POST-OFFICE T
HE germ of the modern postal systems of the world is to be looked for, obviously, in the earliest organized establishment of a staff of Government couriers. When, or under what precise circumstances, such an establishment was first made available by a state for the carriage of the letters of private persons there is no satisfactory evidence to show. That there must have been, even in early times, a connexion, more or less authorized, between the transmission of public and of private correspondence is highly probable. Even financial reasons would soon dictate a formal permission to Government couriers to carry letters for individuals—under regulation and restriction, of course —although at the outset such a practice may well have been rather connived at than allowed. In the postal system of Spain and the German empire there is express record of such a permission in the month of 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. For the purposes of this article, however, it is enough to note that 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 Continental states the universities had inland postal establishments of a rudimentary sort at an early date. The university of Paris, for example, organized a postal service almost at the beginning of the 13th century, and it lasted in a measure until the year 1719. In various parts of Europe mercantile guilds and brotherhoods λvere licensed to establish posts for commercial purposes. But everywhere—as far as the accessible evidence extends—foreign posts were under state control.
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—variously designated “cokinus,” “nuncius,” or “garcio ”—for the conveyance of letters to various parts of the country. In the supervision of these royal messengers lies the 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, in the curious collection of 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 amongst themselves. When that office chanced to fall vacant in 1568 they quarrelled about a successor; and the quarrel cost them their privilege.
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. Some years earlier special posts had been established by the magistrates of certain Scottish towns for the conveyance of 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.” The new royal orders of 1603 directed (1) 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 2∣d. 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 miles an hour in summer and 5 miles in winter.
In 1607 the king granted to James Stanhope, first Lord 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 100 marks a year, together with all “avails and profits” belonging to the office. In 1619a separate office of “postmaster-general of England for foreign parts” was created, by new letters patent, in favour of Matthew de Quester • and Matthew de Quester the younger. The new office was regarded by the existing 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 Merchants 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 Merchants 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. In 1632 the foreign postmastership was assigned by the De Questers to William Frizell and
Thomas Witherings. Letters-patent were granted to them jointly, 15th March 1633. Witherings took the labouring oar, and probably ought to rank as the first of the many conspicuous postal reformers in the long history of the British post-office. Under him one Bichard Poole obtained a special postmastership for the service of the court. A petition subsequently presented by him to the House of Lords contains curious proof of the jealousies which Witherings’s successful administration of his office excited. 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. In June 1635 Witherings submitted to the king a proposal (still preserved in the StatePaper Office) “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 some curious incidental notices of the state of the internal communication of the kingdom at that time. The nett charge to the crown of the existing posts is stated to be <£3400 per annum. Letters, it is said, “being now carried by carriers or footposts 16 or 18 miles 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 of on 31st 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 miles, 4d. if between 80 and 140 miles, 6d. if above 140 miles, 8d. if to Scotland. And it was further provided that from the beginning of this service 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. 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.
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.” It is evident, therefore, that any 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 AttorneyGeneral Prideaux speedily obtained the intervention of the council of state. He 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 no less than five under the various patents which had been granted and assigned. Thereupon the Protector was advised that the management of the post-office should be entrusted to John Thurloe by patent under the broad seal of the Commonwealth immediately 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, and pending the decision of the council upon the question so submitted to it, a remarkable step in postal reform -was taken by an attorney at York, named John Hill, who placed relays of post-horses between that city and London, and undertook the conveyance of letters and parcels at half the former rates of charge. 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 letter-carriers were
(literally) “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 Λ 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 very probable that this publication helped to prepare the way for those measures of partial but valuable and 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 very similar to those imposed by the Act of 1657, but for a larger sum. Henry Bishop was the first postmaster-general in the reign of Charles II., and he contracted to pay to the king a yearly rent of £21,500, these new arrangements being embodied in the Act 12 Charles II. c. 35, 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, after considerable debate, ultimately ^ejected 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 the continuance of that session. It also provided that the lessee should permit the secretaries of state for the time being, or either of them, from time to time, to have the survey and inspection of all letters at their discretion. Bishop - was succeeded by Daniel O’Neill in 1662, on similar terms. In the consequent proclamation, issued on 25th 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 postmastergeneral, 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 miles for twopence. Every twenty-four hours the post goes 120 miles, and in five days an answer may be had from a place 300 miles distant.”
By an Act of the 15th Charles II. (“An Act for Settling the Profits of the Post-Office on H.R.H. the Duke of York, and his Heirs-Male ”), and by a subsequent proclamation issued in August 1683, it was directed that the postmastergeneral 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.
It was during the possession of the post-office profits by the duke of York that a London penny post was established by the joint enterprise of William Dockwra, a searcher at the customs house, and of Robert Murray, a clerk in the excise office. The working-out of the plan fell to the first-named, 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 so memorably afforded 160 years later by the plans of Sir Rowland Hill. The London of that day was small, and easily manageable. Dockwra carried, registered, and insured, for a penny, both letters and parcels up to a pound in weight and £10 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 (thus anticipating one of the most recent improvements of the present time) 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 general post. Dockwra, after the Revolution of 1688, obtained a pension of £500 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 very curious volume, often wrongly ascribed to Defoe, entitled The Visions of Sir Heister Ryley. Povey took upon himself to set up a footpost 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 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-general of Scotland for life at a salary of £500 Scots. But it would seem from the proceedings of the Scottish privy council that the rights and duties of the office 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 packetboat to carry the mail from Portpatrick to Donaghadee.
The colonial post-office at this period was naturally more rudimentary still. Perhaps the earliest official notice of it is to be seen in the following paragraph from the records of the general court of Massachusetts in 1639. “It is ordered that notice be given that Richard Fairbanks his house in Boston is the place appointed for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas, or are to be sent thither 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.” That 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 1657 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, as we see by the following paragraph in the Boston News-Letter. “By order of the postmaster-general of North America. These are to give notice, That on Monday night, the 6th of December, the Western Post between Boston and New York sets out once a fortnight, the three winter months of December, January, and February, and to go alternately from Boston to Saybrook, and Hartford, to exchange the mayle of letters with the New York Ryder; the first turn for Saybrook, to meet the New York Ryder on Saturday night the 11th currant; and the second turn he sets out at Boston on Monday night the 20th currant, to meet the New York Ryder at Hartford, on Saturday night the 25th currant, to exchange Mayles; and all persons that sends letters from Boston to Connecticut from and after the 13th inst. are hereby notified first to pay the Postage on the same.” This office of postmaster-general for America had been created in 1692.
We have now traced the postal communications of different portions of the British empire from their earliest beginnings until the eve of the passing of the Act of the 9th of Queen Anne which consolidated them into one establishment, and which, as to organization, continued to be the great charter of the post-office until the date of the important reforms of 1838-50, mainly introduced by the energy, skill, and characteristic pertinacity of 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 miles and 4d. if above, and 6d. to Edinburgh or Dublin. It continued to the postmaster-general 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. 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 £12,000 a year.
The postal revenue of Great Britain, meanwhile, stood thus :— [table]
Table I.— Gross and Nett Income, 1724-1774.
The system of burdening the post-office revenue with pensions, nearly all of which had not the slightest connexion with the postal service, and some of which were unconnected with any sort of service that can possibly be called public, was begun by Charles II., who granted to Barbara, duchess of Cleveland, £4700 a year, and to the earl of Rochester £4000 a year, out of that revenue. The example was followed until, in 1694, the list of pensions so chargeable stood thus: — [table]
Queen Anne granted a pension of £5000 to the duke of Marlborough, charged in like manner. In March 1857 the existing pensions ceased to be payable by the post-office, and became chargeable to the consolidated fund.
The first important and enduring impulse to the development of the latent powers of the post-office, both as a public agency and as a source of revenue, was given by the shrewdness and energy of the manager of the Bath theatre, John Palmer. Palmer’s notice was attracted to the subject in October 1782. His avocations had made him familiar with that great western road which was still in such peculiar favour, alike with people of fashion and with the gentlemen of the highway. So habitual were the robberies of the post that they came to be regarded by its officials as among the necessary conditions of human affairs. They urged on the public 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, as it has been proved that the strongest carts that could be made, lined and bound with iron, were soon broken open by a robber.”
