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Sunday, November 24th, 2024
the Week of Christ the King / Proper 29 / Ordinary 34
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Postal Service
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And Postal Service . The germ of modern postal systems is to be looked for in the earliest organized establishment of a staff of government couriers. In the postal system of Spain and the German empire there is express record of permission to government couriers to carry letters for individuals in April 1544 and within fifteen or sixteen years that permission had grown into a legalized and regulated monopoly, whence the counts of Taxis drew part of their profits as postmasters-general. In Great Britain existing private letters of the 15th century - some, perhaps, of the 14th - bear endorsements which show that they were conveyed by relays of men and horses maintained under the control of the government, and primarily intended for its special service. In several states on the continent of Europe the universities had inland postal establishments of a rudimentary sort at an early date. The university of Paris organized a postal service almost at the beginning of the 13th century, and it lasted in a measure until 1719. In various parts of Europe mercantile gilds and brotherhoods were licensed to establish posts for commercial purposes. But everywhere - as far as the accessible evidence extends-foreign posts were under state control.
1 Great Britain
2 Savings Bank Finance
3 Inducements to Thrift
4 One Penny Stamp
5 Twopenny Stamp
6 Sixpence
7 Tenpence
8 Threepence
9 Fourpence
10 Sixpence
11 Eightpence
12 Ninepence
13 Tenpence
14 One Shilling
15 Five Shillings
16 Ten Shillings
17 One Pound
18 One Halfpenny
19 Three-halfpence
20 Twopence
21 Fivepence
22 Three-halfpence
23 Twopence
24 Fivepence
25 Sixpence
26 Ninepence
27 Five Shillings
28 Ten Shillings
29 One Pound
30 One Halfpenny
31 Three-halfpence
32 Twopence
33 Threepence
34 Fourpence
35 Fourpence-halfpenny
36 Fivepence
37 Ninepence
38 Tenpence
39 Threepence
40 Fourpence
41 Sixpence
42 Five Shillings
43 Ten Shillings
44 New Zealand
45 Dominion of Canada
46 British India
47 Telegraphs
48 Savings Banks
49 Authorities
Great Britain
Early History (c. 1533-1836). As early as the middle of the 13th century entries occur in the wardrobe accounts of the kings of England of payments to royal messengers for the conveyance of letters. In the supervision of these royal messengers lies the P }' g germ of the office of postmaster-general. The first English postmaster of whom a distinct account can be given is Sir Brian Tuke, who is described (1533) in the records as " Magister Nunciorum, Cursorum, sive Postarum," " both in England and in other parts of the king's dominions beyond the seas." But long subsequent to this appointment of a postmastergeneral the details of the service were frequently regulated by proclamations and by orders in council. Thus, among the royal proclamations in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, there is one of Philip and Mary (undated, but apparently of 1555) which regulates the supply of horses for the conveyance of letters to Dover. Again, in July 1556 the lords of the council ordered " that the postes betweene this and the Northe should eche of them keepe a booke, and make entrye of every lettre that he shall receive, the tyme of the deliverie thereof unto his hands, with the parties names that shall bring it unto him." Much of the business of the foreign postal service to and from England during the earlier years of Queen Elizabeth was managed by the incorporated " merchant strangers," who appointed a special postmaster. When that office fell vacant in 1568 they quarrelled about a successor; and the quarrel cost them their privilege.' 1 F. Windebank to Sir W. Cecil: " All the Italians were unwilling The accession of James I. to the English throne, by necessitating a more frequent communication between London and Scotland, led to improvements in the postal service. Special posts had already been established by the Ja magistrates of certain Scottish towns to convey their despatches to and from the court. Thus in 1590 a messenger was appointed by the magistrates of Aberdeen with the title of " council-post." 2 The new royal orders of 1603 directed (I) that the postmasters at the various stages should enjoy the privilege of letting horses to " those riding in post (that is to say) with horn and guide," by commission or otherwise, and to that end they were charged to keep or have in readiness a sufficient number of post-horses; (2) that the lawful charge for the hire of each horse should be, for public messengers, at the rate of 22d. a mile, " besides the guides' groats," private travellers being left to make their own agreements. Finally, it was directed that every postmaster should keep at least two horses for the express conveyance of government letters, and should forward such letters within a quarter of an hour of their receipt, and that the posts should travel at the rate of not less than 7 m. an hour in summer and 5 m. in winter.3 In 1607 the king granted to John Stanhope, first Baron Stanhope of Harrington, and to his son Charles Stanhope, afterwards second Lord Stanhope, jointly and to the survivor of them, the postmastership of England under the title of " Master of the Posts and Messengers," with a fee of Too marks a year, together with all " avails and profits " belonging to the office. In 1619 a separate office of " postmaster-general of England for foreign parts " was created in favour of Matthew. de Quester 4 and Matthew de Quester the The new office was regarded by the existyounger.g Y ing postmaster-general, Charles, Lord Stanhope, as an infringement of his own patent. A long dispute ensued in the king's bench and before the lords of the council. In 1626 by an order in council liberty was granted to all companies of merchants, including the merchant adventurers, to send their letters and despatches by messengers of their own choosing. A year afterwards this liberty was revoked, except for the Company of Merchant Adventurers. Lord Stanhope, however, continued to carry letters abroad by his agents, and obtained a warrant prohibiting De Quester from interfering. It shows strikingly the confusion of postal affairs at this period to find a statement addressed to the privy council by the postmasters of England to the effect that they had received no payments " ever since the last day of November 1621 till this present time, June 1628 " - the arrears amounting to £22,626.
The rights of the postmasters were also infringed by private individuals, as by one Samuel Jude in 1629 in the west of England. 6 In 1632 the foreign postmastership was assigned by De Quester, who had lost his son, to William Frizell and Thomas Witherings. Letters-patent were granted to them to give their voices to Raphael,. but inclined to favour Godfrey " (Dom. Cor. Eliz. xlviii. § 65, State Paper Dept., Rolls Office). Raphael was a German, Godfrey an Englishman.
