The History of the Post Office Part 17

Birkenhead, Torquay, and Bournemouth,[73] of course, did not exist.

Eastbourne existed indeed, but not as we know it now. Hither the letters were carried three times a week from Lewes. At Ramsgate, then a village served from the neighbouring post-town of Sandwich, an office for the receipt of letters was kept at a cost of 6 a year. The whole of the Isle of Wight had but one postmaster and one letter-carrier. To the Channel Islands there was no post.

[73] As late as 1854 Bournemouth received its letters from Poole by donkey and cart.

On Palmer's retirement the office of chief adviser to the postmasters-general devolved almost naturally upon Francis Freeling, the surveyor located at headquarters. Todd still held the appointment of secretary, but after a service of more than fifty years he was unequal to the exertion which the exigencies of the time required. Between Todd and Walsingham, moreover, there was little in common. Their relations, indeed, had always been most friendly; but the views they entertained on Post Office questions were more often than not at variance. "It is a matter of great entertainment to me," wrote Walsingham, as early as October 1788, "to see how totally we differ in all our official opinions." From this time Todd took less and less part in the duties of his office, and confined himself almost exclusively to its social amenities. This was a sphere in which he excelled. At his table in Lombard Street the postmasters-general themselves and such as they might choose to meet them were frequent guests, and "his old hock in his old parlour" pa.s.sed into a by-word.

Freeling, on the contrary, possessed advantages which not only pointed him out as Todd's successor when Todd should be pleased to retire, but peculiarly fitted him to deal with the circ.u.mstances of the moment. In the prime of life, of good address and prepossessing appearance, and with a knowledge of every detail of Post Office organisation such as only constant visits to different parts of the kingdom could give, he soon contrived to make himself not only useful but indispensable; and before any long period had expired the postmasters-general appointed him joint secretary with Todd, an arrangement by virtue of which one was to be the acting and the other the sleeping partner; one was to do the work and the other to draw the pay. It was new to the postmasters-general to have about them some one who was not only able but willing and anxious to impart information on every official question as it arose, and they could ill conceal their glee at the altered state of affairs. "One of the complaints made by us of Mr. Palmer," they wrote about this time, "was that he did what he thought fit without making the least communication to the Board, or without there being a single record of anything which he did or objected to either before or after it was done"; ... but "Mr. Freeling reports distinctly to us upon every application that we refer to him, or that is made to the Board, amounting to above two hundred reports every quarter for the current business." Freeling was now exposed to a serious danger, a danger to which many a reputation has succ.u.mbed, namely, that of being transformed from a man of action into a mere scribe; but this was a temptation which he stoutly resisted. Without relaxing his efforts to maintain and improve upon Palmer's plan, he was careful not only to keep the postmasters-general informed of what he was doing, but to do nothing which had not first been duly authorised.

The period immediately following Palmer's retirement was one rather of honest endeavour than of solid achievement. The first and most pressing question to arise was that of insufficiency of accommodation at headquarters. The inland office, this being the office in which the mails were made up for despatch, was not only close and ill-ventilated, but altogether too small for its purpose. More post-towns were required in various parts of the kingdom; but it was impossible to add to the number of towns for which bags would have to be made up until more s.p.a.ce should be provided. Some persons thought it would be best at once to take a step which in any case would probably have to be taken in the not remote future, and to build a new Post Office on other and more extensive premises. Such, however, was not the opinion of the postmasters-general. They were naturally unwilling to advocate the heavy expenditure which such a measure would involve except upon proof of its absolute necessity. Mainly on this ground, but also partly because premises in so central and convenient a position as those which the present Post Office occupied were not to be had, authority was sought and obtained for nothing more than the erection of a new inland office.