At this period, in addition to the recognized perils of the roads, the postal system was characterized by extreme irregularity in the departure of mails and delivery of letters, by an average speed of about 3∣ miles in the hour, and by a rapidly-increasing diversion of correspondence into illicit channels. The nett 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 mailcoaches of a construction 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 pertinaciously opposed the plan and maintained that the existing system was all but perfect. Lord Camden, however, brought the plan under the personal notice of Pitt. No sooner was the minister convinced of its merits than he insisted on its being tried. The experiment was made in August 1784, and its success exceeded all anticipation. The following table will show the rapid progress of the postal revenue under the new arrangements. [table]
Table II.— Gross and Nett Income. 1784-1805.
It had been at first proposed to reward Palmer by a grant for life of two and a half per cent, on a certain proportion of the increased nett revenue, which would eventually have given him some £10,000 a year; but this proposition fell through, in consequence either of technical difficulties created by the Post-Office Act or of the opposition of the post-office authorities. Pitt, how ever, 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, 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.
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 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 success of the plan had become fully apparent, gave Williamson a pension, and absorbed his business, the acquisition of which was subsequently confirmed by the Act 34 Geo. III. c. 17. A dead-letter office was established in 1784. The entire staff of the Edinburgh post-office, which consisted in 1708 of seven persons, now comprised twenty-five, the cost of the office being £1406. In 1796 the number of functionaries had increased to forty, and the cost to £3278. But in Ireland the old state of things continued until the present century. In 1801 only three public carriages in the whole country conveyed mails. There were, indeed, 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 Irish post-office were £80,040; the charges of management and collection were £59,216, or at the rate of more than 70 per cent.; whilst in Scotland the receipts were £100,651, and the charges £16,896, or somewhat less than 17 per cent.
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 unquestionably the best. In one shape or another he had forty years’ experience of postal work, having been appointed postmaster at Philadelphia as early as October 1737. When he became postmaster - general in 1753 he bestirred himself for the improvement of his department in that practical painstaking way with which he was wont to guide any plough he had once put his hand to, whatever the ground it had to work in. 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 improved methods (as far as that development was permitted by the authorities), which we take to be pretty nearly contemporaneous with the parliamentary settlement of his claims, and the still more important 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. Undoubtedly the inquiries of these commissioners attracted a larger share of public attention to the management of the post-office than had theretofore been bestowed on it; but, if anything had been wanted to throw into bolder relief Hill’s intelligent and persevering exertions, these reports supply the want in ample measure. In some important particulars they mark out practical and most valuable reforms, but they are so clumsy in arrangement, so resilient in the treatment of the various branches of the service, and so crowded with petty details as to contrast most unfavourably with the lucid order and vigorous reasoning of Rowland Hill’s Post- Office Reform. While the functionaries of the post-office are criticized with a severity so salient as to wear an appearance at times of almost personal hostility, the truth that a very large and liberal increase of public facilities would be likely to benefit the revenue much more materially than small economies in salaries and perquisites seems scarcely to have dawned on the minds of the commissioners. Even in dealing with a new accommodation actually provided—that of the money-order office—whilst taking just exception to the unofficial character of its management, they incline rather to its abolition than to its reform.
As early as 1788 the cost of the packets employed by the postoffice attracted parliamentary attention. In that year the “commissioners of fees and gratuities” reported that in the preceding seventeen years the total cost of this branch 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) of 1771-87 had increased in 1797 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. [table]
Table III.— Cost of Packet Service, 1820-1829.
The general administration of postal affairs at this period was still characterized by repeated advances in the letter rates, and the twenty years previous to Rowland Hill’s reforms by a stationary revenue. The following table (IV.) will show the gross receipts, the charges of collection and management, and the nett 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. [table]
Before passing to the reform of 1839 we have to revert to that important feature in postal history,—the interference with correspondence 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 significant 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 from the originals, which were stopped at the postoffice and copied, and sent forward as directed.” Hereupon Atterbury very naturally 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 and put a stop to his inquiry 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. In the preceding February complaints were made by several members that not only were their letters charged at the post-office, but they were often broken open and perused by the clerks, that the practice of breaking open letters was become frequent, and was so publicly known that “the liberty given to break open letters . . . could now serve no purpose but to enable the idle clerks about that office to pry into the private affairs of every merchant and of every gentleman in the kingdom.” 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 for any postmaster, his deputies, or agents, in Great Britain or Ireland, to open or look into, by any means whatever, any letter directed to or signed by the proper hand of any member, without an express warrant in writing under the hand of one of the principal secretaries of state for every such opening and looking into; or to detain or delay any letter directed to, or signed with the name of any member, unless there shall be just reason to suspect some counterfeit of it, without an express warrant of a principal secretary of state for every such detaining or delaying.”
Sir Howland Hills 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 (see Table IV. above), 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 £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 τ 8 θ t σ - of a penny for each, of which τ¾⅜ was c0s ^ °f transit and 1 ⅞ r ⅛- cost of receipt, delivery, &c. Taking into account, however, the much greater weight of newspapers and franked letters as compared with chargeable letters, the apparent average cost of transit became, by this estimate, but about τ ^- σ , or less than τ ⅛ 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 proportion, 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 •Id. 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. Apart from the necessary commercial evils of an excessive taxation, the effects upon the postal service itself were injurious,—on the one hand, a complicated system of accounts, involving both great waste of time and great temptation to fraud in their settlement, and, on the other, a constant invitation to the violation of the sacredness of correspondence, by making it part of daily official work to expose letters to a strong light expressly to ascertain their contents. These mischiefs it was proposed to remove by enacting 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. And 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. By the public generally, and pre-eminently by the trading public, the plan was received with great favour. By the functionaries of the post-office it was at once denounced as ruinous and ridiculed as visionary. Lord Lichfield, then postmastergeneral, said in the House of Lords that, if the anticipated increase of letters should be realized, the mails would have to carry twelve times as much in weight, and therefore the charge for transmission, instead of being <£100,000 as then, must increase to twelve times that amount. The walls of the post-office would burst; the whole area in which the building stood would not be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters. The latter part of this prediction indeed has been abundantly verified, but not within the period or under the circumstances then referred to. In the course of the following year (1838) petitions were 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 tact 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 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.”
During the session of parliament which followed the presentation of this report about 2000 petitions in favour of uniform penny postage were presented to both Houses, and at length the chancellor of the exchequer brought in a Bill to enable the treasury to carry that reform into effect. The measure was carried in the House of Commons by a majority of 100, and became law on 17th August 1839. A new but only temporary office under the treasury was created to enable Rowland Hill to superintend (although, as it proved, under very inadequate arrangements) the working out of his plan. The first step taken was to reduce, on 5th December 1839, the London district postage to Id. and the general inland postage to 4d. the half-ounce (existing lower rates being continued). On 10th 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 ounces. The postage was to be prepaid, and if not to be charged at double rates. Parliamentary franking was abolished. Postage stamps (see below, p. 585 sg , .) 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, very little was done. In carrying out the new measures the officers were, as the chancellor of the exchequer (Baring) expressed it on one occasion, “unwilling horses.” Nor need a word more be said in proof of the assertion than is contained in a naive passage of Colonel Maberly’s evidence before the postal committee of 1843. “My constant language to the heads of the departments was,— ‘ This plan, we know, will fail. It is your duty to take care that no obstruction is placed in the way of it by the heads of the department, and by the post-office. The allegation, I have not the least doubt, will be made at a subsequent period, that this plan has failed in consequence of the unwillingness of the Government to carry it into fair execution. It is our duty, as servants of the Government, to take care that no blame eventually shall fall on the Government through any unwillingness of ours to carry it into proper effect.’” And again: “After the first week, it was evident, from the number of letters being so much below Mr Hill’s anticipations, that it must fail, inasmuch as it wholly rested upon the number of letters; for without that you could not possibly collect the revenue anticipated.”
The plan, then, 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; and, when Goulburn succeeded Baring, the chancellor was very much of Colonel Maberly’s way of thinking. It happened, too, that the scheme had to be tried and carried through 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 per cent, of the amount of the gross revenue in 1839. These results at so early a stage, and in the face of so many obstructions, amply vindicated the policy of the new system. But by its enemies that system was loudly declared to be a failure, until the progressive and striking evidence of year after year silenced opposition by an exhaustive process.
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 miles round the metropolis; (10) 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.
Improvements, more conspicuous still, in the money-order branch of the postal service will be noticed in a subsequent section of this article (page 572).
Later History (1842-1885).
When Sir R. Hill initiated his great reform the postmastership-general was in the hands of the earl of Lichfield, the thirty-first in succession to that office after Sir Brian Tuke. It was under Lord Lichfield that the legislation of 1839 was carried out in 1840 and in 1841. In September of the last-named year Lord Lichfield was succeeded by Viscount Lowther.