2 Kennedy, Annals of Aberdeen, i. 262.
3 Book of Proclamations, p. 67 (S. P. O.; now in Rolls House); Report from the Secret Committee on the Post O f fice, (1844) appendix, pp. 38-40.
4 Or " De l'Equester," as he is called in Latch's Reports of King's Bench Cases, p. 87.
These disputes were much embittered by the growing jealousies of English against foreign merchants. The proofs of this in the state correspondence of Elizabeth's day are abundant, but there were many statesmen who took larger views. See, e.g. John Johnson's " Brief Declaration for the. .. erecting and maintaining of the Staple.. in England " (June 1582), Dom. Corresp. Eliz. cliv. No. 30; and compare the same writer's " Discourse for the repairing the decayed State of the Merchants," &c. (July 22, 1577), ibid. cxiv. No., 39, with Leake's " Discourse," &c., of the same year (ibid. cxi. 1 seq.), and with John Hales's " Letter to Sir W. Cecil " (March 20, 1 559), ibid. iii., where he describes the merchant strangers as being " spies for foreign princes," and with Cecil's " Reasons to move a Forbearing of the Restitution of the Intercourse to Antwerp " (1564),(1564), ibid. xxxv. No. 33 (in Rolls House). 418, as quoted 6 See Analytical Index to the Remembrancia, p. 4 q by H. B. Wheatley in the Academy of the 27th of December 1879, P. 464
jointly, the 15th of March 1633.1 Witherings took the labouring oar, and ranks as the first of many conspicuous postal reformers.
Under him one Richard Poole obtained a special postmastership for the service of the court. Among the earliest measures of improvement taken under the new patent was an acceleration of the continental mail service. For this purpose the patentees made a contract with the count of Thurn and Taxis, hereditary postmaster of the Empire and of Spain. At this time there was still but one mail weekly between London, Antwerp and Brussels, and the transit occupied from four to five days. By a subsequent contract with Count Thurn two mails weekly were secured and the transit made ordinarily in two days. 2 In June 1635 Witherings submitted to the king a proposal " for settling of staffets or pacquet-posts betwixt London and all parts of His Majesty's dominions, for the carrying and re-carrying of his subjects' letters," which contains curious notices of the state of internal communications. The net charge to the Crown of the existing posts is stated to be £J400 per annum. Letters, it is said, " being now carried by carriers or footposts 16 or 18 m. a day, it is full two months before any answer can be received from Scotland or Ireland to London. If any of His Majesty's subjects shall write to Madrid in Spain, he shall receive answer sooner and surer than he shall out of Scotland or Ireland." By the new plan it was proposed that all letters for the northern road should be put into one " portmantle," and directed to Edinburgh, with separate bags directed to such postmasters as lived upon the road near to any city or town corporate. The journey from London to Edinburgh was to be performed within three days. The scheme was approved on the 31st of July 1635, the proclamation establishing eight main postal lines - namely, the great northern road, to Ireland by Holyhead, to Ireland by Bristol, to the marches of Wales by Shrewsbury, to Plymouth, to Dover, to Harwich and to Yarmouth. The postage of a single letter was fixed at 2d. if under 80 m., 4d. if between 80 and 140 m., 6d. if above 140 m., 8d. if to Scotland. It was provided that no other messengers or footposts should carry letters to any places so provided, except common known carriers, or a particular messenger " sent on purpose with a letter by any man for his own occasions," or a letter by a friend, on pain of exemplary punishment. 3 In February 1638 another royal proclamation ratified an agreement between Witherings and De Noveau, postmaster to the French king, for the conveyance of the mails into France by Calais, Boulogne, Abbeville and Amiens.4 But in 1640 the active postmaster was accused of divers abuses and misdemeanours, and his office sequestrated into the hands of Philip Burlamachi of London, merchant, who was to execute the same under the inspection of the principal secretary of state.' Witherings then assigned his patent to Robert Rich, earl of Warwick, and a long contest ensued in both houses of parliament. The sequestration was declared by a vote in parliament in 1642 to be illegal. Nevertheless the dispute gave repeated occupation to both houses during the period from 1641 to 1647, and was diversified by several affrays, in which violent hands were laid upon the mails. In 1643 the post office yielded only £5000 a year. In 1644 the Lords and Commons by a joint ordinance appointed Edmund Prideaux " to be master of the posts, messengers and couriers." In 1646 the opinion of the judges was taken on the validity of Witherings's patent (assigned to Lord Warwick), and they pronounced that " the clauses of restraint in the said patent are void and not good in law; that, notwithstanding these clauses be void, the patent is good for the rest." 6 It is evident, therefore, that any 1 Minute in " House of Lords' Papers " (2633), Fourth Report of Hist. MSS. Commission (1874), app. The papers there calendared contain many proofs of Witherings's activity and ability. See also appendix to Fifth Report (1875), and " A proclamation concerning the Postmaster of England for Forraigne Parts " (July 19, 1632), in Rymer's Foedera, xix. 385.
2 Egerton MS. (Brit. Mus.), No. 2543, fol. 5 seq.
3 Rymer; Foedera, xix. 649.4 Ibid. xx. 192.5 Ibid. xx. 429.
6 Journals of the House of Commons, ii. 81, 82, 95, 47 0 , 493, 500, prohibition to carry letters must be by act of parliament to have force of law.