But, as the postmasters-general found to their cost, it is one thing to obtain an authority and another thing to carry it into effect. On part of the ground on which the office was to be erected stood two houses, the lease of which had not long to run; and the Drapers' Company, to whom the property belonged, declined to extend the term. This difficulty was at length overcome, and the houses were in course of demolition, when projecting into the very centre of the s.p.a.ce designed for the new office was found the wall of an old house belonging to Sir Charles Watson, and this house he refused to let the Post Office have unless it would also take seven other houses which he possessed in the immediate neighbourhood. At the present time houses in and about Abchurch Lane would probably fetch twenty-five years' purchase. Fifteen years'

purchase was the sum then demanded, and it was considered a hard bargain. Eventually Watson consented to grant a ninety-nine years'

lease; but it was a lease not only of the single house that the Post Office wanted, but of all eight houses, seven of which it did not want.

What they called their mortifications and disappointments at an end, the postmasters-general proceeded to build.

Still more unsatisfactory was the result of an attempt that was made or intended to be made about this time to improve the post with the Continent. Communication with France was only twice a week, and Walsingham desired to treble it. In France, as in England, the post went to the water's edge on six days of the week, and he could see no reason why, except on two days, it should stop there. He entertained a strong opinion that between the two countries communication should be daily.

There was also another matter to be settled with our neighbours. During a period of sixty-six years, namely, from 1713 to 1779, the postage on a single letter between London and Paris had been 10d.; and, to avoid the keeping of accounts, this sum had been collected and retained by the Post Office of the country in which the letter was delivered. In 1779, when owing to the war communication between Dover and Calais was stopped, letters from Paris reached England through Flanders, and on these letters when put into the post in Paris a charge of 4d. was made in addition to the 10d. to be paid on delivery in London. It had been thought that in 1783, on the termination of the war, this charge would be abandoned, and that the old postage of 10d. would be resumed. Such, however, was not the case. The Post Office authorities in France adhered to the 4d. charge and defended it. The old postage of 10d., they argued, was all very well when they had no packets of their own and England performed the sea service. But now France had her own packets, and the distance between Paris and Calais being far greater than between London and Dover, it could not in reason be expected that on a letter between the two capitals she would be content with no higher postage than that which England received. The charge of 4d. upon letters for London when put into the post in Paris must be maintained, even though they no longer went through Flanders. It was a matter of internal regulation with which England had no concern. Without contesting this view of the case, the home authorities regarded the 4d. charge as a most vexatious impost. Not only had it the effect of diminis.h.i.+ng the correspondence, but many of the letters which still pa.s.sed were carried by private hand from Paris to Dover and there posted, so that the British Post Office received upon them only 4d. apiece, this being the postage from Dover to London, instead of 10d., the postage from Paris. In 1787 Palmer had, by Pitt's direction, gone over to France in order to adjust the matter and to promote a six days' post between the two countries; but he returned without effecting either object.

Circ.u.mstances now appearing more favourable, Walsingham determined to make fresh overtures. An emissary had already been selected for the purpose, and was on the eve of departure when a new and unexpected difficulty arose; the merchants of London, to whom the intention to increase the frequency of communication with France had become known, met to protest against the project. A hundred years before they would have gone to the Post Office, talked the matter over with the postmasters-general, and, after an exchange of opinions, an agreement would have been come to as to what was best to be done. Now they a.s.sembled in their numbers at the London Tavern and resolved "that any addition to the present number of post days to France or to any other part of the Continent is unnecessary, and would be highly inconvenient and injurious to the merchants of London." The resolution was unanimous, and copies were sent to the postmasters-general and the minister. For the merchants of London Walsingham entertained a sincere respect; but in this particular matter, convinced that they did not know what was for their own good, he determined to proceed in their despite. Unhappily, however, at this conjuncture the resumption of hostilities with France extinguished for the time all hopes of improved communication with the Continent.

