IRELAND
1801-1828
At the Union with Ireland the Irish Post Office was not merged into the
Post Office of England as the Scotch Post Office was merged at the Union
with Scotland. The existence of two separate establishments, presided
over by different heads, who had not always the same objects in view,
and were influenced by different considerations, was not unattended with
inconvenience.
Between the Post Offices of the two parts of the kingdom, moreover,
there were differences not only of practice but of law, the statutes
passed during the seventeen years that the Post Offices were separate
not having been repealed at the time of the Union. Thus, the law which
regulated franking was stricter in Ireland than in England, although, it
must be confessed, the practice was looser. The law prohibiting the
illicit conveyance of letters was also stricter. In England the Post
Office was not empowered to search for letters; in Ireland the Post
Office might search both vehicles and houses from sunrise to sunset. In
England the mail-coaches were exempt from toll; in Ireland no such
exemption was allowed. In Ireland, again, the Post Office was legally
bound not, as in England, to deliver letters but only to carry them; and
except in Dublin there was not a single letter-carrier in the kingdom.
Even the constitution of the two Post Offices, though apparently
similar, was really different. In Ireland, as in England, there were
two heads commonly called joint postmasters-general; but whereas in
England the assent of both was necessary to make a decision operative,
in Ireland the assent of one was sufficient. This, while probably
designed to facilitate the despatch of public business, was, as will be
seen later on, attended with a curious result, a result which the
framers of the statute can have little contemplated.
Of such differences of practice as were not rendered necessary by any
difference of law it may be sufficient to mention a few. In England the
mail-coach contractors supplied horses only; in Ireland they supplied
coaches as well. In England the contract was for short periods and for
short distances, seldom for more than one or two stages; in Ireland,
where there was little or no competition, the contract was for the whole
of the road over which the coach travelled, and for as much as twenty
and even thirty years. Meanwhile no alteration was possible except with
the contractors' assent. In England the horse-posts were provided upon
the most advantageous terms of which each particular case would admit;
in Ireland the obligation to provide them was imposed upon the local
postmasters, who received for the service, cost what it might, one
uniform rate of 5d. a mile. In London there was no despatch on Sundays;
in Dublin the mails were despatched on Sundays as on other days. In
Dublin, again, the men who collected letters by the sound of bell,
bellmen as they were now called, received not as in London 1d. a letter
but 1d. a house, a difference of which the inhabitants were wont to shew
their appreciation by sending to a single house for delivery to the
letter-carrier the letters of an entire street.
In Dublin there was one institution to which there was no counterpart in
London. This was the British Mail Office, an office set apart for the
management of the mails passing between England and Ireland. Other mails
were dealt with in the Inland Office; but those to and from England were
considered of such paramount importance as to deserve exceptional
treatment. At the present day the term "office" as applied to the public
service conveys the notion possibly of a palace and certainly of a
building or part of a building consisting of several rooms. The British
Mail Office, though destined to play a not unimportant part in the
history of the Irish Post Office at the beginning of the present
century, consisted of one room only, and this room was exactly six feet
square.
The establishment of this office was one of many measures which owed
their origin to Lord Clancarty, who was joint postmaster-general with
Lord O'Neill from 1807 to 1809. Clancarty enjoyed an honourable
distinction. Other postmasters-general were habitual absentees, their
visits to the Post Office, if visits they made, being confined to the
rare occasions on which they passed through Dublin on their way to
London and back. Clancarty, on the contrary, devoted to his official
duties all the powers of a keen intellect and a singularly energetic
nature. Shortly after his appointment he proceeded to London, and having
made himself master of the system pursued in the Inland Office in
Lombard Street, returned to Dublin, resolved that, as far as
circumstances would permit, a similar system should be established
there.
A formidable difficulty, however, presented itself in the different
hours of attendance in the London and Dublin offices. In London the
attendance was daily, on every night and every morning; in Dublin it was
only on alternate days, on every other night and every other morning.
How to get rid of this difference was the question which Clancarty now
set himself to solve. There was at this time in the Inland Office a
clerk of the name of Donlevy, whose parts pointed him out as qualified
to take the lead among his fellows. Clancarty sent for this young man,
and told him that under the plan which was about to be introduced he
would have to attend daily. Donlevy objected that a plan which would
involve such attendance was an unreasonable, an oppressive plan, and
that no man's constitution, strong as he might be, would stand it.
"But," said Clancarty, "I will make you vice-president." "My Lord,"
replied Donlevy, "I am very much obliged to you; but under the
conditions proposed I would not accept even the office of president."
"Very well," rejoined Clancarty, laying his watch on the table, "I will
give you three hours to consider of it." Long before the three hours had
expired, Donlevy, who knew the character of the man with whom he had to
do, and what would be the penalty of refusal, had accepted the
vice-presidentship, and opposition to the introduction of daily
attendance was at an end.[82]
[82] Clancarty was afterwards appointed joint postmaster-general of
England. This appointment he held from 30th September 1814 to 6th April
1816, but he never took it up. Between the dates mentioned he was
employed on missions abroad.
But Clancarty was an exception to the general rule. Lord Rosse, who
succeeded him and remained postmaster-general in conjunction with
O'Neill for more than twenty years, was, like his colleague, an habitual
absentee; and the consequence was to place large power in the hands of
the chief permanent officer on the spot. This was Edward Smith Lees, who
had been appointed joint secretary with his father in 1801, and who on
his father's death some years afterwards became sole secretary. The
power which Lees must in any case have possessed as chief resident
officer was enormously increased by the fact to which we have already
referred, that the signature of either of the two postmasters-general
was sufficient. Of this fact Lees took advantage to an extent which may
seem incredible. If the particular postmaster-general to whom the case
was referred agreed to the course recommended, no reference to the other
appears to have been considered necessary; but if he did not agree, a
reference to the other took place without the fact of disagreement being
made known, or even an intimation that his colleague had been consulted.
By thus playing off one postmaster-general against the other, Lees
generally contrived to secure approval of his own recommendations; but
when, as occasionally happened, such approval could not be obtained from
either, he claimed and exercised the right, as chief officer on the
spot, to take his own course.