In the summer of 1844 public attention was aroused in a remarkable manner to a branch of post-office administration which hitherto had been kept almost wholly out of sight. The statement that the letters of Mazzini, then a political refugee, who had long been resident in England, had been systematically opened, and their contents communicated to foreign Governments, by Sir James Graham, secretary of state for the home department, aroused much indignation. The arrest of the brothers Bandiera, 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 the year 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 years 1841-44 inclusive, a number exceeding that of any previous period of like extent. It further appeared that the whole recorded number of warrants from the beginning of the century was 372, which the committee classified under the following heads :— [table]
Subject-Matters in relation to which IVarrants were issued for the Opening of Letters, 1799-1844.
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, . . . 2d, 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.”
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.” The House of Commons accepted this explanation; and in view of many recent and 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, speedily gave a more vigorous impulse to the progress of the nett revenue than had theretofore obtained. During the seven years 1845-51 inclusive the average was but <£810,951. During the seven years 1852-57 inclusive the average was £1,166,448,—the average of the gross income during the same septennial period having been £2,681,835. The following table (V.) shows the details (omitting fractions of a pound) for the entire period from 1838, the last complete year of the old rates of postage, to 1857 inclusive :—
[table]
Number of Letters ; Gross and Nett Income, 1838-1857.
Briefly, within a period of eighteen years under the penny rate the number of letters became more than sixfold what it was under the exorbitant rates of 1838. When the change was first made the increase of letters was in the ratio of 122‘25 per cent, during the year. The second year showed an increase on the first of about 16 per cent. During the next fifteen years the average increase was at the rate of about 6 per cent, per annum. Although this enormous increase of business, coupled with the increasing preponderance of railway mail conveyance (invaluable, but costly), carried up the post-office expenditure from £757,000 to £1,720,800, yet the nett revenue of 1857 was within £320,000 of the nett revenue of 1839. During the year 1857 the number of newspapers delivered in the United Kingdom was about 71,000,000, and that of book-packets (the cheap carriage of which is one of the most serviceable and praiseworthy of modern postal improvements) about 6,000,000.
During the succeeding quarter of a century, 1858-84, the achievements of the period 1835-57 have been eminently surpassed. The postmasters-general of the new epoch have been assisted and seconded by a series of public servants, not a few of whom added to the conspicuous energies of Sir R. Hill more of those not less estimable qualities—suavity of manner, tact in dealing with large bodies of inferiors, reverence for the good doings of past times— than had fallen to his lot. Salient amongst such stand the names of Sir John Tilley, Mr Frank Ives Scudamore, and Mr Stevenson Blackwood. Among the postmasters - general the Earl of Elgin (1859), Lord Stanley of Alderley (1860), Lord Hartington (December 1868), Lord John Manners (February 1874), and the forty-fourth postmaster-general Henry Fawcett (April 1880 to November 1884) hold eminent place.
This period includes — (1) the establishment of postal savings banks (1861), in which Air Gladstone, as chancellor of the ex chequer, had a very large share, and (2) the transfer to the state of the telegraphic service (1870). The origin and growth of each of these pregnant improvements is narrated in a separate section of this article. Scarcely less important than these are (3) the introduction of postal cards (October 1870) and (4) the establishment (August 1883) of a parcel post. The last-named measure will probably, in its results, prove to be a public boon of almost unexampled magnitude. At its outset it checks railway abuses, both of overcharge and of excessive delays, which had grown to be enormous evils. Minor but most valuable ameliorations of the postal service begin with the abolition of the half-ounce limit (1877), and include the provision of new and excellent post-office buildings, great improvement of the system of registration, extensive accelerations of mails in various parts of the empire, increased postal deliveries, and, not least in importance, a most just amelioration (greatly needed) of the position of sub - postmasters, of clerks, of sorters, and of letter-carriers. Certain minor improvements cannot be more briefly or better epitomized than in the words of a writer in the Standard newspaper of 10th January 1879.
“The half-ounce weights chanced to be just above the weight of a letter written on full-sized post paper, and, when that was the maximum weight allowed, the margin was so fine that a little thicker paper than usual, or slightly larger envelope, sufficed to turn the scale, and all but strictly business correspondents λvere continually landing those whom they favoured with their communications in the annoyance of a surcharge for deficient prepayment of postage. By the extension to an ounce all that worry and annoyance has been swept away, and no inconsiderable benefit has been conferred besides on people whose missives are of necessity somewhat more ponderous than ordinary. Quite recently the postoffice has introduced another great improvement, which the public, not having yet had time to appreciate, do not utilize to the extent it deserves,—that is, the system of ensuring, which is little less than absolute security for money and articles of value sent through the post by means of registration. The fee for a registered letter, which was at one time as much as half a crown, and has within easy recollection been as high as a shilling, was reduced early in 1878 from 4d. to 2d., with the result that something like 6,500,000 of registered letters were sent in 1878, as compared with 4,316,000 in the previous year, and with 1,300,000 twenty years ago. This number would be largely increased if all the official registered packets were included. Not only has the fee been reduced to what may be considered the lotvest possible point, but letters are registered by rural postmen on their rounds, and registration envelopes have been issued by the department to facilitate registration by the public. The envelopes have been devised with care, and seem well suited for the purpose, being strong as well as cheap. They are sold at prices varying from 2∣d. to 3d. each (which includes the registration fee), and are in five useful sizes, from small note size to a large cover suitable for bankers and merchants. But the reduction in the charge and the sale of envelopes are not the only improvements which have been made in the registration system, for the post-office now undertakes to make good, up to £2, the value of any registered letter which it loses, simply stipulating, in the case of money, that one of its own envelopes shall be used. It is on every account most desirable that money and articles of value should not be loosely committed to the post, and with the facilities for transmitting letters securely which are now offered, people who choose to run the risk of loss deserve very little sympathy if the chance goes against them. As regards international communication it is enough to merely mention the beneficent results of the postal union, under which the postage to most places on the Continent and abroad has been reduced to the uniform rate of 2⅜d. for a letter not exceeding half an ounce in weight; while to a second category of more distant places under foreign dominion the charge for the letter of half an ounce is 6d.”
Table VI. gives the estimate of the number of letters (only) which passed in both directions between the United Kingdom and foreign countries and colonies in 1864. [table]
There were also about 21,500,000 books, papers, and patterns.
Meanwhile the estimated number of chargeable letters delivered within the United Kingdom during the year had grown from 504,421,000, at which it stood in 1857, to upwards of 700,000,000 in 1867, and to 1,057,732,000 in 1877. In the year 1884 the number was reported as 1,322,086,900 (exclusive of 153,586,100 post-cards). The growth of other departments of the postal service is fully in proportion to that of the letters of inland delivery, as may be seen by the following tables (VII., VIII., IX. ).
Table VII. - United Kingdom. Estimated Inland Delivery of Letters, 1839-1884. [table]
The statistics of post-cards, book-packets, and newspapers delivered in the United Kingdom in different years from 1872 to 1884 stand thus (Table VIII.) :— [table]
Table IX. (compare with Table VI.) gives the estimated number of letters, &c., which passed between the United Kingdom and countries abroad during the year ending 31st March 1884. [table]
Meanwhile the position of many efficient workers in the postal service, who had helped to bring about these satisfactory results, stood greatly in need of improvement. The humbler class of clerks, most of the sorters, and the entire body of metropolitan letter-carriers were prominent in expressing discontent, and they were able to show good grounds for it. The telegraphists soon followed with like representations, though their hardships were assuredly less. The result has been a large measure of amelioration in pay and in position, effected in part by Lord John Manners, and more especially by Mr Fawcett, who in 1883 estimated that these improvements would involve an annual cost of about £63,000.
The systematic employment of women in Her Majesty’s postal and telegraph service was for a long time an experiment and a problem. It may now be said, most accurately, that, on the whole, the experiment is grandly successful, and the problem fully solved. In telegraphic labour female counter-clerks and telegraphists were actively employed before the transfer to the state. The postmastergeneral of 1870 (Lord Hartington) did but accept what he found established. Under the new regulation, he employed women as telegraphists for eight hours daily, at scales of pay which varied from eight shillings a week to thirty, according to age, intelligence, and practical experience of the work. At first the women were put into separate galleries, afterwards into the same galleries with men and boys; and the change was found to work advantageously for all. As regards the postal service proper, the general introduction thereinto of female labour was effected, under the rule of Lord John Manners, by Sir John Tilley. The situations were eagerly sought for. At the close of 1880 there were in the three capital cities of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin alone very nearly a thousand female telegraphists; and throughout the kingdom a number not much inferior of women of various grades, employed in minor postal services, over and above the number of those whose employment is but an incident of their family position, as the wives and daughters of sub-postmasters and the like. The best and the most entirely successful experiment of all was that of 1875, which offered postal clerkships expressly to “gentlewomen,” and conspicuously to the daughters of officers of the army and navy and of officials in the civil service, admissible only between seventeen and twenty years of age after six months’ satisfactory probation, and organized in 1876 into two classes, each under a lady superior, who holds the position of a staff-officer. All promotions are made according to merit. Those of class I. have £80 to £100, and the “principal female clerks £100 to £150 a year; class II. £40 to £75. The same work which formerly occupied male clerks at £80 to £240 is now equally well done by female clerks at £40 to £75, and so in proportion with the other classes.”
