The History of the Post Office Part 23

Accordingly it was decided that between Liverpool and Dublin the Post Office should run its own packets, and the new service began on the 29th of August 1826. The opening was marred by a lamentable disaster. Early in September the _Francis Freeling_ packet, a recently-built cutter named after the secretary, and reputed to be the finest vessel of its kind afloat, foundered during a heavy gale and all the pa.s.sengers and crew were lost.

The new service, while an unquestionable convenience to the public, did not altogether satisfy the Post Office. It is true that, as a consequence of the increased accommodation, the letters for Ireland pa.s.sing through Liverpool nearly doubled in number; but this satisfactory result was not without alloy. During the past few years the art of building as applied to steamboats had made rapid progress; and not only were the packets on the Liverpool station larger than those stationed at Holyhead, the horse-power of the engines being 170 in the one case as against 40 in the other, but they were altogether better equipped. The fares by the Liverpool route as fixed by the Post Office were also relatively lower, and to any one proceeding from London or the large manufacturing towns of the North the distance to be travelled by road was shorter. As a consequence, the diversion of traffic from Holyhead to Liverpool, notwithstanding the longer sea voyage, proceeded still more rapidly than when the steamers from the latter port were in private hands; and the Holyhead service, which had for some years produced a clear profit of many thousand pounds a year, was now carried on at a loss.

To the Post Office authorities, indeed, there was in connection with the four packet stations in communication with Ireland only one thing which gave them unqualified satisfaction. It was this--that to the Post Office belonged the credit of being first to demonstrate by practical experience that, to use Freeling's words, "steam vessels could force their way at all seasons of the year and in weather in which no sailing vessel, be her qualities what they might, would attempt to put to sea."

Whether the claim is well founded or not we have no means of judging; we only know that it was made.

By land, at the beginning of the present century, communication with Ireland was in a more backward state than it was by water; and since the Union a very general opinion had prevailed that this communication should be improved. It would perhaps be too much to say that the British Post Office proved obstructive in the matter; but there can be no doubt that it did not lend the a.s.sistance it might have done, and the reasons are obvious. In the first place, a little soreness existed. No sooner had the Act of Union pa.s.sed than the Government decided that between London and Dublin there must be an express in both directions daily.

This, as the postmasters-general pointed out, would cost more than 4000 a year, and, as it was not required for Post Office purposes, the Post Office should not bear the cost. Accordingly the question as to the source from which the cost should be defrayed was reserved for future consideration; but after the express was well established, the Post Office received notice that it must defray the cost itself, and it continued to do so for twenty years and more. This was always a sore point with Freeling, and he constantly adduced it as an instance of unremunerative work.

Another reason which kept Lombard Street back from a.s.sisting to improve the communication with Ireland was that the British and Irish Post Offices approached the subject from different points of view. With the British Post Office the main object, an object which in its judgment was sufficiently well attained already, was the transmission of letters; with the Irish Post Office, as indeed with that section of the public which could best make its voice heard, the main object was the transport of pa.s.sengers. Yet a third reason, we can well believe, was the conviction that for any improvement that might be made, though primarily for the sake of Ireland, the British and not the Irish Post Office would have to pay. These three reasons, we cannot doubt, were at the root of the manifest indisposition displayed by the British Post Office to meet what had gradually become a very general demand.

The first strenuous effort to induce the authorities in Lombard Street to improve the communication with Ireland was made in 1805, the prime mover in the matter being John Foster, the Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer. At this time the mail-coach between London and Holyhead went by a circuitous route through Chester. Foster maintained that it should go direct through Coventry and Shrewsbury. By Coventry the distance was 264 miles, and by Chester 278 miles--a difference, in point of time, of more than two hours.