Another project, in which the Post Office and the merchants possessed a common interest and a common desire, was also doomed to failure. The practice of cutting bank notes into two parts and sending one part by one post and another by another had now become general. The expedient, though efficacious, was a costly one. A letter with an enclosure, however light, paid double postage; and double postage between two places no farther apart than London and Birmingham was 10d. To send two halves of a bank note each in a separate letter would, of course, cost twice that amount. This was a heavy insurance to pay. The Post Office, in its desire not to discourage a practice which diminished temptation to dishonesty, was hardly less anxious than the merchants themselves that the amount should be reduced. Accordingly Walsingham proposed that in all cases where a bank note was sent by two separate posts the second letter, that is to say, the letter containing the second half, should, on proof being given of its contents, be charged with only single postage. A notice to the public announcing the change had already been prepared when he learnt to his chagrin that the proposed regulation would be illegal. In the case of a letter with an enclosure the law prescribed double postage, and it was no more in the power of the Post Office to reduce the amount than to forego it altogether.

But these were failures which it is only interesting to record as evidence that at the Post Office, after Palmer had left it, there was no want of directing energy or of a desire to study the interests of the public. It is pleasant to turn to matters in respect to which good intentions were not unattended with results. But before leaving 1792, the year in which these disappointments occurred, we must not omit to notice that it was at the end of this year that the letter-carriers were for the first time put into uniform. Palmer, who was now playing the part of the outside critic, condemned the innovation as a piece of unnecessary extravagance. But Palmer did not know the reasons for it.

The letter-carriers when in private clothes were exposed to temptation from which the wearing of uniform would protect them; and more than one recent case had brought the fact into painful prominence. Nor can it be denied that, so long as there was no distinctive dress, letter-carriers in want of a holiday were a little apt to take one without permission, supplying their place by persons of whose character they knew little or nothing. It was in order to check irregularity of this kind and as a means of protection to themselves and the public that uniform was now introduced. The uniform consisted of a scarlet cloth coat with blue lapels and blue linings of padua; a blue cloth waistcoat, and a hat with gold band.

It should also be noticed that about this time the Post Office servants in London were in some measure relieved from the pecuniary cares by which they had long been oppressed. The Commissioners of Inquiry in their Report of 1788 had recommended for the Post Office a new establishment; and now, after an interval of nearly five years, this establishment was approved by the King in Council. The new salaries were not high. At the present time they would be considered low; but such as they were, they were higher than the salaries they replaced. Jamineau's recent death, moreover, by relieving the clerks of the roads from payment of the commission[74] which this officer received on all newspapers with which they dealt, enabled them to reduce their price for franking, the result being an immediate extension of sale. On the whole, the Post Office servants in London were, at this time, in comparatively comfortable circ.u.mstances, or at all events above the reach of actual want. The starvation and bankruptcy with which they had at one time been threatened had been staved off by a grant, which Pitt renewed year after year while the Commissioners' Report was under consideration. This grant amounted to 3000, of which 2000 were for distribution in the sorting office, and 1000 in the other offices.

[74] This was a commission of three halfpence on every dozen newspapers, besides one newspaper in every quire.

The year 1793 was signalised by a remarkable development of the penny post. This inst.i.tution, which had as yet been established nowhere but in London and in Dublin, was now to be extended to Edinburgh, to Manchester, to Bristol, and to Birmingham. In Edinburgh the ground had been to some extent preoccupied. The keeper of a coffee-house in the hall of the Parliament House had sixteen years before set up an office from which letters were delivered throughout the city at 1d. apiece; and this office still remained open and prospered. To compare Williamson's undertaking with Dockwra's would be to compare a mouse with an elephant; and yet it may not be uninteresting to note the different treatment which the two men received. Dockwra was prosecuted, fined, and his undertaking confiscated. Williamson was granted a pension. "We have also," write the postmasters-general under date the 19th of July 1793, "to beg your Lords.h.i.+p's permission to authorise us to allow to Mr.

Williamson of Edinburgh 25 per annum, he having long had the profits of 1d. a letter on certain letters forwarded through his receiving house at Edinburgh, which he will lose by our having established a penny post there. We have made it a rule," they add, "always to propose that those who suffer in their incomes from regulations which are certainly beneficial to the public should receive compensation for the loss they sustain."

