Читать книгу The History of the Post Office, from Its Establishment Down to 1836 - Herbert Joyce - Страница 18

A far more efficient check, in the case of the metropolis at least, had been the difficulty of dispersion. It was one thing to bring letters to London and another to deliver them. In a maze of streets consisting of houses which bore no numbers, a comparative stranger to the town attempting anything in the shape of a general delivery would have been simply bewildered. But all this was now altered. The penny post supplied the very machinery, the want of which had hitherto kept the illicit traffic within bounds. Once within the orbit of that post, a letter consigned to any one of Dockwra's four or five hundred receiving offices would be delivered in any part of what was then known as London for 1d., and in the suburbs for 2d. And these charges would carry up to one pound in weight; whereas a quarter of one pound by the general post, even from places no further distant from London than Croydon or Kingston, would be charged 2s. 8d.

Of course, under such conditions, to carry letters across the border-line, the line which separated the general post from the penny post, had soon become a regular traffic; and this traffic, in consequence of the impunity it enjoyed, was now being carried on with little concealment. No stage-coach entered London without the driver's pockets being stuffed with letters and packets, and he was moderate indeed if he had not a bagful besides. The waggoner outstripped his waggon and the carrier his pack-horse; and each brought his contribution. The higgler's wares were the merest pretext. It was to the letters and packets he carried that he looked for profit. So notorious had the abuse become that two private persons, unconnected with the Post Office, offered their services with a view to its correction. These persons were gentlemen by birth, and yet it is difficult to conceive an office more odious than the one which they were prepared to assume. They proposed to erect stands or barriers in Westminster, Southwark, and other places in the outskirts of London, and there to demand of suspected persons as they passed any letters they might have about them which did not concern their private business. They further proposed to deliver these letters by messengers of their own, and to collect the postage, and to proceed against the bearers of them for the recovery of the penalties. It is significant of the extent to which the traffic had grown, that in return for their services they asked no more than two-thirds of the postage they should collect, and even pleaded the heavy expenses to which they would be put as an apology for asking so much. The remaining third they would undertake to make over to the postmasters-general. They did not explain, however, how it was proposed to distinguish letters which concerned the private business of the bearers from those which did not, or how, while checking others, they were to be checked themselves. Nor indeed was any such explanation needed, for the postmasters-general very clearly discerned that the proposed remedy would be worse, far worse, than the disease.

Cotton and Frankland were sorely perplexed. They knew perfectly well that the true policy was to supplant and not to suppress; and experience had taught them that to facilitate correspondence was to increase it. These views they never ceased to inculcate; but their power of giving effect to them was extremely limited. They could not lower the rates of postage, for these were fixed by Act of Parliament. They could not set up a new post nor alter an old one without the King's permission. Neither was this permission so easy to obtain as it had been. The Post Office revenue was settled upon William just as it had been settled upon James; but while James kept the control in his own hands William left it to his ministers.[14] Constitutionally sound as the change of practice was, it had its drawback. James might care little for the convenience of trade and commerce; but self-interest would prompt him not to withhold facilities where these might be given at small cost and with the prospect of comparatively large returns. Ministers, on the contrary, even the most enlightened, concerned themselves mainly with the balance-sheet of the year, and no promise of future and remote profit would easily reconcile them to a diminution of present receipts. That the Post Office must sow before it can reap is a truism which those who hold the purse-strings have, at all times, found it hard to accept.