It was alleged that by the shorter route other delays which now took place might be avoided; but how important was a saving of even two hours may be judged from the fact that the time of the mail-coach leaving Holyhead was fixed with reference, not to the arrival of the packet from Dublin, but to the arrival of the coach in London. All the mail-coaches were timed to reach London early in the morning, so that the letters they brought might go out by the morning delivery. To effect this object, the mail-coach by the Chester route had to leave Holyhead at seven o'clock in the morning, an hour by which it was barely possible for the packet from Dublin to have arrived. During the whole of the year 1804, for instance, the Dublin mails arrived at Holyhead in time to catch the coach to London on only twelve occasions; and, of course, when the mails did not catch the coach, they had to remain idle at Holyhead until the following morning.

If, argued Foster, the route be by Shrewsbury and Coventry, the coach can leave Holyhead so much later that the occasions on which the Dublin mail does not arrive in time to catch it will be not as now the rule but the exception. Freeling set the suggestion aside as impracticable. The coach, he maintained, must go through Chester. At Chester centred all the correspondence from the great manufacturing towns of the North, from Liverpool and Manchester, from Hull, Halifax, and Leeds, indeed from all parts of Yorkshire and many other counties besides. Was this correspondence of no account? Or was it suggested that a second mail-coach should be established? Already the Post Office was paying many thousand pounds a year for an express service between London and Holyhead which it did not require. Could it in reason be expected to incur the further expense which a second mail-coach would involve? The thing was impossible, and the project could not be entertained.

Foster, though silenced for the time, was not convinced. In 1808 the subject was mooted again. Clancarty, who had recently been appointed joint postmaster-general with O'Neill, had arrived in London, prepared to argue the point with all the energy of his energetic nature. Foster was unable to come; but he had sent a memorandum which no one who was not thorough master of the subject could have produced. A meeting was appointed at Lord Hawksbury's office. Freeling poured out all the old objections, and proceeded to contend, as he had contended three years before, that the project was impracticable. But one was present there who did not believe in impracticabilities. This was the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, Sir Arthur Wellesley. Wellesley's opinion was emphatic--that all other considerations must be made subordinate to the one grand purpose of facilitating communication between the two capitals of London and Dublin. Freeling had encountered a stronger will than his own. What had been impossible before was possible now, and that very evening arrangements were begun to be devised for accelerating the Irish mails.

Even now, what little was done was done grudgingly. The mail-coach from London which ran through Oxford and Birmingham to Shrewsbury was extended from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, and was met at Llangollen by an express from Chester bringing the cross-post correspondence. Thus matters remained for nine years, when, under pressure which the Post Office could no longer resist, the Coventry route was adopted. The Post Office opposed the change to the last, even though a Parliamentary Committee had recommended it, and an address in its favour had been presented to the Prince Regent. At length Vansittart, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, brought his authority to bear, and in July 1817 a mail-coach by way of Coventry began to run, accomplishing the distance between London and Holyhead in thirty-eight hours.

But in order to facilitate communication between England and Ireland a good deal more was required than to set up an additional coach or to send an existing coach by another and shorter route. The roads of the country were still in a state to make rapid travelling impossible. Much, no doubt, had been done to improve them. Between the years 1760 and 1809 no less than 1514 Turnpike Acts had been pa.s.sed, and under the turnpike system the roads were better than before. Still the making of them had been entrusted to incompetent hands, and they were constructed on false principles. For the bed or foundation of the roads improper or insufficient materials had been used. Little or no attention had been paid to drainage. Few roads were provided with side channels. Not seldom, indeed, the sides were enc.u.mbered with huge banks of mud which had acc.u.mulated to the height of six, seven, and even eight feet. Not only had convexity of surface, as a means of carrying off the water, been disregarded, but the road was frequently hollow in the middle and everywhere cut into deep ruts. High hedges and trees were still allowed to intercept the action of the sun and wind, the importance of a rapid evaporation of moisture being as yet unrecognised. Even the roads themselves had been laid out on no fixed principle. Their lines of direction were, almost without exception, identical with the footpaths of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country; and these, doubtless to avoid the bogs and marsh lands, and possibly also for purposes of observation, had invariably followed the hills.

