JOHN PALMER
1782-1792
The apathy of the Post Office about this time is incomprehensible. More
than twenty years before, the General Convention of the Royal Boroughs
of Scotland had called the attention of the postmasters-general to the
intolerable slowness of the post on the Great North Road. "Every common
traveller," they wrote, "passes the King's mail on the first road in the
kingdom." At the present time the clerks of the roads were giving as one
of the reasons why they were undersold in the matter of newspapers that,
whereas they sent their wares by post, the booksellers and printers
availed themselves of the more expeditious conveyance by stage-coach.
Yet it seems never to have occurred to the postmasters-general that what
was being done by others they might do themselves. The lesson that was
lost upon the postmasters-general was to be learnt and applied by John
Palmer, proprietor of the theatre at Bath.
Palmer had, while yet at school, been distinguished for a love of
enterprise, an indomitable perseverance, and an activity of body which
knew no fatigue and set distance at defiance. He had, through sheer
persistency, obtained a patent for his theatre at Bath, which thus
became the first Theatre-Royal out of the metropolis. At a time when the
mail leaving London on Monday night did not arrive at Bath until
Wednesday afternoon, he had been in the habit of accomplishing the
distance between the two cities in a single day. He had made journeys
equally long and equally rapid in other directions; and, as the result
of observation, he had come to the conclusion that of the horses kept at
the post-houses it was always the worst that were set aside to carry the
mail, and that the post was the slowest mode of conveyance in the
kingdom. He had also observed that, where security or despatch was
required, his neighbours at Bath who might desire to correspond with
London would make a letter up into a parcel and send it by
stage-coach,[59] although the cost by stage-coach was, porterage
included, 2s. and by post 4d. Not seldom, indeed, the difference would
be more than 1s. 8d., for to prevent delay on the part of the porters in
London one of these clandestine letters would as often as not have
written on the back, "An extra sum will be given the porter if he
delivers this letter immediately."
[59] Thus, Mrs. Thrale to Doctor Johnson. Writing from Bath on the 4th
of July 1784, she says: "I write by the coach the more speedily and
effectually to prevent your coming hither."--Hayward's _Autobiography of
Mrs. Piozzi_, vol. i. p. 241.
Starting from these premises Palmer, with characteristic energy, set
himself to devise a plan for the reform of the Post Office. This plan
was simply that the mails--which, to use his own words, had heretofore
been trusted to some idle boy without character, mounted on a worn-out
hack, who, so far from being able to defend himself against a robber,
was more likely to be in league with one--should for the future be
carried by coach. The coach should be guarded, and should carry no
outside passenger. For guard no one could be better than a soldier, who
would be skilled in the use of firearms. He should carry two short guns
or blunderbusses, and sit on the top of the coach with the mail behind
him. From this position he could command the road and observe suspicious
persons. The coachman also should carry arms; but in his case they
should be pistols. A speed should be maintained of eight or nine miles
an hour. Thus, the distance between London and Bath would, stoppages
included, be accomplished in sixteen hours instead of thirty-eight; and
these stoppages should, in point of time, be largely reduced. As the
coach arrived at the end of each stage there would be little more for
the postmaster to do than to put into the mail bag the outgoing letters
and to take out of the bag the letters that were coming in. Surely a
quarter of an hour would be ample for the purpose. He must indeed be an
inexpert postmaster who could not change his letters as soon as the
ostler changes his horses. Strict punctuality should be observed. Each
postmaster should be on the spot and to the moment to receive the mail
when it arrived; and if it did not arrive to time, a man on horseback
should be despatched to ascertain the cause of delay. This, in the event
of the coach having been stopped by highwaymen, would secure immediate
pursuit.
And how little would be the cost of the proposed reform. It was doubtful
indeed whether there would be any additional cost at all. The mails were
now being conveyed at a charge for boy and horse of 3d. a mile. It was
certain that men might be found who for this rate of payment would be
glad to convey them by coach. Especially would this be the case if the
coaches which carried the mails were exempt, as they ought to be, from
toll. Between London and Bath, for instance, the toll was, for a
carriage and pair, 9s., and for a carriage and four, 18s. Exemption from
this impost would of itself be no inconsiderable boon to the
contractors. Besides, the speed and security of a mail coach would
attract passengers. At all events something, it was clear, must be done.
As matters stood it was an intolerable hardship that persons sending
letters by coach should be subject to penalties. A coach might go at a
time when there was no post; and a letter might require immediate
despatch. Yet, rather than make use of the coach and pay half a crown,
one was obliged to hire an express, which was less expeditious, at a
cost of two or three guineas. Surely, if no other change were made, this
at least should be conceded--that any one taking a letter to the Post
Office and paying the proper amount of postage upon it according to its
address should, after the letter had been impressed with the postmark
and signed by the postmaster, be at liberty to send it by what channel
he pleased.
Such were the main features of Palmer's plan. As a subsidiary, though by
no means a necessary, part of it he made two suggestions which it may be
well to mention, if only because they were afterwards adopted. These
were--1st, that the mails, which from the first establishment of the
Post Office had not left London until between midnight and three o'clock
in the morning, should start at eight in the evening; and 2nd, that they
should not be kept waiting for the Government letters when these
happened to be late. This keeping the mails waiting for the Government
letters had, at the beginning of the century, been a constant source of
complaint. "We take this occasion of representing to your Lordship,"
wrote the postmasters-general to Lord Dartmouth on the 16th of March
1710, "the great inconvenience which happened to the business of this
office on Tuesday's night's post by the inland mails having all been
detained here till the receipt of the Court letters, which were not
brought by the messenger from Whitehall before half-past six on
Wednesday morning." A similar letter of remonstrance was at the same
time addressed to Mr. Secretary St. John. But, of late years, so
profound had been the supineness which reigned at the Post Office that
it may, probably enough, have been considered of little consequence
whether the mails were delayed or not. Palmer was unable to take this
view. To him it appeared in the highest degree improper that, for the
sake of a few letters which after all might be of no great importance,
the Post Office business of the whole country should be thrown out of
gear. Far better, he urged, that the mail should leave at the proper
hour, and that these letters, if behind time, should be sent after it by
express. A third suggestion he made, a suggestion admirable in itself,
and yet one that at that time was little likely to be adopted. This was
that the Post Office should take the public into its confidence, and
invite them to make known their wants and suggest how best these wants
might be supplied.
In October 1782, through the intervention of his friend John Pratt,
afterwards Lord Camden, Palmer's plan was brought under the notice of
Pitt; and Pitt, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the
administration of Lord Shelburne, at once discerned its merits. Nothing,
however, could be done until the Post Office had had an opportunity of
offering its opinion on the matter, and when this opinion was
given--which was not until July 1783--Pitt was out of office; and,
although he returned to power as minister in the following December, the
struggle in which he then became engaged with an unruly Parliament, and
afterwards a general election, effectually precluded him from giving
attention to the posts until the summer of 1784.
Meanwhile Palmer devoted himself to the perfection of his plan. He
traversed the whole of the kingdom by stage-coaches, noting down the
time they occupied in accomplishing their journeys, the time they
unnecessarily lost, and how they might be better regulated and made
serviceable for the transport of the mails. He took the same opportunity
of acquainting himself with the course of the post and carefully
observed its defects and delays. Nor did he trust to his own exertions
alone. In order to test the extent of clandestine traffic, he employed
persons to watch the Bath and Bristol coaches as they started for
London, and to count the number of parcels which appeared to contain
letters. These persons assured him that the number was never less than
several hundreds in the week, and in some weeks was as high as 1000.
The office of postmaster-general was at this time held by Lords Carteret
and Tankerville. Carteret had only recently been raised to the peerage.
