AT THE POST OFFICE
As the evident weakening of Peel's Government became more marked, the
thoughts of the man who had been sacrificed to official intrigues, and
unto whom it was, as he pathetically writes, “grief and bitterness to
be so long kept aloof from my true work,” turned longingly towards
the Post Office and to his insecurely established and only partially
developed plan. With a change of Ministry, better things must surely
come.
His hopes were realised. In 1846 the Peel Administration fell, and
Lord John (afterwards Earl) Russell became Prime Minister. The public
voice, clearly echoed in the Press, demanded Rowland Hill's recall to
office, there to complete his reform.[174]
One of the first intimations he received of his probable restoration
was a letter from Mr Warburton advising him to be “within call if
wanted.” A discussion had risen overnight in Parliament. Mr Duncombe
had complained of the management of the Post Office, and so had Mr
Parker, the Secretary to the Treasury. The new Postmaster-General,
Lord Clanricarde, it was reported, had found “the whole establishment
in a most unsatisfactory condition”; and the new Prime Minister
himself was “by no means satisfied with the state of the Post Office,”
and did not “think the plans of reform instituted by Mr Hill had been
sufficiently carried out.” Messrs Hume and Warburton urged Mr Hill's
recall.[175]
Several of the good friends who had worked so well for the reform both
within and without Parliament also approached the new Government,
which, indeed, was not slow to act; and my father entered, not, as
before, the Treasury, but his fitter field of work—the Post Office.
The whirligig of time was indeed bringing in his revenges. An entire
decade had elapsed since the reformer, then hopeful and enthusiastic,
inwardly digested the cabful of volumes sent him by Mr Wallace, and
dictated to Mrs Hill the pages of “Post Office Reform.” He had at
the time been denied admission to the Post Office when seeking for
information as to the working of the old system he was destined to
destroy. He now found himself installed within the official precincts,
and in something resembling authority there.
Thus before the passing of the year 1846 he was able to comment yet
further in his diary on the curious parallel between his own treatment
and that of Dockwra and Palmer. “Both these remarkable men,” he
wrote, “saw their plans adopted, were themselves engaged to work them
out, and subsequently, on the complaint of the Post Office, were
turned adrift by the Treasury.” We “were all alike in the fact of
dismissal.... I alone was so far favoured as to be recalled to aid in
the completion of my plan.”[176]
At the time when Dockwra, the most hardly used of all, was driven
from office a ruined man, and with the further aggravation of
responsibility for the costs of a trial which had been decided
unjustly against him, the “merry monarch's” numerous progeny were
being lavishly provided for out of the national purse. The contrast
between their treatment and that of the man who had been one of the
greatest benefactors to his country renders his case doubly hard.
In an interview which Mr Warburton had with the Postmaster-General
preparatory to Rowland Hill's appointment, the Member for Bridport
pointed to the fact that his friend was now fifty-one years of
age, and that it would be most unfair to call on him to throw up
his present assured position only to run risk of being presently
“shelved”; and further urged the desirability of creating for him the
post of Adviser to the Post Office, in order that his time should
not be wasted in mere routine duty. At the same time, Mr Warburton
stipulated that Rowland Hill should not be made subordinate to the
inimical permanent head of the Office. Had Mr Warburton's advice
been followed, it would have been well for the incompleted plan, the
reformer, and the public service. Rowland Hill himself suggested, by
way of official designation, the revival of Palmer's old title of
Surveyor-General to the Post Office; but the proposal was not received
with favour. Ultimately he was given the post of Secretary to the
Postmaster-General, a title especially created for him, which lapsed
altogether when at last he succeeded to Colonel Maberly's vacated
chair. The new office was of inferior rank and of smaller salary than
his rival's; and, as a natural consequence, the old hindrances and
thwartings were revived, and minor reforms were frequently set aside
or made to wait for several years longer. Happily, it was now too late
for the penny post itself to be swept away; the country would not have
allowed it; and in this, the seventh year of its establishment, its
author was glad to record that the number of letters delivered within
12 miles of St Martin's-le-Grand was already equal to that delivered
under the old system throughout the whole United Kingdom.
By 1846 Rowland Hill was occupying a better pecuniary position than
when in 1839 he went to the Treasury. He had made his mark in the
railway world; and just when rumours of his retirement therefrom
were gaining ground, the South Western Railway Board of Directors
offered him the managership of that line. The salary proposed was
unusually high, and the invitation was transparently veiled under
a Desdemona-like request that he would recommend to the Board some
one with qualifications “as much like your own as possible.” But
he declined this and other flattering offers, resigned his three
directorships, and thus relinquished a far larger income than that
which the Government asked him to accept. The monetary sacrifice,
however, counted for little when weighed in the balance against the
prospect of working out his plan.
His first interview with Lord Clanricarde was a very pleasant
one; and he left his new chief's presence much impressed with his
straightforward, business-like manner.
On this first day at St Martin's-le-Grand's Colonel Maberly and
Rowland Hill met, and went through the ceremony of shaking hands. But
the old animosity still possessed considerable vitality. The hatchet
was but partially interred.
With Lord Clanricarde my father worked harmoniously; the diarist after
one especially satisfactory interview writing that he “never met with
a public man who is less afraid of a novel and decided course of
action.”
Early in his postal career, my father, by Lord Clanricarde's wish,
went to Bristol to reorganise the Post Office there, the first of
several similar missions to other towns. In nearly every case he
found one condition of things prevailing: an office small, badly
lighted, badly ventilated, and with defective sanitary arrangements;
the delivery of letters irregular and unnecessarily late; the mail
trains leaving the provincial towns at inconvenient hours; and other
vexatious regulations, or lack of regulations. He found that by an
annual expenditure of £125 Bristol's chief delivery of the day could
be completed by nine in the morning instead of by noon. Although
unable to carry out all the improvements needed, he effected a good
deal, and on the termination of his visit received the thanks of the
clerks and letter-carriers.[177]
In 1847 a thorough revision of the money order system was entrusted to
him; and, thenceforth, that office came entirely under his control.