Hence it came to pa.s.s that almost every road of any importance was both steep and crooked. Where there were no hills and the roads pa.s.sed across wet and flat land, they were almost always below the level of the adjacent fields, the mud having been carried away by constant use. While such was the general state of the roads during the first twenty years of the present century, the road between Shrewsbury and Holyhead, over which a mail-coach had been travelling since the summer of 1808, was notoriously one of the worst in the kingdom. "To Kenneage,[88] six miles of narrow road; scarcely room for two carriages to pa.s.s, and much out of repair; in winter, the drivers say, the ruts are up to the bed of the coach." "From Kenneage to Capel Curig, road narrow and wants walling to prevent carriages falling down precipices 300 or 400 yards perpendicular." "From Capel Curig to Bangor, side of the road unguarded, and many accidents may happen to pa.s.sengers by the coach running off the road as the mail pa.s.ses here in the dark." Thus wrote the a.s.sistant superintendent of mail-coaches in 1808, and nothing had since been done to remedy defects.

[88] _i.e._ Kinniogga, the old name for Cernioge.

The mail along this line, of road was now to be carried at a higher rate of speed than before, and, if only on this ground, it would have been necessary at least to remove actual causes of danger. Even before 1817, however, Parliamentary Commissioners had been appointed for the improvement of the Holyhead road; and these Commissioners had summoned to their aid the first of that line of ill.u.s.trious men who, during the last eighty years, have transformed the face of England. This was Thomas Telford, who had already achieved distinction by the roads he had made in the Highlands of Scotland.

Telford commenced operations in the autumn of 1815; and now for the first time in England, or at all events for the first time since the ancient ways were laid down by the Romans, a road was to be constructed on scientific principles. "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." This--we say it without irreverence--is what literally came to pa.s.s. Easy inclinations, ample breadth, perfect drainings, complete protection, and a smooth and hard surface--these were the distinguishing characteristics of the road which Telford now made between Holyhead and Shrewsbury. A road that had been one of the worst in the kingdom was now the very best. In summer it was not even dusty, and in winter was free from dirt. Frost and rain produced upon it but trifling and superficial effects. To crown all, the Menai Straits were spanned by a n.o.ble bridge, where before there had been only an inconvenient ferry.

While Telford was thus raising the business of road-making to the level of an art, John Loudon Macadam was demonstrating of what materials the surface of a road should be made. Macadam had travelled about the kingdom much as John Palmer had travelled about some thirty years before in pursuit of a different object, and, as the result of long observation, he had come to the conclusion that the surface of roads should be made of broken stones; and having in 1816 been appointed general surveyor of roads in the British district he proceeded to put his views into practice. With success to recommend it, the new system spread like wildfire, and "a macadamised road" soon became a household word.

Nor was it to the business of road-making alone that science now lent her aid. What force of traction or power is required to draw carriages over different kinds of road, in what line of direction the power can be best applied--what, in other words, is the proper angle for the traces, and what in the case of hills is the highest inclination up which horses can go at a trot and down which they can with safety be driven at full speed--these were some of the questions which now engaged the attention of the scientific world. Some thirty years before, Walsingham and Chesterfield when postmasters-general had dabbled in matters of the kind;[89] but now they were reduced to the form of mathematical problems and received a mathematical solution.

[89] "G.o.d knows whether we are to remain postmen or not, or whether all the lights which philosophy is now throwing upon coach-making are not to be left by us as an official legacy to some more pliant successors."--Chesterfield to Walsingham, 22nd April 1792.

