The History of the Post Office Part 19

Nine years had now pa.s.sed since the Royal Commissioners had reported upon the condition of the public offices; and four years had pa.s.sed since the Report had seen the light. Pitt had been deliberate enough in approving the recommendations; but having done so, he had no intention that they should remain inoperative. And yet he had little confidence that such would not be the case unless some external influence were brought to bear. Accordingly recourse was had to an expedient which might perhaps with advantage be sometimes adopted at the present day.

At Pitt's instigation a Special Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to ascertain and report how far the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners had been carried into effect.

The Post Office, on the whole, came well out of the ordeal. Abuses had been corrected; useless offices had been abolished; and men were no longer drawing salaries for duties which they did not perform. There was, however, one notable exception. Todd, the secretary, had during many years ceased to do any work; yet he had not ceased to draw his full salary; neither had he ceased to retain his shares in at least one of the Post Office packets. The Committee denounced his conduct in terms which far exceeded the ordinary bounds of parliamentary usage. Their language indeed, as applied to a man of more than eighty years of age, might even be p.r.o.nounced to be cruel. And yet scathing as the censure was, it fell upon callous ears. With a tenacity worthy of a better cause the old man still clung to his place and his shares. The postmasters-general now brought pressure to bear. As regards the shares, which Todd had held unknown to his masters, they insisted upon his selling them; but his place of secretary they were either unwilling or unable to wrest from his grasp.

Death at length put an end to the scandal. In June 1798 Todd yielded up at once his life and his office; and Francis Freeling, according to a long-standing promise, became Secretary to the Post Office in his stead.

CHAPTER XIV

FRANCIS FREELING

1798-1817

The name of Francis Freeling has been placed at the head of this chapter, not because, in devising new means of correspondence or extending means that already existed, he is to be cla.s.sed with the distinguished men who preceded him--with Palmer and Allen, with Dockwra and Witherings--but because for more than a generation he exercised a paramount influence in Post Office matters, and during this long period whatever was done affecting the communications of the country was done upon his advice.

The first act of importance in which Freeling was concerned after his appointment as secretary was the establishment of the s.h.i.+p letter office, an office which owed its origin to the suggestion of Frederick Bourne, a clerk in the foreign department. Hitherto the packet boats, where packet boats existed, had been the only means by which correspondence could be legally sent out of the kingdom; and yet in the neighbourhood of the Exchange there was hardly a place of public resort at which letters for America and the West Indies, as well as other places abroad, were not collected for despatch by private s.h.i.+p. There was no concealment about the matter. At Lloyds, and the Jamaica, the Maryland, the Virginia and other coffee-houses, bags were openly hung up, and all letters dropped into these bags, including those for places to which there was communication by packet, were taken on board s.h.i.+p, and, without the intervention of the Post Office, despatched to their destination, the captains receiving for their transport a gratuity of 2d. apiece.

Illegal as the practice was, Pitt was unwilling to suppress it. The Act which made it illegal to send by private s.h.i.+p letters which might be sent by packet had been pa.s.sed in the time of Queen Anne, and he could not reconcile it to himself to enforce a law some ninety years old which had never yet been set in motion. Bourne's idea was to sweep all s.h.i.+p-letters into the post, and to charge them inwards with a fixed sum of 4d. and outwards with half the packet rate of postage. If with the place to which a letter was addressed there was no communication by packet, the rate was to be fixed at what presumably it would be if such communication existed. Pitt favoured the idea and adopted it--subject, however, to one important qualification. Instead of being compulsory the Act, should an Act be pa.s.sed, was to be permissive. On this point Pitt was determined. It was only in return for some service that the Post Office was ent.i.tled to make a charge. And what was the service here? To seal the bags? This he could not regard as a substantial service--a service for which a charge should be made. The s.h.i.+p was a private s.h.i.+p, her commander was not a servant of the Post Office, and the bag of letters he carried might be, and not infrequently was, for countries in which neither the Post Office nor any other branch of the British Government had an accredited agent.