The ministers charged with the control of the Post Office were the Lords of the Treasury. How little the postmasters-general were left to act on their own responsibility will best be shewn by examples. Warwick, according to the computation of those days, was sixty-seven miles from London; but letters for that town passed through Coventry, thus traversing a distance of eighty miles. And not only was the route a circuitous one but it involved an additional charge for postage, the rates for a single letter being, for eighty miles, 3d., and for less than eighty, 2d. The postmasters-general desired to send the letters direct; but even so simple a matter as this they were not competent to decide for themselves. A change of route involved a reduction of charge; and a reduction of charge might affect the King's receipts. Before, therefore, the route could be altered, the King's assent had to be signified through his appointed ministers. In 1696 a post was established between Exeter and Bristol. This was the first cross-post set up by authority in the British Isles. It ran twice a week, leaving Exeter on Wednesdays and Saturdays at four in the afternoon, and arriving at Bristol at the same hour on the following days. From Bristol the return post, which went on Mondays and Fridays, started at ten in the morning. But in this case as in the other, the postmasters-general had not the power to act of their own motion. Hitherto letters between the two towns had passed through London, and so had been liable to a double rate of postage, to one rate of 3d. from Exeter to London, and to another rate of equal amount from London to Bristol, or 6d. altogether. For the future, the towns being less than eighty miles apart, the charge would be 2d. Large as this reduction was, the postmasters-general strongly advocated it. The existing post, they said, was both tedious and costly, and had been little used in consequence. A direct post, it was true, would require a small outlay to start it; but, this outlay notwithstanding, the post was certain to prove remunerative. Increase facilities for correspondence, and correspondence would assuredly follow. Besides, it would promote trade and be an inestimable boon to the public generally. To these representations the Treasury yielded; and before three years were over, the postmasters-general had the satisfaction of reporting that the new post was producing a clear profit of more than £250 a year. But complaisant as the Treasury had been on this occasion, their co-operation was fitful and uncertain. The Post Office could not advance a step without incurring some trifling expense; and the Treasury only too often acted as if to save expense, however trifling, were the highest proof of statesmanship.

The postmasters-general were indeed heavily handicapped. Even with a free hand their position would have been one of great embarrassment. But bound hand and foot as they were, what could they do? They did what was perhaps the very best thing that could have been done in the circumstances. They grouped large numbers of post offices together and let them out to farm. These groups, or branches as they were called, spread over a wide area. The Buckingham branch, for instance, not only included the county of Bucks but extended as far as Warwick. The Hungerford branch comprised sixteen post offices in the counties of Berks, Wilts, and Somerset. The Chichester branch covered a large part of Surrey as well as Sussex; and the six remaining branches, for eventually there were nine altogether, were equally extensive.

This, though by no means a perfect remedy for the existing evils, went far to mitigate them. The farmer, of course, could not alter the rates of postage; but with this single exception he was free from the restraints which hampered the postmasters-general. Within the area over which his farm extended he had only to consult his own interests; and, happily, his own interests and the interests of the public were identical. He improved and extended the posts, because to improve and extend the posts added to the number of letters and made his farm more profitable. He stopped the practice of levying gratuities on the delivery of letters, because this practice, by adding to the cost of the post, and so deterring persons from using it, diminished his own receipts. For the same reason he took good care that no agent of his own should omit to account for bye-letters, and, if other than his own agents continued to send letters by irregular means, that it should not be for want of facilities which he could himself supply.

To this community of interest as between himself and the public may be ascribed the exceptional feelings with which, at the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, the Post Office farmer was regarded. The very name of farmer in connection with other branches of the revenue had become a by-word for all that was rapacious and extortionate. Only recently the farmer of the customs and the farmer of the hearth money had been stamped out as moral pests. The Post Office farmer, on the contrary, was welcomed wherever he came as a public benefactor. In his case outrages and exactions such as had disgraced the others were impossible. Before he could collect a single penny he had a service to perform; and according as this service was performed well or ill, he repelled or attracted custom.

The real secret of his welcome, however, was that he supplied an urgent demand; and how urgent this demand was may best be judged by the conditions on which he was glad to accept his farm. These conditions were a lease of no more than three years, and a rent equivalent to the highest amount which the post offices included in his farm had in any one year produced. For his profits he had nothing to look to but the increase of revenue resulting from his own management; and even of this he received the whole only in the first year, when he would, presumably, be establishing his plant. In subsequent years he received two-thirds, the remaining third going to the Post Office. If under such conditions as these it were possible to toil and grow rich, great indeed must have been the field of operation.

Among those who were commissioned to supply the accommodation which the postmasters-general were precluded from supplying themselves was one who deserves to be specially mentioned. This was Stephen Bigg of Winslow, in Buckinghamshire. Bigg farmed the Buckingham branch. He appears to have possessed and to have deserved the confidence of the postmasters-general. Of ample means, and endowed with no ordinary powers of organisation, he had probably embarked on his undertaking less with a view to profit than from a desire to improve the posts. Be that as it may, the same means which conduced to the one end conduced also to the other; and when the time arrived for him to render an account of his proceedings, he not only made over to the Post Office a handsome sum as one-third share of the profits, but had earned for himself the gratitude of the large district over which his farm extended.

