The growth of the postal system is a sure measure of the progress of
industry, commerce, education, and all that goes to make up the sum of
civilization; and there is no more striking illustration to be found of
the strides which our country has made in that direction since the
century began than the introduction of a cheap and rapid delivery of
letters, and the craving which it has at once satisfied and augmented.
Nothing gives us so forcible an idea of the difference between the
Britain of the present day and the Britain of the Stuart or even of the
Georgian period, than the contrast between the postal communication of
these times and of our own. The itch of writing is now so strong in us,
we are so constantly writing or receiving letters, our appetite for them
is so ravenous, that we wonder how people got on in the days when the
postman was the exclusive messenger of the king, and when even majesty
was so badly served that, as one old postmaster[D] wrote in
self-exculpation of some delay, "when placards are sent (to order the
immediate forwarding of some state despatches) the constables many times
be fayne to take the horses oute of plowes and cartes, wherein," he
gravely adds, "can be no extreme diligence." It was a sure sign that the
country was going ahead when Cromwell (1656) found it worth while to
establish posts for the people at large, and was able to farm out the
post office for L10,000 a year. The profits of that establishment were
doubled by the time the Stuarts returned to the throne, and more than
doubled again before the close of the seventeenth century. The country
has kept on growing out of system after system, like a lad out of his
clothes, and at different times has had new ones made to its measure.
Brian Tuke's easy plan of borrowing farmers' horses on which to mount
his emissaries, gave place to regular relays of post-boys and
post-horses; and, in course of time, when the robbery of the mails by
sturdy highwaymen had become almost the rule, and their safe conveyance
the exception, post-boys were in turn supplanted by a system of
stage-coaches, convoyed by an armed guard. This was thought a great
advance; and so it was. A pushing, zealous man named Palmer originated
the scheme. Amidst many other avocations, he found time to travel on the
outside of stage-coaches, for the sake of talking with the coachmen and
observing the routes, here, there, and everywhere all over England, and
thus matured all the details of his plan from personal experience. "None
but an enthusiast," said Sheridan in a rapture of admiration in the
House of Commons, "could have conceived, none but an enthusiast could
have practically entertained, none but an enthusiast could have carried
out such a system."
Still, in spite of the exactitude with which Palmer's scheme was
declared to fit the wants of the country, it soon began to be grown out
of like the rest. It became too short, too tight, too straitened every
way, and impeded the circulation of correspondence,--no unimportant
artery of our national system. The cost of postage was too high, the
mode of delivery too slow, and the consequence was, that people either
repressed their desire to write letters, or sent them through some
cheaper and illegitimate channel. Sir Walter Scott knew a man who
recollected the mail from London reaching Edinburgh with only a single
letter. Of all the tens of thousands of the modern Babylon, only one
solitary individual had got anything to say to anybody in the metropolis
of the sister kingdom worth paying postage for. "We look back now,"
writes Miss Martineau, "with a sort of amazed compassion to the old
crusading times, when warrior-husbands and their wives, grey-headed
parents and their brave sons, parted with the knowledge that it must be
months or years before they could hear of one another's existence. We
wonder how they bore the depth of silence! And we feel the same now
about the families of Polar voyagers. But, till a dozen years ago, it
did not occur to many of us how like this was the fate of the largest
class in our own country. The fact is, there was no full and free
epistolary intercourse in the country, except between those who had the
command of franks. There were few families in the wide middle class who
did not feel the cost of postage a heavy item in their expenditure; and
if the young people sent letters home only once a fortnight, the amount
at the year's end was a rather serious matter. But it was the vast
multitudes of the lower orders who suffered like the crusading families
of old, and the geographical discoverers of all times. When once their
families parted off from home it was a separation almost like that of
death. The hundreds of thousands of apprentices, of shopmen, of
governesses, of domestic servants, were cut off from family relations as
if seas or deserts lay between them and home. If the shilling for each
letter could be saved by the economy of weeks or months at first, the
rarity of correspondence went on to increase the rarity; new interests
hastened the dying out of old ones; and the ancient domestic affections
were but too apt to wither away, till the wish for intercourse was gone.
The young girl could not ease her heart by pouring out her cares and
difficulties to her mother before she slept, as she can now, when
the penny and the sheet of paper are the only condition of the
correspondence. The young lad felt that a letter home was a serious
and formal matter, when it must cost his parents more than any
indulgence they ever thought of for themselves; and the old fun and
light-heartedness were dropped off from such domestic intercourse as
there was. The effect upon the morals of this kind of restraint is
proved beyond a doubt by the evidence afforded in the army. It was a
well-known fact, that in regiments where the commanding officer was kind
and courteous about franking letters for the privates, and encouraged
them to write as often as they pleased, the soldiers were more sober and
manly, more virtuous and domestic in their affections, than where
difficulty was made by the indolence or stiffness of the franking
officer."