In 1650 an attempt was made by the common council of London to organize a new postal system on the great roads, to run twice a week. This scheme they temporarily carried into effect as respects Scotland. But Mr U Attorney-General Prideaux urged on the council of state that, if the new enterprise were permitted, besides intrenching on the rights of the parliament, some other means would have to be devised for payment of the postmasters. Both houses resolved (1) that the offices of postmasters, inland and foreign, were, and ought to be, in the sole power and disposal of the parliament, and (2) that it should be referred to the council of state to take into consideration all existing claims in relation thereto. Of these there were five under the various patents which had been granted. Thereupon the Protector was advised that the management of the post office should be entrusted to John Thurloe by patent upon the expiration of John Manley's existing contract. Thurloe was to give security for payment of the existing rent of £10,000 a year. Ultimately the posts, both inland and foreign, were farmed to John Manley for £10,000 a year, by an agreement made in 1653. Meanwhile an attorney at York, named John Hill, placed relays of post horses between that city and London, and undertook John, ' 'leeformslli. the conveyance of letters and parcels at half the former rates. He also formed local and limited partnerships in various parts of the kingdom for the extension of his plan, which aimed to establish eventually a general penny postage for England, a twopenny postage for Scotland and a fourpenny postage for Ireland. But the post office was looked upon by the government of the day as, first, a means of revenue, and secondly, a means of political espionage.' The new lettercarriers were " trampled down " by Cromwell's soldiery. The inventor had a narrow escape from severe punishment. He lived to publish (1659) the details of his plan, at the eve of the Restoration, in a pamphlet entitled A Penny Post: or a Vindication of the Liberty and Birthright of every Englishman in carrying Merchants and other Man's letters, against any Restraint of Farmers, &c. It is probable that this publication' helped to prepare the way for those measures of partial but far-reaching reform which were effected during the reign of Charles II. The rates of postage and the rights and duties of postmasters were settled under the Protectorate by an act of parliament of 1657, c. 30. In 1659 the item, " by postage of letters in farm, £14,000," appears in a report on the public revenue.' The government of the Restoration continued to farm the post office upon conditions similar to those imposed by the act of 1657, but for a larger sum. Henry Bishop, the first postmaster-general in the reign of Charles II. Un er ' 'Charles H. contracted to pay a yearly rent of £21,500, these new arrangements being embodied in the Act 12 Charles II. c. 35 (1660), entitled " An Act for Erecting and Establishing a Post Office." A clause proposing to frank all letters addressed to or sent by members of parliament during the session was 501, 658 seq.; Journals of the House of Lords, v. 343, 3 8 7, 45 0, 4 6 9473, 500 seq.; Report from Secret Committees on the Post Office, Appendix, pp. 60-69.
' Illustrations of this may be seen (in the state-paper department of the general record office) among the correspondence between Sir John Coke and Lord Conway, and also in many other state letters, as well after the outbreak of the great rebellion as before it. There is in the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawlinson, A. 477) a minute account of the methods alleged to have been pursued in the systematic and periodical examination of letters entrusted to the post office. The paper is not authenticated by any signature, and is undated. But it is an original document of the time of Charles II., addressed to Mr. Bridgman, clerk of the council, and drawn up to recommend the adoption of a like practice, but with greater dexterity than that used by Dr Dorislaus and Samuel Morland, who, according to this narrative, formed the Cromwellian board of examiners for post-office letters, and who read all that were addressed to foreign parts.
8 There is a copy in the library of the British Museum, from which H. B. Wheatley has given the abstract quoted above.
' Journals of the House of Commons, vii. 627.
rejected by the Lords. But the indenture enrolled with the letters-patent contained a proviso for the free carriage of all letters to or from the king, the great officers of state and also the single inland letters only of the members of that present parliament during that session. It also provided that the lessee should permit the secretaries of state, or either of them, to have the survey and inspection of all letters at their discretion. Bishop was succeeded by Daniel O'Neill 1 in 1662, on similar terms. In the consequent proclamation, issued on the 25th of May 1663, it was commanded that. " no postmasters or other officers that shall be employed in the conveying of letters, or distributing of the same, or any other person or persons,. .. except by the immediate warrant of our principal secretaries of state, shall presume to open any letters or pacquets not directed unto themselves." In 1677 the general "post office comprised in the chief office, under Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, as postmaster-general, seventy-five persons, and its profits were farmed for £43,000 a year. There were then throughout England and Scotland 182 deputy postmasters, and in Ireland 18 officers at the Dublin office and 45 country postmasters. " The number of letters missive," says a writer of the same year, " is now prodigiously great.... A letter comprising one whole sheet of paper is conveyed 80 m. for twopence. Every twenty-four hours the post goes 120 m., and in five days an answer may be had from a place 300 m. distant." 2 By an act of the 15th Charles II. (" An Act for Settling the Profits of the Post Office on the duke of York, and his Heirs-Male "), and by a subsequent proclamation issued in August 1683, it was directed that the postmaster-general should " take effectual care for the conveyance of all bye-letters, by establishing correspondences. .. in all considerable market-towns with the next adjacent poststage," and the rights of the postmasters as to hiring horses were again emphasized.
During the possession of the post-office profits by the duke of York a London penny post was established by the joint enter- Dockwra's prise of William Dockwra, a searcher at the customs- London house, and of Robert Murray, a clerk in the excise Penny Post. office. The working-out of the plan fell to the firstnamed, and in his hands it gave in April 1680 - although but for a short time - far more extensive postal facilities to the Londoners than even those afforded 160 years later by the plans of Sir Rowland Hill. Dockwra carried, registered and insured, for a penny, both letters and parcels up to a pound in weight and £io in value. He took what had been the mansion of Sir Robert Abdy in Lime Street as a chief office, established seven sorting and district offices, and between 400 and 500 receiving-houses and wall-boxes. He established hourly collections, with a maximum of ten deliveries daily for the central part of the city, and a minimum of six for the suburbs. Outlying villages, such as Hackney and Islington, had four daily deliveries; and his letter-carriers collected for each despatch of the general post office throughout the whole of the city and suburbs. Suits were laid against him in the court of king's bench for infringing on the duke of York's patent, and the jealousies of the farmers eventually prevailed. The penny post was made a branch of the genera] post. Dockwra, after the Revolution of 1688, obtained a pension of £50o a year (for a limited term) in compensation of his losses. In 1697 he was made comptroller of the London office. Eleven years later his improvements were outvied by Charles Povey, the author of schemes for improving coinage, and also of a curious volume, often wrongly ascribed to Defoe, entitled The Visions of Sir Heisler Ryley. Povey took upon himself to set up a foot-post under the name of the " halfpenny carriage," appointed receiving-houses, and employed several persons to collect and deliver letters for hire within the cities of London and Westminster and borough of Southwark, " to the great prejudice of 1 The trusted friend but not always the trusted adviser of the duke of Ormonde. O'Neill's correspondence exists among the duke's papers, in part at Kilkenny Castle, in part (extensively) among the Carte MSS. in the Bodleian; and it abounds in incidental illustrations of postal administration in both England and Ireland.