The excellence of the road constructed between Holyhead and Shrewsbury brought into bold relief the imperfections of the road between Shrewsbury and London. To this road, which, in comparison with the other, had at one time been p.r.o.nounced good and was now p.r.o.nounced execrable, Telford proceeded to apply the same principles as before. He raised the valleys, lowered or avoided the hills, and corrected deviations. To give only one instance--an instance taken from the second stage out of London--the old road from Barnet to South Minims ascended three steep and long hills; the new road avoided two of these hills altogether, and at the same time was shorter than the old one by more than 600 yards. And so it was in a greater or less degree all the way from London through St. Albans to Coventry, and thence through Birmingham and Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury.

It should also be mentioned that at this time, while the country roads were hollow in the centre instead of convex, the roads in and about London within a radius of about ten miles were the exact contrary. Here convexity, as a means of carrying off water, had been pushed to so absurd an extent that the road was in the form of a slanting roof, and a carriage, unless kept in the centre, was on a dangerous slope. This, which had been a prolific source of accidents, Telford now altered. The effect of his operations upon the first stage out of London, the Highgate Archway Road as it was called, is perhaps best described in the words of one of the princ.i.p.al mail-coach contractors. Before Telford took this road in hand, he wrote, "It was all we could do to walk up both sides of the archway with six horses, and now we can trot up with our heaviest loads with four."

The road from London to Shrewsbury, in continuation of the one from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, was completed in 1828, and, corresponding alterations having been made in the eight miles of road which connect Howth and Dublin, a line of communication was established between the capitals of England and Ireland such as, until the days of railways, could hardly have been improved. Some few years before, when the Post Office had received orders to accomplish the distance between London and Holyhead in thirty-eight hours, Hasker, the experienced superintendent of mail-coaches, while zealously applying himself to carry the orders into effect, had felt it inc.u.mbent upon him as a loyal servant to make a protest in writing against the "extraordinary expedition projected." It would, he urged--and no doubt rightly so as the road then was--be inhuman to horses and dangerous to life. This extraordinary expedition was at the rate of seven miles an hour. Along the Parliamentary Road the distance was accomplished, without hurt to horses and with perfect safety, at the rate of ten miles an hour, and the London and Holyhead coach soon became one of what were known as the "crack" coaches of the kingdom.

Meanwhile the Post Office had shewn its appreciation of Telford's achievement in a remarkable manner. It had imposed an additional charge of 1d. upon every letter carried over Conway Bridge, and a second penny for carriage over the Menai Straits.[90]

[90] The postage between Liverpool and Dublin by way of Holyhead was 13d., as thus made up:--

Inland postage to Holyhead 9d.

For the Conway Bridge 1d.

For the Menai Bridge 1d.

Sea postage 2d.

---- 13d.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

1817-1836

We must now go back a few years. On the cessation of hostilities with France the state of the finances occupied a large share of men's thoughts, and among the plans for relieving the burden upon the taxpayer none perhaps was more obvious than to abolish sinecures and useless offices.

On the 16th of February 1817 Mr. Lambton, member for the county of Durham, gave notice of motion for a return shewing the number of Boards which had been held by the postmasters-general during the last twenty years, and distinguishing the names of the places where such Boards had been held and the persons by whom they were attended. The Post Office was in a flutter. Just twenty years before, the Commissioners of Inquiry into Public Offices had recommended, and the recommendation had been approved by the House, that a Board should be held by the postmasters-general at least once a week; and from that date to the present not a single Board had been held. The position was no doubt embarra.s.sing, and not the less so because the postmasters-general, Lords Chichester and Salisbury, were the one at Stanmer and the other at Hatfield. Nothing could be done without the concurrence of both, and at such distances, little as would be thought of them now, it was a tedious process eighty years ago to arrive at a common understanding.

Freeling, who regarded it as little short of an outrage that the two n.o.ble peers, his masters, should be thus called to account, appealed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have the terms of the motion altered; but Vansittart refused, and the return was granted and ordered to be laid on the table of the House. Of course it was necessary to admit that no Boards had been held; but the work of the Post Office, the return went on to state, did not lend itself to Boards. Boards could be held only at intervals, and the work of the Post Office was so continuous and pressing that, without detriment to the public interests, it could not be kept waiting for a single day. A daily transmission of papers to the postmasters-general was, therefore, necessary; and by such means the business was better conducted than it would be by any system of Boards.