Surely in such circ.u.mstances anything in the shape of compulsion was out of the question, and all that should be done was to invite the merchants to bring their letters to the Post Office, when the Post Office would undertake to find a private s.h.i.+p that would carry them. A bill on these lines was brought in and pa.s.sed; and on the 10th of September 1799 the s.h.i.+p letter office was opened, Bourne being appointed to superintend it under the t.i.tle of inspector. The new measure failed of its object. On letters entering the kingdom fourpences were no doubt collected, because, until these letters had been deposited at the local Post Office, no vessel was allowed to make entry or to break bulk. But letters leaving the kingdom left it just as they had been used to leave it before the s.h.i.+p letter office was established. It was in vain that the Post Office tempted the keepers of coffee-houses by the offer of high salaries to become its own agents. All overtures to this end were resolutely declined; and during many years the letters by private s.h.i.+p that were sent through the post stood to those that were received through the same agency in no higher proportion than one to eighteen.

In 1801 the Post Office was called upon to make to the Exchequer a further contribution to the amount of 150,000. What would have struck consternation to the hearts of most men was to Freeling a source of unmixed pleasure. Not only had he a perfect craze for high rates of postage, but it had long been with him a subject of lament that under the law as it stood no higher charge was made for a distance of 500 miles than for a distance of 150. This in his view was a glaring defect, and he now set himself to remedy it. The new rates--which, as he lost no opportunity of making known, were exclusively of his own devising--were adopted by the Government, and having pa.s.sed the Houses of Parliament came into operation on the 5th of April. As compared with the old rates, they were as follows:--

+------------------------------------------------------------------+ BEFORE THE 5TH OF APRIL 1801. +-----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+------+ Single. Double. Treble. Ounce. +-------+-------+-------+------+ _d._ _d._ _d._ _d._ Not exceeding 15 miles 3 6 9 12 Above 15 and not exceeding 30 miles 4 8 12 16 " 30 " 60 " 5 10 15 20 " 60 " 100 " 6 12 18 24 " 100 " 150 " 7 14 21 28 Exceeding 150 miles 8 16 24 32 +-----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+------+

+------------------------------------------------------------------+ ON AND AFTER THE 5TH OF APRIL 1801. +-----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+------+ Single. Double. Treble. Ounce. +-------+-------+-------+------+ _d._ _d._ _d._ _d._ Not exceeding 15 miles 3 6 9 12 Above 15 and not exceeding 30 miles 4 8 12 16 " 30 " 50 " 5 10 15 20 " 50 " 80 " 6 12 18 24 " 80 " 120 " 7 14 21 28 " 120 " 170 " 8 16 24 32 " 170 " 230 " 9 18 27 36 " 230 " 300 " 10 20 30 40 " 300 " 400 " 11 22 33 44 " 400 " 500 " 12 24 36 48 " 500 " 600 " 13 26 39 52 " 600 " 700 " 14 28 42 56 Exceeding 700 miles 15 30 45 60 +-----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+------+

Thus the postage on a single letter was--from London to Brighton, 6d.; from London to Liverpool, 9d.; and from London to Edinburgh, 1s. A letter weighing one ounce is now carried from London to Thurso for 1d.

In 1801 the charge was 5s.

On letters to or from places abroad, "not being within His Majesty's dominions," the postage was at the same time raised by 4d., 8d., 1s., and 1s. 4d., according as the letter was single, double, treble, or of the weight of one ounce.

But there was worse to come. By the Act of 1801 the London penny post--that post which had been established 120 years before, and which, its founder had predicted, would endure to all posterity--was swept out of existence. For us who are now living it is difficult to conceive that such an enormity should have been possible. Yet there is the fact. After the pa.s.sing of the Act of 1801 the London penny post had ceased to be.

Where 1d. had been charged before, the sum of 2d. was to be charged now.

The same Act contained another provision, which it is impossible to regard otherwise than as a wanton interference with trade. The Legislature, from the earliest days of the Post Office, had shewn indulgence to merchants' accounts not exceeding one sheet of paper, to bills of exchange, invoices, and bills of lading. All these, in the language of the Act establis.h.i.+ng the Post Office--the Act of 1660--were to be "without rate in the price of the letters"; and a similar provision was contained in the Act of Anne. Owing, however, to a faulty construction of the clause it was doubtful whether the exemption was confined to foreign letters or whether it applied to inland letters as well. The merchants contended that inland letters were included; otherwise, as they pointed out, a letter might "go cheaper to Constantinople than to Bristol." The postmasters-general, on the other hand, insisted that the exemption applied only to foreign letters, and, in order to set doubts at rest, they early in the reign of George the Second procured an Act to be pa.s.sed declaring their interpretation to be the right one. As regards foreign letters, therefore, there had never been the slightest doubt as to either the intention or the practice.