Thus Lees, like Freeling, was an autocrat within his own domain; but the
means by which the two men attained this result were essentially
different. Freeling kept the postmasters-general informed of every
incident, however trivial. Lees gave no information which could with
decency be withheld. Freeling supported his views by a perfect wealth of
explanation. Lees explained no more than enough to carry his point.
Freeling's candour, like his loyalty, knew no bounds. It is to his
candour, indeed, that we owe our materials for criticising his own
proceedings. Lees's candour and loyalty, on the contrary, so far as
these can be said to have had any existence, were held in rigid
subjection to considerations of expediency and personal advantage.
The circumstances attending the appointment of Lees's brother, a
searcher in the Customs at Wexford, to a position in the secretary's
office only inferior in point of rank and emolument to his own, well
exemplify the mode in which the business of the Irish Post Office was
conducted during the first two or three decades of the present century.
The minute appointing him was signed, not by O'Neill and Rosse, nor by
either of them, but by one of Lees's own subordinates, and purported to
embody a decision come to at a Board at which the two postmasters-general
were present. "At the Board"--so ran the minute--"present the Earls."
The whole thing was a fiction from beginning to end. The Earls had
not been present, and there had been no Board. Indeed, as Lees was
afterwards forced to admit before a Committee of the House of Commons,
during a period of twenty years that O'Neill and Rosse had been
joint postmasters-general and he their secretary, he had seen them
only once together in the same room, and that was in the drawing-room
at Parsonstown.
The example set in high quarters was not without its effect below. Every
one seems to have been left to do pretty much as he liked. The force was
maintained at a level very far in excess of the actual requirements, and
it was no uncommon thing for one-half of the entire number to absent
themselves without notice in a single morning. Some of the clerks never
attended at all, while others gave to their Post Office duties only such
fragments of their time as they could snatch from other and more
lucrative employments. Thus, one was a clerk in a private bank, another
a clerk in a merchant's office, a third was a surgeon, several held
appointments under the Customs or the Imprest Office, and many were
practising attorneys. To most of these the object of holding an
appointment in the Post Office appears to have been not so much the
salary attaching to it as the privilege which they enjoyed, or rather
which they assumed to themselves, of sending and receiving their letters
free. The attorneys, indeed, were credited with a still less respectable
motive. All, as soon as a mail arrived, helped themselves to their own
letters and the letters of the firms in which they were interested. The
president of the Inland Office held a valuable appointment in the Bank
of Ireland, and was not in a position to check on the part of his
subordinates a license which he allowed to himself. The
receiver-general, the highest financial officer on the establishment,
was a private banker and money-lender, and, beyond signing the
balance-sheet at stated periods, the only Post Office function he
performed was to frank his own correspondence.
That in Ireland the Post Office arrangements were made subservient to
private interests does not admit of a doubt. A suspicion will indeed now
and again cross the mind that even in England the readiness to raise the
rates of postage, and the hostility shewn to newspapers except when
supplied by the clerks of the roads, were not unconnected with personal
considerations; but what in the case of England is at best only a matter
of suspicion becomes in the case of Ireland an absolute certainty. In
Ireland, as in England, the clerks of the roads had from the first
establishment of the Post Office enjoyed the privilege of franking
newspapers; but soon after the British Mail Office had been established
by Clancarty, two other clerks, styling themselves express clerks,
undertook to supply newspapers express. Their plan was very simple. In
London the newspapers were made up in a parcel addressed to the express
clerks; and these clerks had in readiness messengers of their own, who
proceeded to deliver the newspapers as soon as they arrived in Dublin
and without waiting, as others had to do, for the sorting of the mail.
This alone would have given to the express clerks a considerable
advantage over the ordinary news-vendor. But, more than this, the
British mail was irregular in its arrival, and the latest hour in the
evening at which a delivery by letter-carrier took place in Dublin was
seven o'clock. The express clerks delivered the English newspapers by
their own messengers as late as eleven o'clock.
In the case of the country the advantage which the express clerks
enjoyed was still greater. The mails for the interior of Ireland left
the Inland Office in Dublin at seven o'clock in the evening; but under a
rule, on the observance of which the authorities rigidly insisted, no
mails from the British Mail Office were to be received in the Inland
Office for despatch the same evening unless they were brought there
ready sorted full twenty minutes before that hour. Practically,
therefore, as the sorting occupied about twenty-five minutes, mails from
England arriving later than a quarter past six were detained until the
following evening. No such detention, however, was sustained by the
express newspapers, which, addressed as they were to the express clerks,
could be forwarded up to the last moment. It may readily be supposed
that, with such advantages in their favour, the express clerks and the
clerks of the roads, for the two bodies had amalgamated and formed one
common purse, found many customers. That they realised and fully
appreciated their position will be seen from the following advertisement
which was issued no longer ago than April 1822:--
BRITISH NEWSPAPER OFFICE, GENERAL POST OFFICE.
The clerks of roads and clerks of express newspapers having, under
the authority of the postmasters-general, reformed their
establishment in this department for the transmission of British
and foreign newspapers, lottery, commercial, army and navy lists,
periodical and other publications, the nobility and gentry of
Dublin are respectfully informed that they can be supplied with
those articles either by an express delivery (which is made by
special messengers immediately on the arrival of the packets) or by
the regular course of post.
Country correspondents will have a peculiar advantage, as upon all
occasions when a packet arrives before the despatch of the inland
mails but too late for general transmission, their newspapers will
be forwarded at the last possible moment.
Newspapers exchanged at pleasure any time during the period of
subscription.
Subscriptions to be paid in advance.
Further particulars known by application to Messrs. Leet and De
Joncourt, General Post Office, who will receive subscriptions.
Daily attendance from twelve till four o'clock.
London daily newspapers to Dublin by general delivery, L10:17:6 per
annum.
Leet and De Joncourt were the two express clerks; but among the clerks
of the roads, on whose behalf they wrote as well as their own, was Lees,
the secretary, who participated in the profits derived from the sale of
newspapers, and received the lion's share.
