RAILWAYS AND THE POST OFFICE—SPEED ON RAILWAYS.
Passengers, luggage, horses, carriages, dogs, merchandise, minerals and
live stock constitute the whole of the traffic, as well as the whole
of the receipts of railway companies, with one only exception. That
exception is an important one: it is the conveyance of mails by railway.
From the day that railways were opened in England, the Post Office has
resorted to them for the conveyance of its mails. The Liverpool and
Manchester railway was opened for traffic, as already stated, on the
14th of September, 1830; on the same day the Post Office commenced
using it, and mails were conveyed on it four times a day in each
direction. The same happened at the opening of the Grand Junction
between Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham on the 6th July, 1837;
upon the completion of the line between London and Birmingham, on the
20th September, 1838, and so in succession with every leading railway
throughout the kingdom.
The Post Office soon became jealous of the power and position of
railway companies, and the expression of its jealousy culminated in the
introduction, at its instance, of a bill into Parliament, in 1838, “for
the conveyance of mails by railway.” The bill proposed to give power
to the Post Office to run its own trains upon any line of railway open
for traffic, without payment of toll. It was further to be authorised
to remove all obstacles in the shape of passenger or other carriages
out of the way of its trains; pains and penalties were to be amerced
on the servants of companies if the “lawful commands” of the postal
officials were disobeyed. The aid of the railway plant and of railway
officials was commanded, and the remuneration to the companies for
these services was to be this much, and no more—_the cost of the wear,
tear and deterioration that Post Office trains inflicted upon the
rails!_
Mr. Labouchere, now Lord Taunton, introduced the bill, and in doing
so said that the country was at the mercy of railway companies which
had bound the land in bonds of iron—bonds from which it was necessary
that the land should be freed by the action of Parliament. Mr. Rice,
afterwards Lord Monteagle, prince of jobbers, and for many years
enjoying the sinecure and emoluments of Comptroller of the Exchequer,
an office abolished at his death, warned all railway directors to
beware of opposing the bill, threatening them, on the part of the
Government, of which he was then a member, with more stringent
measures, if they were so ill-advised.
The bill, nevertheless, met with vigorous opposition; at its head was
Mr. George Carr Glyn, chairman of the London and Birmingham Company,
and then, as now, the honoured member for the Borough of Kendal, whom
Mr. John Francis truthfully describes in the dedication of his History
of the English Railway[26], as “one of the earliest, as well as one of
the most efficient allies of the system;”
The effect of the opposition was that an act was passed which differed
essentially in character and conditions from the bill that had been
presented to Parliament. The chief power given to the Post Office was
that the railway companies were bound to convey mails at such hours as
the Postmaster-General should direct; if required, they were to apply
separate carriages exclusively to their conveyance, and remuneration
was to be according to agreement between the Postmaster-General and
the Directors, but in case of difference recourse was to be had to
arbitration.
The era of postal reform commenced on the 10th of January, 1840. In the
year previous to it, the number of letters circulating through the post
was 82,471,000. In these were included 6,563,000 franks. The estimated
number of newspapers conveyed by the post in 1839 was 44,500,000. In
1840 there were about 1,300 miles of railway open. What had before been
an advantage to the Post Office, and to the letter-writing public, by
the gain of speed which railways afforded, at once became a necessity
to the department, in consequence of the sudden increase in the weight
and the bulk of the mails. The number of letters delivered in the
United Kingdom, in 1840, was more than double that of 1839. They were
168,768,000, and there was every indication that they would increase,
if not in the gigantic ratio of the first year, at all events very
rapidly; such was the case, for the number carried in 1841 showed an
increase of nearly 28,000,000. Newspapers increased about 500,000 in
1840. It would have been supposed that the Post Office would have
entered into negotiations, in a friendly spirit, with the officials
of the railway companies; this, however, was not the case: on the
contrary, from the earliest period of postal reform until recent years,
the railway has experienced nothing but hostility and reproach from
the department. Personal and friendly communication with its heads
became out of the question, for the demeanour of one high official
(whose name, without being mentioned, can easily be surmised) to many
of the leading railway officials was such, that several declined to
meet him; recourse was then had to arbitration, in accordance with
the powers conferred on the Post Office by the provisions of the Act
of Parliament. The result of references, many of which were very
protracted, and in the course of which very minute and elaborate
evidence was adduced on both sides, was that decisions were given much
more favourable to the railways than the Post Office had expected.
The proof that the demands of railway companies did not justify the
appellations which the Post Office attributed to them was, that they
were not much above the amounts awarded. But as regards the Post
Office, the payments proposed by it, and those awarded differed very
widely. This, however, did not make any difference in the crusading
energy of the department. Long before the issue of Postmaster-General’s
reports,[27] whenever an opportunity offered, either in giving
evidence before a Committee of Parliament, or in furnishing
information, there was sure to be an insinuation, an innuendo, or a
more open attack upon the railway authorities who had succeeded in not
allowing the Post Office to have it all its own way.
The Postmaster-General’s First Report partakes more of the character
of an historic document than of a record of the transactions of an
official year. There are, therefore, only some few unimportant remarks
in it upon the subject of railways. It was otherwise in the second, as
will appear by the following somewhat lengthy extract:—
“Undoubtedly great advantage has arisen from the employment of
railways in respect of rapid conveyance. Between districts which, even
in the best days of the mail coach system, were, postally speaking,
two days apart, the letters now pass in a single night.
“The facilities thus afforded to commerce, and to the business of
life in general, can hardly be exaggerated, nor is there any doubt
that they have tended largely to increase the amount of postal
correspondence, while in return cheap postage has equally tended to
increase railway traffic.
“Again, the service has been most materially promoted by the
introduction of travelling Post Offices,[28] _i. e._, carriages
in which the mail bags are opened and made up, the letters being
assorted while the train is in progress; an arrangement which not
only obviates the necessity of the stoppages which would otherwise
be required at certain ‘forward’ offices, but has greatly tended to
reduce the number of mail bags and accounts, and to simplify the whole
system.
“Against these great advantages, however, there is an important
set-off in increased expense; for, strange as it may seem, that
change, which to the public at large has so much reduced the charge
for the conveyance, whether of persons or of goods, has had precisely
the reverse effect as respects the conveyance of mails.