Seventeen years later, Lord Clanricarde, in the Upper House, paid his
former lieutenant, then about to retire, a handsome tribute of praise,
saying, among other things, that, but for Mr Hill, the business of
that office could hardly have been much longer carried on. No balance
had been struck, and no one knew what assets were in hand. On passing
under Mr Hill's management, the system was altered: four or five
entries for each order were made instead of eleven; and official
defalcation or fraud, once common, was now no more heard of.[178]
Lord Clanricarde placed the management of that office under my
father's command in order that the latter should have a free hand; and
it was settled that all returns to Parliament should be submitted to
Rowland Hill before being sent to the Treasury, with leave to attack
any that seemed unfair to penny postage. Previous to this act of
friendliness and justice on the Postmaster-General's part, papers had
generally been submitted to the permanent head of the office and even
to officers of lower rank, but had been withheld from the reformer's
observation.[179]
“Eternal vigilance” is said to be the necessary price to pay for
the preservation of our liberties; and, half a century ago, a like
vigilance had to be exercised whenever and wherever the interests of
the postal reform were concerned.
The arrears in the Money Order Departments of the London and
provincial offices were so serious that to clear them off would, it
was declared, fully employ thirty-five men for four years. The Post
Office had always maintained that the Money Order Department yielded
a large profit; but a return sent to Parliament in 1848 showed that
the expenditure of the year before the change of management exceeded
the receipts by more than £10,000. In 1849 my father expressed “a
confident expectation” that in the course of the year the Money Order
Office would become self-supporting. By 1850 that hope was realised.
By 1852 the office showed a profit of £11,664, thereby, in six years,
converting the previous loss into a gain of more than £22,000;[180]
and during the last year of Rowland Hill's life (1878-79) the profits
were £39,000.
A reduction of size in the money order forms and letters of advice,
and the abolition of duplicate advices effected a considerable saving
in stationery alone; while the reduction of fees and the greater
facilities for the transmission of money given by cheap postage
raised the amount sent, in ten years only, twenty-fold. In 1839 about
£313,000 passed through the post; and in 1864, the year of my father's
resignation, £16,494,000. By 1879 the sum had risen to £27,000,000;
and it has gone on steadily increasing.
Perhaps the following extract from Rowland Hill's journal is
satisfactory, as showing improvement in account-keeping, etc. “July
8th, 1853.—A recent return to Parliament of the number and cost of
prosecutions [for Post Office offences] from 1848 to 1852 inclusive,
shows an enormous decrease—nearly, I think, in the ratio of three to
one. This very satisfactory result is, I believe, mainly owing to the
improved arrangements in the Money Order Office.”[181]
The new postal system, indeed, caused almost a revolution in official
account-keeping. Under the old system the accounts of the provincial
postmasters were usually from three to six months in arrear, and
no vouchers were demanded for the proper disbursement of the money
with which the postmasters were credited. In consequence of this
dilatoriness, the officials themselves were often ignorant of the
actual state of affairs, or were sometimes tempted to divert the
public funds to their own pockets, while the revenue was further
injured by the delay in remitting balances. Under the new system each
postmaster rendered his account weekly, showing proper vouchers for
receipts and payments and the money left in hand, to the smallest
possible sum. This improvement was accompanied by lighter work to a
smaller number of men, and a fair allowance of holiday to each of them.
When, in 1851, my father's attention was turned to the question
of facilitating life insurance for the benefit of the staff, and
especially of its humbler members, it was arranged with Sir George
Cornwall Lewis,[182] at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, that,
to aid in making up the requisite funds, the proceeds of unclaimed
money orders, then averaging £1,100 a year, and all such money found
in “dead” letters as could not be returned to their writers, should
be used. Accumulations brought the fund up to about £12,000. In this
manner “The Post Office Widows' and Orphans' Fund Society” was placed
on a firm footing. A portion of the void order fund was also employed
in rescuing from difficulties another society in the London office
called “The Letter-Carriers' Burial Fund.”[183]
Although in 1857 my father, with the approval of Lord Colchester,
the then Postmaster-General, had proposed the extension of the money
order system to the Colonies, it was not till the Canadian Government
took the initiative in 1859 that the Treasury consented to try the
experiment. It proved so successful that the measure was gradually
extended to all the other colonies, and even to some foreign countries.
Like Palmer, Rowland Hill was a born organiser, and work such as that
effected in the Money Order Office was so thoroughly congenial that
it could scarcely fail to be successful. The race of born organisers
can hardly be extinct. Is it vain to hope that one may yet arise to
set in order the said-to-be-unprofitable Post Office Savings Bank,
whose abolition is sometimes threatened? As a teacher of thrift to one
of the least thrifty of nations, it is an institution that should
be mended rather than ended. Mending must surely be possible when,
for example, each transaction of that Bank costs 7.55d. exclusive of
postage—or so we are told—while other savings banks can do their work
at a far lower price.[184]
The following story is illustrative of the strange want of
common-sense which distinguishes the race, especially when posting
missives. “Mr Ramsey, (missing-letter clerk),” writes Rowland Hill in
his diary of 27th May 1847, “has brought me a packet containing whole
banknotes to the amount of £1,500 so carelessly made up that they had
all slipped out, and the packet was addressed to some country house in
Hereford, no post-town being named. It had found its way, after much
delay, into the post office at Ross, and had been sent to London by
the postmistress.”
