A Hundred Years by Post Part 4

TO THE HONOURABLE THE LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL [_or_, THE COMMONS, _as the case may be_] IN PARLIAMENT a.s.sEMBLED:--

The humble Pet.i.tion of the Undersigned [_to be filled up with the name of Place, Corporation, &c._]

SHEWETH,

That your Pet.i.tioners earnestly desire an Uniform Penny Post, payable in advance, as proposed by Rowland Hill, and recommended by the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons.

That your Pet.i.tioners intreat your Honourable House to give speedy effect to this Report. And your Pet.i.tioners will ever pray.

MOTHERS AND FATHERS that wish to hear from their absent children!

FRIENDS who are parted, that wish to write to each other!

EMIGRANTS that do not forget their native homes!

FARMERS that wish to know the best Markets!

MERCHANTS AND TRADESMEN that wish to receive Orders and Money quickly and cheaply!

MECHANICS AND LABOURERS that wish to learn where good work and high wages are to be had! _support_ the Report of the House of Commons with your Pet.i.tions for an UNIFORM PENNY POST. Let every City and Town and Village, every Corporation, every Religious Society and Congregation, pet.i.tion, and let every one in the kingdom sign a Pet.i.tion with his name or his mark.

THIS IS NO QUESTION OF PARTY POLITICS.

Lord Ashburton, a Conservative, and one of the richest n.o.blemen in the country, spoke these impressive words before the House of Commons Committee--"Postage is one of the worst of our Taxes; it is, in fact, taxing the conversation of people who live at a distance from each other. 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."

"Sixpence," says Mr. Brewin, "is the third of a poor man's income; if a gentleman, who had 1,000_l._ a year, or 3_l._ a day, had to pay one-third of his daily income, a sovereign, for a letter, how often would he write letters of friendship! Let a gentleman put that to himself, and then he will be able to see how the poor man cannot be able to pay Sixpence for his Letter."

READER!

If you can get any Signatures to a Pet.i.tion, make two Copies of the above on two half sheets of paper; get them signed as numerously as possible; fold each up separately; put a slip of paper around, leaving the ends open; direct one to a Member of the House of Lords, the other to a Member of the House of Commons, LONDON, and put them into the Post Office.

_Reproduced from a handbill in the collection of the late Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B. By permission of Lady Cole._

Should any reader desire to inform himself with some degree of fulness of the stages through which the Penny Postage agitation pa.s.sed, he cannot do better than peruse Sir Henry Cole's _Fifty Years of Public Work_.

The Postmaster-General, speaking at the Jubilee Meeting at the London Guildhall, on the 16th May last, thus contrasted the work of 1839 with that of 1889: "Although I would not to-night weary an a.s.semblage like this with tedious and tiresome figures, it may be at least permitted to me to remind you that, whereas in the year immediately preceding the establishment of the Penny Postage the number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom amounted to[5] 76,000,000, the number of letters delivered in this country last year was nearly 1,600,000,000--twenty times the number of letters which pa.s.sed through the post fifty years ago. To these letters must be added the 652,000,000 of post-cards and other communications by the halfpenny post, and the enormous number of newspapers, which bring the total number of communications pa.s.sing through the post to considerably above two billions. I venture to say that this is the most stupendous result of any administrative change which the world has witnessed. If you estimate the effect of that upon our daily life; if you pause for a moment to consider how trade and business have been facilitated and developed; how family relations have been maintained and kept together; if you for a moment allow your mind to dwell upon the change which is implied in that great fact to which I have called attention, I think you will see that the establishment of the penny post has done more to change--and change for the better--the face of Old England than almost any other political or social project which has received the sanction of Legislature within our history."

Among the Penny Postage literature issued in the year 1840 there are several songs. One of these was published at Leith, and is given below.

It is ent.i.tled "Hurrah for the Postman, the great Roland Hill." The leaflet is remarkable for this, that it is headed by a picture of postmen rushing through the streets delivering letters on roller skates.

It is generally believed that roller skates are quite a modern invention, and in the absence of proof to the contrary it may be fair to a.s.sume that the author of the song antic.i.p.ated the inventor in this mode of progression. So there really seems to be nothing new under the sun!

HURRAH FOR THE POSTMAN, THE GREAT ROLAND HILL.[6]

"Come, send round the liquor, and fill to the brim A b.u.mper to Railroads, the Press, Gas, and Steam; To rags, bags, and nutgalls, ink, paper, and quill, The Post, and the Postman, the gude Roland Hill!

By steam we noo travel mair quick than the eagle, A sixty mile trip for the price o' a sang!

A prin it has pownt.i.t--th' Atlantic surmount.i.t, We'll compa.s.s the globe in a fortnight or lang.