“No doubt this result is attributable partly to the necessity for
running certain mail trains at hours unsuitable for passenger traffic;
but even when the Post Office uses the ordinary trains established by
the companies for their own purposes, the rate of charge, especially
considering the regularity and extent of custom, is almost always
higher than that made to the public for like services.
“It is important that these facts should be correctly understood,
especially by those who may have to arbitrate between the Post Office
and the Railway Companies, because from time to time great efforts
have been made to represent the service as underpaid.
“The total payments to the companies for the year 1854 were £392,600,
which it may be observed, exceeds by £83,000 the five per cent.
passenger tax for the same period. The above points are fully
discussed in an able report by Mr. Edward Page (Inspector General of
Mails), which will be found at page 45 of the appendix.
“To this report I would also refer for an investigation of the claims
frequently made by the railway companies for compensation on the
ground of
alleged injury by the book post. The report clearly shows: first,
that the service which is alleged to be an injury, is, in reality, a
benefit; second, that even if it were otherwise, the law relieving
newspapers from the compulsory stamp, must have had the effect of
transferring from the mail bags to the companies’ vans a weight
of newspapers many times exceeding that which the book post is
erroneously alleged to have withdrawn from the companies’ vans to the
mail bags.”
The foregoing is in the body of the report, what follows appears as a
foot-note.
“As nearly as it can be estimated it appears that, while the whole
number of book packets conveyed annually by the Post Office is
probably over stated at three millions, the number of newspapers[29]
passing through the post has decreased by about twenty-five millions,
or by more than eight times the number of all the book packets.
Besides this reduction in number, there has been a decrease in the
average weight of the newspapers sent through the post; and the
combined effect of these changes has been to reduce the total weight
of the newspapers by an amount more than nine times as great as the
total weight of all the book packets.”
There never has been anything to show, either at the time those
paragraphs were written, or subsequently, that cheap postage has tended
to increase railway traffic. We are therefore at a loss to understand
why such an assertion should be adduced as an argument. The same remark
applies to the connection attempted to be set up between the amount
paid by the Post Office for the transmission of mails through the
country, and the tax which railway companies pay to the Government as
their contribution to the fiscal burdens, unavoidably and of necessity
imposed upon industry by the State: and it must also be considered
strange that the Post Office should make a Postmaster-General’s Report
the medium of conveying to arbitrators its opinion as to the mode in
which they should arbitrate between it and the companies.
However, we pass over these minor and insignificant points, to come
to the very serious misrepresentation which is embodied in the
foot-note. If the reader will be so good as to read it again, he will
see words, which, if they mean anything, mean that the number of
newspapers circulating through the post was 25,000,000 less in 1855,
than it was in 1854, the object being to show that although 3,000,000
of book packets were carried through the post in 1855, railways were
not sufferers thereby, as these packets only formed one-eighth of the
number of newspapers that had been withdrawn from postal circulation,
owing to the abolition of the compulsory stamp duty. Now we know
that in consequence of the reduction in 1836 of the Stamp Duty upon
newspapers,[30] from nominal 4d. and real 3¼d. each, to 1d., the
number posted had steadily increased each year. Therefore, if the
assertion of the foot-note were correct, newspapers posted would have
suddenly fallen, in 1855, to 46,000,000, that is to only 1,500,000 more
than they were in 1839; yet at page 19 of the identical Second Report,
it is stated that 71,000,000 of newspapers were posted in 1855. Thus at
page 15, to serve one purpose, figures are given which would show that
only 46,000,000 were posted, but four pages farther, to serve another
purpose, that of showing how postal business has increased, they are
stated at 71,000,000.
Let us now turn to the Third Report. At page 10, the number of
newspapers transmitted through the post in 1856, is stated to be
71,000,000. If this statement be correct, it would show, either that
the number transmitted in 1855 had in reality been about 71,000,000,
or that, on the mechanical principle of action and reaction being
equal and contrary, there had been a fall of 25,000,000 in 1855,
and that precisely the same rise had taken place in 1856. This rise
in one year would have to be considered all the more remarkable,
inasmuch as the total number, not only of newspapers, but of _book
post packets_ transmitted in 1865, was 97,250,000 according to one
statement, 2,766 more according to another. Owing to the unceasing
changes in the mode of imparting information to the public by means of
the Postmaster-General’s reports, the number of newspapers, exclusive
of book post packets, cannot be given, but, including these latter,
there was, according to the Postmaster-General’s Twelfth Report, an
increase of only 26,250,000 in ten years, as against an alleged fall of
25,000,000 in one year, and a recovery to the same amount in the next.
We come now to deal with the Report, dated the 29th February, 1856, by
Mr. Edward Page, an excellent officer within the limits of his duties
as Inspector-General of Mails, as well as a courteous and agreeable
gentleman. He is consequently much esteemed and respected.
But before going farther, let us premise that the late Mr. Robert
Stephenson, in the course of the inaugural address which, as President
of the Institution of Civil Engineers, he delivered on the 8th of
January, 1856, made the following observations upon the connection
between the Post Office and the railways:—
“The facilities afforded by railways to the Post Office are, no doubt,
of the highest public consequence. The speed which is attained in
the transmission would appear, at first, to be the greatest item in
the catalogue of those facilities; but it may be doubted if it is
the most important. What is really of the greatest value to the Post
Office, is the facility afforded for conveying bulk. It is not too
much to say that without railway facilities, the excellent plans of
Mr. Rowland Hill, for the reduction of the rates of postage, could not
have been carried out to their full extent. The first essential to the
success of those plans would have been wanting; for there would have
been no sufficient means of conveying the greatly-increased mass of
correspondence necessary to be carried in order to render the reduced
rates of postage profitable. The old mail coaches were never planned
for bulk, which would, indeed, have been fatal to that regularity
and speed, upon which the Post Office could alone rely as the means
of securing to the Government the monopoly of the letter carriage of
the nation. The aggregate weight of the evening mails despatched from
London in 1838, in twenty-eight mail coaches, amounted, as was shown
by the Report of the Select Committee on Postage, to only 4 tons 6
cwt. or an average of about 3¼ cwt. per coach. But now on a Friday
night, when so many thousands of weekly papers are sent into the
country, the Post Office requires, on the London and North-Western
Railway, not only the use of the travelling post-office which is
provided for its convenience, but it occupies also six or eight
additional vans. It is obvious, therefore, that if the existing system
of the Post Office had been in operation, with the present results,
in the days of mail-coach communication, not one mail alone, but
fourteen or fifteen mails, such as were used in those days, would have
been needed to carry on, with regularity, the Post Office traffic
between (say) London and Birmingham. Nearly every coach that ran in
1830, between Birmingham and London, would now have been needed for
Post Office purposes, if the London and North-Western Railway had not
been brought into existence. The expenses would, consequently have
been so large, that a universal penny postage would have entailed a
certain loss. For the great blessing, therefore, derived from cheap
postal communication, the nation is, in a great degree, indebted to
the facilities offered by railways. It must be borne in mind here,
that the boon conferred upon the public is not limited to written
correspondence. Viewed in reference to the postal facilities they
afford, the railways are the great public instructors and educators
of the day. Contrast the size of the _Times_, in 1830, and in 1856.