It is not often that the head of so dignified and peaceful an
institution as the Post Office is seen in a maimed condition, and that
condition the result of fierce combat. Nevertheless, in that stirring
time known as “the year of revolutions” (1848), a newly-appointed
chief of the French Post Office, in the pleasant person of M. Thayer,
arrived in this country on official business. He came supported on
crutches, having been badly wounded in the foot during the June
insurrection in Paris. He told us that his family came originally from
London, and that one of our streets was named after them. If, as was
surmised, he made a pilgrimage to Marylebone to discover it, it must
have looked to one fresh from Paris a rather dismal thoroughfare.
About 1849 Rowland Hill instituted periodical meetings of the Post
Office Surveyors to discuss questions which had hitherto been settled
by the slower method of writing minutes. These postal parliaments were
so satisfactory that henceforth they were often held. They proved
“both profitable and pleasant, increased the interest of the surveyors
in the work of improvement, and by the collision of many opinions,
broke down prejudices, and overthrew obstacles.”
One of the greatest boons which, under my father's lead, was secured
to the letter-carriers, sorters, postmasters, and others, all over
the kingdom, was the all but total abolition of Post Office Sunday
labour. In a single day 450 offices in England and Wales were relieved
of a material portion of their Sunday duties. Three months later the
measure was extended to Ireland and Scotland, 234 additional offices
being similarly relieved. While these arrangements were in process of
settlement, Rowland Hill, in the autumn of 1849, resolved to still
further curtail Sunday labour. Hitherto the relief had been carried
out in the Money Order Department only, but it was now decided to
close the offices entirely between the hours of ten and five. To make
this easier, it became necessary to provide for the transmission
of a certain class of letters through London on the Sunday, and to
ask a few men to lend their services on this account. Compulsion
there was none: every man was a volunteer; and for this absence of
force my father, from beginning to end of the movement, resolutely
bargained. Previous to the enactment of this measure of relief, 27
men had been regularly employed every Sunday at the General Post
Office. Their number was temporarily increased to 52 in order that
some 5,829 men—all of whom were compulsory workers—should elsewhere be
relieved, each of some five-and-three-quarters hours of labour every
“day of rest.” In a few months, all the arrangements being complete,
and the plan got into working order, the London staff was reduced to
little more than half the number employed before the change was made.
Ultimately, the services even of this tiny contingent were reduced,
four men sufficing; and Sunday labour at the Post Office was cut down
to its minimum amount—a state of things which remained undisturbed
during my father's connection with that great public Department.
The actual bearing of this beneficent reform was, strange to say,
very generally misunderstood, and perhaps more especially by “The
Lord's Day Society.” Thus for some months Rowland Hill was publicly
denounced as a “Sabbath-breaker” and a friend and accomplice of His
Satanic Majesty. The misunderstanding was not altogether discouraged
by some of the old Post Office irreconcilables; but it is only fair
to the memory of the chief opponent to record the fact that when
the ill-feeling was at its height Colonel Maberly called his clerks
together, told them that, owing to unjust attacks, the Department was
in danger, and exhorted them to stand forth in its defence.[185]
When the turmoil began the Postmaster-General was inclined to side
with some of the leading officials who advocated compulsion should
the number volunteering for the London work be insufficient. Happily,
the supply was more than ample. But when the trouble subsided Lord
Clanricarde generously admitted that he had been wrong and my father
right.
Some of the provincial postmasters and other officials,
misunderstanding the case, joined in the clamour, and went far on the
way to defeat a measure planned for their relief. Others were more
discerning, and the postmaster of Plymouth wrote to say that at his
office alone thirty men would be relieved by an enactment which was
“one of the most important in the annals of the Post Office.”
The agitation showed how prone is the public to fly to wrong
conclusions. Here was Rowland Hill striving to diminish Sunday work,
and being denounced as if he was seeking to increase it! It goes
without saying that, during the agitation, numerous letters, generally
anonymous, and sometimes violently abusive, deluged the Department,
and especially the author of the relief; and that not even Rowland
Hill's family were spared the pain of receiving from candid and,
of course, entirely unknown friends letters of the most detestable
description. Truly, the ways of the unco gude are past finding out.
While the conflict raged, many of the clergy proved no wiser than the
generality of their flocks, and were quite as vituperative. Others,
to their honour be it recorded, tried hard to stem the tide of
ignorance and bigotry. Among these enlightened men were the Hon. and
Rev. Grantham Yorke, rector of St Philip's, Birmingham; the Professor
Henslow already mentioned; and Dr Vaughan, then head-master of Harrow
and, later, Dean of Llandaff. All three, although at the time personal
strangers, wrote letters which did their authors infinite credit, and
which the recipient valued highly. The veteran free-trader, General
Peronnet Thompson, also contributed a series of able articles on the
subject to the then existing _Sun_.