Appointed thirteen years before as Henry Frederick Thynne in conjunction
with Lord le Despencer, he had, amid the conflict of parties and the
fall of successive ministries, contrived to retain his post.
Tankerville, on the contrary, had come in and gone out with a change of
Government. Called upon to preside over the Post Office in 1782, he had
left it in 1783 and had returned in January of the following year. The
part which these two peers took in connection with Palmer's plan appears
to have been not injudicious. Without expressing any opinion of their
own as to its feasibility or otherwise, they contented themselves with
collecting and forwarding to Pitt the opinions of such of their
subordinates as were presumably qualified to judge. These were the
district surveyors, and their verdict was unanimously against the plan.
Of the reasons for this judgment a specimen or two will suffice. By one
it was objected that there could be no need for the post to be the
swiftest conveyance in the kingdom; by another, that to employ firearms
for the protection of the mail would encourage their use on the other
side, and thus murder might be added to robbery; by a third, that not
only did the posts as they stood afford all reasonable accommodation,
but it was beyond the power of human ingenuity to devise a better
system.
Of these and other objections Pitt made short work. He summoned a
conference at the Treasury, at which were present the postmasters-general,
Palmer, and the objectors; and having patiently listened to all that
could be urged against the plan, he desired that it should be tried
on what was commonly called the Bath road, the road between Bristol
and London. This conference was held on the 21st of June 1784. On
Saturday the 31st of July an agreement was signed under which,
in consideration of a payment of 3d. a mile, five innholders--one
belonging to London, one to Thatcham, one to Marlborough, and two to
Bath--undertook to provide the horses; and on Monday the 2nd of August
the first mail-coach began to run.
It is unfortunate that of the early performances of this coach no record
remains. We only know that on the first journey it started from Bristol
and not from London, and that Palmer was present to see it off; that,
ordinarily, the distance was accomplished in seventeen hours, being at
the rate of about seven miles an hour; and that, as a result, the
expresses to Bristol, which before 1784 had been as many as 200 in the
year, ceased altogether. Ten or twelve years later, indeed, the
expresses for the whole of the kingdom were not one-fifth of what,
before 1784, was the number for the city of Bristol alone.
Palmer's plan, once introduced, made rapid progress. Mail-coaches began
to run through Norfolk and Suffolk in March 1785; and on the cross-road
between Bristol and Portsmouth in the following May. On the 25th of July
the plan was extended to Leeds, Manchester, and Liverpool, and during
the next two months to Gloucester and Swansea; to Hereford, Carmarthen,
and Milford Haven; to Worcester and Ludlow; to Birmingham and
Shrewsbury; to Chester and Holyhead; to Exeter; to Portsmouth; to Dover
and other places. The Great North Road was reserved to the last, and
here the plan was carried into effect in the summer of 1786.
It may be convenient here to say a few words on the subject of
nomenclature. Post-coach, a term in vogue about this time,[60] might not
unnaturally be supposed to denote a coach in use by the Post Office.
Such, however, was not the case. The term post-coach, like the kindred
term post-chaise, was introduced probably early in the last century,
and, so far as we are aware, was never employed in the sense of
mail-coach. It should further be noticed that the term mail-coach,
although we have employed it to make our meaning clear, did not come
into use until after 1784. In that year, and for some little time
afterwards, coaches which carried the mails were called diligences or
machines, and the coachmen were called machine-drivers.
[60] Thus, the Act 20 Geo. III. cap. li. sec. 2--an Act passed four
years before the mails were carried by coach:--
"That every person who shall keep any four-wheeled chaise or other
machine commonly called a diligence or post-coach, or by what name
soever such carriages now are or hereafter shall be called or known...."
That the term post-coach, as distinguished from mail-coach, was in vogue
as late as 1827 appears from evidence taken in that year before the
Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry--"(Q.) Are you acquainted with the
post-coaches? (A.) Not any very great deal. (Q.) Comparing them with
mail-coaches, which do you think are the best formed? (A.) Decidedly the
mail-coaches, I think."--Appendix to Eighteenth Report, p. 443.
The plan of carrying letters by mail-coach was, on its introduction,
sadly marred by a simultaneous or almost simultaneous increase in the
rates of postage. Pitt had brought forward his budget on the 30th of
June; and among the measures he proposed with a view to replenish an
exhausted Exchequer was a tax upon coals. The proposal was not well
received by the House, and it was afterwards withdrawn in favour of an
increase of postage. Palmer took credit to himself that he had proposed
the substitution. If, as would appear to be the case, the claim is well
founded, one can only regret that he should thus wantonly have
handicapped his own proceedings. It is true, no doubt, that he was about
to make the post both quicker and more secure; that he would have a
better article to dispose of, an article that would fetch a higher
price. It is also true that his plan, weighted as it was, proved an
unqualified success. And yet it is impossible to deny that his
reputation as a Post Office reformer, high as it stands, would have
stood still higher if his counsel had been on the side of reduction.
The rates prescribed by the Act of 1784, as compared with those of 1765,
were as follows:--
+-----------------------------+-------------------++-------------------+
| | 1765. || 1784. |
| +----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+
| DISTANCE. | S | D | T | O || S | D | T | O |
| | i | o | r | u || i | o | r | u |
| | n | u | e | n || n | u | e | n |
| | g | b | b | c || g | b | b | c |
| | l | l | l | e || l | l | l | e |
| | e | e | e | . || e | e | e | . |
| | . | . | . | || . | . | . | |
+-----------------------------+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+
| |_d._|_d._|_d._|_d._||_d._|_d._|_d._|_d._|
|Not exceeding one post stage | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 || 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
|Exceeding one and not | | | | || | | | |
| exceeding two post stages | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 || 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 |
|Exceeding two post stages | | | | || | | | |
| and not exceeding 80 miles | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 || 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 |
|Exceeding 80 and not | | | | || | | | |
| exceeding 150 miles | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 || 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 |
|Exceeding 150 miles | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 || 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 |
|To and from Edinburgh | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 || 7 | 14 | 21 | 28 |
| | | | | || | | | |
| |
| { The Irish Post Office had only |
| { recently been placed under the |
| { authority of the Irish Parliament; |
|To and from Dublin { and the rates of postage, not only |
| { within Ireland, but between Ireland |
| { and Great Britain, were awaiting |
| { revision. |
| |
| Within Scotland. | | | | || | | | |
| (Measured from Edinburgh.) | | | | || | | | |
|Not exceeding one post stage | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 || 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
|Exceeding one post stage and | | | | || | | | |
| not exceeding 50 miles | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 || 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 |
|Exceeding 50 miles and not | | | | || | | | |
| exceeding 80 miles | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 || 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 |
|Exceeding 80 and not | | | | || | | | |
| exceeding 150 miles | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 || 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 |
|Exceeding 150 miles | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 || 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 |
+-----------------------------+----+----+----+----++----+----+----+----+
The same Act which increased the rates of postage imposed, or sought to
impose, additional restrictions upon franking. Some concessions indeed
were made. Letters from members of Parliament, in order to secure
exemption, need no longer be limited, in point of weight, to two ounces
and, in point of time, to the session of Parliament and forty days
before and after. As part of the superscription, however, were now to be
given the full date of the letter, the day, the month, and the year, all
in the member's handwriting; and the letter was to be posted on the date
which the superscription bore. These restrictions, it was confidently
expected, would correct the worst abuses and render the concessions
harmless. But, curiously enough, like the restrictions of 1764, they had
an exactly contrary effect to that which was intended. The members sent
to their constituents and friends, for use as occasion should serve,
franks that were post-dated. These the Post Office charged, as coming
from places where the members were known not to be. The members
remonstrated, demanding to be informed in what respects the conditions
of the Act had not been satisfied. The dispute waxing warm, the matter
was referred to Pitt; and Pitt, after testing the opinion of the House,
decided that pending fresh legislation the charges should be abandoned.