Under the costly postal system, the revenue of the post office did not,
as it had hitherto done, and should have continued to do, keep pace with
the progress of the country. The appetite for communication between
distant friends or men of business was evidently either decaying, or
finding vent in an unlawful way. The latter was chiefly the case. There
were vast numbers of people separated from each other by long weary
miles, too many to permit of visits, who could not resist writing to
each other,--the doating parent to the child, the lover to his
mistress, the merchant to his agents, the lawyer to his clients. Those
who could not afford postage, were the very class who could not get
franks; for the principle was, that those who could best afford postage
money should have plenty of franks, which were, of course, quite out of
the way of poor, humble folks,--the fat sow had his ear well greased,
the lean, starving one had to consume his own fat, like the bear, or go
without. The consequence was, that those who were eager to write and
could not get letters through the post, found other means of forwarding
them to the evasion of the law. There was no limit to the exercise of
ingenuity in this direction. Three or four letters were written on one
piece of paper, to be cut up and distributed separately by one of the
recipients; newspapers were turned into letters by underscoring or
pricking with a pin the letters required to form the various words of
the communication; some peculiarity in the style of address on the
outside was arranged between correspondents, the sight of which was
enough to indicate a message, and the letter was then rejected, having
served its purpose; and so on, in a hundred other ways, fraudulent means
were found of evading the law. Some carriers had a large and profitable
business in smuggling letters. In many populous districts the number of
letters conveyed by carriers at a penny each in an illegal way far
exceeded those sent through the post. In Manchester, for every letter
that went by the postman, six went by the carrier; and in Glasgow the
proportion was as one to ten. All this was notorious. The most
honourable people saw no great harm in cheating the post to send a word
of comfort or encouragement to an absent friend,--it was a vice that
leaned to virtue's side. But it was a bad thing for the country that
people should be driven to such devices, in obeying a natural and proper
impulse. The man who began by smuggling letters, might end by smuggling
tobacco or brandy; and the system was morally pernicious. All felt the
evil, but remedy seemed impossible. As the urgency for a change grew to
a head, the man came to effect it,--a man "of open heart, who could
enter into family impulses; a man of philosophical ingenuity, who could
devise a remedial scheme; a man of business, who could fortify such a
scheme with impregnable accuracy"--that man was Rowland Hill.
When quite a young man, on a pedestrian excursion through the lake
district, Rowland Hill, passing a cottage door, observed the postman
deliver a letter to a woman, and overheard her, after looking anxiously
at the envelope, and then returning it, say she had no money to pay the
postage. The man was about to put it back in his wallet and pass on, for
it was an every-day thing for him to receive such a reply from the poor
countryfolk, when Mr. Hill in his goodness of heart, out of compassion
for the woman, stepped forward and paid the shilling, regardless of
many shakes of the head, and hints of remonstrance from her, which he
interpreted as merely unwillingness to trespass on a stranger's bounty.
As soon as the postman was out of sight she broke the seal, and showed
him why she did not want him to pay for the letter. The sheet was a
blank, and the envelope had served as a means of communication between
her and her correspondent. It appeared that she had arranged with her
brother, that as long as all went well with him he should send a blank
sheet in that way once a quarter, and thus she had tidings of him
without paying the postage.
As he pursued his walk, Mr. Hill could not help meditating on the
incident, which had made a deep impression on his mind. He could not
blame the poor woman and her brother for the trick they had played upon
the post office in order to correspond with each other; and yet he felt
there must be something wrong in a system which put it out of their
reach, and of others similarly circumstanced, to do so in a lawful
manner. Every country post-master had a budget of touching stories of
poor folk who were tantalized with the sight of a letter from some dear
one, full, perhaps, of kind words and cheering news, or asking sympathy
and condolence in misfortune, or transmitting money to help them in
their straits; as well as of countless little frauds of the sort
described, which they could not always harden themselves to circumvent
and punish, so piteously eager did the poor souls appear to be to get
word of their friends. And yet, in spite of all sorts of frauds, to
people in humble life letters came like "angels' visits, few and far
between."