When enclosed in letters going or coming from abroad, merchants'

accounts not exceeding one sheet of paper, bills of exchange, invoices, and bills of lading had from the first establishment of the Post Office been exempt from postage; and now after an interval of more than 140 years this exemption, like the penny post, was swept away. Henceforth these doc.u.ments were to be charged as so many several letters.

Yet one more provision in the Act of 1801 it is necessary to notice as introducing a novel principle. This Act gave power to the postmasters-general to grant postal facilities to towns and villages where no Post Offices existed, provided the inhabitants were prepared to pay such sums as might be mutually agreed upon. As the postmasters-general were already authorised to establish Penny Post Offices wherever they might see fit out of London, the object of this fresh power may not be very clear. It was not that the Post Office might be able to charge for the local service more than 1d. a letter, for in no single instance, so far as we are aware, was more than 1d. charged, but that in arranging the local service the Post Office might have a freedom of action which it did not possess under the statute empowering it to establish penny posts. In short, the object of the power was to enable the Post Office, in concert with the inhabitants of the towns and villages concerned, to try experiments.

As a natural consequence of the high rates of postage, the illegal conveyance of letters now became general. This was an offence to which Freeling gave no quarter. Wherever information could be obtained that letters were being conveyed otherwise than by post, there a prosecution was inst.i.tuted. The extent to which the policy of repression was carried less than a century ago may seem incredible. In Scotland, for instance, every carrier and every master of a stage-coach as well as many others were served with notice of prosecution. In that part of the kingdom alone no less than 1200 prosecutions were inst.i.tuted simultaneously.

Even Parkin, the solicitor to the Post Office in England, was absolutely aghast at the zeal of his colleague over the Border, and counselled moderation. Freeling, on the other hand, expressed entire approval, declaring that the Scotch solicitor was to be encouraged and not restrained. Nor were the prosecutions merely nominal. An unfortunate Post Office servant, or rider as he was called, had been detected in carrying forty unposted letters. This man, whose wages did not exceed a few s.h.i.+llings a week, was sued upon each letter, and adjudged to pay forty separate penalties of 10s. apiece.

Lord Auckland and Lord Charles Spencer were at this time postmasters-general. Spencer had been only recently appointed. Auckland had held his appointment for a couple of years, and by virtue of his seniority took the lead. Seldom, perhaps, has there been a more kindly postmaster-general, or one who to an equal extent enlivened by sprightly sallies the dull monotony of official work. The postmaster of Tring had opened a letter from Freeling to Sir John Sebright. The postmaster pleaded that the opening was accidental; Freeling maintained that it was wilful, and recommended the man's dismissal. Auckland ordered him to be reprimanded for culpable negligence. It may, no doubt, he said, have been a wilful act; but it may also have been an act of inadvertence.

And then, in order to remove any feeling of soreness which Freeling may have entertained at his recommendation being set aside, he good-naturedly added, "_Multi alii hoc fecerunt etiam et boni_." "I have," he continued, "a fellow-feeling on the occasion. My appet.i.te for reading is as much sickened as that of any man-cook for the tasting of high sauces; and yet so lately as last night I tore the envelope of a letter which a little attention would have shewn was not for me."

On another occasion two postmistresses--the postmistress of Faversham and the postmistress of Croydon--simultaneously announced their intention of marrying, each for the third time, and asked that their offices, which as married women they would be incompetent to continue to hold, might be transferred to their future husbands. Auckland gave the permission sought, adding, in the case of the postmistress of Faversham, "I meet the repeated applications of this active deputy with great complacency, and in the words of Lady Castlemaine's answer to our mutton-eating monarch--

'Again and again, my liege, said she, And as oft as shall please your Majesty.'"

Bennett, the man to whom the postmistress of Croydon was engaged, had been known to her for some time, and she bore testimony to his qualifications for the post to which he aspired. "The Croydon lady, who is also laudably p.r.o.ne to a reiteration of nuptials," wrote Auckland, "rests her case on grounds less solid. I have no doubt of her judgment and testimony respecting the ability of Mr. Robert Thomas Bennett; but for the sake of the precedent the sufficiency should be certified either by the surveyor of the district, or by the vicar or some princ.i.p.al inhabitant."