Practically, therefore, the abuses which the Act was designed to prevent
were not only not prevented but were given wider scope.
Palmer maintained to the end of his life that during the two years which
followed the starting of the first mail-coach he was thwarted and
opposed by the Post Office. This charge, so far as it refers to those by
whom the Post Office was managed and controlled, we believe to be
groundless. That he had difficulties with contractors and postmasters is
beyond question. Contractors were at all times troublesome persons to
deal with, but they were not Post Office servants; and postmasters might
well be excused if they looked askance at the new plan. Their salaries,
low as they were, had long been shamefully reduced by exactions at
headquarters under the name of fees; and what little they had been able
to make out of their allowances for riding-work was now threatened by a
system under which that work was to be done by contract. But the charge
was not confined to contractors and postmasters. It extended to those
who controlled and directed the Post Office, to Carteret and Tankerville
and to their confidential adviser, the secretary; and, as we believe,
with very insufficient reason. Carteret was indifferent. Tankerville was
sincerely desirous of a reform of the posts, from whatever quarter it
might come. Anthony Todd, the secretary, was eminently a man of peace.
Appointed to the Post Office in 1738, he had arrived at a time of life
when to most men ease and quiet are essential; and not only was he well
advanced in years but it was not in his nature to thwart or oppose any
one. All he wanted was to be left alone; and he was shrewd enough to
know that the best way to secure this object was not to molest others.
Between Todd and Palmer, indeed, there was little in common. Palmer, in
everything he undertook, was intensely in earnest. Todd, on the
contrary, could with difficulty get up even an appearance of earnestness
about anything which did not concern himself. Even of his duty Todd took
a view which must have been absolutely repugnant to Palmer. Lloyds's
coffee-house was supplied by the Post Office with the arrivals and
sailings of British ships, and it paid for the information no less than
L200 a year. One-half of this amount went into Todd's own pocket; and
yet, according to him, the giving of the information was a concession,
an indulgence. "The merchants," he would write, "are indulged with ship
news." To the Mayor of Shrewsbury, who had asked on behalf of the
inhabitants for an earlier post, he deliberately wrote, "The arrival of
the mail a few hours sooner or later can be of no great consequence."
Not many years before, a despatch sent by express from Lord North to the
Duke of Newcastle had been lost. Even to the minister Todd was not
ashamed to write, "I dare to say there is no roguery in the case, but
[that the letter has been] lost and trampled under foot in the dirty
roads." Between a man who could take this view of his duty and Palmer,
who was burning to perfect his plan, there could be little sympathy; but
there was certainly no active antagonism. That, as Palmer extended his
plan, doubts as to its merits arose at headquarters is perfectly true;
but they were honest doubts, doubts which might excusably be entertained
and which, if entertained, the Post Office was bound to express. Palmer,
who regarded every one who was not for him as being against him,
construed the expression of a doubt into an act of hostility.
Let us see what some of these doubts were, and whence they originated.
In London, before the introduction of Palmer's plan, it had been the
practice to wait for the arrival of all the mails before any one of them
was delivered, so that in the event of a single mail being behind time,
no delivery at all might take place until three or four o'clock in the
afternoon or even later. Palmer, of course, altered this. But now his
interest in the Bristol coach led him to an opposite extreme. The
Bristol mail was delivered the moment it arrived; and all other mails,
by how little soever they might be later, were kept waiting. Again,
before 1784 the post was frequently diverted from the high road in order
that adjacent villages might be served. On the Bath road, for instance,
although on this road there were fewer diversions than on any other in
the kingdom, the post left the turnpike road between Hungerford and
Marlborough in order to go through Ramsbury. Under the new arrangement
it would have defeated Palmer's object to leave the direct track, if
indeed the state of the roads would have admitted of it; and as the
coaches could not go to the villages, the villages had to send to the
coaches. Not in these cases alone was there, at first, a very general
failure to effect a junction. Along every road on which a mail-coach was
started the bye and cross posts were deranged and thrown into confusion;
and, as a consequence, the Post Office was swamped with complaints from
those whose letters had been delayed.
Had this been all, it would have been little more than might be expected
in the course of transition from one system to another; but other causes
of dissatisfaction arose. The Act of Parliament regulated the rates of
postage according to stages--2d. in the case of a single letter, for one
stage, 3d. for two stages, and beyond two stages and not exceeding
eighty miles 4d.; but what was meant by the term stage the Act nowhere
defined. Virtually it was in the power of one man, by the simple
expedient of reducing the length of the stages and so increasing their
number, to raise the rate of postage between any two towns in the
kingdom that were not more than a certain number of miles apart. And
this is exactly what Palmer did. From Rochester to Dartford, for
instance, had been one stage. The single stage was replaced by two
stages; and the postage, which had been 2d., became 3d. From Newbury to
Devizes had been two stages. The two stages were increased to three; and
the postage was raised from 3d. to 4d. And so it was throughout the
kingdom. Well might the postmasters-general write, as they wrote under
date the 7th of December 1785, "We are now at a loss in many instances
how to rate letters and what to call by the name of a stage."
But not even the increase of postage which resulted from shortening the
stages gave so much offence as the earlier closing of the Post Office in
Lombard Street. The Post Office had from the earliest times been kept
open to at least twelve o'clock at night, and probably a little later.
It now closed at seven o'clock in the evening, so as to admit of the
mails starting at eight o'clock. Palmer had foreseen that objections
might be raised to the change; but he was little prepared for the storm
of indignation that followed. The first merchants in London, some of
them bearing names still honoured in the city,--Thellusson, Lubbock and
Bosanquet, Herries, Quentin Dick and Hoare,--protested in writing and
afterwards waited on the postmasters-general in a body to support their
protest. The leather-dealers followed suit, a body representing more
than sixty firms. Some held that the Post Office should be kept open
till nine o'clock, and others till ten or even eleven o'clock; but all
were of opinion that seven was too early an hour to close. At a meeting
held at the London Tavern, and presided over by one of the sheriffs,
resolutions were passed, copies of which were afterwards presented to
Pitt in person, not only condemning the early hour of closing but
calling for the adoption of measures with a view "to remove the
inconveniences which had hitherto been experienced from the
establishment of mail-coaches." No wonder if the postmasters-general
doubted the merits of a plan which exposed them to these complaints.
Nor was it only from without that troubles came. The letter-carriers
were grumbling and more than grumbling; and not without reason. For more
than seventy years they had been ringing bells in the streets after the
receiving houses were shut--until 1769 on the three nights of the week
called grand post nights, and since that date on the bye-nights as
well--receiving as their own perquisite 1d. on each letter they
collected. Hence the men had made a comfortable addition to their wages
of 12s. a week; and now, owing to the closing of the Post Office at
seven, the emoluments derived from this source were rapidly dwindling
and promised soon to disappear altogether.
Between Carteret and Tankerville differences now arose which, in view of
subsequent events, it is impossible to pass unnoticed. On the break-up
of the Shelburne administration in 1783, when Tankerville left the Post
Office and Carteret remained, the two postmasters-general had parted
with mutual expressions of regard and goodwill. A questionable
transaction in which Carteret had been concerned, a transaction
partaking of the nature of a corrupt bargain, had indeed come under
Tankerville's notice; but he willingly attributed it to the malign
influence exercised by his predecessor, Lord le Despencer. This
favourable construction his later experience had induced him to modify.