Mr. Hill asked himself whether there was no means of lessening the cost
of postage, whether the government could not afford to charge a lower
rate, or manage to get the work done more cheaply? Keeping his ears and
eyes open, always on the alert to pick up a fact as regarded the
present, or a hint for the future, examining the mode of carriage and
delivery, the routes chosen, and the time occupied, Mr. Hill, after a
while, arrived at the conviction, that the postage rates might not only
be reduced, but that the transmission of letters might be more quickly
performed by a remodelling of the system. He ascertained that the cost
of mere transit incurred upon a letter sent from London to Edinburgh, a
distance of 400 miles, was not more than a thirty-sixth part of a penny,
and that, therefore, there was a margin, under the existing charge, of
11-35/36d. for extra expenses and profit. He observed that the twopenny
posts of London and other large towns were found to answer very well,
although people, being within easy distances of each other, did not need
so much as in the country to correspond in writing, and that the
carriers, in spite of the illegality of the traffic, had loads of
letters to deliver at a penny each, and that penny paid them for their
trouble, as well as their risk of detection. He therefore came to the
conclusion, that what was wanted, and what it was quite possible to
establish, was a uniform penny postage rate over the whole of the United
Kingdom. He calculated that if that were adopted, the number of people
then in the habit of writing letters would write a great many more than
ever; that others, who had been precluded by the expense from
corresponding, would come into the field; and that hundreds of letters
forwarded illegally would now pass through the post, so that the number
of letters sent by post would be increased fourfold, and the revenue, at
first, perhaps a trifle curtailed, would soon mount up again.
The post-office authorities were greatly shocked and disgusted at so
audacious and utopian a proposal. But the public were greatly delighted
with it, only doubting whether it was not too good news to be true.
First by means of an anonymous pamphlet, then by direct and personal
application to the government, Mr. Hill endeavoured to get his plans
taken into consideration--no easy matter, for circumlocution officials
had passed from contemptuous indifference to active hostility, as they
gradually discovered how formidable an antagonist in the truth and
accuracy of his calculations, the sincerity and earnestness of his
purpose, they had to deal with. It was a great national cause Mr. Hill
was fighting, and he was not to be put down. The people took his side,
Parliament granted an inquiry, and the result was a report in favour of
his scheme. On the 17th of August 1839--why is not the anniversary kept
with rejoicings?--penny postage became the law of the land.
During the last weeks of the year a uniform fourpenny rate was charged
by way of accustoming people to the cheap system, and saving official
feelings from the rude shock of a sudden descent from the respectable
rate of a shilling, to the vulgar one of a penny. On the 10th January
1840 the penny system came into force. At first Mr. Hill availed himself
of a suggestion thrown out some years before by Mr. Charles Knight, that
the best way of collecting the penny postage on newspapers would be to
have stamped covers; but subsequently stamped envelopes were done away
with, and queen's heads introduced. The franking privilege, of course,
died with the dear postage.
Upon the adoption of the scheme, Mr. Hill received an appointment in the
post office in order to superintend its working; but he had an uneasy
berth of it. His plan was adopted only in part,--the postage rate was
lowered, while the other compensating and essential features were thrown
aside; official jealousy of reform showed itself in various attempts to
thwart his efforts, and to fulfil its prediction of failure to the
scheme. The consequence was, that the immediate results were not so
satisfactory as could have been wished. The increase in the number of
letters was certainly very great. During the last month of the old
system the total number of letters passing through the post office was
little more than two millions and a half, of which only a fifth were
paid letters; while a twelvemonth after the introduction of the new
system the total number of letters had risen to nearly six millions per
month, of which the unpaid letters formed less than a twelfth part. Very
heavy expenses, however, not connected with the new plan, had been
incurred; and the consequence was, that the profits of the post office
were only a fourth of what they had been. Advantage was taken of this to
get Mr. Hill ousted from his post; but, after he had transferred his
services for some years to the management of the London and Brighton
Railway, the authorities were glad to receive him back again, to place
the remodelling of the system in his hands, and to allow him to
introduce the other parts of his scheme which had before been neglected.
In this work Mr. Hill was busily engaged for a number of years, and most
of his plans were gradually carried out with great advantage to the
public. In 1846 a public testimonial of L13,360 was presented to Mr.
Hill in acknowledgment of his distinguished services to the country; and
at a later date he was made a Knight of the Bath.
Cheap postage has now been fairly tried, and must be pronounced a grand
success. It has become part and parcel of our national life, and has
been found precious as the gift of a new faculty. We should miss the
loss of cheap and rapid correspondence with our friends and
acquaintances almost as much as the loss of speech or the loss of sight.
The postman has now to find his way to the humblest, poorest districts,
where twenty years back his knock was never heard; and what was once a
rare luxury, has now come to be considered a common necessary of life.
Instead of only seventy-six millions of letters passing through the post
in a year, as in 1838, the number has risen to between seven and eight
hundred millions. On the average every individual in England receives
twenty-eight letters a-year (in London the individual average is
forty-six), in Scotland eighteen, and in Ireland nine.
The gross revenue derived from these sources is over four millions; and
some of the railway companies each make more money out of the conveyance
of the mails in a year, than the annual revenue of the whole kingdom in
the days of William and Mary.