Quoted in Gent. Mag. (1815), xxxv. 309, 310.
the revenue," as was represented by the postmaster-general to the lords of the treasury. Povey was compelled to desist. At this period the postal system of Scotland was distinct from that of England. It had been reorganized early in the reign of Charles II., who in September 1662 had appointed Patrick Grahame of Inchbrakie to be postmaster- Early general of Scotland for life at a salary of £500 Scots. Scottish But it would seem from the proceedings of the Scottish Postal privy council that the rights and duties of the office System. were ill defined; for immediately after the appointment of Grahame the council commissioned Robert Mein, merchant and keeper of the letter-office in Edinburgh, to establish posts between Scotland and Ireland, ordained that Linlithgow, Kilsyth, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Dumboag, Ballantrae and Portpatrick should be stages on the route, and granted him the sum of £200 sterling to build a packet-boat to carry the mail from Portpatrick to Donaghadee.3 Perhaps the earliest official notice of the colonial post is to be seen in the following paragraph from the records of the general court of Massachusetts in 1639. " It is ordered that Early be given that Richard Fairbanks his house in y Boston is the place appointed for all letters which are Colonial brought from beyond the seas, or are to be sent thither Posts. to be left with him; and he is to take care that they are to be delivered or sent according to the directions; and he is allowed for every letter a penny, and must answer all miscarriages through his own neglect in this kind." The court in 1667 was petitioned to make better postal arrangements, the petitioners alleging the frequent " loss of letters whereby merchants, especially with their friends and employers in foreign parts, are greatly damnified; many times the letters are imputed (?) and thrown upon the exchange, so that those who will may take them up, no person, without some satisfaction, being willing to trouble their houses therewith." In Virginia the postal system was yet more primitive. The colonial law of 2657 required every planter to provide a messenger to convey the despatches as they arrived to the next plantation, and so on, on pain of forfeiting a hogshead of tobacco in default. The government of New York in 1672 established " a post to goe monthly from New York to Boston," advertising " those that bee disposed to send letters, to bring them to the secretary's office, where, in a lockt box, they shall be preserved till the messenger calls for them, all persons paying the post before the bagg be sealed up."' Thirty years later this monthly post had become a fortnightly one. The office of postmaster-general for America had been created in 1692.
The act of the 9th of Queen Anne which consolidated the posts of the empire into one establishment, and, as to organization, continued to be the great charter of the post office until the reforms of1838-1850mainl intro- Act mainly solydation. duced by Sir Rowland Hill. The act of Anne largely increased the powers of the postmaster-general. It reorganized the chief letter-offices of Edinburgh, Dublin and New York, and settled new offices in the West Indies and elsewhere. It established three rates of single postage, viz. English, 3d. if under 80 m. and 4d. if above, and 6d. to Edinburgh or Dublin. It continued to the postmastergeneral the sole privilege " to provide horses to persons riding post." And it gave, for the first time, parliamentary sanction to the power, formerly questionable, of the secretaries of state with respect to the opening of letters, by enacting that " from and after the first day of June 1711 no person or persons shall presume ... to open, detain or delay ... any letter or letters ... after the same is or shall be delivered into the general or other post office, ... and before delivery to the persons to whom they are directed, or for their use, except by an express warrant in writing under the hand of one of the principal secretaries of state, for every such opening, detaining or delaying." Nine years after the passing of the act of Anne the cross-posts were farmed to the well-known " humble " Ralph Allen - the lover of peace and of humanity. 5 Allen became the inventor of the cross-roads postal system, having made an agreement that the new profits so created should be his own during his lifetime. His improvements were so successful that he is said to have netted during forty-two years an average profit of nearly £1 2,000 a year.
'Lang, Historical Summary of the Post Office in Scotland, pp. 4, 5
' Miles, " History of the Post Office," in the American Banker's Magazine, new series, vol. vii. p. 358 seq.
" Is there a variance ? enter but this door, Balked are the courts; the contest is no more." Pope's " humble Allen " was also the " Allworthy " of Fielding.
