not a thing referring merely to the year 1757, for Franklin, writing
from Passy, near Paris, in the year 1782, again dwells upon the
uncertainty of the communication. "We are far from the sea-ports," he
says, "and not well informed, and often misinformed, about the sailing
of the vessels. Frequently we are told they are to sail in a week or
two, and often they lie in the ports for months after with our letters
on board, either waiting for convoy or for other reasons. The
post-office here is an unsafe conveyance; many of the letters we receive
by it have evidently been opened, and doubtless the same happens to
those we send; and, at this time particularly, there is so violent a
curiosity in all kinds of people to know something relating to the
negotiations, and whether peace may be expected, or a continuance of the
war, that there are few private hands or travellers that we can trust
with carrying our despatches to the sea-coast; and I imagine that they
may sometimes be opened and destroyed, because they cannot be well
sealed."
Harriet Martineau gives an insight into the way in which mails were
treated on board American packets in the year 1836, which may be held to
be almost in recent times; yet the treatment is such that a
Postmaster-General of to-day would be roused to indignation at the
outrage perpetrated upon them. She thus writes: "I could not leave such
a sight, even for the amusement of hauling over the letter-bags. Mr.
Ely put on his spectacles; Mrs. Ely drew a chair; others lay along on
deck to examine the superscriptions of the letters from Irish emigrants
to their friends. It is wonderful how some of these epistles reach their
destinations; the following, for instance, begun at the top left-hand
corner, and elaborately prolonged to the bottom right one:--Mrs. A. B.
ile of Man douglas wits sped England. The letter-bags are opened for the
purpose of sorting out those which are for delivery in port from the
rest. A fine day is always chosen, generally towards the end of the
voyage, when amusements become scarce and the passengers are growing
weary. It is pleasant to sit on the rail and see the passengers gather
round the heap of letters, and to hear the shouts of merriment when any
exceedingly original superscription comes under notice." Such liberties
with the mails in the present day would excite consternation in the
headquarters of the Post Office Department. Nor is this all. Miss
Martineau makes the further remark--"The two Miss O'Briens appeared
to-day on deck, speaking to nobody, sitting on the same seats, with
their feet _on the same letter-bag_, reading two volumes of the same
book, and dressed alike," etc. The mail-bags turned into footstools,
forsooth! It is interesting to note the size of the packet in which this
lady crossed the Atlantic. It was the _Orpheus_, Captain Bursley, a
vessel of 417 tons. In looking back on these times, and knowing what
dreadful storms our huge steamers encounter between Europe and America,
we cannot but admire the courage which must have inspired men and women
to embark for distant ports in crafts so frail.[4] It is well also to
note that the transit from New York occupied the period from the 1st to
the 26th August, the better part of four weeks.
Reference has been made to the fact that a century ago the little
packets, to which the mails and passengers were consigned, were built
for fighting purposes. It was no uncommon thing for them to fall into
the hands of an enemy; but they did not always succumb without doing
battle, and sometimes they had the honours of the day. In 1793 the
_Antelope_ packet fought a privateer off the coast of Cuba and captured
it, after 49 of the 65 men the privateer carried had been killed or
disabled. The _Antelope_ had only two killed and three wounded--one
mortally. In 1803 the _Lady Hobart_, a vessel of 200 tons, sailing from
Nova Scotia for England, fell in with and captured a French schooner;
but the _Lady Hobart_ a few days later ran into an iceberg, receiving
such damage that she shortly thereafter foundered. The mails were loaded
with iron and thrown overboard, and the crew and passengers, taking to
the boats, made for Newfoundland, which they reached after enduring
great hardships.
The introduction of the uniform Penny Postage, under the scheme with
which Sir Rowland Hill's name is so intimately associated, and the
Jubilee of which occurs in the present year, marks an important epoch in
the review which is now under consideration. To enter into a history of
the Penny Postage agitation would be beyond the scope of these pages.
