house, for instance, receives letters for the East Indies; the North and South American Coffee-house, for South America, the United States, and British America; that almost every ship-broker in London has a bag hanging up for letters to be forwarded by the ship to which heis broker; and that the number of letters for North America so collected for several ships in the office of one ship-broker have been enough to load a cab.”

In short, the committee came “to the conclusion that, with regard to large classes of the community, those principally to whom it is a matter of necessity to correspond on matters of business, and to whom, also, it is a matter of importance to save the expense of postage, the Post Office, instead of being viewed as it ought to be, and would be, under a wise administration of it, as an institution of ready and universal access, distributing equally to all, and with an open hand, the blessing of commerce and civilization, is regarded by them as an establishment too expensive to be made use of, and as one with the employment of which they endeavour to dispense by every means in their power.”[181]

They also became convinced that if it were possible, by increased rigour, to put a stop to the illicit transmission of letters, a vast diminution must take place in the number of letters written; and that the suppression of correspondence already caused by high rates would be greatly magnified. One witness had “made a calculation some time ago among the poor manufacturers, and found that, when one of them in full work could earn forty shillings a week, he would receive, on an average, thirty orders, which, at fourpence a piece, if they went through the Post Office, would be twenty-five per cent. on his earnings.”[182]

While, however, illicit correspondence was found thus prevalent, there was abundant and striking evidence to show that “high rates of postage deter the public to a vast extent from writing letters and sending communications which otherwise they would write orsend;” that “even those who have the means of evasion within their reach reduce their correspondence greatly below the standard which, under other circumstances, they would think expedient;” that “suppression of correspondence on matters of business takes the place of evasion in proportion as the transactions to be announced or performed are moderate in amount, and the condition in life of the parties is humble.”[183]

Were it not too tedious to enumerate even the heads under which suppression was deposed to, the reader, accustomed to the present state of things, would be astonished at the extent and variety to which movements would be restricted by a return to the old rates. Some few instances are all that can be noted. Who would now divine that high rates of postage could have any relation to the prevalence of small-pox? And yet it was found that “Practitioners and others in the country do not apply for lymph, in the degree they otherwise would do, to the institutions formed in London for the spread of vaccination, for fear of postage.”

Again: “Sixpence,” says Mr. Brewin, “is a third of a poor man’s daily income; if a gentleman, whose fortune is a thousand pounds a year, or three pounds a day, had to pay one-third of his daily income, that is, a sovereign, for a letter, how often would he write letters of friendship?” ... “The people do not think of using the Post Office; it is barred against them by the very high charge.”[184]“Mr. G. Henson, a working hosier from Nottingham, had given his wife instructions not to take letters in unless they came from particular persons; it would take half his income were he to pay postage.”[185]

The following statement, showing at once the desireand the inability of the poor to correspond, is taken from the evidence of Mr. Emery, Deputy-Lieutenant for Somersetshire, and a Commissioner of Taxes:—

“A person in my parish of the name of Rosser had a letter from a grand-daughter in London, and she could not take up the letter for want of the means. She was a pauper, receiving two-and-sixpence a week.... She told the Post Office keeper that she must wait until she had received the money from the relieving officer; she could never spare enough; and at last a lady gave her a shilling to get the letter, but the letter had been returned to London by the Post Office mistress. She never had the letter since. It came from her grand-daughter, who is in service in London.”[186]

Struck by this statement, Mr. Emery made further inquiries. The following statement he received from the postmaster of Banwell:—

“My father kept the Post Office many years; he is lately dead; he used to trust poor people very often with letters; they generally could not pay the whole charge. He told me, indeed I know, he did lose many pounds by letting poor people have their letters. We sometimes return them to London in consequence of the inability of the persons to whom they are addressed raising the postage. We frequently keep them for weeks; and, where we know the parties, let them have them, taking the chance of getting our money. One poor woman once offered my sister a silver spoon, to keep until she could raise the money; my sister did not take the spoon, and the woman came with the amount in a day or two and took up the letter. It came from her husband, who was confined for debt in prison; she had six children, and was very badly off.”[187]