Subjoined are (1) the latest financial statement of postal expenditure for the year 1883-84, and (2) some comparisons of the nett revenue of the post-office at various periods. [table]
In 1643 the nett revenue was about £5000 a year. In 1653 it was farmed to John Manley for £10,000 a year, and ten years afterwards to Daniel O’Neill for £21,500. In 1677 the farm rent was raised to £43,000. In 1685 the nett revenue had grown to £65,000, in 1707 to £111,426, in 1790 to £331,180, in 1800 to £720,982. In 1808 the nett revenue (for Great Britain) was £1,100,606, in 1820-21 £1,495,945, in 1839 £1,659,510, in 1849 £740,429, in 1859 £1,349,676, in 1869 £2,198,220 / in 1881 £2,597,768, in 1882 (inclusive of telegraphs) £3,100,475, in 1883 £3,061,748, and in 1884 £2,897,427. Money-Order Department.
The money-order branch of the post-office was for forty years the private enterprise of three post-office clerks known as “Stow and Company.” It was commenced in 1792, with the special object of facilitating the safe conveyance of small sums to soldiers and sailors, but was soon extended to all classes of small remitters. The postmastergeneral sanctioned the scheme without interposing in the management. Each of the three partners advanced £1000 to carry it on; and each of them seems, during the greater portion of the period, to have derived about £200 a year in profit. In 1830 the amount of remittances from London was only about £10,000. The percentage was eightpence in the pound, out of which threepence were allotted to each of the postmasters receiving and paying, the remaining twopence forming the profit of the partners. On 6th December 1838 the office was converted into an official department under the postmaster-general,—the then partners receiving due compensation. The commission was reduced to a fixed charge of Is. 6d. for sums exceeding £2 and under £5, and of 6d. for all sums not exceèd-ing £2. In 1840 these rates were reduced to 6d. and 3d. respectively. The number and aggregate amount of the orders issued (inland, colonial, and foreign) in different periods from the reorganization (1839) until 1884 are as follows (Table X.) [table]
From 1871 to the end of 1877, the rates having been reduced to Id. for sums under 10s., and 2d. for sums of 10s. and under 20s., increasing by a graduated scale of Id. for each additional £1 or fraction thereof, inland orders failed to be remunerative; and it was only by reckoning as profit the amount of unclaimed and forfeited orders that the cost to the office of inland orders could be covered. But, as the loss was only on orders for very small sums, Mr Chetwynd proposed to meet it by issuing postal notes payable at any post-office without previous notice. When the plan was submitted to a committee appointed by the treasury, it was objected that the postal note as a remitting medium would be less secure than the money order. The objection was met in part by giving a discretionary power to fill in the name of the post-office and also that of the payee, and no practical inconvenience or cause of complaint seems to have resulted. And in like manner another objection which was urged against the new form of money order in several quarters, and very strongly in the Banker's Magazine— namely, that they would prove to be an issue of Government small notes under another name—has derived no support from experience. “It is found,” says the postmaster-general, “that the average time [during] which these orders are in circulation is six days,—a fact which shows that there was no foundation for the idea that they would be used as currency.” The statistics of notes issued under the provisions of the Postal Orders Act, 43 and 44 Vict. c. 33 (1880), are as follows (Table XI.) :— [table]
The postal notes most largely in request are those of Is., 5s., 10s., and 20s. In 1884 plans were under the postmaster-general’s consideration for improving the regulations and for extending the system to the colonies. Meanwhile the money-order business, which for several years past had been constantly declining both in number and in value, was on the increase. In foreign ® and in colonial orders the increase was in the number as well as in the amount. The inland orders showed an increase in value of nearly two millions sterling (£1,856,091) in 1882-83 as compared with 1881-82, although their number was smaller by 386,531. In 1883- 84 there was a decrease of 0'84 per cent, in the value as compared with that of 1882-83, whilst the increase in the number of postal orders during the same year was more than four millions, the increase in value being more than £1,500,000.
The relative amount of the money-order business of the chief towns of the United Kingdom is shown in Table XII. It states the number and amount of the orders paid in each town on one day only (5th May 1876), and for the sake of comparison the corresponding figures for one day in 1884 (5th May) are appended :— [table]
Postal Savings Banks.
The establishment of post-office savings banks was practically suggested in the year 1860 by Mr Charles William Sykes of Huddersfield, whose suggestion was cordially received by Mr Gladstone, then chancellor of the exchequer, to whose conspicuous exertions in parliament the effectual working-out of the measure and also many and great improvements in its details are substantially and unquestionably due. Half a century earlier (1807) it had been proposed to utilize the then existing (and very rudimentary) money-order branch of the post-office for the collection and transmission of savings from all parts of the country to a central savings bank to be established in London. A Bill to that effect was brought into the House of Commons by Mr Whitbread, but it failed to receive adequate support, and was withdrawn. When Mr Sykes revived the proposal of 1807 the number of savings banks managed by trustees was 638, but of these about 350 were open only for a few hours on a single day of the week. Only twenty throughout the kingdom were open daily. Twenty-four towns containing upwards of ten thousand inhabitants each were without any savings bank. Fourteen entire counties were without any. In the existing banks the average amount of a deposit was £4, 6s. 5d.
Mr Gladstone’s Bill—entitled “An Act to grant additional facilities for depositing small savings at interest, with the security of Government for the due repayment thereof ”—received the royal assent on the 17 th of May 1861, and was brought into operation on the 16th of September following. The banks first opened were situated in places theretofore unprovided. In February 1862 the Act was brought into operation both in Scotland and in Ireland. Within two years nearly all the money-order offices of the United Kingdom became savings banks; about 367,000 new deposit accounts were opened, representing an aggregate payment of £4,702,000, including a sum of more than £500,000 transferred from trustee savings banks the accounts of which were closed. At the end of 1863 the number of accounts in the post-office banks was 319,669, with an aggregate deposit of £3,377,480. The average amount of each deposit was £3, 2s. lid. In 1867 the number of post-office savings banks in the United Kingdom was 3629, that of depositors in them 854,983, the amount standing to their credit £9,749,929. The average amount of each deposit was about £2, 18s. At the end of 1878 there were in the United Kingdom 5831 post-office savings banks; the number of depositors was 1,892,756; and the amount standing to their credit, inclusive of interest, was £30,411,563. At the end of 1882 the number of banks was 6999, the number of depositors 2,858,976, and the amount standing to their credit £39,037,821. This sum was increased at the end of the ordinary financial year, 31st March 1883 (the savings banks accounts being made up, in conformity with the Act of 1861, to 31st December), to £40,087,000. The average amount of each deposit was about £2, as against £4, 6s. 5d. in the trustee savings banks prior to the passing of the Act of 1861.
On 31st December 1883 the number of depositors was 3,105,642, and the aggregate amount standing to their credit (including interest) was £41,768,808; the amount of expenses remaining unpaid was about £11,000. The aggregate value of securities and amount of cash in the hands of the national debt commissioners was £43,294,949. The amount of cash in the hands of Her Majesty’s postmaster-general was £316,853. The aggregate assets were £43,697,932. The surplus of assets over liabilities was £1,918,116. At the beginning of 1884 the total amount received from depositors, including interest, stood at £173,660,388, the total amount repaid to depositors at £131,891,580. The aggregate number of deposits from the outset of postal savings banks was 62,154,832, that of withdrawals 21,612,727, the number of accounts opened 9,225,575, that of accounts closed 6,119,933, that of accounts remaining open 3,105,642. The total cost of these banks was £2,698,547. The aggregate number of transactions of all kinds was 83,767,559. The average cost of each transaction was 7⁷∕₁₀d. It marks the accuracy of the Government actuaries to note that, prior to the passing of the Savings Banks Act of 1861, the estimated cost of each transaction thereunder was stated at 7d.