Some of the newspapers at first misunderstood the question quite as
thoroughly as did the public; but, so far as we ever knew, only the
_Leeds Mercury_—unto whose editor, in common with other editors,
had been sent a copy of the published report on the reduction
of Sunday labour—had the frankness to express regret for having
misrepresented the situation.[186] Other newspapers were throughout
more discriminating; and the _Times_, in its issue of 25th April 1850,
contained an admirable and lengthy exposition of the case stated with
very great clearness and ability.[187]
“Carrying out a plan of relief which I had suggested as a more general
measure when at the Treasury,” says Rowland Hill in his diary, “ I
proposed to substitute a late Saturday night delivery in the nearer
suburbs for that on Sunday morning. By this plan more than a hundred
men would be forthwith released from Sunday duty in the metropolitan
district alone.”[188] He further comments, perhaps a little slyly,
on the “notable fact that while so much has been said by the London
merchants and bankers against a delivery where their places of
business are, of course, closed, not a word has been said against a
delivery in the suburbs where they live.”[189]
To give further relief to Sunday labour, Rowland Hill proposed “so
to arrange the work as to have the greatest practicable amount of
sorting done in the travelling offices on the railways; the earlier
portion ending by five on Sunday morning, and the later not beginning
till nine on Sunday evening. The pursuit of this object led to a
singular device.”[190] He was puzzling over the problem how to deal
with letters belonging to good-sized towns too near to London to
allow of sorting on the way. The railway in case was the London and
North-Western; the towns St Albans and Watford. The thought suddenly
flashed upon him that the easiest way out of the difficulty would be
to let the _down_ night mail train to Liverpool receive the St Albans
and Watford _up_ mails to London; and that on arrival at some more
remote town on the road to Liverpool they should be transferred,
sorted, to an _up_ train to be carried to London. No time would be
really lost to the public, because, while the letters were performing
the double journey their destined recipients would be in bed; nor
would any additional expense or trouble be incurred. The plan was a
success, was extended to other railways, and the apparently eccentric
proceeding long since became a matter of everyday occurrence.
In 1851 prepayment in money of postage on inland letters was abolished
at all those provincial offices where it had thus far been allowed.
Early in the following year the abolition was extended to Dublin, next
to Edinburgh, and, last of all, to London—thus completing, throughout
the United Kingdom, the establishment of prepayment by stamps alone,
and thereby greatly simplifying the proceedings at all offices. To
save trouble to the senders of many circulars, the chief office, St
Martin's-le-Grand, continued to receive prepayment in money from 10
A.M. to 5 P.M., in sums of not less than £2 at a time: an arrangement,
later, extended to other offices.
An extract from Rowland Hill's diary, under date 29th October 1851,
says: “A clerkship at Hong-Kong having become vacant by death, the
Postmaster-General has, on my recommendation, determined not to fill
it, and to employ part of the saving thus effected in giving to the
postmaster and each of the remaining clerks in turn leave of absence
for a year and a half,[191] with full salary, and an allowance of
£100 towards the expense of the voyage. By these means, while ample
force will still be left, the poor fellows will have the opportunity
of recruiting their health.”
Early in 1852 Rowland Hill also writes in his diary that “The
Postmaster-General has sanctioned a measure of mine which, I expect,
will have the effect of converting the railway stations in all the
larger towns into gratuitous receiving offices.” The plan, convenient
as it has proved, was, however, long in being carried out.
The agitation to extend penny postage beyond the limits of the
British Isles is much older than many people suppose. Far back in the
'forties Elihu Burritt[192] strove long and manfully in the cause of
“_ocean_ penny postage”; and in my father's diary, under date 5th
March 1853, it is recorded that the Postmaster-General received a
deputation “which came to urge the extension of penny postage to the
Colonies.”[193] It was a reform long delayed; and as usual the Post
Office was reproached for not moving with the times, etc. That a large
portion of the blame lay rather with the great steamship companies,
which have never failed to charge heavily for conveyance of the mails,
is far too little considered.
But the great steamship companies are not alone in causing the Post
Office to be made a scapegoat for their own sins in the way of
exacting heavy payments. In 1853 Rowland Hill gave evidence before a
Parliamentary committee to consider railway and canal charges; and
showed that, owing to the strained relations between the Post Office
and the railway companies, the use of trains for mail conveyance
was so restricted as to injure the public and even the companies
themselves; also that, while the cost of carrying passengers and
goods had been greatly reduced on the railways, the charge for
carrying the mails had grown by nearly 300 per cent., although their
weight had increased by only 140 per cent. He also laid before the
Committee a Bill—approved by two successive Postmasters-General—framed
to prescribe reasonable rates, and laying down a better principle
of arbitration in respect of trains run at hours fixed by the
Postmaster-General. The Committee, as shown by their Report, mainly
adopted Rowland Hill's views, which were indeed perfectly just,
and, if adopted, would, in his estimation, have reduced the annual
expenditure in railway conveyance—then about £360,000—by at least
£100,000. The proposals were made to secure fair rates of charge in
all new railway bills, but it was intended to extend the arrangement
eventually to already existing railways. But the railway influence in
Parliament was too strong to allow adoption of these improvements;
and attempts subsequently made were unavailing to alter the injurious
law enacted early in the railway era, and intended to last only
till experience of the working of the lines should have afforded
the requisite data for laying down a scale of charges.[194] Being
of opinion that, in order to serve the public more effectually, far
greater use should be made of the railways, the reformer tried to
procure for the Post Office the unrestricted use of all trains for
a moderate fixed charge. Owing, however, to the existing law, the
uncertainty of rates of payment, the excessive awards frequently made,
and other causes, this useful measure was not adopted, with the result
that the subsidies to the companies went on increasing in magnitude.
In the same year the Great Northern Railway had spontaneously begun
to run a train at night, at such speed as to outstrip the night mail
on the London and North-Western line. Believing that the object was
to tempt the public into agitating for the use of the rival train
and line, my father applied to the North-Western Railway company for
such acceleration as would obviate the possibility of such a demand
being made. He also suggested the introduction of what are now called
limited mails; but this idea was not adopted for some years.[195]
Till the acceleration was accomplished the answer to a letter leaving
London by the night mail for Edinburgh or Glasgow could not be
received till the afternoon of the next day but one.
Increased speed, however, was found to produce unpunctuality,
misunderstandings, and other evils; and the public grew dissatisfied.