With such pleasantries as these Auckland beguiled the tediousness of official work; but in serious matters, matters affecting the interests of the public, he appears to have exerted little will of his own. Once, indeed, he expressed some misgiving as to the propriety of the course pursued. It was in the case of the Scotch prosecutions. "I own," he said, "that I was a little surprised to find that so large a measure as that of commencing 1200 prosecutions has been undertaken without our special cognisance; but this circ.u.mstance," he added, "is in some degree explained." The reproof, if reproof it can be called, could hardly have been milder; and yet as coming from Auckland it was a severe one. It had not the effect, however--nor probably was it designed to have the effect--of checking the general policy on which Freeling had embarked.

That policy was one of repression, and in England hardly less than in Scotland prosecutions went merrily on.

Indeed, the repressive powers of the Post Office, large as they were already, were yet not large enough to satisfy headquarters. Freeling discerned clearly enough that, if only a sufficiently high consideration were offered, persons would always be found to carry letters clandestinely. Might it not be possible to strike at the source of the mischief, and make it penal for persons clandestinely to send them? The tempters would thus be reached as well as the tempted. At all events the experiment should be tried.

With this object Freeling now devoted himself to the preparation of a bill, one clause of which rendered liable to penalties persons sending letters otherwise than by the post. The bill, which was throughout of a highly penal character, eventually pa.s.sed into law,[77] but not without grave misgivings on the part of Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, and Ellenborough, the Chief Justice. It was only in deference to the urgent representations of the Post Office that these two eminent men consented to the introduction of the measure, and, while waiving their objections to it, they strongly recommended that "great lenity should be used in its execution." It will be interesting to note how far this recommendation was acted on.

[77] 42 George III. cap. lx.x.xi. (June 20, 1802).

Having settled the postage rates to his satisfaction, Freeling obtained permission to carry out his favourite project of guarding the horse-mails. The arguments in favour of this measure were overwhelming.

During the five years which had elapsed since the Treasury had refused their a.s.sent, these mails had been stopped and rifled of their contents on fifteen different occasions; and on the last of these--when the Lewes mail was robbed in the neighbourhood of East Grinstead--bills had been stolen to the amount of nearly 14,000. During the same period seven persons had been executed for partic.i.p.ation in these felonies; three were awaiting trial; and the cost of prosecutions amounted to 2000 or 3000 a year. The annual cost of Freeling's plan, as he now proposed to modify it, would not exceed 1500. Moved by these considerations, the Treasury gave at length the necessary authority, and the horse-posts throughout the country, except on the less important roads, were provided with a strong cap for the protection of the head, a jacket, a brace of pistols, and a hanger.

We have said that during the last five years--the five years ending in August 1801--the horse-mails had been robbed on fifteen different occasions. One of these robberies occurred between the towns of Selby and York. It was a commonplace robbery enough, with little or nothing to distinguish it from any other; and yet for a reason which will presently appear we give a copy of the letter in which the particulars were reported to headquarters:--

To FRANCIS FREELING, Esq.

POST OFFICE, YORK, _Feb. 22, 1798_.

SIR--I am sorry to acquaint you the post-boy coming from Selby to this city was robbed of his mail between six and seven o'clock this evening. About three miles on this side of Selby he was accosted by a man on foot with a gun in his hand, who asked him if he was the post-boy, and at the same time seized hold of the bridle. Without waiting for any answer he told the boy he must immediately unstrap the mail and give it him, pointing the muzzle of the gun at him whilst he did it. When he had given up the mail, the boy begged he would not hurt him, to which the man replied he need not be afraid, and at the same time pulled the bridle from the horse's head. The horse immediately galloped off with the boy, who had never dismounted.

He was a stout man dressed in a drab jacket, and had the appearance of being a hicklar. The boy was too much frightened to make any other remark on his person, and says he was totally unknown to him.

The mail contained the bags for Howden and London, Howden and York, and Selby and York. I have informed the surveyor of the robbery, and have forwarded hand-bills this night to be distributed in the country, and will take care to insert it in the first papers published here.--Waiting your further instructions, I remain with respect, sir, your obliged and obedient humble servant,

THOMAS OLDFIELD.