Like all great schemes, the idea propounded was fought against inch by
inch, and the battle, so far as the objectors are concerned, remains a
memorial of the incapacity of a great portion of mankind to think out
any scheme on its merits. Whatever is new is sure to be opposed,
apparently on no other ground than that of novelty, and in this bearing
men are often not unlike some of the lower creatures in the scale of
animated nature, that start and fly from things which they have not seen
before, though they may have no more substance than that of a shadow.
However this may be, the Penny Postage measure has produced stupendous
results. In 1839, the year before the reduction of postage, the letters
passing through the post in the United Kingdom were 82,500,000. In 1840,
under the Penny Postage Scheme, the number immediately rose to nearly
169,000,000. That is to say, the letters were doubled in number. Ten
years later the number rose to 347,000,000, and in last year (1889)
the total number of letters passing through the Post Office in this
country was 1,558,000,000. In addition to the letters, however, the
following articles passed through the post last year--Book Packets and
Circulars, 412,000,000; Newspapers 152,000,000; Post Cards 201,000,000.
* * * * *
_Form of Petition used in agitation for the Uniform Penny Postage._
UNIFORM PENNY POSTAGE.
(FORM OF A PETITION.)
TO THE HONOURABLE THE LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL [_or_, THE COMMONS,
_as the case may be_] IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED:--
The humble Petition of the Undersigned [_to be filled up with the name
of Place, Corporation, &c._]
SHEWETH,
That your Petitioners earnestly desire an Uniform Penny Post, payable in
advance, as proposed by Rowland Hill, and recommended by the Report of
the Select Committee of the House of Commons.
That your Petitioners intreat your Honourable House to give speedy
effect to this Report. And your Petitioners will ever pray.
* * *
MOTHERS AND FATHERS that wish to hear from their absent children!
FRIENDS who are parted, that wish to write to each other!
EMIGRANTS that do not forget their native homes!
FARMERS that wish to know the best Markets!
MERCHANTS AND TRADESMEN that wish to receive Orders and Money quickly
and cheaply!
MECHANICS AND LABOURERS that wish to learn where good work and high
wages are to be had! _support_ the Report of the House of Commons with
your Petitions for an UNIFORM PENNY POST. Let every City and Town and
Village, every Corporation, every Religious Society and Congregation,
petition, and let every one in the kingdom sign a Petition with his name
or his mark.
THIS IS NO QUESTION OF PARTY POLITICS.
Lord Ashburton, a Conservative, and one of the richest Noblemen in the
country, spoke these impressive words before the House of Commons
Committee--"Postage is one of the worst of our Taxes; it is, in fact,
taxing the conversation of people who live at a distance from each
other. The communication of letters by persons living at a distance is
the same as a communication by word of mouth between persons living in
the same town."
"Sixpence," says Mr. Brewin, "is the third of a poor man's income; if a
gentleman, who had 1,000_l._ a year, or 3_l._ a day, had to pay
one-third of his daily income, a sovereign, for a letter, how often
would he write letters of friendship! Let a gentleman put that to
himself, and then he will be able to see how the poor man cannot be able
to pay Sixpence for his Letter."
* * *
READER!
If you can get any Signatures to a Petition, make two Copies of the
above on two half sheets of paper; get them signed as numerously as
possible; fold each up separately; put a slip of paper around, leaving
the ends open; direct one to a Member of the House of Lords, the other
to a Member of the House of Commons, LONDON, and put them into the Post
Office.
* * *
_Reproduced from a handbill in the collection of the late Sir Henry
Cole, K.C.B. By permission of Lady Cole._
* * * * *
Should any reader desire to inform himself with some degree of fulness
of the stages through which the Penny Postage agitation passed, he
cannot do better than peruse Sir Henry Cole's _Fifty Years of Public
Work_.