The news-vendors bitterly complained. That the newspapers supplied by
the express clerks and clerks of the roads should be exempt from
postage[83] was bad enough; but that they should also enjoy priority of
transmission and delivery was past all endurance. How was it possible to
compete under such conditions as these? The booksellers also complained,
for the express service, though originally confined to newspapers, had
now extended to periodicals as well. On a _Quarterly_ or _Edinburgh
Review_, for instance, when sent by coach from Dublin into the country,
the bookseller's customers had to pay for carriage from 1s. 8d. to 2s.
6d., whereas the express clerks and clerks of the roads sent it, through
the medium of the post, carriage free. A heavier indictment remains. The
law permitted the examination of newspapers passing through the post
with a view to ascertain whether they contained unauthorised enclosures;
and it was confidently alleged that of this power the Post Office
servants took advantage in order to retard the transmission and delivery
of newspapers that were not supplied by themselves. A ring, the
news-vendors maintained, had been formed at the Post Office, and they
were the victims.
[83] At one time the express newspapers went all the way from London to
Dublin post free; but this, at the date of the advertisement, had been
stopped, and as far as Holyhead their carriage was now being provided
for under an arrangement with the London agents. From Holyhead to
Dublin, however, they still went in the mail free of postage, and on
arrival in Dublin such of them as were destined for the country were
franked by the clerks of the roads.
The management of what was technically termed the alphabet appears to
have been influenced by similar considerations. This was nothing more
than a rack with divisions corresponding to the letters of the alphabet,
into which might be sorted ready for delivery all correspondence
addressed to the Post Office to be called for. Such was its primary
object; but in course of time the bankers and merchants, finding that
through the alphabet they could get their letters sooner than if
delivered by letter-carrier--as soon indeed as the mail arrived--made
use of this expedient for their ordinary correspondence, readily paying
for the accommodation a fee ranging from three to five guineas a year.
This had gone on for a considerable period, when Lees appears to have
been suddenly seized with compunction at the unfairness of a practice
which, in the matter of delivery, gave to one man an advantage over
another; and he issued instructions that henceforth, after the arrival
of each mail, there should be a certain interval during which letters
should not be delivered from the alphabet. The pretence imposed upon no
one. Men readily discerned that in proportion as the advantages of the
alphabet were restricted the express service was rendered more valuable.
It would be unjust to the memory of the Irish Post Office of seventy
years ago not to mention here one good practice and, as far as we know,
the only good one that then existed. By virtue of an arrangement with,
the War Office, soldiers' wives, on presentation of a formal document
with which the military authorities provided them, could draw from any
Post Office in the kingdom a certain sum of small amount until the
entire sum mentioned in the document was exhausted. Thus, a soldier's
wife desirous of joining her husband could pass from one end of the
country to another, and, without carrying anything in her pocket, could
be supplied with money on her way. Of this practice, curiously enough,
not a vestige now remains.
It is also pleasant, amid so much indifference as was at that time
exhibited to the convenience of the public, to be able to record one
instance to the contrary. Thomas Whinnery, the postmaster of Belfast,
had read an account of the alphabet at Liverpool--how the letters were
sorted into a rack according to the initials of the merchants to whom
they were addressed, so as to be ready to be delivered when they should
be called for--and he resolved to introduce something of the same kind
into his own office. Instead, however, of adopting the alphabetical
order he assigned to each merchant a particular number, letting him know
what his number was, and instead of a fixed rack as at Liverpool he
contrived a revolving one; and this, with the numbers conspicuously
exhibited over each division, he placed in full view of a window opening
to the street. Thus, any one looking through the window could see for
himself whether there were any letters for him, and was saved the
trouble of inquiring.
Equality of treatment as between man and man had not yet become one of
the canons of the Post Office, and even Whinnery, well-meaning as he
was, made a distinction as remarkable as it was invidious. Belfast not
being supplied with an official letter-carrier, he employed a man of his
own to deliver the letters, and charged on their delivery 1d. apiece.
The letters, however, instead of all being delivered at one time, were
arbitrarily divided into two classes, termed particular letters and
ordinary letters; and the delivery of the ordinary letters was not begun
until that of the particular letters was finished, a difference in point
of time of two and a half hours. In order to maintain the distinction,
the man had actually to go over the same ground twice. Particular
letters were defined to be letters for merchants and other busy men,
letters to which it was presumably of importance that replies should be
given promptly.
We have said that in Ireland the mail-coach contracts were not, as in
England, for short distances but for the whole of the road over which
the coach travelled. The explanation is that, while in England the local
inn-keepers were eager to horse the mail for one or two stages, in
Ireland, where the coach had to be provided as well as the horses, the
venture was too serious to be undertaken lightly, and the contracts fell
into the hands of a few persons of means who dictated pretty much their
own terms. Thus, in Ireland the cost of conveying the mails by coach was
considerably higher than in England, though forage and labour were
cheaper.[84]
[84] In 1823 the Irish mail-coaches travelled daily a distance of 1450
miles at a cost to the Post Office of more than L30,000 a year, while in
England the cost over the same number of miles would have been only
L7500. From this, however, it is not to be understood that in one
country the cost was four times as heavy as in the other, because the
Irish mile was longer than the English one by about two furlongs, and in
England the contractors did not, as they did in Ireland, provide the
coaches.
All this was soon to be changed. In one of the early years of the
century a young lad had arrived in Dublin, a lad without means and
without friends, a foreigner who was unable to speak one word of
English, and yet who, despite these drawbacks, did for the country of
his adoption more probably than was accomplished by all the legislation
that took place during the fourscore years and more over which his life
extended. This was Charles Bianconi, a man to whom the Post Office owes
a debt of gratitude which, as it seems to us, has never been
sufficiently recognised. After serving an eighteen months'
apprenticeship to a foreign print-seller in a small way of business,
Bianconi passed the next two or three years of his life in hawking
prints about the country on his own account, and in 1806, at the age of
twenty, he turned carver and gilder and opened a shop at
Carrick-on-Suir. From Carrick he removed shortly afterwards to
Waterford, and finally settled down at Clonmel.
The experience of these few years determined Bianconi's future career.