Any depositor in the post-office savings bank can invest his deposit in Government stock by making proper application to the controller of the savings bank department, London, provided that the sum be not less than £10, or than the amount of the current price of £10 stock together with the commission, whichever sum is the smaller; not more than £100 stock can be credited to an account in any year ending 31st December, or £300 stock in all. Within seven days from the receipt of the application the depositor’s account is charged with the current price of the stock purchased, with the commission, the depositor receiving an investment certificate as evidence of the transfer.
As to investments in stock, the postmaster-general reports in 1884 that the total amount of Government stock on 31st December 1883 standing to the credit of depositors was £1,519,983 held by 20,767 persons, against £1,143,717 held by 16,609 persons in 1882,—an increase of £376,266 in amount and of 4158 in the number of stockholders. The average amount of stock held by each person at the end of the year was £73, 3s. 10d., as compared with £68, 17s. 3d. in 1882. During the seven years 1877 to 1883, inclusive, the average sum annually paid into the exchequer (under § 14 of the Act above named) as the excess of accruing interest was £127,192.
The apportionment of the outstanding accounts and their relation in each part of the United Kingdom to the population, respectively, stood as follows at the close of each of the years 1881, 1882, and 1883:— [table]
Table XIII.— Number and Amount of Open Accounts in Post-Office Savings Banks.
During the year 1883 nearly two millions and three quarters sterling (£2,730,987) of postal savings bank deposits were made in excess of those of the year 1882. Only seven small trustee savings banks were closed during the year 1883. During that year 323 new postal savings banks were opened in England and Wales, 33 in Scotland, and 14 in Ireland. At the close of the year the total number for the United Kingdom was 7369. On 31st March 1884 that number was increased to 7475. The year 1874 counts among the flourishing years of trade, 1884 among the depressed years. But since 1874 the aggregate amount of savings deposits in postal banks has very nearly doubled without any noticeable diminution in the business transacted by the trustee savings banks, and the number of depositors has also nearly doubled.
In England the county of Middlesex ranks first with 512,229 depositors (1881) and an aggregate deposit of £7,146,375; in Wales, Glamorganshire with 32,573 depositors and £371,419; in Scotland, Lanarkshire with 14,763 depositors and £104,550; in Ireland, Dublin county with 26,480 depositors and £367,672. At the close of 1882 the aggregate sum due to depositors in the last-named county had increased to £398,994. The increase of late years in the Irish deposits is, it may be added, very conspicuous, and extends to every county of the kingdom. The aggregate sum due to depositors throughout Ireland in 1873 was £845,550; in 1878 it was £1,325,806, and in 1882 £1,925,460, in addition to £125,000 of Government stock standing to the credit of depositors, or, in the whole, £2,050,460.
Of the 638 trustee savings banks which existed in the United Kingdom at the date of the establishment of the post-office system 230 have been closed. Fifteen new trustee banks have been opened; so that the number now existing is 423, as compared with 7475 postoffice savings banks.
Under the Act 45 and 46 Vict. c. 51 (1882) the postmastergeneral will insure the lives of persons of either sex between the ages of fourteen and sixty-five, inclusive, for any sum not less than £5 or more than £100; but where the amount does not exceed £5 the earlier limit of age is eight years. An annuity, immediate or deferred, for any sum not less than £1 or not more than £100 will be granted by the postmaster-general, under the same Act, to any person not under five years of age. The transactions take place through the medium of the savings bank departments. Husband and wife may each purchase an annuity up to the maximum amount, and each may be insured up to the full amount of £100. Conditions of contract in the case of annuities depend upon the age and sex of the purchaser, together with, where the annuity is deferred, the number of years which are to elapse before the commencement of the annuity; they also vary according as the purchase money is to be returned or not. The premiums charged for insurances vary with the age of the insurer and the mode in which the insurance is effected. The insurer, if not under sixteen years of age, enjoys the right of nominating the person to whom the money due at his or her death is to be paid. The contracts for annuities and life insurances in connexion with the savings bank branch of the post-office began on 17th April 1865. The following table (XIV.) shows the amount of business doue in different periods down to the year 1883 :— [table]
Postal Telegraphs.
To the chamber of commerce of Edinburgh belongs the honour of effectually originating that public demand for the transfer of the telegraphic service of the United Kingdom from commercial companies to the state which led to the passing of the Acts of Parliament of 1868 and 1869. There had, indeed, been several like proposals by individuals in preceding years. Mr Thomas Allan proposed such a transfer in 1854. Two years later the scheme was advocated by Mr Baines of the general post-office, and afterwards by Mr Ricardo. But these proposals had no practical effect until after the action taken at Edinburgh, mainly at the instance of Mr (now Sir) George Harrison, convener of the chamber. The committee of inquiry then appointed showed conclusively that the telegraphic service, as managed by the companies, (1) maintained excessive charges, (2) occasioned frequent and vexatious delays in the transmission of messages, and inaccuracies in the rendering of them, (3) left a large number of important towns and districts wholly unprovided for, and (4) placed special difficulties in the way of that newspaper press which had, in the interest of the public, a claim so just and so obvious to special facilities. The committee also proved that, great as were the just causes of public complaint at the date of its inquiry, they would have been greater still but for a considerable reduction of charge effected by, and in consequence of, the establishment in 1861 of the United Kingdom Company,—a company opposed by a formidable combination of its competitors, which forced it to abandon the uniform shilling rate, irrespective of distance, with which it started. The Edinburgh chamber was unanimous in supporting the plan of a uniform sixpenny rate, and that proposal was speedily endorsed by the other chambers of commerce throughout the kingdom. When the inquiry of 1865 was instituted the total number of places supplied with telegraphic communication by all the companies collectively was about 1000, whereas the number of places having postal communication at the same date was 10,685. The telegraph offices were placed most inconveniently for the service of the population generally, and especially for that of the suburbs of large towns; and under the then existing telegraphic tariff the charge in Great Britain was a shilling for a twenty-word message over distances not exceeding 100 miles; Is. 6d. for a like message over distances from 100 to 200 miles; 2s. when exceeding 200 miles. For a message between Great Britain and Ireland the charge ranged from 3s. to 6s.; to Jersey or Guernsey it was 7s. 8d. There were also innumerable extra charges, under contingent regulations of great complexity, which commonly added 50 per cent, to the primary charge, and frequently doubled it.
The Edinburgh committee considered in turn the respective merits of three several remedial measures: (1) a regulated amalgamation of the existing companies; (2) the establishment of entire free-trade in public telegraphy; (3) the transfer of the service to the post-office. It tended towards a preference of the last, but agreed to recommend the appointment of a royal commission of inquiry prior to legislation. In the result the needful preliminary inquiries, and also the preparation of the Bills for parliament to which those inquiries led, came to be made by the direct authority of the postmaster-general, and were mainly entrusted to Mr Frank Ives Scudamore, second secretary of the post-office.
The Electric Telegraph Act of 1868 (31 and 32 Viet, c. 110) authorized the postmaster-general, with consent of the treasury, to purchase for the purposes of the Act the whole, or such parts as he should think fit, of any existing telegraphic company, “provided always that no such purchase be made . . . until the proposed agreement, and a treasury minute thereupon, shall have lain for one month upon the table of both Houses of Parliament without disapproval.” The Bill in its original form gave to the post-office the exclusive right of public telegraphy. But the committee of the House of Commons to which the Bill was referred made a special report of their opinion “that it is not desirable that the transmission of messages for the public should become a legal monopoly in the post-office.” They also recommended that it should be left to the discretion of the postmaster-general, with the consent of the treasury, to make special agreements for the transmission of certain classes of messages at reduced rates; that security should be taken for ensuring the secrecy of messages, by making its violation punishable as a misdemeanour; and, finally, that submarine cables acquired by the postmastergeneral should at first be leased to companies, although ultimately it might become expedient that the post-office should work them.a The Act of 1869 (32 and 33 Viet, c. 73), entitled “An Act to alter andamςnd the Telegraph Act, 1869,” gives to the post-office the exclusive privilege of transmission,—withheld in the previous Act,—empowers the purchase of telegraphic undertakings other than those included in that Act, and enables certain companies to require the postmaster-general to make such purchase. It also directs the raising by the treasury of a sum of £7,000,000 for the purposes of the Acts. The Act 33 and 34 Vict. c. 88 (1870) extended the post-office telegraphic system to the Channel Islands and to the Isle of Man · and that of the 34 and 35 Vict. c. 75 (1871) authorized the raising of an additional million. These sums collectively proved to be quite insufficient, and eventually the capital sum so raised exceeded £10,000,000. This large excess led to very blamable irregularities, during two or three years, in the post-office accounts by the temporary application of savings banks’ balances, and the like, to telegraph expenditure,—irregularities which attracted the express censure both of the treasury and of the House of Commons. Probably no more arduous task was ever thrown upon a public department than that imposed on the post-office by this transfer of 1868-70. The reforms which it was to bring about were eagerly and impatiently demanded by the public. The utmost ingenuity that some of the old companies could exert, employ, or indirectly incite was used at first to prevent or impede the transfer and then to make it as difficult and as costly as possible.a
This great operation had to be effected without for one hour interrupting the public service. Thereupon the department had immediately to reduce and to simplify the charges of transmission throughout the kingdom. It had to extend the hours of business at all the offices. It had to extend the wires from railway stations lying outside of town populations to post-offices in the centre of those populations and throughout their suburbs. It had also to extend the wires from towns into rural districts theretofore wholly devoid of telegraphic communication. It had to effect a complete severance of commercial and domestic telegraphy from that of mere railway traffic; and in order to this severance it had to provide the railways with some 6000 miles of wires in substitution of those of which theretofore they had been joint users. It had, further, to provide at low charges, by all sorts of agencies, an effective “free trade” (so to speak) in the collection of news for the newspaper press, of which collection hitherto the old telegraph companies had possessed a virtual monopoly. It had to facilitate the transmission of money orders by telegram. Finally, it had to amalgamate into one staff bodies of men who had formerly worked as rivals, upon opposite plans and with different instruments, and to combine the amalgamated telegraph staff with that of the postal service.