Do you suppose that the huge mass of paper, which you are permitted
to forward by to-night’s post, would have been conveyed upon the
same terms, if the means of conveyance had remained limited to the
mails and its four horses? Look at the immense mass of parliamentary
reports and documents, now distributed, every session, amongst all the
constituencies of the Empire, at almost a nominal charge. To what do
the public owe the valuable information embodied in those documents,
but to railways? except as parcels, by waggons or by canal boats,
they never could have been conveyed prior to the existence of the
railway system; and if they never could have been distributed, we may
rely upon it they never would have been printed. The reasoning which
applies to the _Times_ and to State Papers, applies to newspapers
generally, and to the distribution of the prices current of merchants,
and of magazines, monthly publications, and bulky parcels of every
description. Without railway facilities they would probably never
have been circulated at all. Certainly they never could have been
circulated to the extent necessary to make them profitable. Hence, the
railway, as before observed, is the greatest engine for the diffusion
of knowledge.”
These words called forth Mr. Page’s Report, and, as the public usually
feels interested in matters relating to the Post Office, we have given
it in full as an Appendix. We also have done very nearly the same with
the Reply to Mr. Page, which Mr. Stephenson read to the Institution
on the 20th of May, 1856. Combinedly these documents are long;
nevertheless, we think they will repay perusal; at all events, our
readers, if they choose to read, will get both views of the question,
about which we also wish to say something.
Mr. Page, as it will be seen, passes by “bulk,” and deals, in all his
arguments, with weight only. Yet the difference between them, even in
the case of mails, the most favourable for the Post Office is very
great indeed. Let us, for illustration, take the case of our Eastern
mails; being all conveyed in parallel-sided boxes,[31] filled to the
uttermost their inner dimensions will permit, they pack closely, and
there is no loss of space, as must be in the case of bags, which, even
when full, do not lay compactly together. Thus, the weight of one
mail conveyed from Southampton to the East, in 1864, was 46 tons; its
measurement was 99 tons, and the weight of the heaviest Eastern mail
conveyed _viâ_ Southampton, in 1865, was 49½ tons; its measurement
106½ tons. Weight to bulk in mail _bags_ is nearer to 1 to 4 than to
any other quantity. Had the weight (or bulk) of chargeable letters only
increased about eight-fold between 1839 and 1855, no doubt the addition
to the mails would not have been considerable. But Mr. Page, “no doubt
without any intention whatever to mislead,” omits from his calculations
matters which it is surprising that an officer of his intelligence and
experience should have allowed to escape him. In the first place, he
omits the fact that “chargeable letters” were very different in their
character in 1855 from what they were in 1839. Then chargeable letters
were, as has been stated by Mr. Page, about 7 per cent. of the total
weight of the mails, but in 1855 letters quite equal in weight to the
weight of those chargeable, viz., parliamentary and official franks,
are excluded from Mr. Page’s calculation. It is well known that the
correspondence of all the public departments has largely increased in
the last thirty years, because, owing to the increased magnitude of the
business of the nation, the number of clerks in the old offices has
been greatly added to, and because several new branches of the public
service have been created. To take a few examples at random. The Steam
branch of the Admiralty consisted in 1838 of five or six persons; now,
owing to rapid and frequent additions, an immense staff is necessarily
connected with it. The Railway and the Navigation, the Education and
the Scientific Departments of the Board of Trade, “Science and Art”
and South Kensington, the Civil Service Commissioners, &c., have
either been created or the staff of each has been added to. So that
the substitutes for franks should be included among the letters of the
general public, and it is quite certain that the weight and bulk of
official letters has kept pace with the weight and bulk of ordinary
letters. Between 1839 and 1855, notwithstanding the foot-note about
newspapers at page 15, of the Postmaster-General’s Second Report, the
number circulating through the post had increased from 44,500,000
to 71,000,000, and although the weight per newspaper had slightly
diminished in the interval, still the increased weight of newspapers to
be carried by the mails was nearly 50 per cent. over that of 1839.
So far as regards the long established articles of conveyance by the
Post Office. Let us now come to those of more modern date. The year
before the commencement of the penny postal system, the number of money
orders issued was 188,921. In 1855 they had risen to 5,807,412. Now,
taking the advices that must be sent to each office upon which an order
is issued, the returns that are forwarded daily to the accountant’s
office in the metropolis of each part of the United Kingdom in which
each Post Office Order has been issued, the remittances unceasingly
sent from the provincial offices to the metropolis, and from the
metropolis to the provincial offices, the receipts for these
remittances and the correspondence which they entail, the weekly
advices that are sent to London, and the correspondence connected with
them, there were at least twelve millions more of letters or documents
from this source in 1855 than there were in 1839. None of these letters
or documents does Mr. Page bring into calculation, although, each being
official, the certainty is that they are heavier in weight and greater
in bulk than a like amount of chargeable letters; all these are carried
free in the letter bags. And it is a question that it is not necessary
to discuss at present, whether they and the letters and documents (we
shall see presently that these are enormous in number, and very great
as regards weight) connected with the new services and functions which
the Post Office performs, should not be brought into account as a
postal charge against the department. The other revenue departments,
such, for instance, as the Customs, Inland Revenue, &c., transmit large
masses of documents necessary in the transaction of their business with
their sub-offices all over the kingdom; but these documents are each
subjected to postal charges which are regularly debited in the account
of the transmitting department.