One case in particular which occurred soon after his return to the Post
Office had aroused the most painful suspicions. On Monday the 2nd of
August 1784, the same day as that on which the first mail-coach started,
the Post Office of Ireland was separated from the Post Office of
England. Into the reasons of this separation, being as they were
political, we do not propose to enter. Suffice it to say that the
Government of Ireland took advantage of the occasion to displace Armit,
the secretary to the Irish Post Office, and to reappoint John Lees, who
had been secretary from 1774 to 1781, when he was promoted to the War
Office. On his reappointment Lees wrote to the postmasters-general in
London recapitulating the conditions on which he had been appointed ten
years before, and stating that to those conditions, onerous as they
were, he proposed in the main to adhere. He was indeed under no
obligation in the matter, for he owed his reappointment to the Irish
Government; but of this circumstance he had no desire to avail himself.
Armit had taken over the conditions from Lees; and Lees would now resume
them from Armit. Let us see what the conditions were. In 1774 Barham,
the packet agent at Dover, being compelled by ill-health to retire, was
succeeded by Walcot, the secretary to the Post Office in Ireland, and
Walcot was succeeded by Lees, who was new to the service. Barham, though
superannuated, was during his life to receive from Walcot the full
salary and emoluments of the packet agency, and Walcot was during the
same period to receive from Lees the full salary and emoluments of the
secretaryship. Lees was meanwhile to receive from Walcot a small
allowance for acting as secretary. Thus far there was nothing unusual in
the arrangement. On the contrary, it was an arrangement which in those
days was very commonly made. That which was unusual, and which nowhere
appeared in the official records, was an undertaking into which Lees had
entered to the effect that, after Barham's death, he would make to a
fourth person during that person's life an annual payment of L350. This
engagement Lees, when reappointed in 1784, expressed himself unwilling
to renew. He was quite prepared to resume the payment to Walcot, reduced
only to the same extent as by recent legislation the secretary's
emoluments had been reduced; but the reversionary payment to the
gentleman whom he would designate by the initials A. B. rested on
different grounds. From this he must beg to be released.
Now, who was A. B.? This was the question which Tankerville asked; and
asked in vain. He could obtain no information on the subject. Meanwhile
Carteret, who was extremely displeased and disquieted at the disclosure,
caused an expression of his severe displeasure to be conveyed to Lees
that he should have presumed to make public a transaction which was
obviously designed to be private. Lees replied that, as he would be
unable to keep the engagement, he was bound in honour to state so; that
he had made known nothing more than was absolutely necessary in order
to obtain an acquittance, namely, that after Barham's death an annuity
of L350 had been agreed to be paid to some one; but who this some one
was had been, and would continue to be, a profound secret. In London it
had been whispered, and more than whispered, that A. B. was Carteret
himself. On this point Lees was emphatic. The transaction, he said,
concerns no postmaster-general, either living or dead. "With Lord
Carteret it has personally no more to do than with the King of France."
Tankerville, though profoundly dissatisfied, resolved to let the matter
drop; and during the next eighteen months the feeling of distrust with
which he regarded Carteret did not prevent the two postmasters-general
from working together harmoniously. It was not until June 1786 that an
open rupture occurred. Some furniture had been ordered for the
housekeeper's apartments, and Tankerville, regarding it as of too
luxurious a nature, refused to countersign the bill unless the secretary
could produce a precedent for the expense. This Todd might have had some
difficulty in doing, as no housekeeper had resided on the Post Office
premises since the year 1740; but instead of offering an explanation to
that effect he waited for the next Board meeting, and, having already
procured Carteret's signature to the bill, put it before Tankerville
without remark. Tankerville, who never signed a document without
examining its contents, inquired whether this was not the housekeeper's
bill to which he had taken exception, and, on being answered in the
affirmative, told Todd that he had been guilty of a gross impropriety.
Carteret, who had made no secret of his opinion that it was no part of a
postmaster-general's duty to check tradesmen's accounts, took Todd's
part; whereupon Tankerville, whose temper was always running away with
him, observed that he would do no jobs, and that if a good understanding
between himself and Carteret were only to be procured by such means he
would rather that they should continue on their present terms.
The next business set down for discussion had a termination still more
unfortunate. The office of comptroller of the bye and cross roads had
become vacant, and Carteret, whose turn it was to appoint, had appointed
Staunton, the postmaster of Isleworth. In addition to a salary of L500 a
year, the appointment carried a residence in the Post Office building;
and as the residence occupied by the late comptroller had by Pitt's
desire been given to Palmer, Carteret proposed that Staunton should be
recommended to the Treasury for an allowance of L100 a year as
compensation. Tankerville, who had been in personal communication with
Pitt and ascertained that he would object to an allowance for such a
purpose, declined to join in the recommendation, explaining the reason.
Carteret's remarks implied, or seemed to imply, a doubt whether Pitt had
really been seen on the subject, as alleged. Tankerville again lost his
temper. High words ensued, and the Board broke up, Carteret declaring
that it was impossible they should continue to act as joint
postmasters-general, and that he should at once wait upon Pitt and
inform him to that effect.
Carteret was as good as his word. In three days from the date of the
Board meeting at which the altercation had taken place he waited upon
Pitt; and Pitt, after labouring in vain to effect a reconciliation, at
length dismissed Tankerville. Tankerville, who had been in constant
communication with the minister on the subject of the abuses at the Post
Office, and had sedulously applied himself to their correction, was
hardly less surprised than he was indignant; and restating the origin of
the disagreement between himself and his colleague, he demanded to be
informed in what respects he had been to blame. Pitt replied that he
could not enter into the merits of the question; that all it concerned
him to know was that Carteret was necessary to him in the House of
Lords; and that, as Carteret had expressed himself unable to act any
longer with Tankerville, it had become essential to make another
arrangement.
This decision as between two colleagues, of whom one was as clearly
actuated by honesty of purpose as the other was not, a decision given
too by a minister who had already established a character for purity of
administration, seems so extraordinary that we must look for some
further explanation. The truth we believe to be that owing to an
ungovernable temper Tankerville was simply intractable, and had shewn
himself to Pitt to be so. Even Todd, who with all his faults was
essentially a man of peace, was unable to get on with him. "I am sorry
to say," he wrote on one occasion, "your Lordship is the only
postmaster-general I have not had the happiness to serve under with his
perfect approbation." On another occasion he wrote to Carteret: "I have
had a very unpleasant day of it. His Lordship is so completely jealous
and wrong-headed, so that without entering into unpleasing particulars I
had better leave him to his own thoughts." Tankerville's own letters
afford evidence to the same effect. "I shall not be disposed to talk
coolly on the subject of Mr. Dashwood, or hear anything you may have to
say, unless you can prove him guilty of fraud, which I do not admit, but
now tell you distinctly that I believe Lord Carteret has been indebted
to you for that forced construction." Again, "I do not find that I cool
very fast," Tankerville wrote from Brighton a week or so after the
incident which had excited his ire. Ever his own worst enemy, he now
spoiled a good ease, so far as it was possible to spoil it, by
intemperate writing. Instead of keeping to the main question, he rambled
off into side-issues which were all but irrelevant. Carteret had spoken
of one interview with Pitt. Pitt had expressed himself as though there
had been more than one. The point was absolutely unimportant. Yet
Tankerville fastened upon it, and, declaring that one or the other must
have been guilty of untruth, called upon them as men of honour to
reconcile the discrepancy.
Intemperate as Tankerville's language had been, it was impossible that
things should remain as they were. Nothing but a public inquiry would
satisfy the justice of the case; and on this he was resolved. It was a
matter of regret to him to impeach Carteret's conduct; but there was no
other method of vindicating his own. "The causes of my removal," he
wrote, "shall be made as public as the injury; and, however gratified
your Lordship and those in concert with you may at present feel by the
success of your measures, I will take upon me to foretell that the
triumph will soon be at an end. I have been removed; others will be
disgraced." "When your Lordship," replied Carteret, "shall think proper
to bring this matter before the public, I flatter myself my conduct will
be unimpeached."
A Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry was granted, and met for the first
time on the 16th of May 1787. The session terminated on the 30th of the
same month. Short as the interval was, evidence enough was taken to
substantiate all and more than all that Tankerville had alleged. The
Committee reported that a payment of L350 a year had been exacted from
Lees as a condition of his appointment as secretary to the Post Office
in Ireland; that a payment of L200 a year had been similarly exacted
from Dashwood, the postmaster-general of Jamaica; that, while Lees had
engaged to pay only in a future event, the payment in Dashwood's case
had begun from the date of his appointment; that both payments were in
favour of the person who had been designated by the initials A. B.; that
the transactions, though protested against at the time, had been
insisted upon by Lords Carteret and Le Despencer; and that not only had
no record of them been made in the official books, but they had been
kept carefully concealed. The Committee further reported that scandalous
abuses had been found to exist at the Post Office, abuses which should
be examined into and corrected forthwith; and that of many of these the
First Lord of the Treasury had been specifically informed by Lord
Tankerville before the latter was dismissed.
The chief interest of the inquiry, however, centred in the question--who
was A. B.? A. B. proved to be one Peregrine Treves, a so-called friend
of Carteret's, who had never performed any public service either in the
Post Office or elsewhere. "Are you not a Jew and a foreigner?" asked the
inexorable Committee. "Yes," was the reply. "In consideration of what
services," the Committee continued, "did you receive these grants?"
"From friendship entirely," answered Treves.
Tankerville's prediction had been amply fulfilled. It was not he that
was disgraced. Yet, curiously enough, Carteret made no sign. And even
Pitt did nothing more than expedite the proceedings of a Royal
Commission which was already sitting. This Commission had been appointed
at his instigation some years before to inquire into the duties and the
pay of certain public departments, of which the Post Office was one. It
was now arranged that the Post Office was to be the next to come under
review.
During these dissensions at headquarters Palmer's plan had made steady
progress. Many of the irregularities inseparable from the introduction
of a new system had been corrected. The cross-posts had been fitted to
the mail-coaches, so that failures of connection were daily becoming
fewer; and when the merchants found that answers to their letters were
being received in less than half the usual time, and with a degree of
punctuality never experienced before, their complaints respecting the
early closing of the Post Office appear to have died away. The Post
Office revenue bore evidence to the improved state of things, the net
receipt during the quarter ending the 5th of January 1787 being L73,000,
as against L51,000 during the corresponding quarter of 1784. According
to all experience, the increase in the rates of postage should have had
the effect of reducing the number of letters; but so far was this from
being the case that the number of letters had increased in spite of the
increase of rates. The truth is that clandestine correspondence had to a
large extent ceased. There was no longer any temptation to send by
irregular means, at a cost of two or three shillings, and at the risk of
detection, a letter which would be conveyed at least as expeditiously
and for one-third of that amount by mail-coach.
Palmer, who had to this time been assisted by persons selected by
himself and not belonging to the Post Office, now bestirred himself to
procure for them an established position. Public and private interests
were for once identical. Hitherto there had been only three surveyors
for the whole of England; and of these one had resided in London. At
Palmer's instigation, England was now divided into six postal districts,
and a surveyor allotted to each. A seventh or spare surveyor was held in
readiness to be detached to any part of the kingdom where his services
might be required. Each surveyor was to reside in the centre of his
district, and his functions, shortly stated, were to keep an accurate
record of the posts and of the persons under his charge, to see that
these persons did their duty, to facilitate correspondence and to remedy
complaints. The resident surveyorship, an appointment which had been
created in 1742, was abolished as no longer necessary, Palmer himself
being at hand to give what advice the postmasters-general might require.
The mode of remuneration was also altered. Hitherto the surveyors had
received a salary of L300 a year without any allowance for travelling,
the consequence being of course that they had travelled as little as
possible. For the future the salary was to be only L100; but as an
inducement to them to move about within their own districts, they were
to have one guinea a day when absent from their headquarters. The whole
of the additional appointments were conferred upon Palmer's nominees,
and for the seventh or spare surveyorship he selected Francis Freeling,
a young man of promise, who during the last two years had been actively
engaged in regulating the mail-coaches throughout the country.
It was about this time or a little earlier that the conditions of
Palmer's own employment were, at length, definitely settled, but not by
any means to his own satisfaction. His first stipulation was that,
besides being absolutely free from the control of the postmasters-general,
he should have a commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon all increase in
the net Post Office revenue, which should follow as the result of
his own plan. Thus, the net Post Office revenue before August 1784
being estimated at L150,000, he stipulated for one-fortieth part of
the excess over that amount. To this Pitt agreed; but freedom from the
control of the postmasters-general was a point which it was out of his
power to concede. The Act of Parliament constituting the Post Office
would not admit of it. Even nominal subjection to the postmasters-general
was so irksome to Palmer that he was constantly pressing that a
special Act might be passed to give him perfect freedom. Nor was
this all. The increase in the rates of postage which came into
operation one month after the starting of the first mail-coach was
estimated to produce L90,000 a year, and Pitt deemed it only reasonable
that this amount should be added to the previous revenue of L150,000,
making L240,000 altogether, before Palmer could be allowed to draw his
percentage. Of this variation of the original understanding Palmer
bitterly complained, not seeing apparently that, as the increase of
rates had been recommended by himself, the complaint reflected on his
own singleness of purpose in making the recommendation.
Eventually it was decided that, in addition to a commission of 2-1/2 per
cent upon the net revenue in excess of L240,000, Palmer should receive a
salary of L1500; but even this settlement was not arrived at without
grumbling on Palmer's part, and without serious misgiving on the part of
the Post Office. Pitt highly approved the percentage, holding that it
would serve as a constant incentive to exertion. Tankerville, while not
denying the expediency of such a mode of remuneration, questioned its
legality. Under the Act of Anne, which a subsequent Act had made
perpetual, the Post Office revenue was appropriated to certain specific
purposes; and he doubted the propriety of diverting any part of it as a
reward for services, however meritorious. Clarendon, Tankerville's
successor, entertained the same scruples; and except by the
postmasters-general no appointment within the Post Office could be
made. Palmer's objection, on the contrary, was to the amount of salary,
on the ground that L1500 did not represent the fortieth part of L90,000.
Pitt declined, however, to give way; and on the 11th of October 1786
Palmer was appointed comptroller-general of the Post Office on the terms
prescribed by the minister.
There can be no question that Palmer bargaining for terms is Palmer seen
in his least pleasing aspect. The best that can be said is that he was
candid enough not to disguise his object, which was to amass a fortune.
At Bath he had in his boyhood seen Ralph Allen living in a large house
and dispensing hospitality on an extensive scale, and he could not bring
himself to understand why the difference between his own and Allen's
remuneration should be in the inverse ratio to the value of their
improvements. And not only did Palmer exhibit an unworthy jealousy of
Allen, but he did that good man, as we think, an injustice. When urging
his own claims on the minister, he constantly insisted that Allen, on
the introduction of his plan, had no difficulties to contend with, and
that he kept that plan a secret. Never was there a more untenable
position. That Allen had difficulties to contend with and how he
overcame them we have seen in a preceding chapter; and the charge of
keeping his plan a secret is refuted by the conditions of his contract,
which prevented him from giving an instruction even to his own servants
until it had been submitted to headquarters. No doubt it was not known
until after his death that Allen had derived from the Post Office an
income of L12,000 a year. His wealth had been supposed to come from the
stone-quarries he possessed on Combe Down. But this was not the
contention. What Palmer insisted upon was that, while he had disclosed
his plan, Allen had kept his plan secret, and that, if only on that
ground, the balance of merit was on his own side.