At Manchester the establishment of the penny post followed upon other and important alterations. The inhabitants of that town had long complained of the inadequacy of their postal arrangements; and measures had recently been taken, the very extent of which serves to shew how serious must have been the defects which they were designed to supply.

The aged postmistress was granted a pension of 120, with the reversion of one-third of that amount to her daughter; and in her room an active postmaster was appointed at a salary of 300. Four clerks were at the same time appointed, at salaries ranging from 50 to 100, and five additional letter-carriers, making six altogether, at wages of 12s. a week. Thus, Manchester suddenly found itself in possession of a Post Office establishment with which, outside London, that of no other town in the kingdom could compare. As a sequel to this important extension of force a penny post was opened in July 1793; and no sooner had the boon been conferred upon Manchester than it was extended to Bristol and to Birmingham.

It is interesting to note what at these three towns was the financial effect of giving postal facilities. During the year 1794-95 the penny post brought a clear gain to the revenue--in Manchester, of 586; in Bristol, of 469; and in Birmingham, of 240. It is a curious fact that, with this experience to guide them and with an anxious desire to extend the system, the Post Office authorities, after sparing no pains to inform themselves on the subject, came to the conclusion that neither at Liverpool nor at Leeds nor at any other town in England would a penny post defray its own expenses.

But it was in London that the penny post attained its highest development. This branch of Post Office business had long been shamefully neglected. Of the officers concerned in it those above the rank of sorter were only three in number--a comptroller, an accountant, and a collector. Of these the collector attended only occasionally, and the accountant and comptroller not at all. This neglect had its natural effect upon the receipts. During the last twenty years and more, notwithstanding the increase which had during this period taken place in the population and trade of the metropolis, the revenue of the penny post had remained almost stationary. Up to 1789 the highest sum it had ever produced in one year was 5157 net. This was in 1784, and for the five following years the receipts went on decreasing until, attention having been called to the decline, there was a sudden rebound. In 1792 the revenue was--gross 10,825, and net 5561.

Palmer, who was well aware of the discreditable condition into which the Penny Post Office had fallen, proposed to take it in farm, and offered as a consideration to forego his salary and percentage; but this was a proposal the acceptance of which was strongly deprecated by the Commissioners of Inquiry who sat in 1788 no less than by the postmasters-general. It was their unanimous opinion that the penny post should be retained in the hands of the State. Palmer, still clinging to the hope that other counsels might prevail, put off effecting improvements which would afford the strongest arguments against the adoption of his own proposal; and in 1793, in spite of the changes which had been going on all around, the Penny Post Office remained much as it had been during the last twenty years.

The man who now took the reform of the penny post in hand was Edward Johnson. Johnson was a letter-carrier. He had been appointed by Palmer or on Palmer's recommendation; and he soon gave proof of more than ordinary ability. Palmer not infrequently exposed him to a severe ordeal. When unable or unwilling to attend the postmasters-general himself, he would send Johnson in his stead, a subst.i.tution which they resented as unseemly; and thus some little prejudice had been excited against him. This prejudice, however, had disappeared with the cause of it, and Johnson now stood high, deservedly high, in the postmaster-generals' favour.

In 1793, in addition to the numerous receiving houses where letters for the penny post might be taken in, there were in London five princ.i.p.al offices--one known as the chief Penny Post Office, and situated in Throgmorton Street, opposite Bartholomew Lane; another called the Westminster Penny Post Office, and situated in Coventry Street, Haymarket; a third, the Hermitage Office in Queen Street, Little Tower Hill; a fourth, the Southwark Office in St. Saviour's Churchyard, Borough; and a fifth, the St. Clement's Office, in Blackmore Street.