While roaming over the country with his prints for sale, he had had
forcibly impressed upon him the difference between a pedlar like himself
who was doomed to tramp on foot and his more fortunate fellow who could
post or ride on horseback. At Carrick the want of facilities for
travelling had been brought home to him in a hardly less cogent manner.
Gold-leaf for the supply of his shop he had to fetch from Waterford, and
Waterford is distant from Carrick twelve or thirteen miles. Between the
two towns, however, the only means of communication was by water, and by
water, owing to the windings of the river, the distance is twenty-four
miles. A single boat, moreover, was then the only public conveyance,
and, besides being obliged to wait for the tide, it took from four to
five hours to accomplish the journey. From this time Bianconi appears to
have become possessed with the idea that his mission in life was to
devise some cheap and easy means of communication between town and town.
Imbued with this notion, he gave up his shop in the summer of 1815, and
started a single-horse car for the conveyance of passengers from Clonmel
to Cahir, a distance of about eight miles. At the end of the same year
he started similar cars from Clonmel to Cashel and Thurles, and from
Clonmel to Carrick and Waterford. From such humble beginnings sprang
that splendid service of cars which, extending from Sligo and
Enniskillen in the north to Bandon and Skibbereen in the south, and from
Waterford and Wexford in the east to Galway and Belmullet in the west,
carried passengers daily over more than 4000 miles of road at an average
cost to each passenger of 1-1/4d. a mile.
But we are anticipating. The Post Office, largely as it availed itself
in later years of the means of communication which Bianconi placed at
its disposal, was slow to perceive the advantage which his enterprise
offered. The country postmasters were wiser in their generation. Located
on the spot, and with their perception quickened by the motive of
self-interest, they made use of the cars as fast as these were put on
the roads. No sooner had a car been started from Clonmel than the
postmaster sent by it the mails which he had been used to send by
horse-post. For this service he received an allowance of 5d. a mile.
Bianconi performed the service for him for an allowance of 2-1/2d. a
mile. The same thing took place elsewhere. It was not until the year
1831, when the Post Office of Ireland was amalgamated with that of
England, that Bianconi was brought into direct relations with
headquarters. Meanwhile, through a strange lack of vigilance on the part
of the Irish authorities, his very existence was ignored, and the
postmasters continued to receive 5d. a mile for a service which,
wherever Bianconi's cars extended, they were getting done for one-half
of that amount.
But it is not only with the Irish Post Office in relation to its
internal affairs that this chapter proposes to deal. The communication
between England and Ireland or rather between the capitals of the two
countries had, since the Act of Union, been under constant review, and
it becomes important to see how, during the first two or three decades
of the present century, this communication stood both by sea and by
land.
By the Act of 1784, which made the Irish Post Office independent of that
of Great Britain--an Act not repealed by the Union--Great Britain and
Ireland were to receive, in respect to letters passing between the two
countries, each its own proportion of the postage. The Channel service
remained; and with this Ireland was to have nothing to do, at all events
in the first instance. Great Britain was to provide the packets and to
receive the packet postage. Ireland, on the other hand, until she should
have established packets of her own, was to receive from Great Britain
the sum of L4000 a year "in lieu as well of the profits of the said
packets as in compensation for other purposes." This arrangement appears
to have worked smoothly enough until after 1801, when, owing to the
increase of correspondence as a consequence of the Union, the Irish Post
Office began to complain that the conditions were hard, and that Great
Britain had the best of the bargain. Surely, under the very terms of the
statute, Ireland was entitled to have packets of her own; and if this
were denied her, did not justice demand that the conditions should be
reconsidered? The question had come before successive Governments and
always with the same result--that the existing arrangement was not to be
disturbed. What Pitt and Portland and Perceval had decided was not to be
done Lees now proceeded to do on his own account.
We doubt whether travellers of the present day who cross from Holyhead
to Dublin in the magnificent boats which modern science has provided
have any idea of the misery to which our grandfathers were exposed in
making the passage. His Majesty's packets afforded the best, if not the
only means of transit; and these were six in number, and ranged from 80
to 100 tons in burthen. Customs duties were at this time levied on goods
passing between the two countries, and passengers' luggage was subjected
to strict examination. Thus, to the discomforts of a sea-passage made in
vessels of light tonnage were added the vexations incidental to a
rigorous search of personal baggage; and these vexations were rendered
all the greater by faulty arrangements. Passengers were unnecessarily
detained, and often, even after detention, had to proceed on their
journey leaving their luggage behind. In course of time, indeed, an
exception was made in the case of peers and members of Parliament. After
December 1819, as the result of incessant complaints, the luggage of
these privileged persons was allowed to pass unexamined on their giving
a certificate on honour that it contained no articles liable to duty;
but at the time of which we are writing, the year 1813, all travellers,
whether of high or low degree, were treated alike.
Despite conditions which at the present day would be considered
intolerable, the number of passengers carried to and fro by the Holyhead
packets was between 14,000 and 15,000 a year;[85] and there can be no
doubt that the advantage which the British Post Office derived from
this traffic was considerable. It is true that the fares went to the
captains; but of course, except for the fares, the Post Office would
have had to pay more for its packets. These were supplied at an annual
cost of L365 apiece, or L2190 altogether; and such being the terms on
which boats could be hired, Lees was confirmed in his opinion that
Ireland would do better if, instead of receiving from Great Britain a
compensation allowance of L4000 a year, she were to provide her own
packets and share the packet postage.
[85] The exact number of passengers in the year 1814 was 14,577, made up
as follows: Cabin passengers, 12,142; passengers' servants, 1136; hold
passengers, 1299.
Freeling took a different view. The better the bargain was for the
British Post Office, the more determined he was that with his consent
the terms should not be altered. And, more than this, he little relished
the prospect of competition between English and Irish packets. Indeed,
so long had he been accustomed to deal with a monopoly that the very
name of competition was hateful to him. At this very time he tried, and
tried in vain, to repress a boat which had been set up between Weymouth
and the Channel Islands in opposition to the packets. Another similar
attempt which he made a little later was hardly more successful. The War
Office had chartered vessels to convey troops between Bristol and
Waterford, and these vessels had assumed the title of "Government
Packets," a title which, according to Freeling, induced persons to go by
them who would otherwise have gone by the Post Office packets from
Milford. Lord Palmerston was then Secretary at War, and we think we see
the twinkle in his eye as he replied to Freeling's letter of
remonstrance. Freeling's objection was of course to the Bristol boats
being styled packets, but he had spoken of them by the title by which
they were known of "Government Packets." The contractors, wrote Lord
Palmerston, had been directed to drop the word Government forthwith, and
the boats would henceforth be called War Office packets, to distinguish
them from the packets employed by the Post Office.