Of course the railway companies blamed the Post Office, and,
equally, of course, though with better reason, the Post Office
blamed the railway companies. My father proposed that each side
should be subjected to fines whenever irregularity occurred, and
that punctuality should receive reward. But the proposal was not
accepted. In 1855, however, the attempt was again made to induce the
railway companies to agree to the payment of mutual penalties in
case of unpunctuality, coupled with reward to the companies, but not
to the Office, for punctual performance. Only one company—the North
British—accepted the proposal, the result being that the instances
of irregularity were in half a year brought down from 112 to 9, the
company at the same time receiving a reward of £400.
Later, the railway companies agreed to accelerate their night mails
between London and Edinburgh and Glasgow. An _additional_ payment
of some £15,000 a year had to be made, but the benefit to the two
countries was so great that the outlay was not grudged. The effort to
extend a like boon to Ireland was not so successful. The companies
which had begun with moderate demands, suddenly asked for lessened
acceleration and increased remuneration; and the Government adopted
their views in preference to those of the Postmaster-General and the
postal reformer. As a natural consequence, an annual subsidy of over
£100,000 had to be paid in addition to the necessary cost of provision
for letter-sorting in the trains and steamships. Punctuality also
was often disregarded, and penalties were suspended on the score of
insufficient pier accommodation at Holyhead.
Some of the companies were short-sighted enough to refuse what would
have been remunerative work offered by the Post Office. On one short
line of 23 miles, £3,000 per annum was demanded for the carriage of a
night mail; and, although the Office offered to furnish a train of its
own, as by law any one was entitled to do, and to pay the appointed
tolls, though legally exempt from so doing—such payment to be
settled by arbitration—the proposal was rejected. Ultimately, a more
circuitous route was adopted at a third of the cost first demanded.
There was great need of reorganisation and common-sense rearrangement
in these matters. Why, for instance, when carrying a letter between
Land's End and John O'Groat's should twenty-one separate contracts,
irrespective of engagements with rural messengers and of plans for the
conveyance of mail-bags to and from railway stations and post offices,
have been required?
With a view to the reduction of these extravagant subsidies, Rowland
Hill proposed that “Government should, on ample security, and to a
limited extent, advance loans on the terms on which it could itself
borrow to such companies as were willing to adopt a reasonable tariff
of charge for postal services.” He hoped by these means to reduce
the annual payments to the companies by about £250,000. The Duke of
Argyll, then Postmaster-General, and Mr Hutchinson, Chairman of the
Stock Exchange, highly approved of the plan; but, though it evoked
much interest, and came up again as a public question more than once
in later years, no progress was made. Were State purchase of the
railways to become the law of the land, solution of the difficulty
might yet be discovered.
One of the measures Rowland Hill hoped to see accomplished was the
conveyance of mails on one of the principal lines by special trains
absolutely limited to Post Office service. The cost would be moderate
if the companies could be induced to join in an arrangement under
which, the bare additional expense in each instance being ascertained
by a neutral authority, a certain fixed multiple of that amount
should be paid. Captain (afterwards Sir Douglas) Galton, of the Board
of Trade, and Sir William Cubitt heartily approved of the plan, the
latter estimating the cost in question at 1s. to 1s. 3d. a mile, and
advising that two and a half times that amount should be offered.
Under this rule the Post Office would pay less for the whole train
than it already paid for a small part of one. The plan of charge by
fixed scale found little favour with the companies; but the proposed
special mail service was ultimately adopted.
The Postmaster-General (Lord Canning's) Commission in 1853 on
the Packet Service—which included among its members Lord Canning
himself and the then Sir Stafford Northcote—did much useful work,
and published an able Report giving a brief history of “contract
mail-packets”; explaining why, under older conditions, heavy subsidies
were necessary, and expressing their opinion that, as now the steamers
so employed carry passengers and freight, these large subsidies could
no longer be required. When a new route has been opened for the
extension of commerce, further continuance of the Service, unless
desirable on account of important political reasons, should depend on
its tendency to become self-supporting. Among other recommendations
made were the omission in future contracts of many conditions whose
effect is increase of cost; a reduction of the contract to an
undertaking (subject to penalties for failure) to convey the mails at
fixed periods and with a certain degree of speed, and an agreement
that, except in the case of a new route, contracts should not be
allowed to exist for a long period.
When at last the management of the Packet Service was transferred from
the Admiralty to the Post Office, a useful—indeed necessary—reform
was accomplished. While in the hands of the former Department, the
Service had become a source of very heavy expense, owing, in great
part, to its extension for political reasons very far beyond postal
requirements.
Great inconvenience had resulted also from the slight control
possessed by the Post Office over the Service. In 1857, for example,
the contract with the West Indian Packet Company was renewed without
the knowledge of either the Postmaster-General or of Rowland Hill. The
absence in the contracts of stipulations as to punctuality likewise
had ill effects. The most punctual service at this time was that
between Devonport and the Cape of Good Hope, as the Union Steamship
Company, into whose contract such stipulations had been introduced
in strong form, made during 1859 every one of its voyages within the
appointed time.
Investigation of the Packet Service accounts showed how abundant
was the room for diminution of cost. The annual charge to the Home
Government for conveying the mails to and from Honduras was, as a
consequence, readily cut down from £8,000 to £2,000, and eventually
to £1,500. There had always been a heavy loss on the foreign and
colonial service. That to the Cape of Good Hope and Natal was reduced
in six years from £28,000 to £5,400 per annum. Much of the merit of
this diminution of cost, as regards the Packet Service, was always
attributed by my father to his youngest brother Frederic; and while
that department remained under the latter's control the large annual
loss was reduced by more than £200,000—one-half the sum—by the cutting
down of expenditure, the other half by increased yield from the
correspondence. The cost to the British taxpayer was further lightened
by calling upon the colonists, who had hitherto been exempt from all
such charges, henceforth to bear their fair share of the expense. Thus
both punctuality and economy were insisted upon.