The moral and social effects of the cheap postage are incalculable. It
has tended to strengthen and perpetuate domestic ties, to bring the most
scattered and distant members of a family under the benign influences of
home, and to foster feelings of friendship and sympathy between man and
man. Upon the education and intelligence of the people, too, it has
had, concurrently with other causes, a marked effect. Many who looked
upon the art of writing as only a temptation to forgery, were induced to
take pen in hand and master the science of pot-hooks and hangers, for
the sake of corresponding with their friends, and of being able to read
the letters they received. In 1839 a third of the men and half of the
women who were married, according to the registrar's returns, could not
sign their own names; in 1857 that was the case with only a seventh of
the men, and a fifth of the women; and not a little of this advanced
education may be attributed to the impulse given by the introduction of
cheap postage.
Nor have the advantages derived from the post office by the great body
of the public ended here. It has shown itself the most progressive
department of the government, and has undertaken many benevolent
branches of work which were never contemplated by Sir Rowland Hill. Thus
it carries on an extensive savings-bank system, worked out by Mr. Frank
Ives Scudamore, adopted by Mr. Gladstone when Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and established by Act of Parliament in 1861. This valuable
department, whose operations are now of a very extensive character,
keeps a separate account for every depositor, acknowledges the receipt,
and, on the requisite notice being furnished, sends out warrants
authorizing post-masters to pay such sums as depositors may wish to
withdraw. The deposits are handed over to the Commissioners for the
reduction of the National Debt, and repaid to the depositors through the
post office. The rate of interest payable to depositors is two and a
half per cent. Each depositor has his savings-bank book, which is sent
to him yearly for examination, and the increasing interest calculated
and allowed.
The post office now acts, too, as a life-insurance society, offering
advantages to the operative which no other society can offer, and which
the public are beginning to appreciate.
In 1869 the entire telegraphic system of the United Kingdom passed into
the hands of the post office, whose administrators have shown themselves
anxious to offer increased facilities to the public for the transaction
of business. The number of telegraphic stations has been greatly
increased, and the rate reduced at which messages are flashed from one
part of the island to the other.
Finally, a recent innovation, made entirely in the interest of the
public weal, is the introduction of _Halfpenny Post Cards_. On one side
of these missives the sender writes the name and address of his
correspondent; on the other, the communication intended for him. The
card already bears a halfpenny stamp impressed, and nothing more remains
to be done but to deposit it in the nearest office or pillar-post. We
think, then, it may fairly be said that the post office has shown itself
anxious to "keep abreast" with the ever-increasing wants of the
commercial classes of Great Britain.
* * * * *
While these pages are passing through the press, the following
particulars, apparently issued under official direction, have attracted
our attention. We append them here, as they cannot fail to interest the
reader:--"It appears that there are in the United Kingdom 6 miles 712
yards of _pneumatic tubes_ in connection with the postal telegraphic
system (1871). Of these, 4 miles 638 yards exist in London, and 2 miles
74 yards in the provinces--the latter being confined to Liverpool,
Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow. Of the total length of tubes now
existing, only 2 miles 1324 yards existed prior to the transfer of the
telegraphs to the post office; so that no less than 3 miles 1148 yards
have been laid since that date; or, in other words, the system has been
considerably more than doubled in less than a year. The total length of
new tubes ordered and in progress exceeds 3 miles, and when these are
completed, the system will be nearly 10 miles in length. All of the
tubes in the provinces, and all but two of those in London, are worked
on Clark's system. The two which form an exception are those between
Telegraph Street and St. Martin's-le-Grand, which are worked on Siemens'
system. The former are made of lead, with a diameter varying from 1-1/4
to 2-1/4 inches--the more frequent size being 1-1/2 inches. The latter
are made of iron, and have a diameter of 3 inches. The idea of iron
tubes worked on Siemens' principle is derived, we believe, from Berlin,
where the system is entirely of this description; and of the new tubes
in progress, that from St. Martin's-le-Grand to Temple Bar will be of
this kind. All of the tubes now in existence are worked in both
directions by means of alternate pressure and vacuum; the motive power,
in the shape of a steam-engine, being stationed at the central office,
with which the out-stations have communication by this means. It is
interesting to note the difference of time occupied by the different
tubes in London in passing the 'carriers' through from one end to the
other--the speed being governed by the length and diameter of the tube,
and by the circumstance whether it is carried in a straight line, or has
to encounter sharp curves and bends on its way. The great advantage of
this means of communication, for short distance, over the electric is,
that the tubes are not liable to sudden blocks of work as the wires are,
and that a dozen or more messages may be sent through, at one blow, if
desired. For local telegraphs in great towns the pneumatic system is
invaluable, and is certain to be greatly extended under the postal
administration."