Attached to the Irish Post Office, by virtue of a contract which had
yet some years to run, were boats called wherries. Originally designed
to carry between the two countries special messengers and despatches
during the period immediately succeeding the Union, they had long lost
their original character, and were now being employed in picking up what
goods and passengers they could, and transporting them across the
Channel in opposition to the packets. These boats were not ill adapted
to the purpose which Lees had in hand. On the 19th of July 1813 he
despatched a letter to Freeling, incidentally mentioning that "as the
intended packet station at Howth had sufficient depth of water for the
vessels belonging to the Irish Post Office, it was in contemplation,
until such time as the regular packets should be stationed there, that
the mails from Ireland should be despatched in its own vessels, and
that, as soon as the arrangements now in progress should be completed,
the measure would take effect." This letter was received in London on
the 23rd of July, and on the next day intelligence reached Lombard
Street that the mail from Ireland had been refused to the British packet
and had been given to the Irish wherry.
And now might be witnessed a most unedifying spectacle--in Dublin Lees
placarding the walls of the city with advertisements,[86] vaunting the
merits of his own packets; at Holyhead the authorised packets arriving
without the mails, and the mails being brought by boats which did not
arrive until after the mail-coach for London had started; and in London
Freeling wringing his hands and invoking the aid of the Government to
check the vagaries of his brother-secretary on the other side of the
Channel. "For the first time," he wrote, "the postmasters-general of
Great Britain have not the means of redressing grievances connected with
their own department, and the most serious remonstrances may be expected
from the merchants and traders of London on this alarming and
unnecessary evil."
[86] The following are copies of the advertisements referred to:--
"The Howth Royal Mail-Coach sets out every evening at seven o'clock from
the Cork Coach Office, 12 Dawson Street, where passengers and luggage
will be booked, and arrives at Howth at a quarter after eight, when the
packet will immediately sail (independently of the tide) with the Irish
mails and passengers for Holyhead. From the admirable construction of
these vessels for fast sailing and excellent accommodation the passage
from the pier at Howth to Holyhead will on the average be performed in
one-third less time than by the _Pigeon House_. Besides, as no more than
eight or ten passengers will be admitted into any one of these packets,
the public, on the score of expedition and comfort, will soon experience
the advantage of going to Holyhead by Howth.
"Passengers by the mail-coach have a preference as to berths in the
packets.
"_July 21, 1813._"
"Howth Royal Mail-Coach, well guarded, sets out from the Cork Coach
Office, No. 12 Dawson Street, at seven o'clock every evening with mails
and passengers to His Majesty's express packets at Howth, from whence
one of these excellent vessels sails at half after eight o'clock every
night for Holyhead.
"_July 31, 1813._"
The prediction was a safe one. Not only were the mails often one day
behindhand in arriving in London, but the letters they brought were
charged with an additional rate of postage in respect of the distance
between Dublin and Howth. The merchants flocked to the Post Office to
inquire the reason. No reason could be given them, and they were invited
to let their applications for a return of the charge stand over until
the postmasters-general should have informed themselves on the subject.
Some assented; others accused the postmasters-general of trifling, and
demanded instant redress. Matters had thus gone on for a fortnight when
Lord Liverpool, to whom an appeal had been made, directed that the
wherries should be withdrawn. One is left to suppose that this direction
cannot have been communicated in the proper quarter, for as a matter of
fact it had no result. In vain the captains of the packets applied at
the Dublin Post Office for the British mails. All such applications met
with a flat refusal, and the mails continued to be sent by the wherries
as before. At length an end was put to the scandal, but not until it had
lasted for more than six weeks.
The question now arose whether for the forty-four days during which the
wherries had acted as packets the compensation of L4000 a year which
Ireland received from Great Britain should not be withheld. Freeling had
not only taken it for granted that such would be the case, but had been
unable to conceal his regret that this was the only penalty of which the
circumstances would admit. Liverpool, however, decided otherwise. Lees
might have been wrong-headed and even perverse, but there could be no
doubt that law was on his side. Accordingly, the compensation was paid
for the period during which the packets had not carried the mails, and
not long afterwards the Government brought in a bill raising the amount
which Ireland was to receive from L4000 a year to L6000.
We now pass over six years. In July 1819 a curious invention, which had
for some little time been in practical operation on the Thames between
London and Margate, was brought into use between Holyhead and Dublin.
This was no other than a vessel propelled by steam. Two vessels of this
class were now set up by private individuals styling themselves the
Dublin Steam Packet Company; and of this company, to the amazement of
the authorities in Lombard Street, Lees had become a director. The
quality which the new vessels possessed of being able to go against wind
and tide, and the comparative speed with which they accomplished the
passage, soon commended them to the favour of the public; and the
consequence was a reduction to the extent of nearly one-half in the
number of passengers by the Post Office packets.[87] The matter was
serious, for it was in consequence of the fares which the captains
received that they let their boats to the Post Office at little more
than a nominal sum: and of course this sum would have to be increased
according as the fares diminished.
[87] By the Post Office packets the number of passengers between
Holyhead and Dublin during the years 1818-20 was as follows:--
Year. Number of
Passengers.
1818 13,128
1819 12,956
1820 7,468
Private steam packets began to ply in July 1819.
We now see the Post Office at its best. Not possessing in the case of
passengers a monopoly such as influenced and often perverted its action
in the case of letters, the department proceeded to do much as private
persons with sufficient capital at command would have done in similar
circumstances, namely to build better boats than those already employed,
and endeavour by the superior excellence of its service to recover the
custom it had lost. Orders were given for two steam packets, the best
that Boulton and Watt could build; and on the 31st of May 1821 the
_Royal Sovereign_, of 206 tons burthen, with engines of 40 horse-power,
and the _Meteor_, of somewhat smaller dimensions, began to ply.