About 1857 a persistent demand arose for a mail service to Australia
by the Panama route, the Press vigorously taking up the agitation,
and the Government being accused of “red tapeism” because they did
not move in the matter, or not until the outcry grew so loud that it
was deemed expedient to apply to the shipping agencies for tenders.
Being one day at the Athenæum Club, Rowland Hill met a friend, a man
of superior education and varied knowledge, who had long held an
important post in the Far East, almost on the shores of the Pacific.
“Why,” asked this friend, “do you not establish an Australian mail by
the Panama route?” “Why should we?” was the counter-question. “Because
it is the shortest,” replied the friend. At once Rowland Hill proposed
an adjournment to the drawing-room, where stood a large globe; the
test of measurement was applied, and thereupon was demonstrated the
fallacy of a widespread popular belief, founded on ignorance of the
enormous width of the Pacific Ocean—a belief, as this anecdote shows,
shared even by some of those who have dwelt within reach of its
waters.[196]
But convincing friends was of far less moment than convincing the
public; and Rowland Hill drew up a Report on the subject which, backed
by the Postmaster-General, Lord Colchester, had the desired effect
of preventing, for the time being, what would have been a heavy and
useless expenditure of public money.[197]
It is found that great public ceremonies affect the weekly returns
of the number of letters passing through the post. Sometimes the
result is a perceptible increase; at other times a decrease. The
funeral of the great Duke of Wellington was held on the 18th November
1852, and “all London” was in the streets to look at it. The weekly
return, published on the 22nd, showed that the number of letters
dispatched by the evening mail from the metropolis on that memorable
18th fell off by about 100,000. The next day's letters were probably
increased by an extra 10,000. The revolutionary year, 1848, also had
a deteriorating influence on correspondence, the return published in
1849 for the previous twelvemonths showing a smaller increase than,
under ordinary circumstances, might have been expected.
In 1853 Docker's ingenious apparatus for the exchange of mail-bags
at those railway stations through which trains pass without stopping
was introduced. The process is described by the postal reformer as
follows:—“The bags to be forwarded, being suspended from a projecting
arm at the station, are so knocked off by a projection from the train
as to fall into a net which is attached to the mail carriage, and is
for the moment stretched out to receive them; while, at the same time,
the bags to be left behind, being hung out from the mail carriage, are
in like manner so struck off as to be caught in a net fixed at the
station; the whole of this complex movement being so instantaneous
that the uninformed eye cannot follow it.” It was this inability to
understand the movement which led to a ridiculous error. On the
first day of the experiment people assembled in crowds to witness
it. At Northallerton “half Yorkshire” gathered—according to the
mail inspector—and many were under the impression that the outgoing
set of bags they saw hanging to the projecting arm in readiness for
absorption by the passing train, and the incoming set hanging out
from the mail carriage, ready to be caught in the net fixed at the
station, were one and the same thing. Though what useful purpose could
be served by the mere “giving a lift” of a hundred yards or so to one
solitary set of bags is rather hard to perceive.
[Illustration:
By permission of the Proprietors of the “_City Press_.”
AN EARLY TRAVELLING POST OFFICE WITH MAIL BAGS EXCHANGE APPARATUS.]
The invention was not altogether a success, very heavy bags—especially
when the trains were running at great speed—being sometimes held
responsible for the occurrence of rather serious accidents. It even
became necessary to cease using the apparatus till the defect,
whatever it might be, could be put right. Several remedies were
suggested, but none proved effectual till my brother, then only
twenty-one years of age, hit upon a simple contrivance which removed
all difficulties, and thenceforth the exchange-bag apparatus worked
well. Sir William Cubitt, who had unsuccessfully striven to rectify
matters, generously eulogised his youthful rival's work.
The stamp-obliterating machines which superseded the old practice
of obliteration by hand were also my brother's invention. In former
days the man who could stamp the greatest number of letters in a
given time was usually invited to exhibit his prowess when visitors
were shown over the office. The old process had never turned out
impressions conspicuous for legibility, and means of improvement had
been for some time under consideration. But it was a trial presided
over by Lord Campbell in 1856 which precipitated matters. An important
question turned upon the exact date at which a letter had been posted,
but the obliterating stamp on the envelope was too indistinct to
furnish the necessary evidence. Lord Campbell sharply animadverted
upon the failure, and his strictures caused the Duke of Argyll—then
Postmaster-General—to write to Rowland Hill upon the subject. The
use of inferior ink was supposed to be responsible for the trouble,
and various experiments were tried, without effecting any marked
beneficial result. Objection was made to abolition of the human hand
as stamper on the ground that thus far it had proved to be the fastest
worker. Then my brother's mechanical skill came to the rescue, and
complaints as to clearness and legibility soon became rare.[198] By
the machines the obliterations were made faster than by the best
hand-work, the increase of speed being at least 50 per cent. About the
year 1903 my brother's machines began, I am told, to be superseded by
others which are said to do the work faster even than his. Judging
by some of the obliterations lately made, presumably by these later
machines, it is evident that, so far as clearness and legibility are
concerned, the newer process is not superior to the older.
My brother was a born mechanician, and, like our uncle Edwin Hill,
could, out of an active brain, evolve almost any machine for which,
in some emergency, there seemed to be need. To give free scope to
Pearson's obvious bent, our father had, in his son's early youth,
caused a large four-stalled stable adjoining our house at Hampstead
to be altered into a well-equipped workshop; and in this many a long
evening was spent, the window being often lighted up some hours
after the rest of the family had retired to bed, and my brother
being occasionally obliged to sing out, through the one open pane, a
cheery “good-night” to the passing policeman, who paused to see if a
burglarious conspiracy was being devised during the nocturnal small
hours, from the convenient vantage-ground of the outhouse.