In December 1787 the Commission of Inquiry commenced its labours.
Exactly a century had elapsed since the Post Office had undergone a
similar ordeal, a period too long for any public department to be left
to itself; and meanwhile abuses had taken root and flourished. One
hundred years before there had been no sinecures. Now the principal
officers attended, some of them only occasionally and others not at all;
and attendance, when attendance was given, often extended no later than
to one or two o'clock in the afternoon. The receiver-general, for
instance, attended on three days a week; and the accountant-general
attended once or twice in three months, when the quarterly balance had
to be made up. Court-post employed a deputy, to whom, out of a salary of
L730, he made an annual allowance of L58. The solicitor, like
court-post, was an absentee, but, unlike him, was careful not to part
with even a fraction of his salary. In this case the deputy received as
remuneration one-third part of the law charges incurred--a form of
payment calculated more perhaps than any other to promote litigation. In
the Penny Post Office were three principal officers--a comptroller, an
accountant, and a collector. Of these the first two gave no attendance,
and the third attended only occasionally, their duties being imposed
upon the chief sorter, who, in all but salary, was practically the head
of the department.
Meagre salaries were bolstered up by fees and perquisites, many of them
of an outrageous character. While the senior letter-carrier was rigidly
restricted to 312 candles in the year, a number not perhaps in excess of
his actual requirements, there was hardly an officer reputed to be of
any position in the Post Office, whether an absentee or otherwise, who
was not provided with coals and candles for his private use. Although to
some the supply of these articles was greater than to others, the usual
annual allowance was, in the case of a subordinate, four, and, in the
case of the head of a department, ten chaldron of coals, and in both
cases thirty-two dozen pounds of candles. As the holder of two
appointments, although he discharged the duties of only one of them, the
comptroller of the bye and cross roads received a double allowance. Many
commuted with the tradesmen whose duty it was to supply the articles for
a money payment. Altogether the allowance to Post Office servants for
their private use in town and country, and irrespective of what was
consumed in the official apartments, exceeded in a single year 300
chaldron of coals and 20,000 pounds of candles.
The postmasters-general had long ceased to reside in the Post Office
building; and yet to them was supplied, besides coals and candles, what
was euphoniously termed tinware, by which is to be understood kitchen
utensils. The expenditure on their account under the three heads during
two years and a half was, for coals L2230, for candles L700, and for
pots and pans L150.
Of stationery there was also a gratuitous supply for private as well as
official use. One fee was a peculiarly cruel one, exacted as it was from
a class of public servants who were unable to protect themselves. All
postmasters whose salaries amounted to as much as L20 were forced to
renew their deputations every three years, with no other object than to
enrich the harpies at headquarters. On each renewal the same fee had to
be paid as on appointment, namely L4:11s.; and of this amount 30s. went
to each of the postmasters-general, 10s. to the secretary, 10s. to the
solicitor, and 1s. to the door-keeper. The remainder was for stamp duty.
Postmasters were also required to pay a fee of half a guinea before
receiving a warrant to exempt them from serving in public offices.
Christmas-boxes given by the merchants, and designed for the
letter-carriers and other subordinates, were to a large extent
appropriated by their superiors. From this source the comptroller of the
foreign office, with an official income of L1300, was not ashamed to
derive L34 a year. Others from the same source derived smaller amounts.
Newspapers for reading were supplied in profligate profusion. One head
of department was allowed for his own use two morning and five evening
papers; another was paid L42:16s. a year to supply himself with what
papers he pleased. All, whether absentees or not, received an annual
payment under the title of drink and feast money, the lowest amount
being L1:17s. and the highest L3:17s., and this was in addition to
three or four so-called feasts given annually at the cost of the
department. These with percentages on tradesmen's bills were some of the
fees and perquisites which were now dragged to the light.
Out of the whole number there was only one which, besides being moderate
and unobjectionable, possessed a certain interest as denoting the
connection which had at one time subsisted between the Post Office and
the Crown. This was a fee of 1s. received by the chief sorter at the
General Post Office on the occasion of a birthday in the Royal Family;
and as the Royal Family now consisted of twenty-one members, his
emoluments from this source amounted to one guinea in the year.
There were two points on which the Royal Commissioners appear to have
received less than full information. These were expresses and registered
letters. Expresses, according to the old custom of the post, were still
going at the rate of only six miles an hour, while the mail-coaches were
going at the rate of eight. To this difference the Commissioners called
attention; but they were silent as to the fees which some expresses
paid, being apparently under the impression that all were treated alike.
As a matter of fact, however, expresses had by this time been divided
into two kinds--the public express and the private express. The public
express, that is the express on public affairs, was allowed to pass
without a fee, no doubt because the Post Office dared not impose one;
but on every private express, in addition to the authorised mileage, was
charged, if from London, a fee of 12s. 6d., and if from the country, a
fee of 2s. 6d.; and of course in this, as in every other case, the fees
were for the benefit of individuals.
On the subject of registered letters addressed to places abroad the
Commissioners merely expressed the opinion that the registration fee,
instead of being any longer treated as a perquisite, should be applied
to the use of the public; but they nowhere stated, and perhaps had not
been informed, what this fee was. It may be interesting if we supply the
omission. The fee for registering a packet of value was, outwards[61]
21s., and inwards 5s. It seems incredible, and yet such is the
unquestionable fact. For every letter registered for abroad the
comptroller of the foreign office received 10s. 6d., the
deputy-comptroller 4s. 6d., and six clerks 1s. apiece. One guinea for
registration! And it was all the more monstrous because there can be
little doubt that at one time letters had been practically registered
without any fee at all. An Order in Council dated as far back as July
1556 had ordained "that the poste between this and the Northe should
eche of them keepe a booke and make entrye of every letter that he shall
receive, the tyme of the deliverie thereof unto his hands with the
parties names that shall bring it unto him, whose handes he shall also
take to his booke, witnessing the same note to be trewe." In 1603
another Order in Council passed, requiring that "every post shall keepe
a large and faire leger paper booke, to enter our packets in as they
shalbe brought unto him, with the day of the moneth, houre of the day or
night, that they came first to his handes, together with the name of him
or them, by whom or unto whom they were subscribed and directed." In
1680 Dockwra, when establishing his penny post, was careful to provide
that letters on reaching any one of his seven sorting offices should be
"entered"; and in a mere detail of treatment, it may well be believed,
he followed the practice of the general post. In 1707 letters from
abroad arriving at Harwich were not to be forwarded to the Court at
Newmarket until the addresses had been copied. And more than this. In
1709 two letters between London and Ostend had been delayed, and it
became important to discover where the delay had occurred. "We find
them," wrote the postmasters-general, "both duly entered in Mr. Frowde's
books, and are satisfy'd they were regularly dispatched from this
office." Now Mr. Frowde was comptroller of the foreign office. It may
be added that, small as was the force employed at the end of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, it is difficult
to account for the length of time which was then occupied in dealing
with a mere handful of letters except on the hypothesis that there was a
good deal more to be done than to sort and to tax them. And now the Post
Office, upon no better authority than its own will, was exacting a fee
of 21s. and 5s., according as the letter was outwards or inwards, for
doing what some eighty years before had been done for nothing. The sums
extorted from the public under this head were in 1783 L121, and in the
following year L240.
[61] A foreign registered letter _outwards_ would be a letter registered
as far as Dover or Harwich or Falmouth for transmission abroad, and
possibly on board ship. A foreign registered letter _inwards_ would not
be the exact converse, for there would be no registration from the port
of arrival to London. The fee of 5s. covered the registration of a
letter only from London to its destination.