Between these five offices there was little or no connection; at no two of them were the number of collections or deliveries the same or the hours at which they were made; the letter-carriers were altogether too few for the ground which they had to cover, so that punctuality and despatch were impossible; and even those whose walks lay near the ten-mile limit, before proceeding to deliver their letters, had to come to London to fetch them.

Johnson proposed to change all this. He proposed to reduce the number of princ.i.p.al offices from five to two, retaining only the chief office and the office in Coventry Street; to increase the number of collections and deliveries; to give the same number to all parts served by the penny post, namely, six in the town and three in the suburbs, or, as the suburbs were then called, "the country," and everywhere, as far as possible, to observe the same hours; to post these hours up in every receiving house, so that the public might be made acquainted with them and act as a check upon their being observed; and, instead of requiring the letter-carriers in the remoter parts to come to London for their letters, to send their letters to them by mounted messengers.

Johnson's last proposal, though following almost naturally from what had gone before, well-nigh staggered the postmasters-general. It was that, in order to carry his plan into effect, the number of penny post letter-carriers should be more than doubled. The existing number was eighty-two, and the number which Johnson proposed was 181. This, even at the present time--large as are the numbers with which the Post Office has been accustomed to deal--would be considered a heavy, an exceptionally heavy, increase. In 1793 it was regarded as portentous, and the postmasters-general anxiously sought means to reduce it; but Johnson, besides being perfect master of his subject, possessed two faculties which by no means always go together. He possessed the faculty of devising a good scheme and the faculty of explaining it; and the lucid explanation he now gave convinced the postmasters-general that they could not do better than adopt his plan in its entirety.

Contrasting the time which a letter took to pa.s.s between various parts of London with the time which it would take if his suggestions were adopted, Johnson had no difficulty in shewing that from his plan the public would derive facilities for intercourse to which they had hitherto been strangers.

There were, perhaps, no two places between which the course of post was more difficult to manage than Marylebone and Limehouse. Under the existing plan a letter from one of these two places, however early it might be posted, might not reach the other on the same day, and, even if it did so, an answer could not be received before the afternoon of the following day. Under Johnson's plan a letter might be received, an answer returned, and the answer answered, all on the same day. Places less inconveniently situated in relation to each other were to receive a still larger measure of benefit. Between persons residing in Lombard Street and the Haymarket, for instance, five letters might pa.s.s to and fro between the hours of eight in the morning and seven in the evening.

This was within the town limits. Within the country limits the general effect of Johnson's plan may be stated thus: that to letters from London answers might be returned sooner by two posts if the letters were for places not more than five miles distant, and, if for places distant between five and ten miles, sooner by a period ranging from one to three days. The last-mentioned places, moreover, were to have three posts a day instead of one post.

Pitt was no less favourably impressed with Johnson's plan than the postmasters-general were; but before sanctioning it he resolved to await the pa.s.sing of an Act for the redress of certain anomalies, or what were considered to be anomalies, in the practice of the penny post. This Act was pa.s.sed in 1794; and immediate steps were taken for carrying the plan into effect. A proud day for Johnson must have been the 8th of September. On that day a public notice appeared announcing the changes that were about to take place; and this notice bore his signature. Only the other day he had been a letter-carrier, and now, by reason of a promotion which did hardly more honour to himself than to the postmasters-general who made it, he signed as deputy-comptroller of the Penny Post Office.

The financial results of Johnson's plan exceeded all expectation. For the last year of the old system the gross revenue of the penny post was 11,000. For the first year of the new system it was 28,560; and for the second year 29,623. Johnson had proceeded on the principle--a principle which from the first establishment of the Post Office has never yet been known to fail--increase facilities for correspondence and correspondence itself increases.