The Postmaster-General, speaking at the Jubilee Meeting at the London
Guildhall, on the 16th May last, thus contrasted the work of 1839 with
that of 1889: "Although I would not to-night weary an assemblage like
this with tedious and tiresome figures, it may be at least permitted to
me to remind you that, whereas in the year immediately preceding the
establishment of the Penny Postage the number of letters delivered in
the United Kingdom amounted to[5] 76,000,000, the number of letters
delivered in this country last year was nearly 1,600,000,000--twenty
times the number of letters which passed through the post fifty years
ago. To these letters must be added the 652,000,000 of post-cards and
other communications by the halfpenny post, and the enormous number of
newspapers, which bring the total number of communications passing
through the post to considerably above two billions. I venture to say
that this is the most stupendous result of any administrative change
which the world has witnessed. If you estimate the effect of that upon
our daily life; if you pause for a moment to consider how trade and
business have been facilitated and developed; how family relations have
been maintained and kept together; if you for a moment allow your mind
to dwell upon the change which is implied in that great fact to which I
have called attention, I think you will see that the establishment of
the penny post has done more to change--and change for the better--the
face of Old England than almost any other political or social project
which has received the sanction of Legislature within our history."
Among the Penny Postage literature issued in the year 1840 there are
several songs. One of these was published at Leith, and is given below.
It is entitled "Hurrah for the Postman, the great Roland Hill." The
leaflet is remarkable for this, that it is headed by a picture of
postmen rushing through the streets delivering letters on roller skates.
It is generally believed that roller skates are quite a modern
invention, and in the absence of proof to the contrary it may be fair to
assume that the author of the song anticipated the inventor in this mode
of progression. So there really seems to be nothing new under the sun!
HURRAH FOR THE POSTMAN, THE GREAT ROLAND HILL.[6]
"Come, send round the liquor, and fill to the brim
A bumper to Railroads, the Press, Gas, and Steam;
To rags, bags, and nutgalls, ink, paper, and quill,
The Post, and the Postman, the gude Roland Hill!
By steam we noo travel mair quick than the eagle,
A sixty mile trip for the price o' a sang!
A prin it has powntit--th' Atlantic surmountit,
We'll compass the globe in a fortnight or lang.
The gas bleezes brightly, you witness it nightly,
Our ancestors lived unca lang in the dark;
Their wisdom was folly, their sense melancholy
When compared wi' sic wonderfu' modern wark.
Neist o' rags, bags, and size then, let no one despise them,
Without them whar wad a' our paper come frae?
The dark flood o' ink too, I'm given to think too,
Could as ill be wanted at this time o' day.
The Quill is a queer thing, a cheap and a dear thing,
A weak-lookin' object, but gude kens how strang,
Sometimes it is ceevil, sometimes it's the deevil.
Tak tent when you touch it, you haudna it wrang.
The Press I'll next mention, a noble invention,
The great mental cook with resources so vast;
It spreads on bright pages the knowledge o' ages,
And tells to the future the things of the past.
Hech, sirs! but its awfu' (but ne'er mind it's lawfu')
To saddle the Postman wi' sic meikle bags;
Wi' epistles and sonnets, love billets and groan-ets,
Ye'll tear the poor Postie to shivers and rags.
Noo Jock sends to Jenny, it costs but ae penny,
A screed that has near broke the Dictionar's back,
Fu' o' dove-in and dear-in, and _thoughts_ on the shearin'!!
Nae need noo o' whisp'rin' ayont a wheat stack.
Auld drivers were lazy, their mail-coaches crazy,
At ilk public-house they stopt for a gill;
But noo at the gallop, cheap mail-bags maun wallop.
Hurrah for our Postman, the great Roland Hill.
"Then send round the liquor," etc.
The advantages resulting from a rapid and cheap carriage of letters must
readily occur to any ordinary mind; but perhaps the following would
hardly suggest itself as one of those advantages. Dean Alford thus
wrote about the usefulness of post-cards, introduced on the 1st October
1870: "You will also find a new era in postage begun. The halfpenny
cards have become a great institution. Some of us make large use of them
to write short Latin epistles on, and are brushing up our Cicero and
Pliny for that purpose."