"Hitherto," wrote the postmasters-general eight days later, "they have
answered the most sanguine expectations that had been formed of them;
the letters have been delivered in Dublin earlier than was ever yet
known, and Ireland has expressed herself grateful for the attention that
has been shewn to her interests."
The Post Office behaved in this matter with a moderation which was
altogether wanting where its monopoly was concerned. To be outdone by a
private company, to employ inferior boats, boats of an obsolete type and
of a low rate of speed--this would not be creditable to a public
department, still less to a department whose special function it was to
carry the correspondence of the country at the highest speed attainable;
and properly enough the Post Office might take steps to establish its
pre-eminence. But it would be quite another thing for a public
department to undersell a private company, and, by charging lower fares,
to run its boats off the line. This, it appeared to the authorities in
Lombard Street, would exceed the bounds of fair competition. Accordingly
the fares by the Post Office steam packets were fixed at the same
amounts as those charged by the company; and these fares were somewhat
higher than those which had been charged by the sailing packets. By
sailing packet, for instance, the charge for a cabin passenger had been
one guinea, by steam packet it was L1:5s.; for a horse the steam packet
charge was L1:10s. as against one guinea by sailing packet, and for a
coach L3:5s. as against three guineas.
These charges, which were fixed with the express object of not exposing
the company to undue competition, had not been long in force before
Parliament intervened. The Select Committee on Irish Communication
protested in the interests of the public against the raising of the
fares, and the Post Office was constrained to submit. The substitution
of steam packets for sailing packets bore immediate fruit. The number of
passengers carried by the Post Office between Holyhead and Dublin, which
in 1820 had sunk to 7468, rose in 1821 to 13,737 and in 1822 to more
than 16,000; and for some years the Holyhead packets were not only
self-supporting but produced a clear gain to the revenue of more than
L6000 a year.
The change which had been made at Holyhead was not long in extending
itself to other packet stations from which there was communication with
Ireland. Between Milford and Waterford sailing packets were replaced by
steam packets in April 1824, and between Portpatrick and Donaghadee in
May 1825. By sailing packet the average duration of voyage between the
last-mentioned stations had been seven hours and forty-eight minutes.
During the winter of 1825-26, a winter unexampled for the derangement of
sea-communication, the average time which the little Post Office
steamers _Arrow_ and _Dasher_ took to perform the voyage was less than
three hours and a half.
And yet, despite these exertions to maintain its superiority, the Post
Office was not to remain in undisputed possession of the Irish traffic.
Private steamers had begun to ply between Liverpool and Dublin, and the
fares by these steamers were lower than by the Post Office packets from
Holyhead. As a natural consequence, the passenger traffic to which the
Post Office looked to recoup itself for the heavy expense to which it
had been put in replacing sailing packets by steam packets was diverted
to Liverpool.
Nor was it only in the matter of passengers that the Post Office lost by
the competition. Its reputation also suffered. The mails for Ireland
left Liverpool at three o'clock in the afternoon, before the Exchange
was closed, and reaching Holyhead by way of Chester and Llangollen at
six o'clock on the following morning, did not arrive in Dublin until the
afternoon. The private steamers, on the contrary, did not leave
Liverpool until the business of the day was over, and arrived in Dublin
on the following morning. Hence comparisons were drawn not favourable to
the Post Office; and it by no means tended to allay dissatisfaction that
the owners of the private steamers were refused permission to carry the
mails. This they had offered to do, in one case for nothing more than
exemption from harbour and light dues; but at that time, strange as it
may appear to us with our present experience, it was a fixed principle
with the Post Office that private firms even of the highest eminence
were not to be entrusted with the carriage of the public correspondence.
Accordingly it was decided that between Liverpool and Dublin the Post
Office should run its own packets, and the new service began on the 29th
of August 1826. The opening was marred by a lamentable disaster. Early
in September the _Francis Freeling_ packet, a recently-built cutter
named after the secretary, and reputed to be the finest vessel of its
kind afloat, foundered during a heavy gale and all the passengers and
crew were lost.
The new service, while an unquestionable convenience to the public, did
not altogether satisfy the Post Office. It is true that, as a
consequence of the increased accommodation, the letters for Ireland
passing through Liverpool nearly doubled in number; but this
satisfactory result was not without alloy. During the past few years the
art of building as applied to steamboats had made rapid progress; and
not only were the packets on the Liverpool station larger than those
stationed at Holyhead, the horse-power of the engines being 170 in the
one case as against 40 in the other, but they were altogether better
equipped. The fares by the Liverpool route as fixed by the Post Office
were also relatively lower, and to any one proceeding from London or the
large manufacturing towns of the North the distance to be travelled by
road was shorter. As a consequence, the diversion of traffic from
Holyhead to Liverpool, notwithstanding the longer sea voyage, proceeded
still more rapidly than when the steamers from the latter port were in
private hands; and the Holyhead service, which had for some years
produced a clear profit of many thousand pounds a year, was now carried
on at a loss.
To the Post Office authorities, indeed, there was in connection with the
four packet stations in communication with Ireland only one thing which
gave them unqualified satisfaction. It was this--that to the Post Office
belonged the credit of being first to demonstrate by practical
experience that, to use Freeling's words, "steam vessels could force
their way at all seasons of the year and in weather in which no sailing
vessel, be her qualities what they might, would attempt to put to sea."
Whether the claim is well founded or not we have no means of judging; we
only know that it was made.
By land, at the beginning of the present century, communication with
Ireland was in a more backward state than it was by water; and since the
Union a very general opinion had prevailed that this communication
should be improved. It would perhaps be too much to say that the British
Post Office proved obstructive in the matter; but there can be no doubt
that it did not lend the assistance it might have done, and the reasons
are obvious. In the first place, a little soreness existed. No sooner
had the Act of Union passed than the Government decided that between
London and Dublin there must be an express in both directions daily.