| | Gross Produce. | Net Revenue. | | | £ | s. d. | £ | s. d. | 1724 | 178,071 | 16 | 9 | 96,339 | 7 | 5 | 1 734 | 176,334 | 3 | 1 | 91,701 | 11 | 0 | 1 744 | 194,461 | 8 | 7 | 85,114 | 9 | 4 | 1 754 | 214300 | 10 | 6 | 97,365 | 5 | 1 | 1764 | 225,326 | 5 | 8 | 116,182 | 8 | 5 | 1 774 | 313,032 | 14 | 6 | 164,077 | 8 | 4 Cross-road Posts. The postal revenue of Great Britain, meanwhile, stood thus:- Gross and Net Income, 1724-1774. The system of burdening the post-office revenue with pensions, nearly all of which had no public connexion with the postal service, and some of which were unconnected with any public service, was begun by Charles II., who granted to Barbara, duchess of Cleveland, £4700 a year, and to the earl of Rochester £400o a year, out of that revenue. The example was followed until, in 1694, the pensions so chargeable amounted to £ 21,200. Queen Anne granted a pension of £5000 to the duke of Marlborough, charged in like manner. In March 18J7 the existing pensions ceased to be payable by the post office, and became chargeable to the consolidated fund. | Year. | Gross Income. | Net Revenue. | | £ | s. | d. | £ | s. d. | 1784 | 420,101 | I | 8 | 196,513 | 16 | 7 | 1785 | 463,753 | 8 | 4 | 261,409 | 18 | 2 | 1 79 0 | 533,198 | I | 9 | 331,179 | 18 | 8 | 1 795 | 745,238 | 0 | 0 | 414,548 | II | 7 | 1800 | I,083,950 | 0 | O | 720,981 | 17 | I | 1805 | 1,317,842 | 0 | 0 | 9aa,382 | 8 | 4 In October 1782 the notice of the manager of the Bath theatre, John Palmer (1742-1818), was attracted to the postal service. So habitual were the robberies of the post that they came to be regarded as necessary evils. The officials urged the precaution of sending all bank-notes and bills of exchange in halves, and pointed the warning with a philosophical remark that " there are no other means of preventing robberies with effect." At this period the postal system was characterized by extreme irregularity in the departure of mails and delivery of letters by an average speed of about 3 a m. in the hour, and by a rapidly increasing diversion of correspondence into illicit channels. The net revenue, which had averaged £167,176 during the ten years ending with 1773, averaged but £159,625 during the ten years ending with 1783. Yet, when Palmer suggested that by building mail-coaches expressly adapted to run at a good speed, by furnishing a liberal supply of horses, and by attaching an armed guard to each coach the public would be greatly benefited, and the post-office revenue considerably increased, the officials maintained that the existing system was all but perfect. Lord Camden, however, brought the plan under the personal notice of Pitt, who insisted on its being tried. The experiment was made in August 1784, and its success exceeded all anticipation. The following table shows the rapid increase of revenue under the new arrangements: Gross and Net Income, 1784-1805. It had been at first proposed to reward Palmer by a grant for life of 2P/ 0 on a certain proportion of the increased net revenue, which would eventually have given him some £I o,000 a year, but this proposition fell through. Pitt, however, appointed Palmer to be comptroller-general of postal revenues, an office which was soon made too hot for him to hold. He obtained a pension of £3000 a year, and ultimately, by the act 53 Geo. III. c. 157 (1813), after his case had received the sanction of five successive majorities against government, an additional sum of £50,000. Every sort of obstruction was placed in the way of his reward, although nearly a million had been added to the annual public revenue, and during a quarter of a century the mails had been conveyed over an aggregate of some seventy millions of miles without the occurrence of one serious mail robbery.1 1 Debates of both Houses of Parliament 1808 relative to the Agreement for the Reform and Improvement of the Post Office, passim. See also H. Joyce, The History of the Post Office (1893). Scotland shared in the advantages of the mail-coach system from the first. Shortly before its introduction the local penny post was set on foot in Edinburgh by Peter Williamson, the keeper of a coffee-room in the hall of Parliament House. He Scottish and employed four letter-carriers, in uniform, appointed receivers in various parts of the city, and established hourly deliveries.' The officials of the post, when the Ibui* success of the plan had become fully apparent, gave Williamson a. subsequently confirmed by the Act 34 Geo. III. c. 17 (1794). A dead-letter office was established in 1784. But in Ireland in 1801 only three public carriages conveyed mails. There were, indeed,. pension, and absorbed his business, the acquisition of which was. few roads of any sort, and none on which coaches could travel faster - than four miles an hour.' At this period the gross receipts of the. collection were £ 59,216, or at the rate of more than 70%; whilst in Scotland the receipts were £ 100,651, and the charges £16,896, or Irish post office were £80,040; the charges of management and somewhat less than 17%.4 In the American colonies postal improvements may be dated from the administration of Franklin, who was virtually the last colonial. postmaster-general, as well as the best. In one shape or another he had forty years' experience of postal Franklin. work, having been appointed postmaster at Philadelphia in October 1737. When he became postmaster-general in 1753 he visited all the chief post offices throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England, looking at everything with his own eyes.. His administration cannot be better summed up than we find it to be in a sentence or two which he wrote soon after his dismissal. Up to the date of his appointment, he says, " the American post office had never paid anything to that of Britain. We [i.e. himself and his assistant] were to have £600 a year between us, if we could make that sum out of the profits of the office.... In the first four years the office became above £900 in debt to us. But it soon after began to repay us; and before I was displaced by a freak of the minister's, we had brought it to yield three times as much clear revenue to the Crown as the post office of Ireland. Since that imprudent transaction they have received from it-not one farthing." The interval between the development of Palmer's methods,, and the reforms introduced twenty-seven years later by Sir Rowland Hill, is chiefly marked by the growth of the packet system, under the influence of steam navigation, and by the elaborate investigations of the revenue commissioners of 1826 and the following years. In some important particulars these mark out practical and most valuable reforms, but they contrasted unfavourably with the lucidity and reasoning of Rowland Hill's Post Office Reform. As early as 1788 the cost of the packets employed by the post office attracted parliamentary attention. In that year the " corn-. missioners of fees and gratuities " reported that in the Packet preceding 'seventeen years the total cost of this branch Services.. had amounted to £1,038,133; and they naturally laid stress on the circumstance that many officers of the post