His success in his own county encouraged him to enlarge the sphere of his operations. Passing through Lancashire in the last year of the century, he was struck with the wretched accommodation which the posts afforded. As compared with those under his own control, they were slow, irregular, and, owing to the system of gratuities, costly. On his return to London he offered to take in farm the post offices of the whole county. The offer was accepted, and a lease was signed fixing the rent, as ascertained in the usual manner, at £2826. The history of this farm is curious. Bigg had not long been engaged in his new undertaking before the cross-post which had some few years before been set up between Exeter and Bristol was extended to Chester. It is not very clear how this interfered with Bigg's proceedings; but, as a matter of fact, it appears to have tapped an important source of supply. On this being pointed out to the postmasters-general, they at once, with that high sense of justice which distinguished all their proceedings, released him from his engagement and cancelled the lease.

The next county to which Bigg turned his attention was Lincolnshire. If Lancashire had bad posts, Lincolnshire had next to none. Five post towns were all of which Lincolnshire could boast—Stamford and Witham and Grantham, Lincoln and Boston; and of these only two were off the great north road which ran through the extreme west of the county. It is true that other towns received letters; but they received them only by virtue of a private arrangement, and heavily had they to pay for the luxury. From Lincoln, for instance, the postmaster went twice a week to Gainsborough and to Brigg, to Horncastle, Louth, and Grimsby, charging as his own perquisite on each letter he collected or delivered the sum of 3d. over and above the postage; but, so far as depended on any official post, these and all the intervening towns were absolutely cut off from the rest of the world.[15] Bigg procured a farm of the district in favour of his son, and the lease was signed on the 4th of August 1705. On the 1st of October in the same year posts began to run, and gratuities on the delivery of letters had become a thing of the past. One penny on each letter collected was the only charge that remained over and above the postage.

It would be less than justice not to recognise the important part which about this period the farmer played in the history of the Post Office; nor is it possible not to admire the sagacity of those who, when they found the posts to be slipping through their fingers, summoned this extraneous agency to their aid. It was no mere venture which by a happy accident happened to turn out well. The postmasters-general had foreseen and foretold exactly what would be the result—that under a system of farming the public would be better served, letters would become more numerous, and the revenue, when it should revert to the Crown at the termination of the lease, would be higher than when the lease began.

Next to Lincolnshire in poverty of the means of correspondence stood Cornwall. Until 1704 the post to Falmouth, after leaving Exeter, ran through Ashburton to Plymouth and thence along the south coast. Of the towns in Mid Cornwall Launceston alone possessed a post office. At others, indeed, letters were delivered, but only by virtue of a private arrangement and on payment of a gratuity of 2d. apiece. No farmer, unfortunately, offered his services here. But, what was perhaps the next best thing, the gentry of the county, headed by Lord Granville, took the matter up. Thus supported, the postmasters-general proceeded to concert their arrangements. They desired the postmasters of Exeter, Plymouth, and Launceston to meet together and prepare some scheme for facilitating the correspondence of the midland towns. Such a scheme was soon submitted, and, although it involved a cost of £260 a year, authority for its adoption was not withheld. Henceforth the post for the extreme west of England was to go, not by way of Plymouth, but direct from Exeter to St. Columb, and thence through Truro to Falmouth. A single post through a wide extent of country might ill accord with our present views of what the public convenience requires; and yet at the beginning of the eighteenth century Mid Cornwall, by the mere alteration of the route for the Falmouth mails, obtained facilities for correspondence not inferior to those enjoyed by other parts of the country.

The speed at which the post travelled at the end of the seventeenth century only slightly exceeded four miles an hour. This slow rate of progress, added to the fact that, except to the Downs, the post left London only on alternate days, gave occasion for the not infrequent use of expresses. These were mounted messengers sent specially for the occasion. Whether for expresses there was any prescribed rate of speed is not known; but it seems probable that their instructions were to go as fast as they could. The charge for an express was 3d. a mile and 6d. a stage, a stage being on the average about twelve miles. The total sum which the Post Office received on this account during the half-year which ended the 29th of September 1685 was £337.