Johnson had made one mistake, a mistake which he frankly acknowledged and did his best to repair. He had fixed the wages of the letter-carriers too low. It was not that he had been indifferent to the interests of the cla.s.s from which he had recently emerged, but that he had feared to overweight a measure which, even as it stood, he had almost despaired of carrying. The wages, as fixed on his recommendation, ranged from 9s. to 16s. a week. Then came that terrible winter--the winter of 1794-95. We have ourselves been witness to an excessive absence from duty on the part of Post Office servants during the epidemic of influenza in 1890. But the number that were absent then, relatively to the whole force, were not to be compared to the number that were absent in the spring of 1795; neither was their absence due to so grievous a cause.

In the spring of 1795 the penny post letter-carriers, unlike the letter-carriers of the general post, had not yet been supplied with uniform, and, through sheer inability to supply themselves with such articles of clothing and of food as the severity of the weather required, nearly one-half of the whole number were unable to follow their employment. Johnson took great blame to himself for what he had done; nor did he rest until he had procured for the letter-carriers a substantial increase all round. This increase ranged from about 2s. to 6s. a week for each man, and involved a total cost of 1600 a year. Also in matters of detail Johnson effected several improvements, of which we will mention only one. The receptacle for letters at the receiving houses in London had hitherto been an open and movable box. The box was now, on his recommendation, to be fixed and provided with a key. The key was to be kept by the receiver, and he alone was to have access to the letters.

The Act of 1794 contained provisions which it is impossible to pa.s.s unnoticed. The penny post from its first establishment in 1681 had differed from the general post in this--that letters sent by it had to be prepaid. By the general post prepayment had not indeed been prohibited, but it had been discouraged; by the penny post it had been compulsory. This was now altered, and it was left to the option of persons using the penny post whether they would prepay their letters or not. It is difficult to repress a pang at the disappearance of a provision to which Dockwra, the founder of the penny post, attached the highest importance; and yet it must be admitted that the change was not made without a reason. Messengers and servants entrusted with letters to post would destroy the letters for the sake of the pence which had been given them to pay the postage; and to such an extent had the abuse been carried that some persons made it a rule not to use the penny post at all unless they could post their own letters.

Another provision of the Act of 1794 was to relax a restriction imposed by the Act of Anne. Before 1711 the penny post had been so extended as to include many places distant from London as much as eighteen and twenty miles. Then came the Act of Anne, restricting the penny post to a circuit of ten miles. And now the ten-mile limit was abolished, and the postmasters-general were empowered, not in London alone but also in country towns wherever the penny post might be established, to extend it at their discretion.

A third provision of the Act of 1794 was designed to correct what was considered a flaw in a previous Act. It is interesting to note what this flaw was. When Dockwra established his post, he insisted that on letters going by it the postage should be 1d. and no more. This penny, however, in the case of letters for places situated beyond the bills of mortality, was to carry only to the receiving house; for delivery at a private house was to be paid a second penny, commonly called the delivery-penny. The Act of Anne merely provided that letters by the penny post should be charged 1d., and was silent on the subject of the second or delivery-penny; and a subsequent Act, pa.s.sed in 1731, made the delivery-penny legal.

Now what was the consequence of all this? The consequence was that as between two letters, the one pa.s.sing from London to a place outside the bills of mortality and the other pa.s.sing from a place outside the bills of mortality to London, there was a difference of postage. In the one direction the postage was 2d. and in the other 1d. The Act of 1794 imposed a postage of 2d. in both directions; and here we see not indeed the origin of the twopenny post but the twopenny post fully established.

The reform of the penny post was soon followed by that of the dead letter office. This office was established in 1784. How, before that year, dead letters were treated is perhaps one of the obscurest points of Post Office practice. We know that letters which could not be delivered and letters which had been missent were always treated together. We know that in 1716 these letters had become so numerous that an officer was specially appointed to check them. We know that to Ralph Allen, fertile as he was in resources, how to deal with this cla.s.s of letters was a constant source of perplexity. We know that Todd, writing to Foxcroft, the deputy postmaster-general of America, in February 1775, says: "Amongst other regulations made here of late the dead, refused, and unknown letters returned to this office have been opened by the proper officers, and returned to the writers"; but without adding who "the proper officers" were. And we know that as late as 1783 there was in London a letter-carrier whose special duty it was to "take care of the unknown and uncertain letters."