office were owners of such packets, even down to the chamber-keeper, At this time part of the packet service was performed by hired vessels, and part by vessels which were the property of the Crown. The commissioners recommended that the latter should be sold, and the entire service be provided for by public and competitive tender. The subject was again inquired into by the finance committee of 1798, which reported that the recommendation of 1788 had not been fully acted upon, and expressed its concurrence in that recommendation. The plan was then to a considerable extent enforced. But the war rapidly increased the expenditure. The average (£61,000) of1771-1787had increased in 1 797 to £78,439, in 1810 to £105,000, in 1814 to £160,603. In the succeeding years of peace the expense fell to an average of about £85,000. As early as 1818 the " Rob Roy " plied regularly between Greenock and Belfast; but no use was made of steam navigation for the postal service until 1821, when the postmaster-general established Crown packets. The expenditure under the new system, from that date to 1829 inclusive, was thus reported by the commissioners of revenue inquiry in 1830: Cost of Packet Service, 1820-1829.5 Year. £ Year. | 18206 | 85,000 | 1825 | 110, 83 8 | 18217 | 134,868 | 1826 | 144,592 | 1822 | 115,429 | 1827 | 159,250 | 1823 | 93,7 2 5 | 1828. | 117,260 | 1824 . | .. 116,602 | 1829.. . | 108,305. The general administration of postal affairs at this period was still characterized by repeated advances in the letter rates, and the 2 Lang, Historical Summary of the Post Office in Scotland, 15. Minutes of Evidence before Select Committee on Taxation of Internal Communication (1837), evidence of Sir Edward Lees, p. 397. Report, &c., of Select Committee on Postage. Twent y -second Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry, PP. 4 - 6. 6 Last year of exclusive sailing packets. 7 First year of steam-packets. - £ twenty years previous to Rowland Hill's reforms by a stationary revenue. The following table will show the gross receipts, the charges of collection and management, and the net revenue (omitting fractions of a pound) of the post office of Great Britain. We give the figures for the year 1808 for the purpose of comparison. | Year. | Gross Income. | Charges of Col- lection, &c. | Charges per cent. of Gross Income. | Net Revenue. | Population of United Kingdom. | | £ | £ | | £ | | 1808 | 1,552,037 | 45 1 ,43 1 | 29 | 1,10o,606 | | 1815-16 | 2, 1 93,74 1 | 594, 0 45 | 27 | 1,599,696 | 19,552,000 | 1818-19 | 2,209,212 | 719,622 | 322 | 1,489,590 | | 1820-21 | 2,132,235 | 636,290 | 29 | 1,495,945 | 20,928,000 | 3824-25 | 2, 2 55, 2 39 | 6 55,9 1 4 | 29 | 1,599,325 | 22,362,000 | 1826-27 | 2 ,39 2, 2 7 2 | 747, 018 | 31 | 1,645,254 | | 1836-37 | 2,206,736 | 609,220 | 272 | 1 ,597,5 1 6 | 25,605,000 | 3838-39 | 2,346,278 | 686,768 | 29 | 1,659,510 | - Before passing to the reform of 1839 we have to revert to that important feature in postal history - the interference with corre spondence for judicial or political purposes. We have already seen (1) that this assumption had no parliamentary sanction until the enactment of the 9th of Queen Anne; (2) that the enactment differed from the. royal proclamations in directing a special warrant for each opening or detention of correspondence. It is a sig nificant gloss on the statute to find that for nearly a century (namely, until 1798 inclusive) it was not the practice to record such warrants regularly in any official book.' Of the use to which the power was applied the state trials afford some remarkable instances. At the trial of Bishop Atterbury, for example, in 1723 certain letters were offered in evidence which a clerk of the post office deposed on oath to be true copies of the originals, which were stopped at the post office and copied, and sent forward as directed." Hereupon Atterbury asked this witness " if he had any express warrant under the hand of one of the principal secretaries of state for opening the said letters." But the lords shelved his objection on the grounds of public inexpediency. Twenty-nine peers recorded their protest against this decision.' But the practice thus sanctioned appears to have been pushed to such lengths as to elicit in April 1735 a strong protest and censure from the House of Commons. A committee of inquiry was appointed, and after receiving its report the house resolved that it was " an high infringement of the privileges of the. .. Commons of Great Britain in Parliament that letters of any member should be opened or delayed without a warrant of a principal secretary of state." Sir Rowland Hill's Reforms (1836-1842). Rowland Hill's pamphlet ( Post Office Reform ) of 1837 took for its starting-point the fact that, whereas the postal revenue showed for the past twenty years a positive though slight diminution, it ought to have showed an increase of £507,700 a year in order to have simply kept pace with the growth of population, and an increase of nearly four times that amount in order to have kept pace with the growth of the analogous though far less exorbitant duties imposed on stage-coaches. The stagecoach duties had produced, in 1815, £217,671; in 1835 they produced £498,497. In 1837 there did not exist any precise account of the number of letters transmitted through the general post office. Hill, however, was able to prepare a sufficiently approximate estimate from the data of the London district post, and from the sums collected for postage. He thus calculated the number of chargeable letters at about 88,600,000, that of franked letters at 7,400,000, and that of newspapers at 30,000,000, giving a gross total of about 126,000,000. At this period the total cost of management and distribution was £696, 569. In the finance accounts of the year (1837) deductions are made from the gross revenue for letters " refused, missent, redirected," and the like, which amount to about £ 122,000. An analysis of the component parts of this expenditure assigned £426,517 to cost of primary distribution and £ 270,052 to cost of secondary distribution and miscellaneous charges. A further analysis of the primary distribution expenditure gave £282,308 as the probable outgoings for receipt and delivery, and £144,209 as the probable outgoings for transit. In other words, the expenditure which hinged upon the distance the letters had to be conveyed was 1 Report of Secret Committee on the Post Office (1844), p. 9. 