The History of the Post Office Part 9

[41] The leases of seven out of the nine branches were cancelled in 1716; and those of the other two the postmasters-general expressed their intention of cancelling with as little delay as possible. And yet as regards one of the number, viz. the Chichester branch, there is reason to doubt whether it did not survive until the year 1769.

Two questions may here be asked, to neither of which is it easy to give even a plausible reply. Of these the first is, How did it happen that the postmasters-general, who without authority from Whitehall could not even convert a foot-post into a horse-post, were able on their own motion to sanction an arrangement, the practical effect of which was to add to the establishment not only a large number of small salaries, amounting in the aggregate to a formidable total, but also a dead-weight annuity of nearly 2000 a year? This is an obscurity which we confess ourselves unable to penetrate. We can only record the fact, a fact the more surprising because only recently G.o.dolphin had laid it down under his own hand that in the Post Office "all extraordinary payments or allowances are to be vouched by warrant from Her Majesty or myself, or from the Lord High Treasurer or the Commissioners of the Treasury for the time being." The second question is hardly less perplexing. How, except in name, did managers differ from surveyors, whose appointment the postmasters-general were urging, and urging in vain? Or what could surveyors have done which it was not equally competent to managers to do? This question also we cannot answer. We only know that the very men who as farmers had rendered signal service to the Post Office, and earned the grat.i.tude of the districts over which their farms extended, were found as managers to be of little use, even if they did not league themselves with the postmasters to intercept the postage.

Difficulties from an unexpected quarter added to the confusion into which, as the result of the Act of 1711, the Post Office was drifting.

As soon as peace was declared, it became necessary to arrive at an agreement with France as to the conditions on which the British mails should pa.s.s through French territory. M. Pajot was still comptroller of the posts in Paris; and he proved to be hardly less untractable than before the war. Frankland and Evelyn committed their case to the care of Matthew Prior, who was at that time minister plenipotentiary to the Court of France. Prior, who had hated his commissionership of customs because, as Swift tells us, he was ever dreaming of c.o.c.kets and dockets and other jargon, could hardly be expected to give his mind to anything so prosaic as postage and letter bills. The matter, moreover, was one of a highly technical character, and, without fuller information than could be contained in the most precise instructions, a far abler negotiator than Prior could claim to be might easily have found himself overmatched. Pajot, presuming on his superior knowledge, put forward the most extravagant demands; and it was not until an expert had been sent from London, upon whom it would have been useless to attempt to impose, that he abated his pretensions. Extravagant demands were now followed by frivolous objections, and at the last moment, when the conditions were practically settled, he actually refused to proceed further unless "Her Britannic Majesty," an expression employed in the Post Office treaty, were altered to "The Queen of Great Britain."

Vexatious as these proceedings were, the result was more vexatious still. Before the war a lump sum of 36,000 livres a year had been paid for the transit of the British mails across French territory. Pajot now refused to accept any lump sum at all. He insisted that each letter pa.s.sing through France should be charged for separately, according to the French postage; and high as the English postage was, the French postage was higher still. In vain the postmasters-general pointed out that by virtue of such an arrangement they would on many letters have to pay more than Act of Parliament permitted them to receive. Pajot replied in effect that this was their affair and not his; and no better terms could they get. The treaty was eventually signed, and its onerous provisions will best be shewn by an example. On a single letter from Italy the postage prescribed by the Act of 1711 was fifteenpence, and on a letter weighing one ounce sixty pence. This was all which the Act permitted the postmasters-general to collect; and yet, under the terms of the treaty, the postage for which they had to account to the French Post Office was in the one case twenty-one sous and in the other eighty-four.

To this treaty we are indeed indebted for one piece of information. It gives us--what is not to be found elsewhere--a definition of the terms single and double as applied to letters. It is strange that the Acts of 1660 and 1711, while imposing distinctive rates on single and double letters, nowhere define what single and double letters are. This omission the treaty of 1713 supplies. "That piece," the treaty provides, "is to be esteemed a single letter which hath no sealed letter inclosed, and that to be esteemed a double letter which hath inclosures and is under the weight of an ounce." It will be interesting to note how far the Post Office adhered to its own definition.