This, as the postmasters-general pointed out, would cost more than L4000
a year, and, as it was not required for Post Office purposes, the Post
Office should not bear the cost. Accordingly the question as to the
source from which the cost should be defrayed was reserved for future
consideration; but after the express was well established, the Post
Office received notice that it must defray the cost itself, and it
continued to do so for twenty years and more. This was always a sore
point with Freeling, and he constantly adduced it as an instance of
unremunerative work.
Another reason which kept Lombard Street back from assisting to improve
the communication with Ireland was that the British and Irish Post
Offices approached the subject from different points of view. With the
British Post Office the main object, an object which in its judgment was
sufficiently well attained already, was the transmission of letters;
with the Irish Post Office, as indeed with that section of the public
which could best make its voice heard, the main object was the transport
of passengers. Yet a third reason, we can well believe, was the
conviction that for any improvement that might be made, though primarily
for the sake of Ireland, the British and not the Irish Post Office would
have to pay. These three reasons, we cannot doubt, were at the root of
the manifest indisposition displayed by the British Post Office to meet
what had gradually become a very general demand.
The first strenuous effort to induce the authorities in Lombard Street
to improve the communication with Ireland was made in 1805, the prime
mover in the matter being John Foster, the Chancellor of the Irish
Exchequer. At this time the mail-coach between London and Holyhead went
by a circuitous route through Chester. Foster maintained that it should
go direct through Coventry and Shrewsbury. By Coventry the distance was
264 miles, and by Chester 278 miles--a difference, in point of time, of
more than two hours.
It was alleged that by the shorter route other delays which now took
place might be avoided; but how important was a saving of even two hours
may be judged from the fact that the time of the mail-coach leaving
Holyhead was fixed with reference, not to the arrival of the packet
from Dublin, but to the arrival of the coach in London. All the
mail-coaches were timed to reach London early in the morning, so that
the letters they brought might go out by the morning delivery. To effect
this object, the mail-coach by the Chester route had to leave Holyhead
at seven o'clock in the morning, an hour by which it was barely possible
for the packet from Dublin to have arrived. During the whole of the year
1804, for instance, the Dublin mails arrived at Holyhead in time to
catch the coach to London on only twelve occasions; and, of course, when
the mails did not catch the coach, they had to remain idle at Holyhead
until the following morning.
If, argued Foster, the route be by Shrewsbury and Coventry, the coach
can leave Holyhead so much later that the occasions on which the Dublin
mail does not arrive in time to catch it will be not as now the rule but
the exception. Freeling set the suggestion aside as impracticable. The
coach, he maintained, must go through Chester. At Chester centred all
the correspondence from the great manufacturing towns of the North, from
Liverpool and Manchester, from Hull, Halifax, and Leeds, indeed from all
parts of Yorkshire and many other counties besides. Was this
correspondence of no account? Or was it suggested that a second
mail-coach should be established? Already the Post Office was paying
many thousand pounds a year for an express service between London and
Holyhead which it did not require. Could it in reason be expected to
incur the further expense which a second mail-coach would involve? The
thing was impossible, and the project could not be entertained.
Foster, though silenced for the time, was not convinced. In 1808 the
subject was mooted again. Clancarty, who had recently been appointed
joint postmaster-general with O'Neill, had arrived in London, prepared
to argue the point with all the energy of his energetic nature. Foster
was unable to come; but he had sent a memorandum which no one who was
not thorough master of the subject could have produced. A meeting was
appointed at Lord Hawksbury's office. Freeling poured out all the old
objections, and proceeded to contend, as he had contended three years
before, that the project was impracticable. But one was present there
who did not believe in impracticabilities. This was the new Chief
Secretary for Ireland, Sir Arthur Wellesley. Wellesley's opinion was
emphatic--that all other considerations must be made subordinate to the
one grand purpose of facilitating communication between the two capitals
of London and Dublin. Freeling had encountered a stronger will than his
own. What had been impossible before was possible now, and that very
evening arrangements were begun to be devised for accelerating the Irish
mails.
Even now, what little was done was done grudgingly. The mail-coach from
London which ran through Oxford and Birmingham to Shrewsbury was
extended from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, and was met at Llangollen by an
express from Chester bringing the cross-post correspondence. Thus
matters remained for nine years, when, under pressure which the Post
Office could no longer resist, the Coventry route was adopted. The Post
Office opposed the change to the last, even though a Parliamentary
Committee had recommended it, and an address in its favour had been
presented to the Prince Regent. At length Vansittart, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, brought his authority to bear, and in July 1817 a
mail-coach by way of Coventry began to run, accomplishing the distance
between London and Holyhead in thirty-eight hours.
But in order to facilitate communication between England and Ireland a
good deal more was required than to set up an additional coach or to
send an existing coach by another and shorter route. The roads of the
country were still in a state to make rapid travelling impossible. Much,
no doubt, had been done to improve them. Between the years 1760 and 1809
no less than 1514 Turnpike Acts had been passed, and under the turnpike
system the roads were better than before. Still the making of them had
been entrusted to incompetent hands, and they were constructed on false
principles. For the bed or foundation of the roads improper or
insufficient materials had been used. Little or no attention had been
paid to drainage. Few roads were provided with side channels. Not
seldom, indeed, the sides were encumbered with huge banks of mud which
had accumulated to the height of six, seven, and even eight feet. Not
only had convexity of surface, as a means of carrying off the water,
been disregarded, but the road was frequently hollow in the middle and
everywhere cut into deep ruts. High hedges and trees were still allowed
to intercept the action of the sun and wind, the importance of a rapid
evaporation of moisture being as yet unrecognised. Even the roads
themselves had been laid out on no fixed principle. Their lines of
direction were, almost without exception, identical with the footpaths
of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country; and these, doubtless to
avoid the bogs and marsh lands, and possibly also for purposes of
observation, had invariably followed the hills.