Such was the substance of the return which was now laid before the House. Eventually the matter was referred to a friendly Committee, and the appointment of second postmaster-general escaped for a time.

But it was for a time only. In May 1822, on the motion of Lord Normanby, an address to the throne was adopted in the following terms: "His Majesty's faithful Commons, relying upon His Majesty's gracious disposition expressed in answer to former addresses of that House to concur in all such measures of economy as the exigencies of the time require, and in such reductions in the civil department of the State as may be consistent with due consideration for the public service, humbly pray that His Majesty will be graciously pleased to give directions that the office of one of the postmasters-general may be abolished and the salary thereby saved to the revenue." It was Lord Salisbury, as the junior of the two postmasters-general, that was affected by the resolution of the House. Many men, incensed by such treatment, would have thrown up their appointments in disgust. Lord Salisbury did nothing of the kind. The very day he received official intimation that the address had been acceded to by the King he gave directions that his salary should be stopped;[91] but the appointment of postmaster-general he retained, and to the duties of it he gave at least as much attention as before. It was not until his death a year later that Lord Chichester was appointed sole postmaster-general, and the Post Office received the const.i.tution under which it still remains.

[91] The official intimation was received at the Post Office on the 28th of May. On the same day Lord Salisbury wrote to the receiver-general as follows:--

GENERAL POST OFFICE, _May 28, 1822_.

SIR--I have received instructions from the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury to acquaint you that on the 5th of July next you are to retain in your hands the salary of 2500 hitherto paid to me as joint postmaster-general.--I am, etc., SALISBURY.

R. Willimott, Esq., Receiver-General.

Other economies followed. All periodical increases of salary were suspended and salaries were for the first time made subject to abatement in order to provide a superannuation fund.[92] The effect of these two measures was to reduce the Post Office servants to a state of dest.i.tution not very far short of that from which Pitt had rescued them some thirty years before. It must not be thought, however, that ministers imposed upon others conditions to which they were unwilling to submit themselves. On the contrary, they procured an Order in Council to be pa.s.sed reducing their own salaries and those of all the great officers of State by 10 per cent, and the reduction was to continue for five years. The desire to be just and equal was present; the one thing wanting was a due sense of the difference between superfluity and need.

[92] The sums abated were afterwards returned. It was not until 1834 that abatements towards superannuation were imposed by statute.

And now a blow which had long been impending fell. This was the transfer from the Post Office to the Admiralty of the packets stationed at Falmouth. The question had been discussed again and again during the war; but how it came to be revived at this particular time is not very clear. There had indeed been a mutiny among the seamen at Falmouth, and the packets had been temporarily removed to Plymouth; but many years had since elapsed, and now, so far as appeared, matters were perfectly quiet. We only know that at the instance of Lord Liverpool a memorandum was prepared by Lord Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and that after a sharp paper-warfare between him and Freeling the arguments in favour of the change prevailed. At Falmouth thirty packets were employed, nearly double the number at all the other stations put together; and these thirty packets with their crews of 600 seamen, whose deeds of daring had often shed l.u.s.tre on the Post Office, were now made over to another department. Freeling was in despair. This little fleet had, next perhaps to the mail-coaches, been the object of his keenest solicitude; and it gave him little consolation that the packets at the other stations--at Dover and Harwich, at Weymouth, Milford, Holyhead, and Portpatrick, were to remain under the charge of the Post Office.

Some little comfort, however, was at hand. Steam packets being beyond the means of the captains to purchase, the Government provided them and purchased the sailing packets, which they replaced, at a valuation. Thus the Post Office became once more absolute owner of its own boats. This, though by no means reconciling Freeling to the loss of the Falmouth packets, was at all events some compensation. "The steam flotilla belonging to the Post Office," he was able to write in 1827, "consists of no less than nineteen vessels complete, to the aggregate amount of 4000 tons, with machinery equal on the whole to the power of 1540 horses."