In 1839 all expenditure was made by the postmasters throughout the
kingdom, and the voucher for each item was retained in their offices.
In 1855 the expenditure was made as heretofore, and as it now continues
to be, but instead of the vouchers being retained, every tradesman’s
bill and every other item of expenditure that is incurred at a
provincial office, no matter how small the item may be, is, with the
voucher, sent up to its metropolitan office. To specify the number of
these documents would be impossible, but there must be tons weight of
them through the post every year.
In 1839 there were no postage stamps. In 1855 the gross revenue of
the Post Office was £2,716,420. Taking about a fourth of this amount,
or, say £700,000 as the value of those sent through the post for
distribution in every post town in the kingdom, their number (in penny
stamps) 168,000,000; their dead weight (packed) would be about ten
tons, not including the weight of materials in which they were packed,
and excluding from the calculation the very considerable number of
post office envelopes sent all over the empire, one of which envelopes
would weigh as much as two dozen stamps[32].
At the commencement of the new postal system, the number of post
offices throughout the United Kingdom was 4,028, of which about a
fourteenth, or 300, were head post offices, that is offices sending
bags to and receiving bags from London. In 1855 there were 10,498
post offices in the United Kingdom, of which “920[33] were head post
offices and 9,578 sub post offices or receiving offices.” Therefore
not only had the number of bags going from or coming to London from
this one cause been trebled in number, but for the reasons just stated
the weight in them had also trebled. In 1839 there were four or five
day mails to and from London. In 1855 upwards of fifty, all of which
required bags for working them, and their tributary cross posts in
every part of the kingdom, but as Mr. Page’s arguments have reference
principally to night mails, let them be excluded.
As London is the depôt from which the immense and unceasing supply of
new bags for the whole postal system of England and Wales (as Dublin
is for Ireland, and Edinburgh for Scotland) is furnished, every one of
the bags for the night mails, the day mails, the railway mails, the
mail coach mails, the mail cart mails, the horse mails, the foot mails,
and the private bag mails, required, in no matter what part of the
Kingdom, are considered by the Post Office as postal matters, and are
sent post-free accordingly, and when bags are dilapidated or injured
they find their way to London, just in the same inexpensive manner as
new bags find their way from it. “The supply and repair of mail bags”
in England and Wales involve an annual cost of nearly £6,000, exclusive
of the cost of supplying and painting the 22,000 to 25,000 mail boxes
per annum required for the despatch of our Eastern mails; and one man
is borne on the books of the establishment for no other purpose than,
as the estimates tell us, to label mail bags. In Ireland there is an
annual outlay of £800, in Scotland of £900, for new bags and mendings.
In short, empty mail bag transit must have been in 1855 a quarter of
all that, whether filled or empty, of 1839.
In 1839 there was one departure a month of the East India mail _viâ_
Marseilles and one _viâ_ Southampton, yet the weight of the mails by
the two routes was under five tons, in bulk about twelve tons. In
1855, with two departures a month _viâ_ Marseilles, and two _viâ_
Southampton, the Eastern mails were about twenty tons weight. In 1839
the West India and Brazilian mails were despatched once a month, in
the notorious ten-gun “coffins”; yet although the letters were then
always sent in triplicate, because the certainty then was that one
in three would be lost, and the chances were it might be one in two,
nevertheless the letters were only about 200,000 a year; in 1855 they
had risen to 700,000. In 1839 letters between Great Britain, the United
States, and Canada were conveyed by the American “Liners,” they were
under a million per annum; in 1855 they had risen to about 2,500,000,
besides letters “in transit” between the United States, Europe, India,
China, and Australia.
In 1839 the community had not the benefit of a “British Postal
Guide,[34] containing the Chief Public Regulations of the Post
Office, with other information, published Quarterly by command of
the Postmaster-General.” The first number was issued on the 1st of
July, 1855, seven months before Mr. Page wrote his Report. The cost
of each number for two or three years was Sixpence. As we learn by
the cover that they are “Printed, Published, and Sold by George E.
Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen’s Most Excellent
Majesty,” and that they are “to be had also of all Booksellers and
the Principal Postmasters in the United Kingdom.” It therefore
follows that these Postal Guides were, from the date of their first
appearance, transmitted by the Railways in the Post Office bags all
over the Kingdom. We have seen them, from the earliest period of
their publication, exhibited and advertised at the post offices in
Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Cork, and
other places, and almost every postmaster receives one or more copies
for the use of his office. Each number contains 234 pages at present,
besides the pages devoted to advertisements, and they cost 2d. each
for transmission if sent by book post. In 1858, the price per copy was
raised to 1s.; but in 1864 it was reduced to 6d., and the sale has
become very great.
But whatever their number or weight was in 1855, it escaped Mr. Page’s
recollection to mention them in his comparison between the weights
transmitted in that year, and those of 1839.
The foregoing items supply some of the omissions made by Mr. Page
in his calculations, and furnish reasons for dissenting from his
assertion, that whilst “in 1838 the gross weight of the night mails
despatched from London was 4 tons 6 cwt. 1 qr., the total weight of the
night mails despatched in a single evening at the present time, _may be
stated_ (the italics are ours) at about 12 tons 4 cwt. 3 qrs.”
Mr. Page estimates the gross weight of mails per annum for the entire
Kingdom, including guards, clerks, &c., as being considerably under
20,000 tons, “a large portion of which was not conveyed by railway at
all.” Mr. Page adds, “Assuming, however, that the whole of it had gone
by the railways, it would appear that the Post Office paid 1/23 part
of the total earnings for the conveyance of less than a 1/400 part of
the total weight.” Mr. Page must excuse us for asserting that the total
_weight_ of mails in 1855 was nearer to 80,000 tons than to 20,000,
and that by bulk it was nearly 200,000 tons, of which more than half
was carried by railway.