2 Lords' Journals, xxii. 183-186; State Trials, xvi. 540 seq. £144,000, and that which had nothing to do with distance was £ 282,000. Applying to these figures the estimated number of letters and newspapers (126,000,000) passing through the office, there resulted a probable average cost of 1864 6 of a penny for each, of which -moowas cost of transit and 35,00 cost of receipt, delivery, &c. Taking into account, however, the greater weight of newspapers and franked letters as compared with chargeable letters, the apparent average cost of transit became, by this estimate, but about - 0 -, or less than o of a penny. A detailed estimate of the cost of conveying a letter from London to Edinburgh, founded upon the average weight of the Edinburgh mail, gave a still lower propot tion, since it reduced the apparent cost of transit, on the average, to the thirty-sixth part of one penny. Hill inferred that, if the charge for postage were to be made proportionate to the whole expense incurred in the receipt, transit and delivery of the letter, and in the collection of its postage, it must be made uniformly the same from every post-town to every other post-town in the United Kingdom, unless it could be shown how we are to collect so small a sum as the thirty-sixth part of a penny. And, inasmuch as it would take a ninefold weight to make the expense of transit amount to one farthing, he further inferred that, taxation apart, the charge ought to be precisely the same for every packet of moderate weight, without reference to the number of its enclosures. At this period the rate of postage actually imposed (beyond the limits of the London district office) varied from 4d. to is. 8d. for a single letter, which was interpreted to mean a single piece of paper not exceeding an ounce in weight; a second piece of paper or any other enclosure, however small, constituted the packet a double letter. A single sheet of paper, if it at all exceeded an ounce in weight, was charged with fourfold postage. The average charge on inland general post letters was nearly 9d. for each. It was proposed that the charge for primary distribution - that is to say, the postage on all letters received in a post-town, and delivered in the same or in any other post-town in the British Isles - should be at the uniform rate of one penny for each half-ounce - all letters and other papers, whether single or multiple, forming one packet, and not weighing more than half an ounce, being charged one penny, and heavier packets, to any convenient limit, being charged an additional penny for each additional half-ounce. It was further proposed that stamped covers should be sold to the public at such a price as to include the postage, which would thus be collected in advance.3 By the public generally, and pre-eminently by the trading public, the plan was received with favour. By the functionaries of the post office it was denounced as ruinous and visionary. In 1838 petitions poured into the House of Commons. A select committee was appointed, which reported as follows: " The principal points which appear to your committee to have been established in evidence are the following: (1) the exceedingly slow advance and occasionally retrograde movement of the post office revenue during the ... last twenty years; (2) the fact of the charge of postage exceeding the cost in a manifold proportion; (3) the fact of postage being evaded most extensively by all classes of society, and of correspondence being suppressed, more especially among the middle and working classes of the people, and this in consequence, as all the witnesses, including many of the post office authorities, think, of the excessively high scale of taxation; (4) the fact of very injurious effects resulting from this state of things to the commerce and industry of the country, and to the social habits and moral condition of the people; (5) the fact, as far as conclusions can be drawn from very imperfect data, that whenever on former occasions large reductions in the rates have been made, these reductions have been followed in short periods of time by an extension of correspondence proportionate to the contraction of the rates; (6) and, as matters of inference from fact and of opinion - (i.) that the only remedies for the evils above stated are a reduction of the rates, and the establishment of additional deliveries, and more frequent despatches of letters; (ii.) that owing to the rapid extension of railroads there is an urgent and daily increasing necessity for making such changes; (iii.) that any moderate reduction in the rates would 3 Post Office Reform, 27 seq. occasion loss to the revenue, without in any material degree diminishing the present amount of letters irregularly conveyed, or giving rise to the growth of new correspondence; (iv.) that the principle of a low uniform rate is just in itself, and, when combined with prepayment and collection by means of a stamp, would be exceedingly convenient and highly satisfactory to the public." A bill to enable the treasury to establish uniform penny postage was carried in the House of Commons by a majority of loo, and became law on the 17th of August 1839. A to superintend the working out of his plan. The first step taken was to reduce, on the 5th of December 1839, the London district postage to id. and the general inland postage to 4d. the half-ounce (existing lower rates being continued). On the 10th of January 1840 the uniform penny rate came into operation throughout the United Kingdom - the scale of weight advancing from id. for each of the first two half-ounces, by gradations of 2d. for each additional ounce, or fraction of an ounce, up to 16 oz. The postage was to be prepaid, and if not to be charged at double rates. Parliamentary franking was abolished. Postage stamps were introduced in May following. The facilities of despatch were soon afterwards increased by the 'establishment of day mails. But on the important point of simplification in the internal economy of the post office, with the object of reducing its cost without diminishing its working power, little was done. The plan had to work in the face of rooted mistrust on the part of the workers. Its author was (for a term of two years, afterwards prolonged to three) the officer, not of the post office, but of the treasury. He could only recommend measures the most indispensable through the chancellor of the exchequer. It happened, too, that the scheme had to be tried at a period of severe commercial depression. Nevertheless, the results actually attained in the first two years were briefly these: (1) the chargeable letters delivered in the United Kingdom, exclusive of that part of the government correspondence which theretofore passed free, had already increased from the rate of about 75,000,000 a year to that of 196,500,000; (2) the London district post letters had increased from about 13,000,000 to 23,000,000, or nearly in the ratio of the reduction of the rates; { 3) the illicit conveyance of letters was substantially suppressed; (4) the gross revenue, exclusive of repayments, yielded about a million and a half per annum, which was about 63% of the amount of the gross revenue in 1839. These results at so early a stage, and in the face of so many obstructions. vindicated the new system. Seven years later (1849) the 196,500,000 letters delivered throughout the United Kingdom in 1842 had increased to nearly 329,000,000. In addition, the following administrative improvements had been effected: (1) the time for posting letters at the London receiving-houses extended; (2) the limitation of weight abolished; (3) an additional daily despatch to London from the neighbouring (as yet independent) villages; (4) the postal arrangements of 120 of the largest cities and great towns revised; (5) unlimited writing on inland newspapers authorized on payment of an additional penny; (6) a