On the accession of George the First, when almost every place of honour and profit under the Crown changed hands, the Post Office did not escape; and Frankland and Evelyn were succeeded by Cornwallis and Craggs. The natural tendency of the provision which had made members of the House of Commons ineligible for the office of postmasters-general was to throw the office into the hands of peers; and although this tendency did not fully develop itself until later in the century, the appointment of Lord Cornwallis was a first move in that direction. Peers have in our own time been among the ablest of the many able administrators who have presided over the Post Office; but at the beginning of the eighteenth century the conditions attaching to the appointment were in some respects different from what they are to-day.

The postmasters-general had to write their own letters; their attendance was both early and late and during fixed hours; and they were expected to reside at the Post Office. Whether from a disinclination to satisfy these conditions, or on the score of health, which he was constantly pleading, Cornwallis had not been long in Lombard Street before he retired into the country, and left the conduct of affairs pretty much to his colleague. Craggs--or Craggs senior as he was commonly called, to distinguish him from his son, the Secretary of State--was an industrious, plain-spoken man; and deeply as he afterwards became implicated in the South Sea Scheme, there is no reason to suppose that his proceedings as postmaster-general would not bear inspection.

Cornwallis and Craggs had been only a short time at the Post Office before they became profoundly impressed with what they found there. The managers withholding the postmasters' salaries, the postmasters recouping and a good deal more than recouping themselves out of the postage, the post-boys--for so they had begun to be called--clandestinely carrying letters for what they could get, the inordinate number of franked letters--these were among the abuses which arrested the new postmaster-generals' attention; but what excited their most lively surprise was that there should exist a branch of the King's revenue upon the subordinate agents of which there was absolutely no check. At length, on a representation from them as to the scandal of allowing such a state of things to continue, consent was obtained to the appointment of surveyors; and the dismissal of the managers speedily followed.

These remedial measures, though good as far as they went, affected only the internal administration of the Post Office. Of its troubles from without, and how they had been increased by recent legislation, Cornwallis and Craggs were no less sensible than their predecessors; but here they had no remedy to apply. "The additional penny," they wrote in March 1716, within eighteen months of their appointment, "has never answered in proportion, and we find by every day's experience that it occasions the people to endeavour to find out other conveyances for their letters." "The additional tax," they wrote again two years later, "has never answered in proportion to the produce of the revenue at the time it took place, the people having found private conveyances for their letters, which they are daily endeavouring to increase, notwithstanding all the endeavours that can be used to prevent them."

As with the clandestine traffic, so with the abuse of the franking privilege. In isolated cases, where the abuse was more than usually glaring, the postmasters-general would write to the erring member a letter of mild expostulation, affecting to believe him more sinned against than sinning;[42] but even if this had any effect in the particular instance, to stem the torrent was beyond their power. In Great Britain alone the postage represented by the franked letters, excluding those which were or which purported to be on His Majesty's service, amounted in 1716 to what was for that time, relatively to the total Post Office revenue, the enormous sum of 17,500 a year. In Ireland the members followed the example of their English colleagues, if indeed they did not improve upon it. In 1718 the Irish Parliament sat for three months, and in 1719 it sat for nine months; and it was only during the session, and for forty days before and after, that letters could be franked. Cornwallis and Craggs had now been some years at the Post Office; and yet, with all their experience of the extent to which the abuse of franking was carried, they were startled to see the effect which the duration of Parliament had upon the receipts. In 1718 the gross revenue of the Irish Post Office--and in the gross revenue was reckoned the postage on members' letters, the postage which these letters would have paid if they had not been franked--amounted to 14,592, and the net revenue to 3066. In 1719, although the gross revenue rose to 19,522, an amount higher by 4930 than in the preceding year, the net revenue fell from 3066 to 753. Such was the effect upon the revenue of a difference of six months in the duration of the two Parliaments.

[42] Here are two letters they wrote:--

To Mr. CULVERT.

_Nov. 1, 1714._

SIR--As the three inclosed letters are directed to you in several places we have reason to think that some persons have presumed to take the liberty of your name. This practice is so great an abuse upon this office, and so very prejudicial to His Majesty's revenue, that we must desire you'll be pleased to send such letters inclosed that don't belong to you to the office to be charged; and we are very well a.s.sured you'll discourage the like practice for the future.