Unlike some of the branches of post-office work, other than the
distribution of news, either by letter or newspaper, the money order
system dates from long before the introduction of penny postage--namely
from the year 1792.
It was set on foot by some of the post-office clerks on their own
account; but it was not till 1838 that it became a recognised business
of the Department. Owing to high rates of commission, and to high
postage, little business was done in the earlier years. In 1839 less
than 190,000 orders were issued of the value of L313,000, while last
year the total number of transactions within the United Kingdom was
9,228,183, representing a sum of nearly L23,000,000 sterling.
In the year 1861 the Post Office entered upon the business of banking by
the establishment of the Post Office Savings Banks. At the present time
there are upwards of 9000 offices within the kingdom at which Post
Office Savings Bank business is transacted. The number of persons having
accounts with these banks is now 4,220,927, and the annual deposits
represent a gross sum of over L19,000,000.
In order of time the next additional business taken up by the Department
was that of the telegraphs. Before 1870 the telegraph work for the
public was carried on by several commercial companies and by the railway
companies; but in that year this business became a monopoly, like the
transmission of letters, in the hands of the Post Office. The work of
taking over these various telegraphs, and, consolidating them into a
harmonious whole, was one of gigantic proportions, requiring indomitable
courage and unwearying energy, as well as consummate ability; and when
the history of this enterprise comes to be written, it will perhaps be
found that the undertaking, in magnitude and importance, comes in no
measure short of the Penny Postage scheme of Sir Rowland Hill.
In the first year of the control of the telegraphs by the Post Office
the number of messages sent was nearly 9,472,000, excluding 700,000
press messages. At that time the minimum charge was 1s. per message. In
1885 the minimum was reduced to 6d., and under this rate the number of
messages rose last year to 62,368,000.
The most recent addition of importance to the varied work of the Post
Office is that of the Parcel Post. This business was started in 1883. In
the first year of its operation the number of inland parcels transmitted
was upwards of 22,900,000. Last year the number, including a proportion
of foreign and colonial parcels, rose to 39,500,000, earning a gross
postage of over L878,547. The uniform rates in respect of distance, the
vast number of offices where parcels are received and delivered, and the
extensive machinery at the command of the Post Office for the work,
render this business one of extreme accommodation to the public. Not
only is the Parcel Post taken advantage of for the transmission of
ordinary business or domestic parcels, but it is made the channel for
the exchange of all manner of out-of-the-way articles. The following are
some instances of the latter class observed at Edinburgh: Scotch oatmeal
going to Paris, Naples, and Berlin; bagpipes for the Lower Congo, and
for native regiments in the Punjaub; Scotch haggis for Ontario, Canada,
and for Caebar, India; smoked haddocks for Rome; the great puzzle "Pigs
in Clover" for Bavaria, and for Wellington, New Zealand, and so on. At
home, too, curious arrangements come under notice. A family, for
example, in London find it to their advantage to have a roast of beef
sent to them by parcel post twice a week from a town in Fife. And a
gentleman of property, having his permanent residence in Devonshire,
finds it convenient, when enjoying the shooting season in the far
north-west of Scotland, to have his vegetables forwarded by parcel post
from his home garden in Devonshire to his shooting lodge in Scotland.
The postage on these latter consignments sometimes amounts to about
fifteen shillings a day, a couple of post-office parcel hampers being
required for their conveyance.
And we should not omit to mention here the number of persons employed in
the Post by whom this vast amount of most diverse business is carried on
for the nation. Of head and sub-postmasters and letter receivers, each
of whom has a post-office under his care, there are 17,770. The other
established offices of the Post Office number over 40,500, and there
are, besides, persons employed in unestablished positions to the number
of over 50,000. Thus there is a great army of no less than 108,000
persons serving the public in the various domains of the postal service.