summary process established for recovery of postage from the senders of unpaid letters when refused; (7) a book-post established; (8) registration reduced from one shilling to sixpence; (9) a third mail daily put on the railway (without additional charge) from the towns of the north-western district to London, and day mails extended within a radius of 20 m. round the metropolis; (To) a service of parliamentary returns, for private bills, provided for; (11) measures taken, against many obstacles, for the complete consolidation of the two heretofore distinct corps of letter-carriers - an improvement (on the whole) of detail, which led to other improvements thereafter.' Later History (1842-1905). When Sir R. Hill initiated his reform the postmaster-general was the earl of Lichfield, the thirty-first in succession to that 1 Hill, History of Penny Postage (1880), appendix A ( Life, &c., ii. 438). Part of the strenuousness of the opposition to this measure arose, it must be owned, from the " high-handedness " which in Sir R. Hill's character somewhat marred very noble faculties. The change worked much harm to some humble but hardworking and meritorious functionaries. office after Sir Brian Tuke. Under him the legislation of 1839 was carried out in 1840 and 1841. In September 1841 he was succeeded by Viscount Lowther. In the summer of 1844 the statement that the letters of Mazzini, then a political refugee, long resident in England, had been systematically opened, and their contents communicated to foreign governments, by Sir James of Graham, secretary of state for the home department, aroused much indignation. The arrest of the brothers Bandiera, 2 largely in consequence of information derived from their correspondence with Mazzini, and their subsequent execution at Cosenza made a thorough investigation into the circumstances a public necessity. The consequent parliamentary inquiry of August 1844, after retracing the earlier events connected with the exercise of the discretional power of inspection which parliament had vested in the secretaries of state in 1710, elicited the fact that in 1806 Lord Spencer, then secretary for the home department, introduced for the first time the practice of recording in an official book all warrants issued for the detention and opening of letters, and also the additional fact that from 1822 onwards the warrants themselves had been preserved. The whole number of such warrants issued from 1806 to the middle of 1844 inclusive was stated to be 323, of which no less than 53 had been issued in the years1841-1844inclusive, a number exceeding that of any previous period of like extent. The committee of 1844 proceeded to report that " the warrants issued during the present century may be divided into two classes - 1st, those issued in furtherance of criminal justice.. .; 2nd, those issued for the purpose of discovering the designs of persons known or suspected to be engaged in proceedings dangerous to the State, or (as in Mazzini's case) deeply involving British interests, and carried on in the United Kingdom or in British possessions beyond the seas.... Warrants of the second description originate with the home office. The principal secretary of state, of his own discretion, determines when to issue them, and gives instructions accordingly to the under-secretary, whose office is then purely ministerial. The mode of preparing them, and keeping record of them in a private book, is the same as in the case of criminal warrants. There is no record kept of the grounds on which they are issued, except so far as correspondence preserved at the home office may lead to infer them.'. .. The letters which have been detained and opened are, unless retained by special order, as sometimes happens in criminal cases, closed and resealed, without affixing any mark to indicate that they have been so detained and opened, and are forwarded by post according to their respective superscriptions." 4 Almost forty years later a like question was again raised in the House of Commons (March 1882) by some Irish members, in relation to an alleged examination of correspondence at Dublin for political reasons. Sir William Harcourt on that occasion spoke thus: " This power is with the secretary of state in England.... In Ireland it belongs to the Irish government.... It is a power which is given for purposes of state, and the very essence of the power is that no account [of its exercise] can be rendered. To render an account would be to defeat the very object for which the power was granted. If the minister is not fit to exercise the power so entrusted, upon the responsibility cast upon him, he is not fit to occupy the post of secretary of state." 5 The House of Commons accepted this explanation; and in view of many grave incidents, both in Ireland and .in America, it would be hard to justify any other conclusion. The increase in the number of postal deliveries and in that of the receiving-houses and branch-offices, together with the numerous improvements introduced into the working economy of the post office, when Rowland Hill at length obtained the means of fully carrying out his reforms by his appointment as secretary, Ricordi dei fratelli Bandiera e dei loro compagni di martirio in Cosenza, p. 47 (Paris, 1844). 3 Report from the Secret Committee on the Post Office (1844), p. II. 4 Ibid., pp. 14-17. 5 Hansard, Debates, vol. cclxvii. cols. 294-296 (session of 1882). temporary office was created to enable Rowland Hill p ?' speedily gave a more vigorous impulse to the progress of the net revenue than had theretofore obtained. During the seven years1845-1851inclusive the average was but £810,951. During the six years1852-1857inclusive the average was £1,166,448 - the average of the gross income during the same septennial period having been £2,681,835. | | Estimated | | Cost of | | Postage | Year ending | No. of Chargeable Letters. | Gross Income. | a Mat, ant, | Net Revenue. | charged on Gov- ernment. | | | £ | £ | £ | £ | 5, 1838 | - | 2,339,737 | . 68 7,3 1 3 | 1, 6 5 2 ,4 2 4 | 38,528 | ,,1842 | 196,500,191 | 1,499,418 | 938,168 | 561,249 | 113,255 | „ 1847 | 2 99,5 86 ,7 62 | 1 ,9 6 3, 8 57 | 1, 1 3 8 ,745 | 825,112 | 100,354 | „ 1852 | 360,647,187 | 2,422,168 | 1,304,163 | 1;118,004 | 167,129 | Dec. 31,1857 | 5 0 4,4 21, 000 | 3, 0 35,7 1 3 | 1,720,815 | 1,314,898 | 135,517 Number of Letters: Gross and Net Income, 1838-1857. Within a period of eighteen years under the penny rate the number of letters became more than sixfold what it was under the rates of 1838. When the change was first made the increase of letters was in the ratio of 122.25% during the year. The second year showed an increase on the first of about 16%. During the next fifteen years the average increase was at the rate of about 6% per annum. Although this enormous increase of business, coupled with the increasing preponderance Copyright Statement
These files are public domain. Bibliography Information
Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Postal Service'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/p/postal-service.html. 1910.
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