When under examination by the Commons’ committee of 1868 Mr Scudamore had very modestly disclaimed the honour of originating anything with respect to the proposed transfer. Every part of the scheme had, he said, been borrowed from somebody else, and tried successfully elsewhere: the amalgamation of the telegraphic and postal administration in Victoria, New South Wales, Belgium, Switzerland, and to a certain extent in France; the institution of places of deposit for messages, in addition to the offices of transmission, in Belgium, as well as the gratuitous grant of postal facilities for telegraphic messages; telegraphic stamps in Belgium and France; a telegraphic money-order office in Switzerland and Prussia. But it is quite certain that Mr Scudamore, had he been put under examination at a later date, could have pointed to no precedent for labours like those imposed upon him and his able assistants by the Telegraph Acts of 1868-69.
So zealously was the work of improvement pursued that within little more than six years of the transfer (viz., in 1876) the aggregate extent of road wires in the United Kingdom was already 63,000 miles, that of railway wires 45,000,—in all 108,000 miles. The number of instruments in the telegraphic offices was 12,000. At that date the superintending and managing staffs of the post-office comprised 590 persons, the staff of the old companies with the relatively insignificant traffic of 1867—less than 6,000,000 messages as compared with 20,000,000—having been 534 persons. For supervision exclusively the number of officers was 88 against 86, and the relative cost £16,900 to the post-office as against £15,000 to the companies. At this date there were still no less than 1720 miles of the road wires carried over houses and across streets. In 1882 more than 1300 miles of these had been gradually removed and underground wires substituted.
The following table (XV.) shows the gross and nett revenue derived by the post-office from the telegraph service since the date of the actual transfer (Jan. and Feb. 1870). [table]
In the year 1882 a large increase in the working expenses became necessary for the further improvement and extension of the service, and for a very just increase in the remuneration of the telegraphists. In the report of that year the postmaster-general writes as follows:—“The annual interest on the capital sum of £10,880,571, raised by the Government for the purchase of the telegraphs, has not previously been included in the postmaster-general’s accounts, because the amount is not provided for out t of post-office votes; but in estimating the financial position it ought to be borne in mind that the chancellor of the exchequer has to meet a charge of £326,417 for this service out of the consolidated fund.”
The reduction of the unit of charge from a shilling to sixpence is a reform yet to come, but it is a reform expressly promised (Thirtieth Report, 1884, p. 5). It was originally proposed, in the Edinburgh chamber of commerce, at the outset of the public movement which led to the transfer of 1870. It has been repeatedly urged upon successive postmasters-general by the council of the London Society of Arts. On one of those occasions it was admitted by the postmaster-general that even at a sixpenny rate the telegraphs would eventually more than pay all expenses, including the current rate of interest upon the capital expended. Two years later the urgent necessity of this reform was expressly stated by the same high authority in answer to a question put to him in the House of Commons. But he calculated that to effect it would involve a loss to the revenue for the first three years, which would probably amount to nearly £420,000 in the aggregate.
The chief dates in the history of the electric-telegraph service may be stated briefly thus. The first public line to work the patent of Wheatstone and Cooke was laid from Paddington to Slough on the Great Western line in 1843. The charge for a message up to fifty words was Is. Before the end of the year 1845 lines exceeding in the aggregate 500 miles were at work in England on the same patent. In the following year the Electric Telegraph Company was established with a tariff of Is. for 20 words within a radius of 50 miles, Is. 6d. within 100 miles, 5s. if exceeding 100 miles. Remittance messages or telegraphic moneyorders were established in 1850. In October of that year the first oceanic telegraph was worked for the Submarine Telegraph Company. In June 1854 a writer in the Qτιarterly Review put the question: “Is not telegraphic communication as much a function of Government as the conveyance of letters?” In January 1870 the telegraphs became, in pursuance of the Acts of 1868 and 1869, practically a branch of the post-office. In 1881 telephone exchanges were established, both by the post-office and by private companies under its licence, for terms of years, upon payment of a royalty. In 1884 (August and September) definitive arrangements were made between the post-office and the telephonic companies, thus terminating a long controversy and removing many mercantile heart-burnings.
When the telegraphs were taken over by the Government telephonic communication had not yet come into practical use. But the principle and base of both methods are the same; and the Acts were framed to give the state a right to profit by improvements. In the course of the year 1880 several telephone companies established telephone exchanges in various parts of the kingdom. Means were immediately used by the postmaster-general to vindicate the law. On the 20th December of that year the question was brought to an issue in the Exchequer Division of the High Court of Justice. It was contended by the companies that “the telephone differed essentially from the telegraph,—the one transmitting electric signals, the other carrying the human voice by means altogether unknown when the post-office monopoly was granted.” In the course of his judgment Mr Justice Stephen observed that, “if the telephone really transmitted the human voice, then communication by it could not be more rapid than the velocity of sound, whereas in fact it was instantaneous. In both the communication is by electric signals.” The Exchequer decision of December 1880 establishes once for all, not only that the telephone companies are quite outside of “the terms of the exceptions in section 5 of the Act of 1869,” but also that “the Government monopoly is not limited to the property it acquired. It extends to all improvements in telegraphic communication.” The postmaster-general used his victory with generous moderation. As the companies, he wrote, ‘ ‘ were apparently under the belief that they had infringed no law, I held myself ready to meet them with liberal terms. The system of telephonic intercommunication is therefore now being extended partly through the agencies of companies and partly by the post-office.” In the next annual report (1882) he added: “Licences were granted to the United Telephone Company, as representing the companies defendants to the suit, and to other private agencies to carry on the business of a telephone exchange in London and in various provincial towns, the department at the same time itself establishing exchanges in other places. The principle which underlay this arrangement λvas that only one telephone system should be established in any one town. Ultimately he came to the conclusion that it was undesirable . . . to create a monopoly in the matter of telephonic communication; and in future applications will be favourably entertained from responsible persons for licences to establish exchanges under conditions which may be regarded as giving adequate protection to the public and to the department.”
According to the Situation des Réseaux Téléphoniques for 1883, published by the International Telephonic Company at Paris, the contract between the British post-office and the London and Globe Telephone and Maintenance Company is for a term of twenty-nine years. The licence granted to the Telephone Company of Ireland provides that no exchange to be established thereunder by that company shall be within less than 4 miles of any post-office exchange. But, liberal as they were, the concessions made by Mr Fawcett in 1883 failed to satisfy the large and constantly-increasing claims of the telephonic interest. They claimed (1) entire practical freedom of control for their respective enterprises, (2) the reduction of the subsisting state royalty by one-half, (3) the extension of the commercial telephonic radius to 15 miles. As an alternative, they offered to continue the subsisting royalty if every sort of restriction and control were removed. Mr Fawcett firmly maintained the right of Her Majesty’s post-office to continue the existing royalty, to establish at its discretion its own telephone exchanges throughout the realm, and to grant new licences irrespective of the old ones; he consented to abolish all limitations of radius or area, to subject trunk wires and exchange wires to like conditions, to withdraw the claim heretofore made by the department for an unlimited supply of the patented instruments used by the companies, and to permit the establishment by them of call-offices for local messages. But no company was to be licensed to receive and deliver written messages at any point. By this restriction telegraphic and telephonic messages were practically divaricated in service, although identical in law.