Occasionally several expresses would be required at one time. In 1696, on the discovery of Barclay's plot to assassinate the King, orders were given to close the ports; and these orders the postmasters-general sent, as they were instructed to do, by express. Some twenty years afterwards similar orders were given, and an account is still extant shewing how on the later, and probably the earlier, occasion they were carried into effect. The English ports were sixty-two in number; and to only ten of these were expresses sent direct from Lombard Street, the others being either taken by the way or reached by branch expresses furnished by the towns through which the expresses from London passed. Altogether the distance traversed was 2526 miles, the number of stages 202, and the sum which the Post Office received for the service from the Commissioners of Customs £36:12:6.

From expresses it seems almost natural to pass to flying packets, although between the two there is, so far as we are aware, no necessary connection. What was a flying packet? The term "flying," at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, was, no doubt, used in the sense of running. For this season, writes Lord Compton's private tutor to Lady Northampton, under date September 1734, "the coach has done flying." In like manner "flying post," a term as old as the Post Office itself,[16] meant nothing more than what in Scotland was called a runner. Possibly because the idea of expedition was conveyed by the term "flying," flying packet came to be regarded as synonymous with express. "I despatch this by a flying pacquett," writes Lord Townshend to the Duke of Argyll in 1715; and again, "My lord, after writing what is above, a flying packet brings letters from Edinburgh of the 12th." "By the flying pacquett which arrived last night," writes Secretary Stanhope about the same date, "I received the honour of your Grace's of the 21st inst." Here, by flying packet is obviously meant express. And yet, curiously enough, this is a sense in which the postmasters-general never employed the term. By them it was always designed to signify the thing transmitted, and not the means of transmission. What they called a flying packet might be sent by ordinary post no less than by express; and when sending one by express they never failed to state that it was being so sent. "You are therefore," they write in 1706, "on the receipt of the bag so delivered to your care [i.e. a small bag containing letters for the Court], to dispatch the same imediately by a flying packet from Harwich to this office, and to send a labil therewith expressing the precise time of the arrival and your having dispatched the same per express." On receipt of the Holland mail, they write again in the following year, "You are to take out the Court letters, and to forward the same express by a flying packet directed to Mr. Frankland at the Post Office at Newmarket." "The inclosed box being recommended to our care by His Grace the Duke of Queensberry, one of Her Majesty's principall Secretarys of State, we do send the same by a flying pacquet. … You are to send us advice by the first post of the safe comeing of this pacquet to your hands." In short, flying packet, in its original sense, appears to have meant simply a packet of which the enclosures were designed for some other person than the one whose address the packet bore. Within the Post Office it is occasionally necessary to employ technical terms which would not be intelligible to persons without; but this, so far as we are aware, is the only instance of the same term being used within and without in two totally different senses.

Of the state of the roads about this period the Highway Act 1691 affords, perhaps, not the least trustworthy evidence. To incidents which have resulted in nothing more than temporary inconvenience travellers are apt to give a touch of humorous exaggeration. An Act of Parliament, on the contrary, deals with facts as they are, and concerns itself not with imaginary ills. What, then, is to be thought of the condition of the roads when provisions such as these were necessary?—No causeway for horses was to be less than three feet in breadth, nor was the breadth of any cartway leading to a market town to be less than eight feet. In highways of less breadth than twenty feet no tree was to be permitted to grow, or stone, timber, or manure to be heaped up so as to obstruct progress; and hedges were to be kept trimmed, and boughs to be lopped off, so as to allow a free passage to travellers, and not to intercept the action of the sun and wind. Of any breach of these and other provisions the road-surveyor was, on the Sunday next after it became known to him, to give public notice in the parish church immediately after the conclusion of the sermon.