Hence it came to pass that almost every road of any importance was both
steep and crooked. Where there were no hills and the roads passed across
wet and flat land, they were almost always below the level of the
adjacent fields, the mud having been carried away by constant use. While
such was the general state of the roads during the first twenty years of
the present century, the road between Shrewsbury and Holyhead, over
which a mail-coach had been travelling since the summer of 1808, was
notoriously one of the worst in the kingdom. "To Kenneage,[88] six miles
of narrow road; scarcely room for two carriages to pass, and much out of
repair; in winter, the drivers say, the ruts are up to the bed of the
coach." "From Kenneage to Capel Curig, road narrow and wants walling to
prevent carriages falling down precipices 300 or 400 yards
perpendicular." "From Capel Curig to Bangor, side of the road unguarded,
and many accidents may happen to passengers by the coach running off the
road as the mail passes here in the dark." Thus wrote the assistant
superintendent of mail-coaches in 1808, and nothing had since been done
to remedy defects.
[88] _i.e._ Kinniogga, the old name for Cernioge.
The mail along this line, of road was now to be carried at a higher rate
of speed than before, and, if only on this ground, it would have been
necessary at least to remove actual causes of danger. Even before 1817,
however, Parliamentary Commissioners had been appointed for the
improvement of the Holyhead road; and these Commissioners had summoned
to their aid the first of that line of illustrious men who, during the
last eighty years, have transformed the face of England. This was Thomas
Telford, who had already achieved distinction by the roads he had made
in the Highlands of Scotland.
Telford commenced operations in the autumn of 1815; and now for the
first time in England, or at all events for the first time since the
ancient ways were laid down by the Romans, a road was to be constructed
on scientific principles. "Every valley shall be exalted, and every
mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made
straight, and the rough places plain." This--we say it without
irreverence--is what literally came to pass. Easy inclinations, ample
breadth, perfect drainings, complete protection, and a smooth and hard
surface--these were the distinguishing characteristics of the road which
Telford now made between Holyhead and Shrewsbury. A road that had been
one of the worst in the kingdom was now the very best. In summer it was
not even dusty, and in winter was free from dirt. Frost and rain
produced upon it but trifling and superficial effects. To crown all, the
Menai Straits were spanned by a noble bridge, where before there had
been only an inconvenient ferry.
While Telford was thus raising the business of road-making to the level
of an art, John Loudon Macadam was demonstrating of what materials the
surface of a road should be made. Macadam had travelled about the
kingdom much as John Palmer had travelled about some thirty years before
in pursuit of a different object, and, as the result of long
observation, he had come to the conclusion that the surface of roads
should be made of broken stones; and having in 1816 been appointed
general surveyor of roads in the British district he proceeded to put
his views into practice. With success to recommend it, the new system
spread like wildfire, and "a macadamised road" soon became a household
word.
Nor was it to the business of road-making alone that science now lent
her aid. What force of traction or power is required to draw carriages
over different kinds of road, in what line of direction the power can be
best applied--what, in other words, is the proper angle for the traces,
and what in the case of hills is the highest inclination up which horses
can go at a trot and down which they can with safety be driven at full
speed--these were some of the questions which now engaged the attention
of the scientific world. Some thirty years before, Walsingham and
Chesterfield when postmasters-general had dabbled in matters of the
kind;[89] but now they were reduced to the form of mathematical problems
and received a mathematical solution.
[89] "God knows whether we are to remain postmen or not, or whether all
the lights which philosophy is now throwing upon coach-making are not to
be left by us as an official legacy to some more pliant
successors."--Chesterfield to Walsingham, 22nd April 1792.
The excellence of the road constructed between Holyhead and Shrewsbury
brought into bold relief the imperfections of the road between
Shrewsbury and London. To this road, which, in comparison with the
other, had at one time been pronounced good and was now pronounced
execrable, Telford proceeded to apply the same principles as before. He
raised the valleys, lowered or avoided the hills, and corrected
deviations. To give only one instance--an instance taken from the second
stage out of London--the old road from Barnet to South Minims ascended
three steep and long hills; the new road avoided two of these hills
altogether, and at the same time was shorter than the old one by more
than 600 yards. And so it was in a greater or less degree all the way
from London through St. Albans to Coventry, and thence through
Birmingham and Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury.
It should also be mentioned that at this time, while the country roads
were hollow in the centre instead of convex, the roads in and about
London within a radius of about ten miles were the exact contrary. Here
convexity, as a means of carrying off water, had been pushed to so
absurd an extent that the road was in the form of a slanting roof, and a
carriage, unless kept in the centre, was on a dangerous slope. This,
which had been a prolific source of accidents, Telford now altered. The
effect of his operations upon the first stage out of London, the
Highgate Archway Road as it was called, is perhaps best described in the
words of one of the principal mail-coach contractors. Before Telford
took this road in hand, he wrote, "It was all we could do to walk up
both sides of the archway with six horses, and now we can trot up with
our heaviest loads with four."
The road from London to Shrewsbury, in continuation of the one from
Shrewsbury to Holyhead, was completed in 1828, and, corresponding
alterations having been made in the eight miles of road which connect
Howth and Dublin, a line of communication was established between the
capitals of England and Ireland such as, until the days of railways,
could hardly have been improved. Some few years before, when the Post
Office had received orders to accomplish the distance between London and
Holyhead in thirty-eight hours, Hasker, the experienced superintendent
of mail-coaches, while zealously applying himself to carry the orders
into effect, had felt it incumbent upon him as a loyal servant to make a
protest in writing against the "extraordinary expedition projected." It
would, he urged--and no doubt rightly so as the road then was--be
inhuman to horses and dangerous to life. This extraordinary expedition
was at the rate of seven miles an hour. Along the Parliamentary Road the
distance was accomplished, without hurt to horses and with perfect
safety, at the rate of ten miles an hour, and the London and Holyhead
coach soon became one of what were known as the "crack" coaches of the
kingdom.
Meanwhile the Post Office had shewn its appreciation of Telford's
achievement in a remarkable manner. It had imposed an additional charge
of 1d. upon every letter carried over Conway Bridge, and a second penny
for carriage over the Menai Straits.[90]
[90] The postage between Liverpool and Dublin by way of Holyhead was
13d., as thus made up:--
Inland postage to Holyhead 9d.
For the Conway Bridge 1d.
For the Menai Bridge 1d.
Sea postage 2d.
----
13d.
----