It is true that, in this country, private mails are not of so long
standing, nor so thoroughly systematized as they were in Great Britain
before the adoption of cheap postage. But on the other hand, the state of
things in this country affords much greater facilities for that business,
and renders their suppression by force of law much more difficult and more
odious than in Great Britain.
On this head, the report of the Parliamentary Committee contains a vast
mass of information, which made a deep and conclusive impression, upon the
statesmen of that country. They found and declared that, “with regard to
large classes of the community, those classes principally to whom it is a
matter of necessity to correspond on matters of business, and to whom also
it is a matter of importance to save, or at least to reduce the expense of
postage, the post-office, instead of being viewed as it ought to be, and
as it would be under a wise administration of it, as an institution of
ready and universal access, distributing equally to all, and with an open
hand, the blessings of commerce upon civilization, is regarded by them as
an establishment too expensive not to be made use of, and as one with the
employment of which any endeavor to dispense by every means in their
power.” And among “the commercial and trading classes, by dint of the
superior activity, had in a considerable degree relieved themselves from
the pressure of this tax, without the interference of the legislature, by
devising other means for the cheap, safe and expeditious conveyance of
letters.” Some specimens of these expedients, as developed by the evidence
before the Parliamentary Committee, will be at once curious and
instructive.
M. B. Peacock, Esq., solicitor to the post-office, detailed the
methods which the department had used to suppress the illicit
sending of letters. By law, one half of the penalty, in cases of
prosecution, went to the informer, but of late, informations were
given much less frequently, and he thought the diminution of
informations was owing to the fact that, about five years before,
there had been a call in parliament for a return of the names of
informers. He said the post-office had done all in its power to
put a stop to the illegal sending, _but without success_. And he
was decidedly of opinion, that the prevention is beyond the power
of the post-office, and could only be done by reducing the rates
of postage.
Mr. G. R. Huddlestone, superintendent of the ship-letter office,
gave an account of the illicit sending of letters from London to
the outports to go by sea. He said they were customarily sent in
bags from the coffee houses, and by the owners of vessels, in the
same way as from the ship letter office, and no means had been
devised which could put a stop to it. Of 122,000 letters sent from
the port of Liverpool in a year, by the American packets, only
69,000 passed through the post-office. The number of letters
received inwards, from all parts of the world, by private ships,
was 960,000 yearly; the number sent outwards through the
post-office, was but 265,000. In the year ending October 5, 1837,
there were forty-nine arrivals of these packets, bringing 282,000
letters. The number of letters forwarded from London by post to
Liverpool for these lines, was 11,000; the number received in
London from these lines, was 51,000 a year.
Mr. Banning, postmaster at Liverpool, stated that, in return for
370,000 ship letters received at his office in a year, addressed
to persons elsewhere than at Liverpool, only 78,000 letters passed
through that office to be sent outwards. And yet the masters of
vessels assured him that the number of letters they conveyed
outwards was quite equal to the number brought inwards.
Mr. Maury, of Liverpool, said that on the first voyage of the
Sirius steamship to America, only five letters were received at
the post-office to go by her, while at least 10,000 were sent in a
bag from the consignee of the ship.
Mr. Bates stated that the house of Baring & Co. commonly sent two
hundred letters a week, in boxes, from London to Liverpool, to go
to America—equal to 10,000 a year.
These things were done under the very eye of the authorities, and yet no
means had been found to prevent it. What police can our government
establish, strict enough to do what the British government publicly
declared itself unable to do?
The correspondence, of the manufacturing towns, it appeared, was carried
on almost entirely in private and illicit channels. In Walsall, it was
testified that, of the letters to the neighboring towns, not one-fiftieth
were sent by mail. Mr. Cobden said that not one-sixth of the letters
between Manchester and London went through the post-office. Mr. Thomas
Davidson, of Glasgow, stated the case of five commercial houses in that
city, whose correspondence sent illegally was to that sent by post in the
ratio of more than twenty to one; one house said sixty-seven to one.
In Birmingham, a system of illicit distribution of letters had been
established through the common-carriers to all the neighboring towns, in a
circuit of fifteen miles, and embracing a population of half a million.