--We are, sir, your most humble servants,

T. FRANKLAND J. EVELYN.

To Sir RICHARD GROSVENOR, Bart.

_April 29, 1715._

SIR--Having observed a letter directed to the Rev. Mr. Harwood at Billingsgate that arrived here yesterday in an Irish mail frank't with your name in Ireland, and knowing that you are in England, we have reason to think that somebody in that kingdom has taken the liberty of signing your name to the prejudice of His Majesty's revenue, which is a practice that we are convinced you will discourage, and it is in order thereunto that you have this trouble from your most humble servants,

CORNWALLIS.

JAMES CRAGGS.

To add to the postmaster-generals' troubles, the merchants of London, groaning under the onerous rates of postage, had recourse to an expedient in order to evade them. They a.s.sociated themselves together, and all those who had occasion to write to a particular place, though to different persons, would write on the same piece of paper and under the same cover. The postmasters-general contended that these several writings should be charged as separate letters; the merchants contended that there was but one letter, and that it should pa.s.s for a single rate of postage.

Their next step was to dispute the postmaster-generals' reading of the statute. Under the law as pa.s.sed in 1660, and re-enacted in 1711, merchants' accounts not exceeding one sheet of paper, and all bills of exchange, invoices, and bills of lading, were "to be allowed without rate in the price of letters"; in other words, the weight of these doc.u.ments was not to be reckoned in the weight of a letter for the purpose of charging it with postage. This exemption, however, had hitherto been allowed only in the case of foreign letters; and the postmasters-general held that such was the intention of the statute. The merchants retorted that no such intention was expressed, and that to act as though it had been brought about this anomaly--that on a letter containing any one of the doc.u.ments in question the charge from Constantinople was actually less than from Bristol. Was it possible that the Legislature could ever have enacted such an absurdity? It was an old contention, as old as the Post Office itself,[43] and the merchants took the present opportunity to revive it. On both questions Northey, the Attorney-General, advised that the Post Office should adhere to its ancient practice as the best expositor of the meaning of the new law; but excellent as this advice may have been, its adoption failed to satisfy the merchants and it was not until a declaratory Act had been pa.s.sed that they ceased to contest the points.

[43] A strongly-worded pet.i.tion on the subject was presented to Parliament only a year or two after the Restoration. This pet.i.tion, after calling the charge an "abuse and extortion," goes on to say that "it cannot be imagined the Parliament should either so far forget themselves, or the countrey for which they served, or the necessary and convenient correspondence, as well as the trade of His Majesties dominions, as to put them upon worse and harder tearms than foreigners, or foreign trade, to the prejudice of the kingdom...."

Much the same sort of thing occurred a few years later in connection with the penny post. From the first establishment of this undertaking 1d. had carried only within the bills of mortality; for delivery beyond those limits had been charged 1d. more. Some persons now refused to pay the additional penny, on the ground that it was not prescribed by law.

This was perfectly true. The penny post owed its legal sanction to the Act of 1711; and this Act merely provided that "for the post of all and every the letters and packets pa.s.sing or repa.s.sing by the carriage called the penny post, established and settled within the cities of London and Westminster and borough of Southwark and parts adjacent, and to be received and delivered within ten English miles distant from the General Letter Office in London [shall be demanded and received the sum of] 1d." Again an Act of Parliament had to be pa.s.sed in order to a.s.similate law and practice. This Act, which was not obtained until 1730, made legal the twopenny post, just as the penny post was made legal by the Act of 1711; although, as a matter of fact, both posts had been in existence since April 1680.