But when we have stated this, we have stated all. Whether there was any recognised mode of dealing with dead letters, or whether any one into whose hands these letters came dealt with them as he judged best, according to circ.u.mstances, are questions upon which we have absolutely no information. In 1784 only a part of the dead letters and letters that had been missent went to the newly-created dead letter office. Another and larger part, consisting of bye-letters or letters that in the ordinary course would not reach London, were dealt with in the bye-letter office. No letter was returned to the writer until after the expiration of six months, and on its return no postage was charged. In 1790 Palmer reduced from six months to two the period before which letters were returned, and on his own motion, without reference to the postmasters-general, charged them with postage. Grave doubts were entertained as to the legality of this charge, and Pitt, as soon as he heard of it, ordered it to be discontinued.

In 1793 Barlow, a clerk in the secretary's office, who had charge of the dead letter office, introduced two changes of practice which, obvious as they may now appear, were then regarded as evidence of no little merit. He arranged that missent letters, instead of being sent to London to be dealt with in the dead letter office, should be forwarded to their destination from the place where the missending was discovered; and also--a change which gave great satisfaction in naval and military circles--that letters for the army and navy should be sent where the army and navy were known to be, and not to stations and quarters which they were known to have left simply because the letters were addressed there.

About the same time the dead letter office received most valuable help in the discharge of its duties from the publication of what was, virtually, the first County Directory. For some years past three Post Office servants had been engaged in compiling a list of all the names and addresses they could collect throughout the different counties of England. This list, though still far from complete, now filled six large folio volumes. The venture which had been undertaken with a view to profit was financially a failure; but as a means of helping to forward letters with imperfect addresses it proved an unqualified success.

Thus matters stood in 1795, when Barlow proposed a further reform. The inspector of the "bye, dead, and missent letters," as they were called, had neglected his duties. These letters were not sent to London until they had lain for three months in the country offices, and after their arrival he had suffered a still longer period to elapse before proceeding to dispose of them. Barlow now proposed that these letters also should be placed under his control, and the proposal being approved, the dead letter office began to a.s.sume the shape in which, though under another name, we know it to-day. To the general practice one exception was made. On the first opening of penny post offices in country towns many letters could not be delivered on account of their imperfect addresses. The novelty and cheapness of the post, it may well be believed, induced persons to use it who possessed little skill in writing, and no knowledge of the mode in which superscriptions should be prepared. It was a duty imposed on the surveyor who was engaged in establis.h.i.+ng the post to open these letters and return them to the writers on the spot.

Another office was established about this time, an office for dealing with the American and West Indian letters. The merchants had recently complained that these letters were continually missent, letters for one of the West India Islands being sent to another, and letters for places served from Halifax being sent to Quebec and _vice versa_. The truth is that until lately some profit had been derived from the sorting of these letters; and the most experienced officers, who knew the circulation abroad almost as well as they knew the circulation at home, had been glad to sort them. The comptroller of the inland department--for, curiously enough, it was there and not in the foreign department that the letters were dealt with--had received one guinea a night and the clerks 5s. a night for dealing with them; but these unauthorised additions to salaries had now been stopped, and the West Indian and American mails were left to be sorted, just as any other mails were sorted, by seniors and juniors in common.

It was impossible that mistakes should not occur. To a.s.sist in the disposal of inland mails there were what were called circulation lists, lists shewing to what towns letters for particular places were to be sent; but in the case of the American and West Indian mails there were no such aids to inexperience, and the letters were to a large extent sent haphazard. Freeling now altered this. He procured from abroad circulation lists corrected to the latest date. Four experienced officers were selected, who were made specially responsible for the West Indian and American correspondence; they were to devote to it two hours a night over and above their ordinary hours; and for this extra attendance they were each to receive a special allowance of 30 a year.