The following was reported by the postmaster of Congresbury:—

“The price of a letter is a great tax on poor people. I sent one, charged eightpence, to a poor labouring man about a week ago; it came from his daughter. He first refused taking it, saying it would take a loaf of bread from his other children; but, after hesitating a little time, he paid the money, and opened the letter. I seldom return letters of this kind to Bristol, because I let the poor people havethem, and take the chance of being paid; sometimes I lose the postage, but generally the poor people pay me by degrees.”[188]

The postmaster of Yatton stated as follows:—

“I have had a letter waiting lately from the husband of a poor woman, who is at work in Wales; the charge was ninepence; it lay many days, in consequence of her not being able to pay the postage. I at last trusted her with it.”[189]

Mr. Cobden stated:—

“We have fifty thousand in Manchester who are Irish, or the immediate descendants of Irish; and all the large towns in the neighbourhood contain a great many Irish, or the descendants of Irish, who are almost as much precluded, as though they lived in New South Wales, from all correspondence or communication with their relatives in Ireland.”[190]

As the postage between Manchester and most parts of Ireland was then about double the present postage (1869) from any part of England or Ireland to Australia, the separation between the Irish in Lancashire and their countrymen at home must then have been, postally considered, not only as great, but about twice as great as is now that between the Irish at home and their friends at the Antipodes.

Of the desire of the poor to correspond, Mr. Emery gave further evidence, stating:—

“That the poor near Bristol have signed a petition to Parliament for the reduction of the postage. He never saw greater enthusiasm in any public thing that was ever got up in the shape of a petition; they seemed all to enter into the thing as fully, and with as much feeling as it was possible, as a boon or godsend to them, that they should be able to correspond with, their distant friends.”[191]

Much evidence was also given as to the extent ofmoral evil caused by the suppression of correspondence. On this point Mr. Henson speaks again:—

“When a man goes on the tramp, he must either take his family with him, perhaps one child in arms, or else the wife must be left behind; and the misery I have known them to be in, from not knowing what has become of the husband, because they could not hear from him, has been extreme. Perhaps the man, receiving only sixpence, has never had the means, upon the whole line, of paying tenpence for a letter to let his wife know where he was.”[192]

Mr. Dunlop believed that—

“One of the worst parts of the present system of heavy postage is, that it gradually estranges an absentee from his home and family, and tends to engender a neglect of the ties of blood, in fact, to encourage a selfish spirit; at the same time he has known very affecting instances of families in extreme poverty making a sacrifice to obtain a letter from the Post Office.”[193]

Mr. Brankston said:—

“I have seen much of the evils resulting from the want of communication between parents and their children among the young persons in our establishment; I find the want of communication with their parents by letter has led, in some instances, to vice and profligacy which might have been otherwise prevented.”[194]

It was also shown that one effect of suppression of correspondence was to keep working-men ignorant of the state of wages in different parts of the country, so that they did not know where labour was in demand. Thus Mr. Brewin said:—

“We often see poor men travelling the country for work, and sometimes they come back, and it appears they have been in a wrong direction; if the postage were low they would write first, and know whether they were likely to succeed.”[195]

Mr. Henson stated as follows:—

“The Shoemakers’ Society at Nottingham tell me that 350 persons have come there for relief.... Very few of those personswould have gone upon tramp if they could have sent circular letters to a number of the largest towns in England at a penny to receive information whether a job could be got or not.”[196]

It may be observed that one of the main facts now urged in favour of Trades Unions is, that they collect and circulate the very information here spoken of as so much wanting.

There was evidence to show that the difficulty of communication aggravated—

“The remarkable pertinacity of the poor to continue in their own parish, rather than remove to another where their condition would be bettered.”[197]

It was also stated that—

“The consequence of the high rates, in preventing the working-classes from having intercourse by letter, is, that those who learned at school to write a copy have lost their ability to do so.”[198]

Mr. Henson adds that—

“There are many persons, who, when he first knew them wrote an excellent hand, but now, from their scarcely ever practising, they write very badly: one of these persons is so much out of the habit of writing that he would as soon do a day’s work, he says, as write a letter: they are so much out of the habit of writing that they lose the art altogether.”[199]