In 1721 Lowndes, who was still at the Treasury, called for a return of the Post Office income and expenditure. Ten years had now elapsed since the imposition of the new rates. Of these ten years eight, as compared with the eight which preceded them, had been years of prosperity and peace; the population had increased, and the reductions in the packet service had effected a saving of many thousand pounds a year. Certainly the circ.u.mstances had not on the whole been unfavourable for testing the results of the new policy. The return was rendered. During the year ending the 29th of September the gross Post Office revenue was, in 1721, 168,968, and in 1710, 111,461, being an increase of 57,507; in 1721 the cost of management was 69,184, as against 44,639 in 1710; and the net revenue, which in 1710 had been 66,822, was in 1721 99,784, an increase of 32,962. But the case does not end here. Under the terms of the Act the sum of 700 a week, or 36,400 a year, was to be allocated to a specific object. This sum had been regularly paid into the Exchequer, and, after deducting it from the net revenue, there remained for the use of the Sovereign a balance of 63,384, or less than in 1710 by 3438.

While the contingency of a loss to the Civil List had not been either foreseen or provided against, elaborate precautions had been taken for the disposal of a surplus. If the gross Post Office revenue should exceed the sum of 147,861, the excess was to be divided between the Sovereign and the public in the proportion of one-third to the public and two-thirds to the Sovereign. As a matter of fact, the gross Post Office revenue in 1721 had exceeded, and exceeded by a considerable amount, the sum of 147,861; and yet there was no excess to divide. The plain truth is that, in preparing the Act of 1711, Lowndes had forgotten the cost of management. It must have sounded strange in the ears of an a.s.sistant Chancellor of the Exchequer to be told, as Cornwallis and Craggs did not scruple to tell him, that he had confounded gross and net revenue, and that by this blunder Parliament had been misled.

The Act of 1711, disastrous as it proved in its effects on the wellbeing and morality of the nation, is only one more instance of the mischief which may be done with the best intentions; and it was perhaps meet that its author should have remained long enough at his post to witness the results of his own handiwork.

CHAPTER X

RALPH ALLEN

1720-1764

There was one who realised not less fully than the postmasters-general themselves the difficulties by which they were beset. He knew well, even better than they, how letters were being kept out of the post and transmitted clandestinely, and how even on letters which fell into the post the postage was being intercepted. But while the postmasters-general regarded the evil as incurable, he thought that it might at all events be mitigated. This was Ralph Allen, the postmaster of Bath. Allen's experience in postal matters was probably unrivalled.

He had, it might almost be said, been cradled and nursed in the Post Office. The son of an innkeeper at St. Blaise, he had, at eleven years of age, been placed under the care of his grandmother, who, on the post road being diverted from South to Mid-Cornwall, was appointed postmistress of St. Columb. Here the regularity and neatness with which the lad kept the accounts gained for him the approval of the district surveyor when on a tour of inspection; and shortly afterwards, probably through the surveyor's influence, he obtained a situation in the Post Office at Bath. It is said that while in this situation, intelligence having reached him that a waggon-load of arms was on its way from the West for the use of the disaffected, he placed himself in communication with General Wade, who was then quartered at Bath with his troops, and that it was by this service that he first brought himself into notice; but be that as it may, it is certain that when Quash the old postmaster died, Allen was appointed in Quash's room.

In 1719 Allen offered to take in farm the bye and cross-post letters, giving as rent half as much again as these letters had ever produced. It was a bold offer, and, coming as it did from a young man only twenty-six years of age, and presumably without capital, not one to be accepted precipitately. Allen proceeded to London and had frequent interviews with the postmasters-general. The earnestness of his convictions and the modest a.s.surance with which he expressed them invited confidence, and on the 12th of April 1720 a contract was signed, the conditions of which were to come into operation on the Midsummer Day following.

Much as we desire to avoid the employment of technical terms, it is necessary here to explain that letters, exclusive of those pa.s.sing through the penny post, were technically divided into four cla.s.ses--London letters, country letters, bye or way letters, and cross-post letters. For purposes of ill.u.s.tration we will take Bath, the city in which Allen resided. A letter between Bath and London would be a London letter, and a letter from one part of the country to another which in course of transit pa.s.sed through London would be a country letter. A bye or way letter would be a letter pa.s.sing between any two towns on the Bath road and stopping short of London--as, for instance, between Bath and Hungerford, between Hungerford and Newbury, between Newbury and Reading, and so on; while a cross-post letter would be a letter crossing from the Bath road to some other--as, for instance, a letter between Bath and Oxford. It was only with the last two cla.s.ses of letters that Allen had to do. The London and country letters were outside the sphere of his operations.