Let us now go forward to the year 1876. In that year this identical bag, for which a reward had been offered at the time without result, was placed in our hands, having been found concealed in the roof of an old wayside public-house situated not far from the scene of the robbery, and then in course of demolition. The original doc.u.ments were called for and produced; and thus, after an interval of nearly eighty years, the bag and the official papers in which its loss was reported have come together and found one common resting-place. Of the ident.i.ty of the bag there is no question. Not only do the form and texture proclaim it to be of the last century, but it bears upon it the word "Selby," and a medallion with the letters "G. R."[78]

[78] This experience is not to be compared with that of Inspector d.i.c.ker, who in 1839 wrote to the Secretary of the Post Office as follows:--

"HONOURED SIR ... On arriving at Caxton, in the course of conversation with the landlord of the Crown Public-House respecting the loss of the above-mentioned bag, he informed me he had found a mail bag secreted under an oak floor between the joists that supported the floor in one of the upper rooms of his house, and that the letters it contained were of very ancient date, as far back as the year 1702. I requested to be allowed to see them, and, on his producing them, discovered it to be a London bag labelled Tuxford. I desired to be allowed to take two of the letters with me and a bit of the bag, which I gave to Mr. Peac.o.c.k the solicitor. The only intelligence I could gain as to the probable cause of the bag being found there was that a post-rider was robbed and murdered about the date of the above-mentioned letters." The two letters are still with the official papers. One of them is undecipherable. The other is nearly as legible as on the day it was written. In it the writer announces to his uncle the death of his mother from "the Small Pox and purples," and states that this disease is devastating the town of Kirtlington.

The troubles which had long been brewing with the mail-coach contractors now came to a climax. In 1797 an Act of Parliament had been pa.s.sed imposing a duty of 1d. a mile upon all public carriages. The mail-coach contractors bitterly complained of this impost, and not without reason.

A penny a mile was all they received for carrying the mails, and the new statute virtually took this 1d. away, leaving them without any payment at all for their services. It had been overlooked that the mail-coach was not as other coaches were. The ordinary stage-coach was at liberty to carry as many pa.s.sengers as its proprietor pleased, and it was no unusual thing for eight or nine and even ten to be carried inside, the number outside being limited only by considerations of safety. The mail-coach, on the contrary, was rigidly restricted to five pa.s.sengers--four inside and one out--and the Post Office rejected all proposals for so altering the construction of the coach as to admit of its carrying more.

Then came the year 1799, a year of scarcity, during which all kinds of horse provender reached unprecedented prices. The Government refused to bring in a bill exempting the mail-coaches from the new duty; and it only remained for the Post Office to raise the allowance which the contractors received from 1d. to 2d. a mile, a measure involving an additional payment of 12,000 a year. The second penny, however, was granted only as a temporary allowance, terminable at the end of one year and three-quarters, and, unlike most allowances given under a similar condition, it actually ceased at the appointed time.

The clamour of two years before now broke out afresh and with redoubled force. The tax on public carriages remained; and horse provender had become no cheaper. Did not justice demand that the additional penny should continue to be paid? The Post Office was disinclined to contest the claim; but acting under orders from above--orders which a.s.suredly would not have been given had Pitt remained minister--it proceeded to bargain, and at length, after much haggling, the contractors were prevailed upon to accept one-half of the temporary allowance or an additional 1/2d. a mile for a further period of eighteen months, viz.

from the 10th of October 1802 to the 5th of April 1804, when the question was to be again considered. A temporary expedient of this nature seldom answers; and the present was no exception to the rule.

Eventually the Post Office had to give rather more than need have been given in the first instance, and after 1804 the mails were carried at an average rate of 2-1/8d. the single or 4-1/4d. the double mile.

Other alterations followed. To the postmasters' salaries an increase was made all round, an increase small indeed individually but large in the aggregate. What had been done for Manchester eight years before was now done for Liverpool. The Post Office there was remodelled and a penny post established. An end was, about the same time, put to a most objectionable arrangement. As a reward for their services in promoting Palmer's plan, three of the surveyors had been appointed to postmasters.h.i.+ps, and these appointments they held in addition to their own proper appointments as surveyor. Thus, one of their number was postmaster of Gloucester, another postmaster of Honiton, and a third postmaster of Portsmouth.