Mr. Davidson, of Glasgow, thought—

“That additional opportunities of correspondence would lead the industrious classes, the working-classes, to pay more attention to the education of their children than they do now, and that it would have a highly beneficial effect, both upon their moral and intellectual character.”[200]

So strong was the sense entertained by some of the witnesses of the evils inflicted on society by imposinga tax upon postage that they expressed their doubts whether it were a fit subject for taxation at all. Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd (now Lord Overstone), said:—

“I think if there be any one subject which ought not to have been selected as a subject of taxation it is that of intercommunication by post; and I would even go a step further, and say, that if there be any one thing which the Government ought, consistently with its great duties to the public, to do gratuitously, it is the carriage of letters. We build national galleries, and furnish them with pictures; we propose to create public walks, for the air and health and exercise of the community, at the general cost of the country. I do not think that either of those, useful and valuable as they are to the community, and fit as they are for Government to sanction, are more conducive to the moral and social advancement of the community than the facility of intercourse by post. I therefore greatly regret that the post was ever taken as a field for taxation, and should be very glad to find that, consistently with the general interests of the revenue, which the Government has to watch over, they can effect any reduction in the total amount so received, or any reduction in the charges, without diminishing the total amount.”[201]

Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Brown, and also Lord Ashburton, strongly supported this opinion, the latter saying:—

“The communication of letters by persons living at a distance is the same as a communication by word of mouth between persons living in the same town. You might as well tax words spoken upon the Royal Exchange, as the communications of various persons living in Manchester, Liverpool, and London. You cannot do it without checking very essentially the disposition to communicate.”[202]

I pause here in my narrative to bar an inference that might very naturally be drawn from my citing the above passages, viz., that in my opinion even the present rates constitute a tax, and may therefore be wisely and justly abandoned in favour of lower ones,or indeed of absolutely free conveyance. Certainly, if it could be shown that some other corporation could and would manage the whole correspondence, with all its numerous and extensive rootlets and ramifications, on lower terms than the Government, and this without any sacrifice in speed or certainty, then the difference between such lower rates and the present might fairly be termed a tax; but I am not aware that such capability has yet been conceived, still less seriously maintained; and indeed I cannot but believe that, taking the duty as a whole, the Post Office, so long as it is well managed, is likely to do the work on better terms than any rival institution.

Another opinion erroneously attributed to me, and connected with the above, is, that so long as the department thrives as a whole, its funds may justly be applied to maintain special services which do not repay their own cost; whereas, from the first, I have held that every division of the service should be at least self-supporting,[203]though I allowed that, for the sake of simplicity, extensions might be made where there was no immediate expectation of absolute profit.[204]All beyond this I have always regarded as contrary to the true principles of free trade, as swerving into the unsound and dangerous practice of protection. Whenever, therefore, it is thought that the net revenue from the Post Office is too high for the interests of the public, I would advise the application of the surplus to the multiplication of facilities in those districts in which, through the extent of their correspondence, such revenue is produced.

To return to the evidence. With regard to theamount of reduction that it would be expedient to make, the witnesses generally, whether from the Post Office or otherwise, were of opinion that it must be large; illicit conveyance having become too firmly established to be effectually dealt with by any moderate change. The Secretary indeed was of opinion—

“That to whatever extent the postage is reduced, those who have hitherto evaded it will continue to evade it, since it cannot be reduced to that price that smugglers will not compete with the Post Office, at an immense profit.”[205]

It has already been shown that a very important, indeed essential, part of my plan was uniformity of rate. To this various objections were raised, some of which would now seem frivolous enough. As an instance, I may mention the statement—

“That in certain cases extra rates are levied, and are applicable to the maintenance of certain roads and bridges, undertaken with a view to expedite the mails which travel over them.”[206]

An objection the more frivolous as the total amount of the rates thus levied was less than £8,000.

Some witnesses from the Post Office regarded the uniform rate as “unfair in principle.”[207]Dr. Lardner, while he regarded it as abstractedly unjust, yet thought it should be recommended on account of its simplicity. All the other witnesses were in its favour, provided the rate were as low as one penny; and nearly all considered a uniform rate preferable to a varying one, though the rate should somewhat exceed one penny.[208]

Mr. Jones Loyd observed that the—

“Justice of the uniform plan is perfectly obvious. You are not warranted in varying the charge to different individuals, except uponthe ground that the cost of conveyance varies; so far as that varies the charge ought to vary; but it appears to me that that which consists of a tax upon individuals ought to have no reference to the place of their residence; it should either be equal, or, if it varies at all, it should be in proportion to their means of bearing the tax.”