The subjoined table (XVI.) shows the total number of telegraphic messages forwarded in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, severally, at different years, since the transfer. [table]
The number of telegrams sent in proportion to population is now much greater in England than it is in the countries which were cited in the evidence of 1868 as in that particular outstripping others. The old companies, “by maintaining high charges as long as they could, by reducing those charges . . . only under pressure, by the confinement of their operations to important towns, and by planting their offices mainly in the business-centres of those towns, had brought speculative men. and speculative men only, to a free use of the telegraph.” The development of the service will be apparent when it is stated that at the date of transfer to the state (1870) the number of telegraph offices did not exceed 3700. The number of messages in a year was 8,606,000. In 1884 they were respectively 5873 and (as above) 32,843,120. The yearly increment has lately averaged nearly 700,000. More striking still is the contrast of cost. In 1851 twenty words sent from London to Edinburgh cost 10s.; as late as 1862 they cost 4s.; since 1880 the cost has been reduced to Is.; in August of the present year (1885) it will be reduced to 6d. Among the latest minor improvements of detail in the telegraph service is that which was effected in November 1882 by the abolition of the distinctive telegraph stamp, and the adoption of ordinary postage stamps for the payment of messages. Telegrams thus posted are conveyed, without extra charge, at the next collection of letters to the nearest telegraph office, whence they are transmitted by the wires at the earliest possible moment.
During 1883 and 1884 great improvements were made in the telegraphic service of Scotland and also in the communication between Great Britain and Ireland. An additional cable was established between Fishguard and Blackwater. Four new landlines were laid in connexion therewith, namely, from London to Fishguard, and from Blackwater to Dublin, Cork, and Limerick. There are now twenty-four wires available for use between Britain and Ireland contained in six cables. A new cable depot has been erected at Woolwich, and a cable-ship constructed (1883) expressly for post-office service. But the marvellous growth of telegraphy and telephony is best seen when we compare their statistics in individual towns. The daily average of messages in London, for example, was 450 in 1870 and nearly 6000 in 1883; in Derby 218 in 1870 and 898 in 1883. The staff at Derby in the former year was fourteen, in the latter year forty-six, and the instruments employed in the same years were respectively seven and twenty-seven.
Government, Organization, Staff, and Regulations.
Originally and essentially the post-office is part of the domain of the crown of England. Practically its administration is controlled and regulated by statute. There were in 1883 no less than twenty-one several Acts of Parliament, or parts of Acts, which affected the postal administration, although at the commencement of the reign of Victoria the existing Post-Office Acts and parts of Acts (somewhat more numerous still) were consolidated into a single statute,—a measure which had been previously resolved upon and in part prepared under the administration of the duke of Wellington. The responsibilities of common carriers do not extend to the postmaster-general or to any of his deputies. But a sub-postmaster is answerable in the ordinary courts of law for individual acts of negligence. And all subordinates of the postal service are, of course, responsible to the postmaster-general, who may, and upon due cause will, besides other and official punishment, require them to make good to the sufferers losses which have been inflicted by proven breach of duty.
The staff of the post-office department was composed as follows on 31st March 1884 (Table XVII.) [table]
The general post-office, London, is organized in seven principal departments, viz., (1) secretary’s. (2) solicitor’s, (3) receiver-and accountant-general’s, (4) money order, (5) savings banks, (6) telegraphs, (7) circulation. The secietary’s office has a general control over all the others.
At the beginning of 1858 the total number of post-offices in the United Kingdom was 11,101; at the beginning of 1884 it was 15,951. Of the former number 810 were head post-offices, of the latter number 921. In 1858 the number of street and road receiving-boxes was 703, in 1884 15,749.
The quarterly Post-Office Guide is now so widely known that we need say very little about rates of postage. Whilst a letter not exceeding 1 oz. passes for Id., and one not exceeding 2 oz. for l⅞d∙, one not exceeding 12 oz. is charged 4d., but for every weight exceeding 12 oz. a penny for each ounce, beginning with the first, is charged. There is no express limit to weight, but no letter, unless it be from or to a Government office, must exceed the dimensions of 18 X 9 × 6 inches. The uniform rate for a registered newspaper is ⅜d., unregistered newspapers pay the book-rate of ⅜d. for every 2 oz. In weight no book-packet must exceed 5 lb, nor must it exceed in dimensions those prescribed for letters. The official post-card is impressed with a ⅜d. stamp; cards for reply, bearing two stamps, may be transmitted not only between places within the United Kingdom but between such places and many foreign countries (see Post-Office Guide}. Petitions and addresses to Her Majesty and to the Houses of Parliament are exempt from charge up to a weight of 2 lb. Parliamentary proceedings are charged at the book rate, but are unlimited as to weight or size, and prepayment is optional, without entailing any increased rate of charge. The rates of the parcel post (1st August 1883) are—for 1 lb or part thereof, 3d.; not exceeding 3 lb, 6d.; not exceeding 5 lb, 9d.; not exceeding 7 lb, Is. The limits of size are 3 feet 6 inches in greatest length, and in length and girth combined 6 feet. In all cases parcels must be prepaid in adhesive stamps. The rule as to registration is held to be inapplicable to postal parcels; but in January 1885 a useful system of stamped certificates of the postage of parcels was introduced. For foreign rates of postage and for all like details we necessarily refer to the Post-Office Guide above-mentioned.
In social importance no branch of postal administration exceeds its savings banks system and the dependencies attached to it. At every post-office forms can be obtained on which twelve penny postage stamps can be fixed, which will be received as a postal savings bank deposit for a shilling, provided a due declaration be made that the depositor has no account with any other savings bank. When the deposit reaches £1, interest at the rate of 6d. a year on each pound is given. The depositor can withdraw his money (which may accrue to the limit of £30 in any one year) from any one of the 7475 post-office banks. At any such office a person who wishes to invest £10 or any larger sum up to £100 in Government stock can do so at the current price of the day.
In conclusion we add a brief retrospective survey of the more salient incidents, in chronological order, of the British post office. (1533) First appointment of a postmaster-general for England; (1591) partial organization of rudimentary English post-office; (1619) appointment of a special postmaster-general for “foreign parts”; (1635) reorganization of English post-office under Thomas Witherings; (1665) settlement of post-office revenue on James, duke of York, and his heirs-male; (1680) establishment of a metropolitan penny post by William Dockwra; (1711) consolidation of Postal Acts by statute 9 Queen Anne, c. x.; (1720) organization of crossroad and rural posts under Ralph Allen; (1753) organization of post-office of American colonies under Benjamin Franklin; (1784) establishment of improved mail-coaches and of well-organized mailroutes, under John Palmer of Bath; (1821) first conveyance of mails by steam-packet; (1830) first mail-coach by railway; (1834, August) postage stamp invented at Dundee by James Chalmers; (1835) establishment of the overland route to India, mainly by exertions of Lieutenant Waghorn; (1837) Sir R. Hill’s postal reform initiated ; (1838) establishment of postal money-order office; (1840, January) general and uniform penny post (per half ounce) established; (1855, March) first street letter-box put up in London; (1855, June) book-post organized; (1856) metropolitan postal districts established and Postal Guide issued; (1861) postal savings banks instituted; (1870) transfer of telegraphs to the state; (1870) Sostal cards introduced; (1870) improved postal treaty with
Γapoleon III. concluded; (1871) postal unit of charge reduced to one penny per ounce; (1874) International Postal Union established at Bern; (1875) further consolidation of the post-office statutes; (1881, January) postal orders issued; (1883, August) parcel post established; (1884, October) entrance of the Australian colonies into the Postal Union.