The dream of my brother's life was to become a civil engineer, for
which profession, indeed, few young men could have been better fitted;
and the dream seemed to approach accomplishment when, during a visit
to our father, Sir William (afterwards first Lord) Armstrong spoke
most highly of Pearson's achievements—he had just put into completed
form two long-projected small inventions—and offered to take the
youth into his own works at Newcastle-on-Tyne. But the dream was
never destined to find realisation. Sir William's visit and proposal
made a fitting opportunity for the putting to my brother of a serious
question which had been in our father's head for some time. In his
son's integrity, ability, and affection, Rowland Hill had absolute
trust. Were the younger man but working with him at the Post Office,
the elder knew he could rely on unswerving support, on unwavering
fidelity. The choice of callings was laid before my brother: life
as a civil engineer—a profession in which his abilities could not
fail to command success—or the less ambitious career of a clerk at
St Martin's-le-Grand. Our father would not dwell upon his own strong
leaning towards the latter course, but with the ever-present mental
image of harassing official intrigues against himself and his hard-won
reform, it is not difficult to picture with what conflicting emotions
he must have waited his son's decision. This was left entirely in
the young man's hands; and he chose the part which he knew would
best serve his father. The cherished dream was allowed to melt into
nothingness, and my brother began his postal career not as a favoured,
but as an ordinary clerk, though one always near at hand, and always
in the complete confidence of his immediate chief. Whatever regrets
for the more congenial life Pearson may have harboured, he never, to
my knowledge, gave them audible expression, nor could any father have
had a more loyal son. When, many years later, it seemed desirable
that some official should be appointed to report on the value of the
mechanical inventions periodically offered to the Post Office, and to
supervise those already in operation, it seemed when my brother was
selected for that post as if he had only received his due, and that
merely in part.
He had also administrative ability of no mean order; and when only
twenty-eight years of age was selected by the Postmaster-General to
go to Mauritius to reorganise the post office there, which through
mismanagement had gradually drifted into a state of confusion,
apparently beyond rectification by the island authorities. He speedily
brought the office into good working order; but perhaps his Mauritian
labours will be best remembered by his substitution of certain
civilised stamps—like those then used in some of the West Indian
isles—in place of the trumpery red and blue, penny and twopenny,
productions which were the handiwork of some local artist, and which
are now so rare that they command amazingly large sums of money in the
philatelist world.
[Illustration: By permission of the Proprietor of Flett's Studios,
late London School of Photography.
PEARSON HILL.]
FOOTNOTES:
[174] The people of to-day who have never known the old postal system
can have no idea of the unanimity and strength of that voice. Memory
of the former state of things was still fresh in men's minds; and,
with perhaps one exception, no person wished for its return. “Hill,
you are the most popular man in the kingdom,” one day exclaimed an old
friend. The exception—there might have been more than one, but if so,
we were none the wiser—was one of the Bentincks who, so late as the
year 1857, suggested in the House of Commons a return to franking on
the score that penny postage was one of the greatest jobs and greatest
financial mistakes ever perpetrated. Sir Francis Baring advised Mr
Bentinck to try to bring back the old postal rates, when he would see
what the country thought of the proposal.—(“Hansard,” cxlvi. 188, 189.)
[175] By this time Mr Wallace had retired from public life, and only
a short while later became involved in pecuniary difficulties. By
the exertions of his friends and admirers, an annuity was secured to
him—a provision which, though small in comparison with his former
prosperity, placed the venerable ex-Parliamentarian well above want.
He died in 1855, aged eighty-two.
[176] “Life,” ii. 9, 10.
[177] “Life,” ii. 58.
[178] The _Times_ (Parliamentary Debates), 15th June 1864. The
Money Order Office dates from 1792. It was first known as “Stow &
Co.,” being started as a private undertaking by three Post Office
clerks; and its mission was to enable small sums of money to be
safely transmitted to our sailors and soldiers. Later, all classes
of the community were included in the benefit, the remittances to be
forwarded being still restricted to small sums. Each of the three
partners advanced £1,000 to float the enterprise, and division of
the profits gave to each about £200 a year. The commission charged
was 8d. in the pound, of which 3d. each went to the two postmasters
who received and paid the orders, and 2d. to the partners. The
Postmaster-General sanctioned the measure, which clearly supplied a
felt want, but refrained from interference with its management. In
1838 “Stow & Co.” ceased to exist, becoming thenceforth an official
department, and the then partners receiving compensation for the
surrender of their monopoly. The fees were thereupon fixed at 6d. for
sums not exceeding £2, and 1s. 6d. for sums of £2 to £5, the rates
being still further reduced in 1840.
[179] “Life,” ii. 59, 60.
[180] “Life,” ii. 257.
[181] “Life” ii. 260.
[182] Reputed author of the well-known saying that “Life would be
endurable were it not for its pleasures.”
[183] “Life,” ii. 304-307. In 1871 the amount of unclaimed money
orders was £3,390. In that year the Lords of the Treasury put an
end to this disposal of unclaimed money except in regard to the
then existing recipients of the aid; and the accumulated capital,
together with the interest thereon, about £20,707, was paid into the
Exchequer.—(Editor, G.B.H.'s, note at p. 306.)
[184] “Life,” ii. 365. (Note by its Editor.)