Until September 1838, fifty-two horses started every evening from
London, with thirteen mail coaches behind them, to convey the mails
that are now carried by the Scotch Limited Mail. The weight of mails
carried by the coaches was about four tons, their bulk about ten tons
measurement. The horses travelled gallantly up hill and down dale
over first-class roads at the rate of more than ten miles an hour,
and at the end of six or seven miles they were replaced by others of
the same mettle. They were guided by thirteen first-class “whips” of
the olden time, and no matter what the weather was, or how rough any
portion of the road might be temporarily, the great ambition was, not
to be a second after time at appointed places. In charge of these four
or ten tons, as the case may be, were thirteen guards, to whom the
custody of the mails was entrusted. They were responsible for their
safe and faithful transmission between St. Martin’s-le-Grand and their
destinations.
Each mail coach was considered to require a horse a double mile, to
maintain its contract time. As Stafford is 133 miles from London,
133 multiplied by 13 gives the number of horses required, 1,729. The
average weight which each mail coach carried was 4 cwt., taken as
bulk it was half a ton. The maximum weight that, by the terms of the
contract, could be imposed upon it was 15 cwt., a total, for thirteen
mails, of 195 cwt.—five less than five tons.
In 1867 _one_ horse—of the railway the iron-clad—invented, not
conceived, not created—a living, but lifeless thing—yet withal of
terrible power, draws, in addition to the same number of passengers
that the fifty-two horses could draw, the mails which are to be
carried to Stafford and beyond it. Instead of the weight being four
tons, it is often nearly _twenty_, and instead of bulk being ten, it
is seldom less than forty, often fifty, and sometimes it mounts up to
even four or five tons further. But no matter, the iron horse is ready
to take its load, and does take it at speed four times as great as the
speed of thirty years ago.
If we had to go back to mail coaches, and each were only to carry the
average of 1837, we should require 100 mail coaches and 13,300 horses;
but if each were loaded to its Post Office maximum of former times,
then _only_ 27 coaches and 3,591 horses would be requisite. At what
cost for 27 coaches? Certainly, the former average of 2½d. a mile would
no longer be attainable. More than double would be demanded. 13s. 6d.
a mile per diem for 133 miles, multiplied by 365 days, is £32,785. Yet
the highest price that the London and North-Western ever had for its
night mail service was 4s. the double mile, £9,709.
This is one answer to the assertion of Mr. Page in his report, “Not
only, therefore, would penny postage without railways have been
both practicable and remunerative, but it would have been even more
profitable[35] (assuming the increase of letters) than it is now.”
We learn from Mr. Howell, the Secretary of the Peninsular and Oriental
Steam Company, that on Australian mail mornings the weight of mails
is 46 tons; to carry these at the rate of 15 cwt. per mail coach
from London to Southampton, 78 miles, it would he necessary to have
61 coaches and 4,758 horses, besides guards and coachmen. As mails,
although not near so heavy as the Australian, are continually arriving
at and departing from Southampton, it would be necessary to keep up at
least the above stock both of bi-and quadru-peds for these 78 miles,
at a cost of about £30,000 a year; but reference to the Post Office
estimates will show that the annual payment made by the department
to the London and South-Western Company is £21,950, and for that sum
the Post Office has the right not only to receive and despatch its
sea-going mails, but to use every one of the Company’s trains over the
503 miles which constitute its system, for Post Office inland business.
How, it may be asked again, can any officer of the department assert
in a report (designated by the Postmaster-General “an able report”)
that the penny postage “would have been even more profitable without
railways than it now is”?
There is a point in connection with this subject that may as well be
referred to here. The Isthmus of Suez Railway[36] was opened for
traffic in 1858, the same year that the Australian mail service by way
of Egypt was commenced. The India and China mails had increased very
rapidly during the few previous years, and the greatest trouble and
difficulty were experienced in getting them across the desert. The
addition of the Australian mails would have overwhelmed the service,
but for the opening of the railway. For let it be asked, What number of
camels would be required, or what time would they require to take some
fifty tons of mails (adding to the transmissions _viâ_ Southampton,
those from England and France _viâ_ Marseilles, and from Germany _viâ_
Trieste) across the desert? By means of the Suez Railway, the cost
to this country for the conveyance of the mails outwards and inwards
through Egypt is £8,000 a year, and eight Janissaries accompany the
mails in both directions, for which they are paid £750 per annum. The
cost of a combined _army_ of camels, camel drivers and Janissaries
would be at least £60,000 a year, and it would be simply impossible to
perform the service satisfactorily.
We think we have demonstrated that even in 1855 the Post Office
services of the country must have totally broken down, were it not for
railways. But between 1855 and 1865 the postal business has increased
enormously. The number of receptacles for letters[37] has risen from
10,498 to 16,246, the number of letters delivered from 456,276,176 to
720,467,007, of newspapers and book parcels,[38] from 71,000,000 to
97,252,766; samples and patterns, an item of Post Office transmission
introduced in 1863, 1,286,116. The amount, in money, of the Money
Orders issued has increased from £11,009,279[39] to £17,829,290. With
the increase comes the concomitant increase of transmissions through
the post. The weight of the Eastern mails has risen from 250 tons a
year to nearly 2,000.
In 1861, the operations of the Post Office Savings Banks commenced,
and by the 31st December, 1865, 3,321 banks had been established all
over the kingdom. The total number of persons who had become depositors
from the commencement was 857,701, of whom 245,882 had closed their
accounts, leaving 611,819 on the books. The total number of deposits
received had been 3,895,135. The total withdrawals 1,011,379. Without
railways, the operations of those banks could never have been
attempted. See what they have to carry? Every person on making his
first deposit receives gratis, a numbered book, in which all deposits
are to be entered. The weight of this book is about three quarters
of an ounce; advice of each deposit is to be sent on the day of its
receipt, by the Postmaster to the Post Office, London. The amount of
the deposit is to be acknowledged, and the acknowledgment is to be
transmitted by post to the receiver. Every depositor’s book must be
forwarded each year (even from the remotest part of the kingdom), on
the anniversary of the day on which the first deposit was made, to
London, in a cover to be obtained at any savings bank. This cover
exempts the book from postage charge, and it is also returned free from
the London office to the depositor. Every necessary letter of inquiry
respecting deposits in savings banks, and their replies are carried
by the railways, and travel free of postage. If a depositor want to
withdraw a part or the whole of the amount to his credit, he must make
application on a form a copy of which can be obtained at any savings
bank. It is sent free to London, as also the warrant from London
payable at the place named by the applicant. The warrant when paid and
receipted is returned by the Postmaster to London.