As regards the working arrangements, Palmer, in virtue of the power he
possessed as comptroller-general, had already corrected those that were
most faulty. Until lately, the letter-carriers' walks had been so
extensive that many of the deliveries could not be accomplished within
five or six hours. Palmer had arranged that no delivery should occupy
more than two hours or two hours and a half at the utmost, counting from
the time of despatch from the General Post Office. It had been the
practice for the junior clerks, the clerks with the least experience, to
sort the letters for delivery, the consequence being that they reached
the letter-carriers' hands in so confused a state that they had to be
sorted again. Hence it had been by no means unusual for an interval of
four or five hours to elapse between the arrival of the last mail and
the going out of the letter-carriers. By appointing some of the most
intelligent letter-carriers to sort the letters in the first instance,
Palmer had reduced the interval to one hour on ordinary, and to one hour
and a half on extraordinary occasions. As many as 400 postmasters had
returned their letter-bills in one week, and on the plea of having been
overcharged had claimed and been allowed deductions. Palmer had checked
this abuse by arranging that in the case of those postmasters who were
in the habit of returning their letter-bills the charges should be twice
told. He had also reduced the amount expended on extra duty by L2000 a
year. Heretofore, if a man had chosen to absent himself, the Post Office
had provided a substitute. For the future the substitute was to be
provided at the absentee's own expense.
But although Palmer had already corrected the most faulty of the
arrangements, some still existed which could not be pronounced good. The
accountant-general was intended to be a check upon the receiver-general;
yet, instead of keeping an independent record of the sums received, he
merely transcribed or caused to be transcribed the entries from the
receiver-general's books. The accountant-general, again, was required to
certify every bill before the postmasters-general passed it for payment;
but as he was not empowered to call for vouchers or for the authority
under which the expenditure had been incurred, his certificate conveyed
nothing more than that the bill had been rightly cast. The accounts
themselves appear to have been rendered in the strangest manner. The
article "Dead Letters," for instance, was made to serve a variety of
purposes. Under this article postmasters were accustomed to claim
chaise-hire, law charges, and even pensions to private persons.
The packet service was a part of the Post Office which the Commissioners
would fain have avoided if they could; but the public voice was too
strong for them. The enormous expenditure which this service involved
had long excited murmurs, and the opportunity which now offered of
investigating the causes of it was one which could not with any regard
to propriety be missed. Accordingly the inquiry was entered upon; but
with a desire to restrict it as far as possible the Commissioners did
not extend their investigations beyond the packet station at Falmouth,
where more than three-fourths of the expenditure was incurred. To
ourselves, who are under no obligation to observe a similar limit,
perhaps a little more latitude may be allowed.
The continental mails by way of Dover and Harwich went at this time only
twice a week; and by a curious arrangement these mails started from the
General Post Office at midnight, although the inland mails for the same
towns and going by the same route started at eight o'clock in the
evening. At Harwich the packet station had abandoned itself to
smuggling. In 1774 two packets, the _Bessborough_ and the _Prince of
Wales_, were seized for having contraband goods on board. Not a single
voyage had these packets made during the last two years without
committing a similar infringement of the law. The Commissioners of
Customs, whose patience was exhausted, now commenced proceedings in the
Court of Exchequer, and were prevailed upon to abandon them only upon
the captains, who were also owners of the vessels, paying by way of fine
two-third parts of their appraised value--amounting to L306 in one case
and to L272 in the other--of which sums one-half was to go to the Crown
and one-half to the officer by whom the goods had been discovered. This
high reward was not long in reproducing the occasion on account of which
it had been given. In November 1777 another seizure took place, this
time of three packets simultaneously, two of them being the same as had
been seized in 1774. The third was the _Dolphin_. On this occasion the
Commissioners of Customs determined that the vessels should be
prosecuted to condemnation. In vain the postmasters-general urged that
the law was a hard one which made the captains responsible for offences
which, it was alleged, they had done their best to check. The customs
authorities were inexorable. It was not long, however, before the Post
Office became possessed of certain facts which, when investigated,
proved beyond a doubt that there had for years past been collusion of
the grossest character. On every voyage contraband goods--chiefly tea,
coffee, and gin--had, with the connivance of the local officers of
customs, been imported in large quantities; and of these only a part, a
comparatively small part, had been seized. Thus, the Post Office
servants received from the goods that were left to them ample, and more
than ample, compensation for those that were taken away; and the
servants of the customs received from their Board in London both credit
and reward for their vigilance. Nor was it by any means certain that the
seizure of the packets in 1774 and again in 1777 was not another phase
of the same collusive arrangement.
At Falmouth the case was somewhat different. Smuggling, indeed, was
going on there just as it was at Harwich. As far back as 1744 the
customs had issued process against the captains of two of the Falmouth
packets for having contraband goods on board. The case is only worthy of
mention as shewing the loose notions which at that time prevailed even
in high quarters on the subject of clandestine traffic. The
postmasters-general of the day, Lord Lovell and Sir John Eyles, told the
Board of Customs in so many words that their conduct was unhandsome. It
was vain, they urged, to endeavour to prevent "these little clandestine
importations and exportations" on board the packets; and if violent
measures were to be resorted to, as in the present instance, no captain
"of real worth and character" would be found to command, and "no fit and
able" seamen to serve. Again, in 1776 the _Greyhound_ packet was seized
at the port of Kingston in Jamaica for attempting to smuggle spirits.
Early in 1788 the _Queen Charlotte_ packet was condemned and sold at the
same port and for the same cause. In 1786 a special agent sent down to
Falmouth by Tankerville reported that, according to common repute, no
packet either proceeded on a voyage or returned from one without
hovering about the coast for the purpose of shipping or unshipping
goods.
But, rife as smuggling was, it was something more than an infringement
of the customs laws that now brought the packet station at Falmouth into
notoriety. During the seventeen years ending the 5th of April 1787, the
cost of the packets had exceeded L1,038,000; and of this amount about
L800,000 had been expended at Falmouth. At the present day, when a
single mail steamer costs perhaps as much as L300,000, the sum of
L1,000,000 sterling would not go far to create and maintain a fleet; but
a century ago it was considered, even when spread over a period of
seventeen years, an enormous expenditure, an expenditure such as, in the
language of the Royal Commissioners, almost to surpass credibility. And
certainly there seems to have been good ground for this opinion. The
packets altogether were only thirty-six in number, of which twenty-one
were stationed at Falmouth. These were of no more than 200 tons burthen,
and were navigated with thirty men, five of them being the property of
the Post Office and fifteen being hired. For each of the hired boats was
paid the annual sum of L2129, and for each of the others the annual sum
of L1529, these sums including the charge of manning and victualling.
The sixteen packets stationed elsewhere than at Falmouth were hired at
ridiculously low prices, at Dover for L412 a year each, at Harwich for
L469, and at Holyhead for L350. To expend upon the packets under such
conditions as these more than L1,000,000 sterling in the course of
seventeen years required no small amount of ingenuity. How was it
managed? This was the question which the Royal Commissioners now set
themselves to solve.
The grossest abuses were found to exist. The hire of the packets had
been paid when they were under seizure for smuggling, and under repair,
and even when they were building. In the case of packets that were
building and under repair the victualling allowance paid when there were
no men to victual had amounted in twelve years and a half to L56,000.
When packets had been taken by the enemy the hire of them had been paid
for months beyond the date of their capture; and this was in addition to
compensation to the owners, which, however old and rotten the packet
might be, was fixed at her original value when taken into the service.