Long after the passing of the Act of 1691, and perhaps in consequence of it, the causeway formed an important feature of the roads. This causeway, or bridle-track, ran down the middle; while the margin on either side was little better than a ditch, and being lower than the adjoining soil, and at the same time soft and unmade, received and retained the sludge. But, in truth, the state of the roads concerned the Post Office far less at the close of the seventeenth century than it did at the close of the eighteenth. The mails were carried on horseback; and, even so, they were carried mainly over the six great roads of the kingdom. These roads, as compared with others, were good; and execrably bad as we might now think them, they were probably not altogether ill adapted to riding. The disasters which history refers to this period, as illustrating the difficulties of travelling, occurred generally on the cross-roads, and always with wheel traffic. For both wheel traffic and horse traffic the six great roads had, probably from the earliest times, been kept in some sort of repair. On the great Kent Road, nearly a hundred years before, a young Dane, with his attendants, had on horseback accomplished the distance between Dover and London in a single day.[17] In 1642 couriers had ridden from London to York and back, a distance of about 400 miles, in thirty-four hours,[18] a feat barely possible except on the assumption that the road was in tolerable order. Now and again, indeed, some postmaster, pleading for the remission of his debt to the Crown, would urge the losses he had sustained in horse-flesh by reason of the badness of the roads; but these roads were always cross-roads—roads along which, if he had delivered letters, he had delivered them on his own account. Of the six great roads as a means of transit for the mails there were no complaints.

It was when the Post Office required something to be done which involved transmission from place to place otherwise than on horseback that its troubles began. Such an event occurred in 1696. Sir Isaac Newton was then busy at the mint, devoting to the coinage those powers of intellect which were soon to astonish the world. The clipping of the coin had gone to such lengths that within the space of one year no less than four Acts of Parliament were passed with a view to abate the evil. Milled money was to take the place of hammered money. The clipped pieces had already been withdrawn from circulation, and now a date was fixed after which no broad pieces were to be received in payment of taxes except by weight. This date was the 18th of November, and collectors of the public revenue were allowed until the 18th of the following month to pay them over to the Exchequer. If not paid over by the 18th of December they were to be taken by weight and not by tale, and the collectors were to lose the difference.

Here was a clear month's grace, and the postmasters were under a strong inducement to see that the period was not exceeded. From Oxford the hammered money was sent by barge. No sooner had it started than a severe frost set in, and lasted for six weeks, the consequence being to delay the arrival in London until the 7th of January. To take the money by weight and not by tale would have been equivalent to a fine of about £23. From this, however, the postmaster was excused on the ground that the barge was the safest means of conveyance he could have employed. As a "flying coach"—a coach which travelled at the speed of about four miles an hour—had for many years been running between Oxford and London, it must be assumed either that it had stopped for the winter or else that for some cause or other, possibly on account of highwaymen, it was not considered safe. From Sandwich, in Kent, the hammered money was sent by hoy, which did not reach the Thames until the 20th of January. Again the postmasters-general urged that the delay might be overlooked on the ground that no earlier means of conveyance would have been safe. Altogether, when the 18th of December arrived, more than £1000 of hammered money was still outstanding in the postmasters' hands; and in every case the want of conveyance or the badness of the roads was assigned as the cause.

The penny post office, since it had passed into the hands of the Government, had undergone but little change. Its headquarters had been removed from Dockwra's house to seven rooms prepared for the purpose, not, indeed, at the Post Office in Lombard Street, where want of space was already beginning to be felt, but probably in the immediate neighbourhood. It had also, in the language of the time, been eased from a multitude of desperate debts. But the conditions on which it was conducted remained as they had been—the same limit of weight, the same frequency of delivery, and the same rule as to compensation in case of loss. Dockwra, with the view, no doubt, of propitiating the authorities, had provided for the conveyance to Lombard Street of all general post letters left at his receiving offices; and this duty, when he was dispossessed, passed to the persons by whom those offices were kept. The result was not satisfactory. The receivers, in their desire to get the work done as cheaply as possible, employed to do it the most needy and most worthless persons, persons who could not get employment elsewhere. At length the miscarriages and losses became so frequent that the Post Office appointed its own messengers to go round and collect the letters. Nor is it by any means certain that the character of the receivers themselves was above suspicion. The plain truth is that they were, with few exceptions, keepers of public-houses. The collector who called there periodically to adjust accounts complained that often four and even five visits were necessary before he could obtain payment, and that the opportunity was taken to pass upon him bad money.