On the bye and cross-post letters the postage for the year 1719 had amounted to 4000. Allen was to give 6000 a year; and in consideration of this rent he was for a period of seven years to receive the whole of the revenue which these letters should produce. Some letters indeed were excepted, namely Scotch letters, Irish letters, packet letters, "all Parliament men's letters during the privilege of Parliament," and such letters as "usually goe free," that is, letters for the High Officers of State or, as we should now say, letters on His Majesty's service. No post under Allen's control, whether a new or an old one, was to go less than three times a week; and the mails were to be carried at a speed of not less than five miles an hour. He was also to keep in readiness "a sufficient number of good and able horses with convenient furniture," not only for the mails but for expresses and for the use of travellers. One condition of the contract may seem a little hard.

Allen's own officers were to be appointed and their salaries to be fixed by the postmasters-general, and to these officers he was to give no instructions which had not first been submitted for the postmaster-generals' approval.

Allen by his sterling qualities had won the confidence of his fellow-townsmen at Bath, and there can be little doubt that they now gave him practical proof of the estimation in which he was held. It is difficult to understand how else he can have raised the funds necessary for the purposes of his undertaking. In the very first quarter, between the 24th of June and the 29th of September 1720, he expended in what may be called his plant as much as 1500, and made himself responsible for salaries to the amount of 3000 a year. But heavy as the expenses were, the receipts bore a most gratifying proportion. From the bye and cross-post letters the postmasters-general had received, at the highest, 4000 a year. Allen in his first quarter received 2946. These first-fruits, while viewed by Allen with equanimity, threw the postmasters-general into transports of delight, such delight as men feel when they find themselves to have been true prophets. "See," they said in a letter to the Treasury dated the 10th of November, "how right we were. We told you that the greater part of the postage on these letters was going into the pockets of the postmasters, and that to accept Mr.

Allen's proposal was the only way to check the malversation." But the promise of the first quarter was not fulfilled. The system of check and countercheck on which Allen relied for the success of his plan depended largely, as the postmasters were not slow to discover, on their own co-operation; and this they refused to give.

Nor can we feel surprise that it should have been so. Of the postmasters some received no salary at all, while others received the merest pittance. It could not in reason be expected that they would give their services gratuitously or, as the postmasters-general were pleased to think, in return for the copy of a newspaper once a week. Postmasters, like other men, must live, and they no doubt reasoned that, as the State did not pay them, they were forced to pay themselves. It must also be remembered that the offence of intercepting postage, heinous as it would now be considered, may in those days have been regarded in a somewhat different light. Some postmasters, as remuneration for their services, were authorised to withhold a certain proportion of the postage; and numerous were the complaints that in this particular the liberty accorded to some was not extended to others. It is probable, therefore, that many a postmaster, when accounting for less postage than he had actually received, excused himself on the plea that he was only doing without authority that for which authority had been given to others, and which should not in his judgment have been denied to himself.

But whatever apologies they may have found for their conduct, the fact remains that Allen's contract had been only a few months in operation before the postmasters resumed their old practices, and, seeing clearly enough that his plan when once fairly floated would deprive them of a profitable source of income, they not only withheld all co-operation but obstructed him by every means in their power. To such an extent indeed was this obstruction carried that at the end of three years Allen, far from realising the promise of the first quarter, found himself a loser to the amount of 270. Although things now began to improve, the improvement was slow, and in June 1727, when the contract expired, Allen had established his plan completely on only four out of the six main roads of the kingdom. On the Yarmouth road he had established it only partially, and on the Kent road not at all.

Circ.u.mstances so far favoured Allen that the demise of the Crown, which must in any case have terminated his contract, took place within a fortnight of the date on which the contract would have expired in the ordinary course. The period of seven years for which it was made expired on the 24th of June 1727, and the King died on the 11th. A renewal of the contract could not in justice be refused. Not only had Allen been obstructed in the execution of his plan and put to heavy expenses which, except for such obstruction, would not have been necessary, but in fixing the amount of his rent a mistake had been made to his prejudice.