The price of delivering a letter in any of these places was 1_d._, and for
this the letters were both collected and delivered. Women were employed to
go round at certain hours and collect letters. They would collect them for
2_d_. per hundred, and make a living by it. The regular postage to those
towns was 4_d_., besides the trouble of taking letters to the post-office.
Hence there was both economy and convenience in the illicit arrangement.
The practice had existed for thirty years, and when it was brought in all
its details to the notice of parliament, no man seems to have dreamed that
it was in the power of the government to suppress it by penal enactments.
An individual, whose name and residence are, for obvious reasons,
suppressed, gave the committee a full description of these private
posts. He said that, in the year 1836, he kept an account of his
letters; that the number sent by the post-office was 2068, and
those sent by other means were 5861. Of these, about 5000 were to
places within twenty miles, all of which were sent for 1_d_. each.
Some carriers made it their sole business to carry letters. Some
of them travelled on foot; others went by the stage coach to the
place, and then distributed their letters. He found the practice
prevailing when he began his apprenticeship in 1807. The
population of the district thus accommodated was from 300,000 to
500,000. The practice was notorious, and used by all persons
engaged in business. The object of a great deal of the
correspondence was to convey orders, notes of inquiry, and other
information to and from the small manufacturers, to whom it would
be a tax of twenty-five per cent. on their earnings, if the
letters were sent through the post-office at 4_d_. The letters
were commonly wrapped up in brown paper, or tied with a string,
some directed and some not. Very few persons thought about the
practice being illegal. He had never heard of an attempt by the
post-office to institute legal proceedings. It would absorb the
whole revenue of the post-office to carry on the prosecutions that
would be required to stop it, and without any effect, as most of
the carriers were worth nothing. To suppress it by law, would be
very injurious to the trade of the place. The only way to
supersede it is to reduce the postage to 1_d_. Were this done, the
post-office would be preferred, for its greater certainty, even
though the carriers would go for a halfpenny. The post-office
would unquestionably receive more money by the change.
“E. F.”, a manufacturer, described what he called the
_free-packet_ system. Those manufacturers who did much business
with London, in forwarding parcels through the stage coaches, were
allowed by the coach proprietors to send a “free-packet,” without
any charge, except 4_d_. for booking; and this package contained
not only the letters and patterns of the house itself, but of
others, who thus evade the postage.
“G. H.” had been a carrier, from a town in Scotland to other
towns. There were six carriers, and they all carried letters,
generally averaging fifty a day, and realizing from 6_s_. to 7_s_.
per day, although there were four mails a-day running from the
town. The business was kept in a manner secret. Reducing the
postage to 2_d_. would not stop the practice, because the carriers
would still take the letters for 1_d_.; but a penny postage would
bring all the letters into the post-office, and then the
post-office would beat the smuggler.
Mr. John Reid, of London, formerly an extensive bookseller in
Glasgow said his house used to send out twenty to twenty-five
letters a day, and scarcely ever through the post. Of 20,000 times
of infringing the post-office laws, he was never caught but once,
and then the government failed in proof, and he had the matter
exposed as a grievance in the house of commons. He had seen a
carrier in Glasgow have more than 300 letters at a time, which he
delivered for 1_d_. Nearly all the correspondence between Glasgow
and Paisley, was by carriers. There were 200 carriers came to
Glasgow daily. There was as regular a system of exchanging bags,
as in the post-office. There was not much attempt at concealment;
sometimes we got frightened, and sometimes we laughed at the
postmasters. Of his own letters, about one in twenty of those
sent, and one in twelve of those received, passed through the
post-office. The only way to put an end to the smuggling of
letters was to remove the inducement. He said he could send
letters to every town in Scotland. He could do it in more ways
than one. He declined to state in what ways he would do it,
because the disclosure would knock up some convenient modes he had
of ending his own letters, and those of others. He said he would
never use the post-office in an illegal manner, as by writing on
newspapers and the like, because that would be dishonestly
availing himself of the post-office, without paying for it. But he
considered _he had a right to send his letters as he pleased_. He
did not feel it his duty to acquiesce in a bad law, but thought
every good man should set himself against a bad law, in order to
get it repealed. Some of the methods of evading postage, practised
in Scotland, are amusing. One was through what he called “family
boxes.” When a student from the country comes to Glasgow to attend
the college, he usually receives a box, once or twice a week, from
his family, who send him cheese, meal, butter, cakes, &c., which
come cheaper from the farm-house than he can purchase them in
town. Probably, also, his clean linen comes in this way. The
moment it was known that any family had a son at the university,
the neighbors made a post-office of that farm-house.