If the reader will be so good as to multiply the amount of
correspondence caused by one depositor, by the total number, viz.,
857,701, he will then be able to estimate what is the annual amount of
work that is involved in the carrying out of the Post Office Savings
Bank system, and also how completely it depends for its success
upon railways. It is pleasant—it is more than pleasant—it is deeply
gratifying and satisfactory, to know that the business increases, and
will continue to increase, for the reason that the humblest classes of
the community have now learned to appreciate the facilities which these
institutions offer for the safe and fructifying deposit of their little
earnings. To Mr. Gladstone is due the honour of their introduction. It
was on the 8th of February, 1861, that he presented to the House of
Commons the resolution that affirmed the principle upon which they are
based, and both Houses of Parliament responded so promptly, that by the
17th of May following, an Act, the title of which is, “An Act to grant
additional facilities for depositing small savings at interest with the
security of the Government[40] for the due repayment thereof,” received
the Royal assent. Mr. Gladstone, you have done many great and many
good acts in your time, but you have never done one greater or better
than this.[41]
The Government Insurance and Annuities Act, which received the Royal
assent on the 14th July, 1864, enables persons proposing to effect
insurances on their lives, or to purchase deferred monthly allowances,
to transmit their proposals, and to send and receive all correspondence
between themselves and the Post Office relating to their proposals free
of all postal charges. The Postmaster-General is compelled to admit,
in his Twelfth Report, that the proposals, from their bulk, “present
a somewhat formidable appearance.” But, thanks to railways, these
formidable-looking documents go free through the post. So do also their
acknowledgments from head quarters; the numerous and minute inquiries
made to friends and medical referees as to the proposer’s age, health,
habits, and occupation, likewise the replies to all these inquiries.
If these replies are deemed satisfactory, a letter is transmitted
to the proposer, post free, directing him to present himself for
examination to a medical man, and the report of the latter often leads
to much correspondence, all of which goes without postal charge. If the
proposer be rejected he is informed accordingly by a free letter, and
there is an end of the matter; but if he be accepted, the insurance
or annuity contract is sent to the Post Office at which the proposer
desires to receive it, and he is apprised to that effect by another
free letter. The system is in its infancy as yet, but the postal
transmissions which it will involve, even at its greatest, will never
be of the same extent as those connected with the Post Office Savings
Banks. Nevertheless, they will be considerable, for every payment to
an annuitant, and every receipt of money from a person assured, must
be transmitted either from or to London, as the case may be. So that,
in addition to the proposals of the “somewhat formidable appearance,”
thousands of documents per annum in connection with that business will
find their way into the mail bags.
Let us hark back to say that no rejoinder to Mr. Stephenson’s answer
was ever given. Nevertheless, the answer, complete and conclusive as it
was, had no effect on Post Office intentions, for during the session of
1857, the Duke of Argyll,[42] then Postmaster-General, was induced by
the permanent officers of the establishment to introduce a bill into
the House of Lords for making “further Provision for the Conveyance of
Mails by Railway.” Mr. William Lewins[43] tells us, in his book called
_Her Majesty’s Mail_, that His Grace deserves the gratitude of his
country for introducing it. But it was well known that His Grace, like
most of the Postmasters-General who have preceded him during the last
twenty years, took but little interest in the working of the department
over which he nominally presided, and knew little, probably nothing, of
the bill, the obnoxious contents of which he was called upon to father.
It was, however, justly viewed with great apprehension by all the
railway interests of the kingdom, and in consequence of the hostility
excited by its appearance, it was withdrawn before it reached a
second reading. In the very lame defence of it, given in the Fourth
Annual Report, we find it mildly stated, that “taken as a whole, the
bill certainly cannot fairly be represented as a measure opposed to
railway interests.” Whether this be correct or not, at all events
it can be stated that the department has never since proposed any
similar enactment. From 1858 it has also ceased to use language such
as “experience has satisfied me, that as the law now stands, it is
impossible either to secure regularity in the conveyance of the
mails, or to have that full use of the railways which the public
demand, which the department is anxious to afford, and which would be
beneficial to the companies themselves.”[44] The relations between the
companies and the department have been amicable during the last seven
or eight years, and there is now scarcely a railway in the kingdom
upon which mails are conveyed that has not adopted a system of general
contracts. The Post Office acquires, by means of them, the right,
for a fixed gross payment per annum, of using _all_ the trains of
the company for the transport of mail bags. There are certain trains
which of course must be run for the convenience of the Post Office,
such as the night mail trains to and from London, with their branch
trains and ramifications. The same as regards Dublin, and, in a lesser
degree, Edinburgh. But the expenses of these trains to the companies is
considered in coming to a decision as to the total price to be paid.
These arrangements are based altogether upon the voluntary principle,
but when agreed to, they are necessarily embodied in legal contracts.
We have no earlier return of postal railway mileage than 1855; that was
at the height of the antagonism with the Post Office. The miles run
were then 27,109 per diem, but so rapidly had friendly arrangements
been entered into, that in 1862 (the last year for which a mileage
return is published) it had risen to 49,782 miles per diem. Had these
returns been continued to the present time, they would have exhibited
an increase to 60,000 per diem, for in 1863, there were three hundred
and ninety-three towns having a night and day mail from London, fifty
having 3 mails daily from London, seven having 4, three having 3, and
three having 4. But in 1865, the number had increased as follows: four
hundred and ten having a night and day mail from London, fifty-seven
having 3 daily from London, nine having 4, and six having 5.