Compensation to the captains had also been given for the loss of their
private property and of provisions. For provisions the compensation had
always been as for six months' supply, although the supply that was
actually on board might not be enough for one month; and for their
private property the captains had been compensated at their own
valuation. Whatever they had asked they had received without examination
and without question. This astounding prodigality indulged in at the
expense of the State is easily explained. The Post Office servants in
London, down even to the chamber-keeper, had shares in the packets; and
of these servants the one who possessed by far the largest number of
shares was Anthony Todd, the secretary. Todd also received a commission
of 2-1/2 per cent upon the entire sum expended on the packet
establishment of the kingdom. Thus, the very man whose duty it was to
check the expenditure had a direct personal interest in making the
expenditure as high as possible.
The salary of the Secretary to the Post Office remained, as it was fixed
in 1703, at L200 a year; and whatever Todd received over and above that
amount, he received without authority. Let us see what his actual
receipts were. In addition to his proper salary of L200, he had what was
called a bye salary of L75. Bye had at one time meant out of course or
clandestine; and this meaning would perhaps not be inappropriate here.
He had for coach hire L100 a year. He had another L100 a year from
Lloyds's coffee-house. He had from fees on commissions and deputations
L154 a year. He had every year twenty chaldron of coal and twelve dozen
of wax and sixty-four dozen of tallow candles, valued by himself at
L103. He had an unfurnished residence with stables in the Post Office
building; and he received annually from the East India Company eight
pounds of tea and two dozen of arrack. But this was by no means all. As
former clerk in the foreign branch, an appointment which he still
retained, he had a salary of L50 and an allowance of L100 a year for
so-called disbursements, which he never made. He had also, in his
capacity of clerk, L15 a year for coach-hire and ten chaldron of coal
and thirty-two dozen of candles, valued at L40. Besides all this, he had
his commission of 2-1/2 per cent upon the entire packet expenditure of
the country, from which source he derived in the year 1782 no less than
L2136. Altogether, Todd's modest salary of L200 a year had, by his own
unaided exertions, been converted into an annual income of more than
L3000.
The extent of Todd's emoluments, his commission on the packet
expenditure, the outrageous character of some of the fees and
perquisites which he and others were receiving, the absenteeism, the
abuses generally--all this had long been known to Pitt. Much he had
heard from Tankerville, and still more, probably, from Palmer. But
before either Palmer or Tankerville became connected with the Post
Office, Pitt had been aware of many, if not most, of the abuses which
prevailed there. As early as 1782 one of his first acts after becoming
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Shelburne administration was to give
peremptory orders that no more packets were to be either built or
purchased without Treasury authority. For such authority it had hitherto
been the practice to ask before setting up new packets, but not before
replacing old ones--packets that were worn out or alleged to be worn
out, or that had been lost or captured. This was a distinction which had
existed since packets were first established, and to which, nearly a
hundred years before, Cotton and Frankland had attached great
importance. It was now to exist no longer. In 1783 Pitt called for a
return of the fees and perquisites received at the Post Office, and it
was not until after this return had been furnished and possibly in
consequence of it that the Commission of Inquiry was appointed. "Did you
ever communicate this transaction to Mr. Pitt," inquired the
Parliamentary Committee in 1787. "I did," replied Tankerville, "but
found him not ill-informed on the subject in general."
It may seem strange that with the knowledge which he unquestionably
possessed respecting the prevalent abuses Pitt should have allowed them
to go on so long uncorrected. The explanation we believe to be twofold.
In the first place he was unwilling to do or suffer to be done anything
which might interfere with the introduction of Palmer's improvements.
This was a point on which Pitt never ceased to betray the utmost
anxiety. To embark on any general system of reform might conflict with
the new plan. Let the plan be established first and the abuses could be
corrected afterwards. Hence it was, no doubt, that of all the public
offices to be inquired into, the Post Office, in spite of the notoriety
which its abuses had acquired, was taken last. But this, although the
primary explanation, was not, we suspect, the only one. Incorrupt
himself, Pitt was extraordinarily tolerant of corruption in others.
Witness his defence of Melville. Even of Carteret's transaction with
Peregrine Treves he could never be brought to admit more than that it
was not a proper one. This tolerance in others of what he would have
scorned to do himself we attribute to a conviction on his part that
abuses were less to be charged against individuals than as the result of
a bad system which made the abuses possible; and what, if we mistake
not, Pitt had proposed to himself was to bring to bear upon this system
the force of public opinion. A ruthless exposure, we have little doubt,
had been in contemplation; and yet when the time for exposure came, Pitt
held back. Whether it was that the abuses proved too flagrant to be
published with safety or that their correction would involve more time
or more money than could then be spared, the fact remains that, after
receiving the report of the Commission, Pitt locked it up in his
despatch box and kept it there for the space of four years; and not even
the postmasters-general could procure a copy.
But secret as the report of the Commission was kept, the procedure at
the Post Office was about to undergo a radical change. A change indeed
had already begun. Tankerville, on his dismissal in August 1786, had
been succeeded by Lord Clarendon; and Clarendon died in the following
December. Then followed an interval of eight months, during which
Carteret alone administered the Post Office and, as was usual on such
occasions, drew the double salary. At length, as Carteret's colleague,
Pitt appointed Lord Walsingham; and from that moment irregularity and
disorder were at an end. Nothing escaped Walsingham's vigilant eye. To
neglect or evasion of work he shewed no mercy. The man honestly
striving to do his duty had no better friend. His industry and power of
work were simply amazing. All instructions were prepared by him. Not a
single letter of any importance was received at the Post Office without
the answer to it being drafted in his own hand. Generous to a fault with
his own money, he regarded the money of the public as a sacred trust, a
trust which could not be discharged too scrupulously. Carteret's opinion
was well known, that it was no part of a postmaster-general's duty to
check accounts. Walsingham, on the contrary, would allow no account to
be passed until he had checked it; and his checking went a good deal
beyond the casting. Unless the articles were necessary and the charges
reasonable, and unless they were proved to be so to his satisfaction,
the account had a sorry chance of being passed. The official hours of
attendance had hitherto been pretty much what each man chose to make
them. To Walsingham all hours were alike; and at all hours he exacted
attendance from others. "It is utterly impossible," wrote the head of
one department, "for the accounts to be ready for your inspection
to-morrow evening." "I will not fail," wrote the head of another, "to do
myself the honour of waiting upon your Lordship to-morrow morning at
eight precisely."
Walsingham, on entering upon his duties at the Post Office, was
concerned to find that to documents requiring to be signed by the two
postmasters-general Carteret attached his signature first. Carteret's
peerage dated from 1784, and Walsingham's from 1780. Surely the peer of
older creation should sign first; and such, Walsingham found on inquiry,
had been the practice hitherto. Pitt, though overwhelmed with business,
was called upon to decide the momentous question. He was sorry, he said,
that in the preparation of the patent the practice of the Post Office
had been overlooked. It was a strange practice, a practice different
from that of all other public offices. There the senior, the one who was
first to enter the office, took precedence of the junior whatever his
rank; and Carteret having been mentioned first in the patent must
unquestionably sign first. But this, he added, need not be drawn into a
precedent, and, on a new patent passing, the old practice of the office
might be reverted to. We may here mention that a few years later the
Earl of Chesterfield became Walsingham's colleague; but on that occasion
Walsingham does not appear to have raised the question again or to have
been unwilling to conform to the new practice. And, indeed, whether
Walsingham signed before or after Carteret must to every one except
himself have appeared of the least possible importance. Sign in what
order he might, Walsingham's influence soon became paramount. Carteret
might give what instruction he pleased, but unless endorsed by
Walsingham a Post Office servant obeyed it at his peril. Walsingham, on
the contrary, gave instructions without reference to his colleague, and
exacted prompt and implicit obedience.