Freeling's last safeguard is interesting as shewing what may be done with a limited correspondence. Two books were to be kept, of which one was to be reserved for Government letters. In this book were to be entered the date on which each individual letter was posted, the date on which it was forwarded to Falmouth, and the name of the packet by which it was despatched. The second book was, in Freeling's own words, "to contain observations of different kinds to enable the clerks the better to satisfy the merchants applying for information" respecting the letters they had posted. It would perhaps be hardly an exaggeration to say that between England on the one hand and America and the West Indies on the other there are at the present time more sackfuls of letters pa.s.sing than there were single letters one hundred years ago.

About the same time, but a little later, an important change took place in the treatment of letters arriving from the East Indies in the s.h.i.+ps of the East India Company. These letters came to the India House in boxes addressed to the directors, and so escaped all but the inland postage. Some of them indeed did not pay even that, for if addressed to persons in or near London they were delivered by the Company's servants, who charged and retained as their own perquisite a fee varying from 2s.

6d. to 10s. 6d. on each letter. The practice was of old date, as old probably as the East India Company itself, and was held to be not illegal. It is true that a vessel was forbidden under a penalty of 20 to break bulk or to make entry into port until all letters brought by the master or his company should be delivered to some agent of the postmasters-general; but both the captain and the directors were held to be exempt from liability under this provision, the captain because he was presumably ignorant of what the boxes contained, and the directors because the penalty attached to the captain and not to them.

The legality of the practice not being contested, nothing remained but to make overtures to the directors; and, on this being done, they readily consented that for the future all letters arriving by their s.h.i.+ps, except such as were for themselves and their friends, should be forthwith sent to the Post Office to be dealt with as s.h.i.+p letters. The public derived no little advantage from the change. The postage from India was actually less than what the company's servants had been accustomed to exact as fees; and the letters were now delivered at once, whereas the company's servants would seldom deliver them under three or four days after their arrival at the India House, and sometimes not for a whole month.

Contemporaneously with the Act of Parliament regulating the penny post was pa.s.sed another establis.h.i.+ng a post to the Channel Islands. This was essentially a war post, a post which, except for the war between England and France, might have been postponed far into the present century.

Hitherto letters for the Channel Islands had been charged with postage only as far as Southampton, and from Southampton they had been carried to their destination by private boat. Again and again had the Post Office been urged by those who wanted employment for their vessels to establish a line of packets to the islands; but to all such overtures the postmasters-general turned a deaf ear. Boats were pa.s.sing to and fro regularly four or five times a week, and the owners of these boats were ready and glad to carry the letters for the s.h.i.+p-letter postage of 1d. a letter. Why then, it was asked, should the Post Office be at the expense of maintaining a line of packets which, unless it were put on a footing out of all proportion to the importance of the service, would give absolutely less accommodation than that which existed already?

Thus matters stood when war broke out and all communication with the islands was stopped. Even now the postmasters-general had grave doubts as to the propriety of establis.h.i.+ng a line of packets. It was true that the correspondence with the Channel Islands was considerable. During the year 1792 the number of letters on which s.h.i.+p-letter postage had been paid was 21,570, namely, 20,070 at Southampton and 1500 at Dartmouth and other ports on the south coast--making, on the a.s.sumption that the letters were as many in the opposite direction, a total correspondence for the year of about 43,000 letters.

And yet there were serious considerations on the other side. Unless an Act of Parliament were pa.s.sed providing a packet rate of postage between the mainland and the islands, the Post Office would have no exclusive right of carrying the letters, and the moment the war ceased the packets might be deserted in favour of the private boats. If, on the other hand, such an Act were pa.s.sed, popular as the measure might be while the war lasted, it could not fail to be unpopular as soon as the war ceased.

Private boats would then be an illegal means of conveyance, and correspondence would be restricted to the packets, however few these might be in number, and however wide the intervals between the despatches.