A century ago, and indeed down to a period only fifty years ago, the
world, looked at from the present vantage-ground, must appear to have
been in a dull, lethargic state, with hardly any pulse and a low
circulation. As for nerve system it had none. The changes which the Post
Office has wrought in the world, but more particularly in our own
country, are only to be fully perceived and appreciated by the
thoughtful. Now the heart of the nation throbs strongly at the centre,
while the current of activity flows quickly and freely to the remotest
corners of the state. The telegraph provides a nervous system unknown
before. By its means every portion of the country is placed in immediate
contact with every other part; the thrill of joy and the moan of
desolation are no longer things of locality; they are shared fully and
immediately by the whole; and the interest of brotherhood, extending to
parts of the country which, under other conditions, must have remained
unknown and uncared for, makes us realise that all men are but members
of one and the same family.
The freedom and independence now enjoyed by the individual, as a result
of the vast influence exercised by society through the rapid exchange of
thought, is certainly a thing of which the people of our own country
may well be proud. Right can now assert itself in a way which was
entirely beyond the reach of our predecessors of a hundred years ago;
and wrong receives summary judgment at the hands of a whole people. Yet
there is a growing danger that this great liberty of the individual may
become, in one direction, a spurious liberty, and that the elements of
physical force, exerting themselves under the aegis of uncurbed freedom,
may enter into conspiracy against intellect, individual effort, and
thrift in such a way as to produce a tyranny worse than that existing in
the most despotic states.
The introduction of the telegraph, and the greater facilities afforded
by the press for the general distribution of news, have greatly changed
the nature of commercial speculation. Formerly, when news came from
abroad at wide intervals, it was of the utmost consequence to obtain
early command of prices and information as to movements in the markets,
and whoever gained the news first had the first place in the race.
Nowadays the telegraph, and the newspapers by the help of the
telegraph, give all an equal start, and the whole world knows at once
what is going on in every capital of the globe. The thirst for the first
possession of news in commercial life is happily described in _Glasgow
Past and Present_, wherein the author gives an account of a practice
prevailing in the Tontine Reading Rooms at the end of last century.
"Immediately on receiving the bag of papers from the post-office," says
the writer, "the waiter locked himself up in the bar, and after he had
sorted the different papers and had made them up in a heap, he unlocked
the door of the bar, and making a sudden rush into the middle of the
room, he then tossed up the whole lot of newspapers as high as the
ceiling of the room. Now came the grand rush and scramble of the
subscribers, every one darting forward to lay hold of a falling
newspaper. Sometimes a lucky fellow got hold of five or six newspapers
and ran off with them to a corner, in order to select his favourite
paper; but he was always hotly pursued by some half-dozen of the
disappointed scramblers, who, without ceremony, pulled from his hands
the first paper they could lay hold of, regardless of its being torn in
the contest. On these occasions I have often seen a heap of gentlemen
sprawling on the floor of the room and riding upon one another's backs
like a parcel of boys. It happened, however, unfortunately, that a
gentleman in one of these scrambles got two of his teeth knocked out of
his head, and this ultimately brought about a change in the manner of
delivering the newspapers."
[Illustration: THE TONTINE READING-ROOMS, GLASGOW--ARRIVAL OF THE
MAIL--PERIOD: END OF LAST CENTURY. (_After an old print._)]
Another instance of the anxiety for early news is exhibited in a
practice which prevailed in Glasgow about fifty years ago. The Glasgow
merchants were deeply interested in shipping and other news coming from
Liverpool. The mail at that period arrived in Glasgow some time in the
afternoon during business hours. A letter containing quotations from
Liverpool for the Royal Exchange was due in the mail daily. This letter
was enclosed in a conspicuously bright red cover, and it was the
business of the post-office clerk, immediately he opened the Liverpool
bag, to seize this letter and hand it to a messenger from the Royal
Exchange who was in attendance at the Post Office to receive it. This
messenger hastened to the Exchange, rang a bell to announce the arrival
of the news, and forthwith the contents of the letter were posted up in
the Exchange. The merchants who had offices within sound of the bell
were then seen hurrying to the Exchange buildings, to be cheered or
depressed as the case might be by the information which the mail had
brought them.