The committee, in their report, concur in the opinion expressed by almost
all the officers of the department, that it was not by stronger powers to
be conferred by the legislature, nor by rigor in the exercise of those
powers, that illicit conveyance could be suppressed. The post-office must
be enabled _to recommend itself to the public mind_. It must secure to
itself a virtual monopoly, by the greater security, expedition,
punctuality, _and cheapness_, with which it does its work, than can be
reached by any private enterprise.
With this nearly all the witnesses also agree, although some of them
thought it possible that a less extreme reduction of the rate of postage
might have kept out the private mails, if it had taken place earlier,
before these illicit enterprises had obtained so firm a footing.
Lord Ashburton, who was examined before the committee, said that
had a uniform rate of 2_d_., or even 3_d_. been adopted
heretofore, most persons would sooner pay it than look out for the
means of evading it.
Mr. Cobden, of Manchester, said a 6_d_. rate between Manchester
and London would increase but slightly the number of letters,
since the sending of letters clandestinely has become a trade,
which would not be easily broken down. The railroads which are now
opening to all parts of the country will so increase the
facilities for smuggling, as _to counteract any reduction_ of from
twenty to fifty per cent. on the postage. No small reduction will
induce the people to write more. A reduction to one half of the
present rates would certainly be a relief to his trade, as far as
it went, that is, to all such as now pay the full rate; but he
thinks it would not induce the poorer classes to use the
post-office. It would occasion a loss to the revenue of fifty per
cent.
Mr. W. Brown, merchant of Liverpool, was sure a reduction to half
the present rates would give satisfaction to the public, but would
not meet the question, and would not prevent smuggling.
I. J. Brewin, of Cirencester, one of the Society of Friends,
considered the effect of a two penny rate would be, that the
post-office would get the long jobs, but not the short ones.
Lieutenant F. W. Ellis, auditor of district unions in Suffolk,
under the poor law commissioners, said that 2_d_. would not have
the effect of 1_d_. in bringing correspondence to the post-office,
because by carriers, and in other ways, letters are now conveyed
for 1_d_.
The evidence seems to have produced a universal and settled conviction,
that as far as the contraband conveyance of letters was an evil, either
financial or social, there was no remedy for it but an absolute reduction
of the postage to 1_d_. There were large portions of the country in which
the government could control the postage at a higher rate, 2_d_. or even
3_d_.; but in the densely populated districts, where the greatest amount
of correspondence arises, and where are also the greatest facilities for
evading postage, no rate higher than 1_d_. would secure the whole
correspondence to the mails. They therefore left the penal enactments just
as they were, because they might be of some convenience in some cases. Mr.
Hill declared his opinion that it would be perfectly safe to throw the
business open to competition, for that the command of capital, and other
advantages enjoyed by the post-office, would enable it to carry letters
more cheaply and punctually _than can be done_ by private individuals. And
the result shows that he was right; for the contraband carriage of letters
is put down. The Companion to the British Almanac, for 1842, says, “The
illicit transmission of letters, and the evasions practised under the old
system to avoid postage, _have entirely ceased_.”
All this experience, and all these sound conclusions, are doubtless
applicable in the United States, with the additional considerations, of
the great extent of country, the limited powers of the government, the
entire absence of an organized police, and the fact that the federal
government is to so great a degree regarded as a stranger in the States.
Shall a surveillance, which the British government has abandoned as
impracticable, be seriously undertaken at this day by the congress of the
United States?