Times have changed indeed. With public-houses for receiving offices, with inn-keepers for postmasters, and with a considerable sum expended annually on drink and feast money, it can hardly be denied that the Post Office at the end of the seventeenth century was a good friend to the licensed victualler. At the present time no postmaster may keep an inn; no receiving office may be at a public-house; and not many years ago, when a hotel with its stock-in-trade was purchased with a view to the extension of the Post Office buildings in St. Martin's-le-Grand, some excellent persons were shocked because, under the sanction of the postmaster-general, were exposed for sale by auction some few dozen bottles of port.

Of the extent to which the penny post was used at this period we are not, so far as the suburbs are concerned, without some means of judging. According to the original plan, which had been adhered to in its integrity, one penny was to carry a letter within such parts of London as lay within the bills of mortality. Beyond these limits one penny more was charged; and this penny, which was technically called the second or deliver penny, constituted the messengers' remuneration. As this soon proved to be more than enough for its purpose, the messengers were put on fixed wages, and the second pennies were carried to the credit of the Post Office. Of the amounts derived from this source during the sixteen years from 1686 to 1702 a record is still extant. The lowest amount for any one year was £310, and the highest £377, the average being £336. It would hence appear that for such parts of London as lay outside the bills of mortality, for what in fact were at that time the suburbs, the number of letters at the end of the seventeenth century was about 80,640 a year, or, counting 306 working days to the year, about 263 a day.

On one point the postmasters-general were determined, that the penny post office should not be let out to farm. All overtures to this effect they resolutely declined. The penny post and the general post had become so interwoven, and, outside London, so short a distance separated the limits within which the one ceased and the other began to operate, that it was considered of the highest importance, both on the score of convenience and as a protection against fraud, that the two posts should not be under different management. The same considerations were not held to apply to Dublin. In Dublin, rapidly as that city was now growing in size[19] and population, a penny post, it was thought, could not possibly answer. Yet in 1703 a spirited lady sought permission to set one up. This was Elizabeth, Countess-Dowager of Thanet. A desire to supplement a jointure, originally slender and now reduced by the taxation consequent on the war, was the simple reason assigned for the enterprise, and yet with the highest professions of public spirit it might have been difficult to render to the community a more signal service. The Duke of Ormonde, who was then Lord Lieutenant, approved the proposal, and the postmasters-general had made preparations for carrying it into effect. The new post was to extend for ten or twelve miles in and around Dublin; no receiving office was to be within two miles of the first stage of the general post; the lease was to be for fourteen years; and one-tenth part of the clear profits was to go to the Crown. At the last moment, however, the Treasury withheld their assent, and for no less than seventy years from this time Dublin remained without a penny post.

Of the internal affairs of the Post Office during the first fifteen years of Cotton and Frankland's administration of it little need be said. At first their only assistant was a clerk at £40 a year to copy their letters. In 1694 they procured a new appointment to be created, the appointment of Secretary to the Post Office. The Secretary to the Post Office at the present time has duties to discharge, of the variety and importance of which his mere title gives a very inadequate idea. In 1694 he was little more than a private secretary. One thing indeed he had to do, to which a private secretary of our own time might perhaps demur. During the night, if an express were wanted, he had to rise from his bed and prepare the necessary instructions. The salary of the appointment, originally £100, was raised to £200 in 1703. In this year a solicitor was appointed, also at a salary of £200.

Two years later a transaction was completed on which the postmasters-general had long set their hearts. This was the purchase of a part of the Post Office premises in Lombard Street. As far back as 1688 Sir Robert Viner, the owner, had offered the freehold for sale, but the Revolution had put a stop to further proceedings. In 1694, after Sir Robert's death, his nephew and executor again proposed to sell, and Sir Christopher Wren, on behalf of the Crown, surveyed the property with a view to its purchase. On examination, however, the title proved to be defective, and it was not until 1705, after the defect had been remedied by Act of Parliament, that the Crown secured the freehold for the sum of £6500. At the present time it matters not where Post Office servants reside, so long as they attend punctually. At the beginning of the eighteenth century it was considered important on account of the unseasonable hours of attendance that they should reside "in and about" the Post Office. The Post Office was, in effect, a barrack, and, except the premises in Lombard Street, there were none in the immediate neighbourhood that would well answer the purpose. Hence the anxiety to purchase the freehold; and the anxiety was all the greater because it had been threatened that if not purchased by the Crown the property would be sold to the speculative builder or, as he was then called, the projector.