Exaggerated opinions have been expressed as to the speed of the mail-coaches during the first two decades of the present century. In 1821 few mail-coaches travelled as much as eight miles an hour, and only one mail-coach attained to a speed of nine miles, and that for only part of the journey. The exact rates of travelling are shewn in the following table:--

1821.

+---------------+-------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+ Number Hour Hour Rate of MAIL COACH of of of Travelling Remarks. FROM LONDON TO Miles. Despatch. Arrival. per hour. +---------------+-------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+ M. F. M. Berwick 341 6 8.0 P.M. 6.15 P.M. 7-13/16 The rates of Berwick to travelling Edinburgh 59 4 -- 2.55 A.M. 7-2/16 include Birmingham 110 2 8.0 P.M. 10.0 A.M. 7-13/16 stoppages for Bristol 122 4 " " 8-10/16 change of Carlisle by horses, but Manchester 311 4 " 1.30 P.M. 8-5/16 not stoppages Carlisle by for refresh- Boroughbridge 302 6 " 1.40 P.M. 7-10/16 ment and for Carlisle to Post Office Glasgow 103 2 -- 4.50 A.M. 7-4/16 business. Chester 191 0 8.0 P.M. 10.50 P.M. 7-8/16 Chester to Holyhead 88 0 -- 7.5 A.M. 7-7/16 Dover 73 4 8.0 P.M. 6.45 A.M. 7 For a Exeter 176 2 " 7.40 P.M. 7-11/16 considerable Exeter by Bath 194 0 " 7.50 P.M. 8-7/16 part of the Gloucester 111 0 " 10.0 A.M. 8-3/16 distance the Holyhead 264 6 " 6.50 A.M. 7-15/16 London and Leeds 196 0 " 11.25 P.M. 7-8/16 Bristol Liverpool 207 4 " 12.10 A.M. 7-6/16 coach Norwich by travelled at Ipswich 114 4 " 11.0 A.M. 7-14/16 the rate of Ipswich to nine miles an Yarmouth 54 2 -- 11.56 A.M. 7-15/16 hour. Poole 117 4 8.0 P.M. 11.20 A.M. 7-14/16 Portsmouth 72 6 " 6.45 A.M. 7-1/16 Worcester 114 4 " 10.40 A.M. 8-7/16 +---------------+-------+---------+----------+----------+-------------+

It was not until some fourteen or fifteen years later, when the main roads of the kingdom had pa.s.sed under Telford's hands and vehicles of lighter build had been introduced, that mail-coaches attained the speed which is very commonly ascribed to an earlier period. In 1836 there were in England 104 mail-coaches, all drawn by four horses. Of these the fastest was the Liverpool and Preston coach, which travelled at the rate of ten miles and five furlongs an hour; and the slowest was the coach between Canterbury and Deal, which travelled at the rate of only six miles an hour. The average speed of all the mail-coaches in 1836, namely eight miles and seven furlongs an hour, was actually higher than the highest speed attained by any one mail-coach in 1821. It should be added that in 1821, as in 1836, the number of pa.s.sengers by a mail-coach was limited to four inside and four out. On some mail-coaches, indeed, no more than three outside pa.s.sengers were allowed.

But the mail-coach at the beginning of the present century did something more than carry mails and pa.s.sengers. It was the great disseminator of news. In times of excitement men would stand waiting along the mail roads and learn the latest intelligence as shouted to them from the tops of the coaches. It may well be believed that this mode of communication did not tend to either accuracy or completeness of statement. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that on important occasions or occasions on which false or inexact intelligence might lead to mischief recourse should have been had to the expedient of printing hand-bills, and sending them to the postmasters with instructions to distribute them in their respective towns. The following are specimens of hand-bills which were so distributed:--