The gross sum paid by the Post Office to the railways of the United
Kingdom in 1866 was £570,500, only £170,500 more than, as Mr. Page
states, were paid to railways in 1855; but at that time the Post
Office, with only few exceptions, did not run more than one day and one
night mail train in each direction on the greater portion of the 8,280
miles which then constituted the railway system of the kingdom; but on
the first of January, 1866, the railway system was 13,289 miles, over
about 12,000 miles of which, the Post Office was able by its contracts,
to send mail bags by whatever trains, whether goods or passenger, they
chose to select from. At the present time (as already stated) the
railway service of the Post Office cannot be less than 60,000 miles a
day[45].
The following statement exhibits the amount paid by the Post Office
to the Railway Companies of the United Kingdom in 1866, together with
the mileage length of most of them. Of the total sum of £570,500,
the London and North-Western, with its 1,320 miles of railway,
naturally earns the largest share, £132,997. The other railways come
as follows:—Great Western (1,311 miles), £50,789; North Eastern
(1,229), £41,397; North British (732), £8,696; Great Eastern (710),
£22,357; Midland (695), £44,600; Caledonian (574), £29,101; London and
South-Western (503), £21,950; Great Northern (441), £9,805; Lancashire
and Yorkshire (403), £6,500; South Eastern (330), £23,571; London,
Brighton and South Coast (320), £1,977; Manchester, Sheffield and
Lincolnshire (246), £2,618; North Staffordshire (144), £1,000; Bristol
and Exeter (134), £9,888; Cambrian (130), £2,413; South Devon (110),
£7,485; London, Chatham and Dover (94), £268; Brecon and Merthyr
(68), £50; Cornwall (66), £5,500; Taff Vale (63), £1,000; Shrewsbury
and Hereford (51), £2,030; Llanelly (46), £39; Monmouthshire (44),
£147; Birkenhead (43), £2,500; North Union (40), £4,878; Maryport and
Carlisle (28), £841; West Cornwall (27), £1,500; Isle of Wight (12),
£31; Whitehaven Junction (6½), £363. There were not any contracts in
1866 with the Furness Company (85), the Somerset and Dorset (66),
nor with the Metropolitan Underground (4¾), but the Post Office has
recently entered into contracts for the conveyance of mails on the
first and the third of the three.
The foregoing, with some payments to minor companies, make the
total which the English and Welsh Companies receive from the Post
Office, £407,512. Some of these minor companies, however, are not
over-handsomely paid; for instance, the Colne Valley, 6½ miles long,
receives the modest sum of £15 a year; the Tenbury, 5¼ miles long,
which nevertheless has a Board of Directors consisting of seven
members, and is presided over by a noble Baron, receives only £7.
Never having heard of the Pontop and Jarrow Railway, we looked in all
the usual sources of information without success, but we perceive by
the Post Office estimates that the company earns £5 a-year for the
services it renders to the department. If the amounts paid by the Post
Office to English Railways be divided by its total mileage, it makes
the average payment per mile per annum to them a little less than £58.
The Irish railways receive £84,508 per annum from the Post Office, of
which the Great Southern and Western (420 miles), obtains £29,500;
the Midland Great Western (261), £14,920; Irish North-Western (145),
£1,540; Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford (107), £4,700; Ulster (106),
£5,800; Belfast and Northern Counties (100), £2,950; Great Northern
and Western (83), £2,349; Waterford and Limerick (77), £3,150; Dublin
and Drogheda (75), £4,700; Dublin and Belfast Junction (63), £6,000;
Londonderry and Enniskillen (60), £3,150; Belfast and County Down
(44), £206; Londonderry and Coleraine (36), £1,300; Cork and Youghal
(34), £1,150; Waterford and Kilkenny (31), £486; Cork and Limerick
direct (25), £50; Cork and Bandon (20), £757. There are three companies
that only receive £30 each, and two have twice as much as the Pontop
and Jarrow. They have £10 each. The average Post Office payment per
mile (assuming that the Post Office sent mails by all the railways in
Ireland, which is not the case) is about £44. 10s.
The Scotch railways receive £78,482, of which the North British and
Edinburgh and Glasgow (748) has £8,696; Caledonian (573), £29,101;
Scottish Central and Scottish North-Eastern (459), £22,136; Great North
of Scotland; (257), £3,830; Glasgow and South-Western (249), £3,436;
the Highland Railway (245), £10,454. The average per mile per annum
paid to Scotch railways by the Post Office, assuming that it availed
itself of the whole of them, is £36.
There is no branch of the connection between the railways and the Post
Office in which the former has gained more conspicuously than in that
of speed;[46] and precisely the same may also be said with respect to
the general community.
As has already been stated, the average speed of mail coaches was a
little under ten miles an hour in 1837, that of stage coaches under
eight, that of waggons two; and that the latter were used in the middle
of the last century, at all events, we have pictorial evidence, through
the pencil of Hogarth, and written testimony from the writings of his
contemporaries, as well as from those of subsequent men of letters.
The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, substituted
between its two termini an average speed of 17 miles an hour. Speed
has increased steadily year by year, as we shall now endeavour to make
manifest.
In 1842 the night mail train left Euston Station at 8·30 p.m., and
reached Lancaster (241 miles) at 7·0 a.m. Since the 1st of October,
1860, the Scotch Limited Mail leaves Euston Station every evening at
8·35 p.m., it arrives at Perth at 8·59 a.m. the next day; the distance
is 449 miles, and it is performed, including ten stoppages, at the
rate of 37½ miles an hour. There were more stoppages for mail trains
in 1840 than since 1860, but, apart from this fact, the time that the
mail train required to complete 449 miles is the same as that which it
required to complete only 15 miles more than half that distance, twenty
years previously.
The Irish express mail completes the journey from London to Holyhead
(263 miles), with three stoppages only, for passenger accommodation, in
6 hours 40 minutes, or at the rate of 38½ miles an hour.
For a short run, involving only one stoppage for the engine to take
water, the most rapid on the narrow gauge[47] in England is between
London and Dover, by the South-Eastern Railway, 88 miles in 2 hours and
5 minutes, 42 miles an hour. But on Australian mail nights (the 26th
of each month), the Post Office employs, in addition to the ordinary
“down” mail, a special one for the conveyance of such bags and boxes as
can be got ready by 7 p.m. This train travels between London and Dover
in 1 hour and 45 minutes. There is one stop for water. The rate of
speed, including the stop, is a little over 50 miles an hour, excluding
it, the rate is 54.