[185] “Life,” ii. 122. On the famous 10th of April 1848 (Chartist
day) Colonel Maberly likewise showed his martial spirit and strong
sense of the virtue of discipline when he requested Rowland Hill
to place his own clerks and those of the Money Order Office—in all
about 250—under his, the Colonel's, command, thus making up a corps
of special constables some 1,300 strong. All over London, on and
before that day, there was great excitement; a large supply of arms
was laid in, defences were erected at Governmental and other public
buildings, very little regular work was done, and there was any amount
of unnecessary scare, chiefly through the alarmist disposition of the
Duke of Wellington—seldom, rumour said, averse from placing a town in
a more or less state of siege, and ever ready to urge upon successive
Governments the desirability of spending huge sums on fortifications
whose destiny ere long was to become obsolete—though partly also
because there were many people still living who could remember the
Gordon riots immortalised in “Barnaby Rudge,” and who feared a
repetition of their excesses. But the Chartists were a different
set of men from Gordon's “tag, rag, and bobtail” followers. On the
morning of the 10th, my father, driving to the Post Office, came up
in Holborn with the long procession marching in the direction of
Kennington Common (now a park), preparatory to presenting themselves
with their petition at the Houses of Parliament. Calling on the
cabman to drive slowly, my father watched the processionists with
keen interest, and was much struck with their steady bearing, evident
earnestness, and the bright, intelligent countenances of many of them.
On close inspection, not a few terrible revolutionists are found to
look surprisingly like other people, though the comparison does not
invariably tell in favour of those other people.
[186] The _Mercury's_ article (25th April 1850) was so good that it
seems worth while to quote some of it. “Macaulay informs us that the
post, when first established, was the object of violent invective as a
manifest contrivance of the Pope to enslave the souls of Englishmen;
and most books of history or anecdote will supply stories equally
notable. But we really very much doubt whether any tale of ancient
times can match the exhibition of credulity which occurred in our own
country, and under our own eyes, within these last twelve months....
Nearly 6,000 people have been relieved from nearly six hours' work
every Sunday by the operation of a scheme which was denounced as a
deliberate encouragement to Sabbath-breaking and profanity.”
[187] _À propos_ of never answering attacks in the Press and
elsewhere, my father was not a little given to quote the opinion of
one of the Post officials who “goes so far as to declare that if he
found himself charged in a newspaper with parricide, he would hold
his tongue lest the accusation should be repeated next day with the
aggravation of matricide.”—“Life,” ii. 235.
[188] This relief, proposed in November 1849, became an accomplished
fact a few days before the year died out.
[189] “Life,” ii. 138.
[190] _Ibid._ ii. 137.
[191] In those slower-going days a large part of the holiday would be
taken up by the journey home and back.
[192] A frequent and always welcome visitor at my father's house
was this son of America—“the learned blacksmith,” as he was
habitually called. He was one of the most interesting as well as
most refreshingly unconventional of men, but was never offensively
unconventional because he was one of “Nature's noblemen.”
Sweet-tempered, gentle-mannered, and pure-minded, he won our
regard—affection even—from the first. He could never have been guilty
of uttering an unkind word to any one, not even to those who were
lukewarm on the slavery question, who did not feel inspired to join
the Peace Society, or who were languid in the cause of “ocean penny
postage.” On the last-named subject he had, as an entire stranger,
written to my father a long letter detailing his scheme, and urging
the desirability of its adoption; and it was this letter which led
to our making Elihu Burritt's acquaintance. He became a great friend
of my elder sister, and maintained with her a many years' long
correspondence. Once only do I remember seeing him angry, and then
it was the righteous indignation which an honest man displays when
confronted with a lie. It was when unto him had been attributed the
authorship of my father's plan. He would have nothing to do with
a fraudulent claim to which sundry other men have assented kindly
enough, or have even, with unblushing effrontery, appropriated of
their own accord. Elihu Burritt and Cardinal Mezzofanti were said to
be the two greatest linguists of the mid-nineteenth century; and I
know not how many languages and dialects each had mastered—the one
great scholar a distinguished prince of the Roman Catholic Church,
the other an American of obscure birth and an ex-blacksmith. Another
trans-atlantic postal reformer, though one interested in the reform
as regarded his own country rather than ours, was Mr Pliny Miles, who
in outward appearance more closely resembled the typical American of
Dickens's days than that of the present time. In his own land Mr Miles
travelled far and wide, wrote much, spoke frequently, and crossed the
Atlantic more than once to study the postal question here. He was an
able man, and a good talker. I well remember his confident prophecy,
some few years before the event, of a fratricidal war between the
Northern and Southern States; how bitterly he deplored the coming
strife; and how deeply impressed were all his hearers both with the
matter and manner of his discourse. I believe he had “crossed the bar”
before hostilities broke out.
[193] “Life,” ii. 241.
[194] “Life,” ii. 227-230.
[195] “My notion is,” wrote the diarist, “to run a train with only one
or two carriages in addition to those required for the mail, and to
stop only once in about 40 miles.” A long distance run in those days.
The speed was fixed at 40 miles an hour, stoppages included. This was
considered very quick travelling in the 'fifties.
[196] “It is curious,” says my father, “how inveterate is the mistake
in question. Columbus expected to reach Cathay more quickly by sailing
westward, but was stopped by the American continent. The projectors
of the 'Darian Scheme' hoped to enrich themselves by making their
settlement a great _entrepot_ between Europe and the East Indies; and
Macaulay, in his interesting narrative of the enterprise ('History
of England,' vol. v. p. 200), considers their mistake to consist
mainly in the assumption that Spain would permit a settlement on its
territory; but it seems not to have occurred to him that, in any
event, the scheme was intrinsically hopeless, seeing that the old
route by the Cape of Good Hope, besides avoiding the cost and delay of
transhipment, surpasses the Darian route even in shortness” (“Life,”
ii. 292). It is also well known that the discoverer of certain rapids
on the great river St Lawrence believed himself to be nearing the
country of Confucius when he called them “La Chine.”
[197] Thus the agitation for an “all red route” is a mere revival.
[198] Sixth Annual Report of the Postmaster-General.