Being asked whether, if a uniform rate of twopence were imposed on all letters, and if a person at Limerick got his letters for twopence, a person at Barnet would not soon find out that he ought to have his letters for a penny, Mr. Loyd answered:—

“If such be the fact, he would soon find it out, I presume; if it was not the fact, of course he would never find it out.”[209]

Mr. Dillon made the following remarkable statement:—

“To show how little the cost of transit sometimes enters into the price of goods, I may mention to the committee, in the way of illustration, that we buy goods in Manchester; they are conveyed to London; we sell them in London very often to dealers resident in Manchester, who again carry them back to the place from whence they came, and after the cost of two transits, they will have bought them of us cheaper than they themselves could have bought them in Manchester. In this instance, the cost of transit, as an element of price, has become absolutely destroyed by the force of capital and other arrangements.”[210]

Colonel Maberly would like a uniform rate of postage, but did not think it practicable. “Any arrangements which, in the great details of Post Office matters, introduce simplicity, he looks upon as a great improvement.”[211]Most of the other Post Office authorities liked the idea of a uniform rate, as “it would very much facilitate all the operations of the Post Office.”[212]

The feasibility of payment in advance, now the almost universal practice, was the subject of muchinquiry. Most of the witnesses from the Post Office recognised the advantage of the arrangement, though some of them doubted its practicability. Part of this difficulty, it must be admitted, was, in some sort, of my own creating; for, perceiving that the costly system of accounting rendered necessary by payment on delivery could never be entirely set aside unless prepayment became universal, my first notion had been to make this compulsory; and though, to smooth the difficulties, I recommended that in the outset an option should be allowed,—that, namely, which exists at present,—I certainly looked upon this as but a temporary expedient, and both desired and expected that the period of probation might be short. Doubtless it was a mistake, though a very natural one, so to clog my plan; my aim, however, was not to establish a pleasing symmetry, but to attain an important practical end.

The Postmaster-General and the Secretary were both of opinion that the public would not like prepayment. Being called on to reply to objections on this point, I showed that the question for the public to determine was between prepayment at a low rate and post-payment at a high rate; and I ventured to predict that, when so considered, the objection to prepayment would speedily die away; the more so as the difference proposed to be made between the two modes of payment, viz., that between one penny and twopence, was not adopted “as an artificial means of enforcing prepayment,” but arose “out of the greater economy to the Post Office of the one arrangement as compared with the other.” Nearly twenty other witnesses were examined on the same point, all supporting my view, some going so far as to advise that compulsory prepayment should be established at once;and, indeed, the ease with which prepayment became the general, nay almost universal, custom, must make it seem wonderful that its adoption should ever have been considered as presenting serious difficulties.

Supposing prepayment to be resolved on, the question remained as to the mode in which such payment could be most conveniently and safely made; and this inquiry of course brought the use of stamps into full discussion. It must be remembered that in proposing by this plan to supersede the multitudinous accounts then kept in the department, my object had been not merely to save expense, but to prevent loss through negligence or by fraud. In relation to this, the committee found important evidence in the Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Enquiry, as appears by the following extracts given in the report of the committee:—

“Upon the taxation of letters in the evening there is no check.“The species of control which is exercised over the deputy postmasters is little more than nominal.”

“Upon the taxation of letters in the evening there is no check.

“The species of control which is exercised over the deputy postmasters is little more than nominal.”

Upon this unsatisfactory state of things it appeared by the evidence of the Accountant-General of the Post Office that very little improvement had been made since the issue of the Commissioners’ Report.