He had agreed to pay half as much again as the bye and cross-road letters had ever produced, and it is true that the postage represented by these letters had amounted to 4000 a year; but it had been overlooked that the whole of this amount had not been collected, and that for the purpose of fixing the rent the sum of 300 should have been deducted on account of letters which could not be delivered, and on which, therefore, no postage had been received. Allen, while making no claim for the return of the amount overpaid, pleaded the fact of overpayment as an additional reason for enlarging his term. The postmasters-general were not less solicitous than Allen himself that his services should be continued. They had, during the last seven years, received on account of bye and cross-post letters 6000 a year, where before they had received only 4000, or, allowing for the sum not collected, 3700; and during the same period the country letters, far from falling off as had been predicted, had improved to the extent of 735 a year, a result which was attributed to the vigilance of Allen's surveyors. These reasons were regarded as conclusive, and, subject to the condition that he should appoint an additional surveyor and lose no time in completing his plan, Allen's contract was extended for a further period of seven years.

While Allen is perfecting his arrangements, it may not be amiss to glance at the condition of affairs as he found them. Houses were still unnumbered. On letters even to persons of position the addresses could be indicated only by their proximity to some shop or place of public resort. "For the R^{t.} Hon^{able.} the Lady Compton next door to Mr.

Ma.s.sy's Wachmaker in Charles Street near S^{t.} James's Square, London."

"To the Right Hon^{ble.} Lady Compton next door to the Dyall in Charles Street near S^{t.} James Squir--London." "Pray derickt for me att my Lady norrise near the Theater in Oxford."[44] To the Court and the Downs the post went every day; but to no town, however large, did it go more than thrice a week. Of cross-posts there were only two in the kingdom, the post from Exeter to Chester and the post from Bath to Oxford.

Outside London, Chester was the only town in England which could boast of two Post Offices; and these two Post Offices were not for letters in the same direction. One was for general post letters, and the other for letters by the Exeter cross-road, an arrangement which presupposed a knowledge of topography not probably possessed even in the present day.

The cathedral town of Ripon had no Post Office at all. Not many years before, the inhabitants had asked for one and the request had been regarded as little less than audacious. "We could not think it reasonable," wrote the postmasters-general, "to put Her Majesty to the expense of a salary to a Deputy att Ripon." The utmost concession that could be obtained was that the letters for that town should be made up into a packet by themselves and put into the mouth of the Boroughbridge bag, and, on arrival at Boroughbridge, be despatched to Ripon at once by a messenger on horseback. This messenger was to deliver them with all expedition, and to remain at Ripon for replies, leaving only in time to catch the return-mail from the North. Charges on letters over and above the legal postage were general. Not a single letter pa.s.sed between Yarmouth and the Great North Road without a charge of 3d. as the postmaster's perquisite. At Gosport a perquisite of similar amount was claimed on every bye-letter. In the neighbourhood of Chesterfield the inhabitants paid for every letter they received in no case less than 2d.

in addition to the postage, and in some cases as much as 4d.; and so it was, with variations as to the amount, in every part of the kingdom.

Only the wealthy could afford to use the post, and even they, on account of the want of facilities, used it sparingly. How far the post was at this time removed from being a matter of common concern might, if other evidence were wanting, be inferred from one solitary fact. In 1728 a book was published,[45] one chapter of which professed to give a detailed account of the posts of the period, and a.s.suredly the account it gave was detailed enough; but of the posts as we understand them, that is to say, as a vehicle for the transmission of letters, there was from the beginning to the end of the chapter not a single word. By the term posts nothing more was meant than the post for travellers, and, for anything that appeared to the contrary, the letter post might have had no existence.

[44] Historical Ma.n.u.scripts Commission, Appendix to Eleventh Report, Part iv. pp. 233, 234.

[45] _British Curiosities in Art and Nature, likewise an Account of the Posts, Markets, and Fair-Towns_, 1728.

And perhaps this may be a convenient place to say a few words about those who had presided over the Post Office during the first five or six years of Allen's connection with it. Edward Carteret and Galfridus Walpole, who had succeeded Cornwallis and Craggs in 1721, possessed in a high degree the qualities which endear men to their subordinates,--a sense of justice, consideration for others, and a rooted dislike to high-handed proceedings. In these respects they bore a striking contrast to their immediate predecessors. We will give instances.