The gas bleezes brightly, you witness it nightly, Our ancestors lived unca lang in the dark; Their wisdom was folly, their sense melancholy When compared wi' sic wonderfu' modern wark.

Neist o' rags, bags, and size then, let no one despise them, Without them whar wad a' our paper come frae?

The dark flood o' ink too, I'm given to think too, Could as ill be wanted at this time o' day.

The Quill is a queer thing, a cheap and a dear thing, A weak-lookin' object, but gude kens how strang, Sometimes it is ceevil, sometimes it's the deevil.

Tak tent when you touch it, you haudna it wrang.

The Press I'll next mention, a n.o.ble invention, The great mental cook with resources so vast; It spreads on bright pages the knowledge o' ages, And tells to the future the things of the past.

Hech, sirs! but its awfu' (but ne'er mind it's lawfu') To saddle the Postman wi' sic meikle bags; Wi' epistles and sonnets, love billets and groan-ets, Ye'll tear the poor Postie to shivers and rags.

Noo Jock sends to Jenny, it costs but ae penny, A screed that has near broke the Dictionar's back, Fu' o' dove-in and dear-in, and _thoughts_ on the shearin'!!

Nae need noo o' whisp'rin' ayont a wheat stack.

Auld drivers were lazy, their mail-coaches crazy, At ilk public-house they stopt for a gill; But noo at the gallop, cheap mail-bags maun wallop.

Hurrah for our Postman, the great Roland Hill.

"Then send round the liquor," etc.

The advantages resulting from a rapid and cheap carriage of letters must readily occur to any ordinary mind; but perhaps the following would hardly suggest itself as one of those advantages. Dean Alford thus wrote about the usefulness of post-cards, introduced on the 1st October 1870: "You will also find a new era in postage begun. The halfpenny cards have become a great inst.i.tution. Some of us make large use of them to write short Latin epistles on, and are brushing up our Cicero and Pliny for that purpose."

Unlike some of the branches of post-office work, other than the distribution of news, either by letter or newspaper, the money order system dates from long before the introduction of penny postage--namely from the year 1792.

It was set on foot by some of the post-office clerks on their own account; but it was not till 1838 that it became a recognised business of the Department. Owing to high rates of commission, and to high postage, little business was done in the earlier years. In 1839 less than 190,000 orders were issued of the value of 313,000, while last year the total number of transactions within the United Kingdom was 9,228,183, representing a sum of nearly 23,000,000 sterling.

In the year 1861 the Post Office entered upon the business of banking by the establishment of the Post Office Savings Banks. At the present time there are upwards of 9000 offices within the kingdom at which Post Office Savings Bank business is transacted. The number of persons having accounts with these banks is now 4,220,927, and the annual deposits represent a gross sum of over 19,000,000.

In order of time the next additional business taken up by the Department was that of the telegraphs. Before 1870 the telegraph work for the public was carried on by several commercial companies and by the railway companies; but in that year this business became a monopoly, like the transmission of letters, in the hands of the Post Office. The work of taking over these various telegraphs, and, consolidating them into a harmonious whole, was one of gigantic proportions, requiring indomitable courage and unwearying energy, as well as consummate ability; and when the history of this enterprise comes to be written, it will perhaps be found that the undertaking, in magnitude and importance, comes in no measure short of the Penny Postage scheme of Sir Rowland Hill.

In the first year of the control of the telegraphs by the Post Office the number of messages sent was nearly 9,472,000, excluding 700,000 press messages. At that time the minimum charge was 1s. per message. In 1885 the minimum was reduced to 6d., and under this rate the number of messages rose last year to 62,368,000.

The most recent addition of importance to the varied work of the Post Office is that of the Parcel Post. This business was started in 1883. In the first year of its operation the number of inland parcels transmitted was upwards of 22,900,000. Last year the number, including a proportion of foreign and colonial parcels, rose to 39,500,000, earning a gross postage of over 878,547. The uniform rates in respect of distance, the vast number of offices where parcels are received and delivered, and the extensive machinery at the command of the Post Office for the work, render this business one of extreme accommodation to the public. Not only is the Parcel Post taken advantage of for the transmission of ordinary business or domestic parcels, but it is made the channel for the exchange of all manner of out-of-the-way articles. The following are some instances of the latter cla.s.s observed at Edinburgh: Scotch oatmeal going to Paris, Naples, and Berlin; bagpipes for the Lower Congo, and for native regiments in the Punjaub; Scotch haggis for Ontario, Canada, and for Caebar, India; smoked haddocks for Rome; the great puzzle "Pigs in Clover" for Bavaria, and for Wellington, New Zealand, and so on. At home, too, curious arrangements come under notice. A family, for example, in London find it to their advantage to have a roast of beef sent to them by parcel post twice a week from a town in Fife. And a gentleman of property, having his permanent residence in Devonshire, finds it convenient, when enjoying the shooting season in the far north-west of Scotland, to have his vegetables forwarded by parcel post from his home garden in Devonshire to his shooting lodge in Scotland.