There is a train on the Great Western, which although not carrying
mails, is the fastest in England. It completes the distance from London
to Exeter, 194 miles, with 4 stops, amounting to 20 minutes, in 4½
hours; or at the rate of 43 miles an hour. A little more than a quarter
of the time occupied by the “Quicksilver” Mail in the olden days; but
the “Quicksilver” only went over 160 miles, the roadway distance
between London and Exeter, or 24 miles less than by the Great Western
and Bristol and Exeter Railways.
The grandest exceptional run ever made on railways was on the 5th
January, 1862, the occasion being, when answers were brought to the
despatches sent to Washington, requiring the surrender of Messrs. Mason
and Slidell, who had been taken out of the “Trent,” Royal West India
Mail Steamer, by orders of Commodore Wilks. The steamer arrived at
Queenstown at 10·5 p.m.: at 11·28 p.m., Irish time,[48] the special
train started from Cork, and accomplished the journey to Dublin (166
miles) in four hours and three minutes; or at the rate of 41 miles
an hour, including stoppages. The mail steamer “Ulster” arrived at
Holyhead at 8·15 a.m. The special train started at 8·28, and it is from
this point that the most remarkable part of the express journey was
accomplished. The run from Holyhead to Stafford, 130½ miles, occupied
only 145 minutes, being at the rate of 54 miles an hour, and although
so high a rate of speed was not attempted over the more crowded parts
of the line approaching London, the whole distance from Holyhead to
Euston was performed by the London and North-Western Company in exactly
five hours, or at a speed of 52¾ miles an hour—a speed unparalleled
for so long a distance on a line crowded with traffic. By means of
the invention for supplying the tender with water from a trough _in
transitu_, respecting which details will be given in a subsequent
page, the engine was enabled to run from Holyhead to Stafford without
pulling-up to take water. This is the longest run ever made by an
engine without stopping; but the engines of the Irish Limited Mail
Trains, owing to this trough, run twice a day in each direction without
stopping, between Holyhead and Chester, 84½ miles. The weight of these
trains, exclusive of the engine and tender, is fully 80 tons; but the
weight of the American special express, exclusive of engine and tender,
did not exceed 20.
A few words with respect to the fastest trains on the Continent.
Previous to the 1st of April of this year, the mail trains between
Calais and Paris completed 203 miles, with 15 minutes of stoppages for
passenger accommodation, in 5 hours and 50 minutes, about 33¼ miles an
hour. Since the opening of the railway between Calais and Boulogne,
the mail trains go to and come from Paris _viâ_ Boulogne. The distance
is shortened to 186 miles, and the journey is performed, 15 minutes of
stoppages for passenger accommodation being allowed, in 5½ hours, or at
the rate of 34 miles an hour.
The “Rapide,” the night mail train from Paris to Marseilles, completes
537 miles in 15 hours 45 minutes, or at the rate, for this long
journey, of 34 miles an hour. The day mail train from Paris to Bordeaux
takes 10½ hours, a distance of 366 miles, or at the rate of 34¼ miles
an hour. It is the fastest mail or express train in France that goes
over a large extent of railway mileage, but its pace is 3¼ miles an
hour less than the Scotch Limited Mail as far as Perth, 4¼ less than
that of the Irish Express Mail, and 8¾ less than the express train of
the Great Western from London to Exeter.
There is, however, one train in France that travels more rapidly for a
short distance,—the 1·0 p.m. express from Paris to Rouen. It completes
85 miles without a stoppage in 2 hours 22 minutes, or at the rate of
35½ miles an hour. Comparing this speed with that of the London and
Dover express mail trains, it is less by 6½ miles an hour.
There are two express mail trains in Belgium analagous to those between
London and Dover. They are the fastest in that kingdom. They complete
the 78 miles between Brussels and Ostend in 2 hours and 17 minutes,
with 3 short stoppages, or, at the rate of about 34¼ miles an hour.
There is a double daily postal service between Cologne and Berlin.
The distance, 391 miles, is accomplished in 12½ hours, or at the rate
of a little more than 31½ miles an hour, including stoppages for the
refreshment of the passengers, amounting to nearly an hour on the whole
journey.
It is a fact well known to railway officials of all grades, but not
appreciated by the public, that it is much more difficult to keep time
with trains stopping at many stations, than with express trains. Yet
the explanation is very easy. People who travel by stopping trains
are of totally different habits from those who travel by express. The
greater part of the passengers of the former belong to the agricultural
classes; and it is just this,—the farmer is not accustomed to be
hurried, and he won’t be hurried, neither are the farmer’s wife, the
farmer’s sons, the farmer’s daughters; the tradesman in farming towns
and villages is like the farmer, he won’t be hurried, and it is the
same with the tradesman’s wife, his sons and his daughters; neither
will the workman, nor the workman’s wife, nor his sons, nor his
daughters, be hurried and flurried. In fact, no one is ever in a hurry,
except in large towns and cities. The country was not made for people
who are always in a hurry, therefore it is impossible to get country
people in and out of trains with the same speed as railway servants
can manage with town and city people, and the effect of all this is,
a stopping train is, much more frequently than “fast” or express
trains, unpunctual, and it is especially so when it exceeds very much
its ordinary amount of traffic. It is then sure to be very late, solely
from circumstances beyond the control of the company, but of course the
company gets all the discredit of the delay. On the other hand, express
trains call only at a few first-class stations, and all the passengers’
business can be satisfactorily and comfortably accomplished in the time
that the train is compelled to stop while the engine is taking in fuel
and water. Let it not be imagined that in this respect “they manage
things better in France.” It has been occasionally our misfortune to
travel by stopping trains, not only in France, but in other parts of
Europe. There is one of two undeviating and unvarying rules with regard
to them. Either they are unpunctual, or they are timed for so slow a
speed, and with such delays at stations, that unpunctuality by them is
impossible. There are many passenger trains on the continent that do
not average a running speed of more than fourteen or fifteen miles an
hour.