Another matter of anxiety relative to the use of stamps was the risk of their forgery; and on this point Mr. John Wood, the Chairman of the Board of Stamps and Taxes, together with other officers of the department, was examined at considerable length. Mr. Wood wished to superadd to the use of stamps that of some paper of peculiar manufacture, forgery being more difficult when it requires the combined talents of the engraver, the printer, and the paper-maker. Specimens of such a paper had been laidbefore the committee by Mr. Dickinson, and such a paper, with lines of thread or silk stretched through it, Mr. Wood regarded as the best preventive of forgery he had ever seen. I scarcely need say that this is the paper which was subsequently used in the stamped envelope, though its use was afterwards abandoned as unnecessary.

The Post Office opinions as to the use of stamps for the purpose of prepayment were, on the whole, favourable; though the Secretary was of opinion that, as regards time, labour, and expenditure at the General Post Office, the saving would not be so great as “Mr. Hill in his pamphlet seemed to think it would.”[213]He enumerated nine classes of letters to which he thought stamps would be inapplicable.

The task of replying to these objections was easy, on some points ludicrously so; thus solemn reference was made to the class of letters which, not having found the party addressed, had been returned through the Dead Letter Office to the sender. The additional postage so caused could not be prepaid in stamps. Of course not, but luckily no such postage had ever been charged.[214]

Another class of letters presenting a difficulty (here I am careful to quote the exact words) “would be half-ounce letters weighing an ounce or above.” I could not but admit that letters exhibiting so remarkable a peculiarity might present difficulties with which I was not prepared to deal.[215]

“The ninth class,” said the Secretary, “is packets improperly sent through the Post Office. You may send anything now if you pay the postage.”

What could be more obvious than the answer? Igave it as follows: “The fact is, you may send anything now, whether you pay the postage or not.”[216]

But the Secretary continued, “The committee is aware that there is no prohibition as to what description of packets persons should put into the Post Office; the only protection to the Post Office at present is the postage that would be charged on such packets.”[217]

My answer was easy: “The fact is, that ‘the only protection’ is no protection at all. The Post Office may charge, certainly, but it cannot oblige any one to pay; and the fact of there being a deduction in the Finance Accounts for 1837, amounting to £122,000, for refused, missent, and redirected letters, and so forth, shows that the Post Office is put to a considerable expense for which it obtains no remuneration whatever.”

Among the advantages claimed for the proposed use of stamps was the moral benefit of the arrangement; and this was strongly urged by Sir William Brown, who had seen the demoralising effect arising from intrusting young men with money to pay the postage, which, under the existing arrangement, his house was frequently obliged to do.[218]His view was supported by other witnesses.

It seems strange now that it should ever have been thought necessary to inquire gravely into the expediency of substituting a simple charge by weight for the complicated arrangement already mentioned. But the innovation was stoutly resisted, and had to be justified; evidence therefore was taken on the question. Lord Ashburton being called on for his opinion,thought that the mode in use was “a hard mode, an unjust mode, and vexatious in its execution.”[219]

On the other hand, though the Secretary admitted the frequent occurrence of mistakes, which indeed it must have been impracticable to avoid, viz., “that a great number of letters are charged as double and treble which are not so, and give rise to returns of postage,”[220]and though Sir Edward Lees thought “that charging by weight would, to a certain extent, prevent letters being stolen in their passage through the Post Office,”[221]yet most of the witnesses from the Post Office were unfavourable to taxing by weight. The Superintending President described an experiment made at the office, from which he concluded that a greater number of letters could be taxed in a given time on the plan then in use, than by charging them in proportion to the weight of each letter. The value of this test was pretty well shown by the fact that in this experiment the weighing was not by the proposed half-ounce, but by thequarter-ounce scale, and that nearly every letter was put into the scale unless its weight was palpable to the hand.[222]

The probable effect of the adoption of my plan on the expenditure of the Post Office department was a question likely to elicit opposite opinions. It was to be considered, for instance, whether the staff then employed in the London Inland Office, viz., four hundred and five persons,[223]would suffice for that increase of correspondence on which I counted; or whether, again, supposing the increase not to be attained, it would, through economy of arrangement, admit of serious reduction. On these questions[224]there was muchdifference of opinion, even within the office. Thus, while one high official stated that payment in advance, even though it occasioned no increase of letters, would not enable the Post Office to dispense with a single clerk or messenger,[225]another was of opinion that four times the number of letters might be undertaken by the present number of hands.[226]