The postage on these latter consignments sometimes amounts to about fifteen shillings a day, a couple of post-office parcel hampers being required for their conveyance.

And we should not omit to mention here the number of persons employed in the Post by whom this vast amount of most diverse business is carried on for the nation. Of head and sub-postmasters and letter receivers, each of whom has a post-office under his care, there are 17,770. The other established offices of the Post Office number over 40,500, and there are, besides, persons employed in unestablished positions to the number of over 50,000. Thus there is a great army of no less than 108,000 persons serving the public in the various domains of the postal service.

A century ago, and indeed down to a period only fifty years ago, the world, looked at from the present vantage-ground, must appear to have been in a dull, lethargic state, with hardly any pulse and a low circulation. As for nerve system it had none. The changes which the Post Office has wrought in the world, but more particularly in our own country, are only to be fully perceived and appreciated by the thoughtful. Now the heart of the nation throbs strongly at the centre, while the current of activity flows quickly and freely to the remotest corners of the state. The telegraph provides a nervous system unknown before. By its means every portion of the country is placed in immediate contact with every other part; the thrill of joy and the moan of desolation are no longer things of locality; they are shared fully and immediately by the whole; and the interest of brotherhood, extending to parts of the country which, under other conditions, must have remained unknown and uncared for, makes us realise that all men are but members of one and the same family.

The freedom and independence now enjoyed by the individual, as a result of the vast influence exercised by society through the rapid exchange of thought, is certainly a thing of which the people of our own country may well be proud. Right can now a.s.sert itself in a way which was entirely beyond the reach of our predecessors of a hundred years ago; and wrong receives summary judgment at the hands of a whole people. Yet there is a growing danger that this great liberty of the individual may become, in one direction, a spurious liberty, and that the elements of physical force, exerting themselves under the aegis of uncurbed freedom, may enter into conspiracy against intellect, individual effort, and thrift in such a way as to produce a tyranny worse than that existing in the most despotic states.

The introduction of the telegraph, and the greater facilities afforded by the press for the general distribution of news, have greatly changed the nature of commercial speculation. Formerly, when news came from abroad at wide intervals, it was of the utmost consequence to obtain early command of prices and information as to movements in the markets, and whoever gained the news first had the first place in the race.

Nowadays the telegraph, and the newspapers by the help of the telegraph, give all an equal start, and the whole world knows at once what is going on in every capital of the globe. The thirst for the first possession of news in commercial life is happily described in _Glasgow Past and Present_, wherein the author gives an account of a practice prevailing in the Tontine Reading Rooms at the end of last century.

"Immediately on receiving the bag of papers from the post-office," says the writer, "the waiter locked himself up in the bar, and after he had sorted the different papers and had made them up in a heap, he unlocked the door of the bar, and making a sudden rush into the middle of the room, he then tossed up the whole lot of newspapers as high as the ceiling of the room. Now came the grand rush and scramble of the subscribers, every one darting forward to lay hold of a falling newspaper. Sometimes a lucky fellow got hold of five or six newspapers and ran off with them to a corner, in order to select his favourite paper; but he was always hotly pursued by some half-dozen of the disappointed scramblers, who, without ceremony, pulled from his hands the first paper they could lay hold of, regardless of its being torn in the contest. On these occasions I have often seen a heap of gentlemen sprawling on the floor of the room and riding upon one another's backs like a parcel of boys. It happened, however, unfortunately, that a gentleman in one of these scrambles got two of his teeth knocked out of his head, and this ultimately brought about a change in the manner of delivering the newspapers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TONTINE READING-ROOMS, GLASGOW--ARRIVAL OF THE MAIL--PERIOD: END OF LAST CENTURY. (_After an old print._)]

Another instance of the anxiety for early news is exhibited in a practice which prevailed in Glasgow about fifty years ago. The Glasgow merchants were deeply interested in shipping and other news coming from Liverpool. The mail at that period arrived in Glasgow some time in the afternoon during business hours. A letter containing quotations from Liverpool for the Royal Exchange was due in the mail daily. This letter was enclosed in a conspicuously bright red cover, and it was the business of the post-office clerk, immediately he opened the Liverpool bag, to seize this letter and hand it to a messenger from the Royal Exchange who was in attendance at the Post Office to receive it. This messenger hastened to the Exchange, rang a bell to announce the arrival of the news, and forthwith the contents of the letter were posted up in the Exchange. The merchants who had offices within sound of the bell were then seen hurrying to the Exchange buildings, to be cheered or depressed as the case might be by the information which the mail had brought them.