Again, as to the sufficiency of the existing means of conveyance, the Superintendent of the Mail-coaches, after stating “that a mail-coach would carry of mail fifteen hundredweight, or one thousand six hundred and eighty pounds, represented that if the letters were increased to the extent assumed, the present mail-coaches would be unable to carry them;”[227]while Colonel Colby stated that the first circumstance which drew his attention to the cheapening of postage was that in travelling all over the kingdom, particularly towards the extremities, he had “observed that the mails and carriages which contained the letters formed a very stupendous machinery for the conveyance of a very small weight; that, in fact, if the correspondence had been doubled or trebled, or quadrupled, it could not have affected the expense of conveyance.”[228]

To determine the question the committee directed a return to be made of the weight of the mail actually carried by the several mail-coaches going out of London. The average was found to be only 463 pounds,[229]or little more than a quarter of the weight which, according to Post Office evidence, a mail-coach would carry; and as it appeared, by other evidence, that the chargeable letters must form less than one-tenth of the weight of the whole mail, it was calculated by the committee that, with every allowance foradditional weight of bags, the average weight of the chargeable letters might be increased twenty-four fold before the limit of 1,680 pounds would be reached. It was further shown that the weight of all the chargeable letters contained in the thirty-two mails leaving London was but 1,456 pounds; that is, less than the weight which a single mail-coach could carry.[230]

Though the amount to be recommended as the uniform rate was of course a question for the consideration of the committee, yet, as my plan fixed it at one penny, most of the witnesses assumed this as the contemplated change, making it the basis of their estimates, and counting upon this low rate for turning into the regular channel of the post various communications then habitually made by other means—such, for instance, as small orders, letters of advice, remittances, policies of insurance, and letters enclosing patterns and samples, all of which were, for the most part, diverted into irregular channels by the excessive postage. Similar expectations were held out with respect to letters between country attorneys and their London agents, documents connected with magisterial and county jurisdiction, and with various local trusts and commissions for the management of sewers, harbours, and roads, and of schools and charities, together with notices of meetings and elections to be held by joint-stock and proprietary bodies.[231]The mere enumeration will surprise the reader of the present day, accustomed as he must be to send and receive all such communications by the post alone. Nor will it seem less strange to learn that at that time the post had little to do with the circulation of prices current, catalogues of sales, prospectuses, circulars, and other documents issued by public institutions for the promotion ofreligion, literature, science, public instruction, or philanthropic or charitable ends; all of which, so far as they could then be circulated at all, were obliged to find their way through channels more or less irregular.[232]

The committee, however, “also took evidence as to the increase that was to be expected in the posted correspondence of the country from the adoption of a uniform rate of twopence;” but on this basis they found that much greater diversity of opinion prevailed. Some important witnesses, however, with Lord Ashburton at their head, “were, for the sake of protecting the revenue, favourable to a plan founded on a twopenny rate.”[233]

While, however, Lord Ashburton thought the reduction to twopence, rather than to a penny, safer as regards the direct revenue of the Post Office, he was strong in his opinion that reduction of postage would act beneficially on the general revenue of the country, saying that there was “no item of revenue from the reduction of which he should anticipate more benefit than he would from the reduction of postage;” and adding that “if, under any plan of reduction, you did not find an improvement in the Post Office revenue, you would find considerable benefit in every other way.”[234]

Although it was obvious that the establishment of a low rate of postage would of itself have a strong tendency to the disuse of the franking privilege, the committee had to consider how far it might be desirable to retain that privilege at all. It was found that the yearly number of franked missives was about seven millions; that those franked by members of parliament,(somewhat less than five millions in number) might be counted nearly as double letters, the official franks (about two millions in number) as eight-fold letters, and the copies of the statutes, distributed by public authority (about seventy-seven thousand in number), thirteen-fold letters.[235]

In respect of the official franks, indeed, supposing their contents to be always in genuine relation to the public service, there was a mere formal difference between their passing through the Post Office free, and their being charged to the office of state from which they were posted; but such a supposition would have been very wide of the truth, for, as is justly remarked in the Report, “it is liable to the abuse, which no vigilance can effectually guard against, of being made the vehicle for private correspondence.” The Report continues:—

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