Bibliography. —John Hill, Penny Post, or a Vindication of the Liberty of every Englishman in carrying Letters, against any Restraint of Farmers of such Employ ment, 1659; “The Case of the Officers of His Majesty’s Penny Post," in the Ninth Report of the Commissioners on the Post-Office Department, 1698; “PostOffice," in Reports on the Revenues of the Crown, 1811 sq. ; “Post-Office,” in Reports of the Commissioners of the Revenue Inquiry, 1826-30; Reports of the Com missioners . . . on the Management of the Post-Office, 1835-38; Rowland Hill, Post- Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability, 1837 (three editions in 1837; reprinted in the Posted Gazette, 1884); Reports of [Commons’] Select Committee on Postage, 1837-38; Papers issued by the Mercantile Committee on Postage, 1839; Post Circular, ed. by Henry Cole; Correspondence on Post-Office Reform, ed. by R. Hill, 1843; R. Hill, State and Prospects of Penny Postage; Reports of PostmasterGeneral, 1855-84 (annually); Post-Office Guide (quarterly, by authority), 1856-85; Postal Official Circular (a revised re-issue of an earlier publication entitled Daily Packet List), 1858-85; W. Lewin, Her Majesty's Mails: an Account of the British Post-Office, 1864; R. Hill, History of Penny Postage (appended to G. B. Hill’s Life of Sir R. Hill), 1880; P. Chalmers, The Penny Postage Scheme of 1837: was it an Invention or a Copy? 1881, and The Position of Sir R. Hill made plain, 1882 (with many other tracts by the same author during 1882-84); Pearson Hill, A Reply to Mr Chalmers ; Henry Fawcett, The Post-Office and Aids to Thrift, 1881.
British Colonies and Dependencies. Australia and New Zealand.— In 1873 there were 2668 postoffices open; 38,930,852 letters (including South Australian and New Zealand packets) and 22,018,483 newspapers and packets were transmitted; 303,741 money orders, amounting to £754,847, were issued; there were 185,202 depositors in the post-office savings banks, whose deposits amounted to £2,081,288; over 20,559 miles of telegraph lines were open; 2,100,272 messages were transmitted, from which an income of £211,276 was derived, while the expenditure (exclusive of South Australia) amounted to £186,681. Western Australia is omitted from these figures owing to the inadequacy of the Government returns. These figures, compared with the population of 1873, show that over 18 letters and over 10 newspapers and packets per head were transmitted; that money orders were issued to 1 in about every 7 persons, at an average value of nearly £2, 10s. per order; that deposits in the post-office savings banks averaged a little over 1 in 11 of the entire population, at an average value of £11, 4s. per deposit; that of telegraph messages there was about one to each person.
In 1883 there were 4410 post-offices open; 123,614,387 letters and post-cards, 10,434,461 packets, and 60,889,570 newspapers (including South Australian packets) were transmitted; the revenue of the postal department amounted to £1,057,100, and the expenditure to £1,287,679; 783,701 money orders were issued, amounting to £2,608,915; there were 254,510 depositors in the post-office savings banks, and their deposits amounted to £4,537,706; there were over 57,174 miles of telegraph, and 7,083,163 messages were transmitted, the value of which was estimated at £476,683; the expenditure of the telegraph departments amounted to £345,590, but it must be explained that the Victorian, South Australian, and West Australian expenditures were included in those of the postal departments. These figures, compared with the population of 1883, show that there were transmitted per head nearly 40 letters and post-cards, and over 23 newspapers and packets; to every third person a money order was issued, at an average value of about £3, 6s. 6d. per order; the number of deposits in the post-office savings banks averaged about 1 in every 12 of the population, and their average value was over £17, 6s. per deposit; the telegraph messages λvere transmitted at the rate of rather more than two messages to each person.
Canada. — During the year which ended on 30th June 1884 the number of letters conveyed by the mails throughout the Dominion of Canada was 66,100,000 as against 62,800,000 in the corresponding year 1883; that of post-cards was 13,580,000 as against 12,940,000. The number of letters registered was 3,000,000 against 2,650,000. The number of money orders issued was 463,502, their aggregate value being £2,068,726. Of this amount £1,638,060 was for inland orders, £430,666 for foreign orders. The number of Canadian post-offices was 6837 against 6395 in 1883; the length of postal routes open was 47,131 miles, showing an increase over the previous year of 2488 miles. The distance traversed thereon by the mails in 1884 was 20,886,316 miles. Of the 6837 postoffices 866 were also money-order offices. In 1884 international money orders were extended to the principal countries of the Postal Union and to all British possessions abroad. In 1884 the amount of foreign money orders paid in Canada was £252,600. In 1884 the number of post-office savings banks was 343, the number of depositors’ accounts 66,682 (an increase of 5623 over 1883), and total amount in deposit £2,650,000.
India.— In order to illustrate the growth of the post-office in India we give the salient statistics for 1873 and 1883. In British India and the native states the total number of post-offices in 1883 was 5310, showing an increase of 2304 since 1873. In 1883 the number of letters of all descriptions that passed through the postoffice was 135,709,147, in 1873 it was 83,127,098. Post-cards were not issued until 1880, when they numbered 7,471,984, which number had increased to 29,844,347 in 1883. In the last-quoted year 18,501,171 newspapers, parcels, and packets passed through the post and 10,030,216 in 1873. In 1883 2,565,904 postal money orders, representing a value of £6,468,418, were issued. Adding the number of money orders to the total of letters, newspapers, &c., for the year 1883 we obtain an aggregate of 186,620,569, equal to 0’73 per head of population. Post-office savings banks were opened in India on 1st April 1882; during the first year the deposits reached a total of £435,356, or including interest (£4902) £440,258. Deposits amounting to £160,578 were withdrawn during the year, leaving a balance of £279,680 on 31st March 1883. The total length of Government telegraph lines increased from 46,386 miles in 1873 to 84,700 miles in 1883. The expenditure in both years under consideration exceeded the receipts: whilst in 1873 the figures were respectively £704,193 and £677,047, in 1883 they were £983,779 and £971,639. (E. ED.)
United States.
The early history of the post-office in the British colonies in North America has been briefly referred to above (pp. 565, 566). Benjamin Franklin was removed by the home department from his office of postmastergeneral in America in 1774. On 26th July 1775 the American Congress assumed direction of the post-offices, re-appointing Franklin to his former post. Shortly afterwards, when Franklin was sent as ambassador to France, his son-in-law, Richard Bache, was made postmastergeneral in November 1775.
In 1789 the number of post-offices was 75, in 1800 903, in 1825 5677, in 1875 35,734, and in 1884 50,017. In 1789 the gross revenues of the postal service were $30,000, in 1800 $280,804. In 1860 the gross revenues had increased to $8,518,067 and in 1875 to $26,671,218. In 1884 they amounted to $43,338,127’08. In 1860 there was a deficit in the postal income of $10,652,542’59, occasioned through lavish expenditure and then existing abuses. Annual deficiencies had occurred for nine years previous to 1860, and continued for twenty-one years thereafter. In 1882 a surplus of $1,394,388’92 was shown, and in 1883 a profit of $1,001,281’83. The percentage of deficit continued steadily to decrease after 1860, and in 1882, for the first time in thirty-one years, the postal service ceased to be a burden upon the treasury. It is not to be doubted that adverse natural conditions operated for many years to prevent or to postpone this favourable result, among them the vast extent of territory embraced within the confines of the republic, entailing costly service over long routes, and the extraordinarily rapid development of the western States and Territories, conditions which militate against the United States in a comparison of the statistics of its postal service during that period with those of the service of countries having more limited areas.
Until 1863 the rates of postage were based upon the distances over which the mails were conveyed. In 1846 these rates were—not exceeding 300 miles, three cents; exceeding 300 miles, ten cents. In 1851 the rates were reduced to three cents for distances not exceeding 3000 miles and ten cents for distances exceeding 3000 miles. The use of adhesive postage stamps was first authorized by Act of Congress, approved 3d March 1847, and on 1st June 1856 prepayment by stamps was made compulsory. In 1863 a uniform rate of postage without regard to distance was fixed at three cents, and on 1st October 1883, after satisfactory evidence had been given of the surplus income from the operations of the post-office establishment for the two preceding fiscal years, the rate was further reduced to two cents, the equivalent of the British penny postage. It will be seen that no time was lost in giving to the public the benefit of the change for the better in the condition of the postal finances, and to this liberality is undoubtedly due in great measure the deficit of $5,204,484’12 for the year 1884, a deficiency which, however, it is reasonable to expect, will decrease from year to year under the stimulus given to correspondence by the cheapened rate. It is hardly remarkable, in view of the great area of the United States, that for a long time distance should have formed a very material element in the calculations for levying postal tribute.
The franking privilege, which had grown to be an intolerable abuse, was finally abolished in 1873, and the post-office now carries free under official “penalty” labels or envelopes (i.e., envelopes containing a notice of the legal penalty for their unauthorized use) nothing but matter which is of a strictly official character, with the single exception of newspapers circulated within the county of publication. As late as 1860 the mails conveyed nothing but written and printed matter. They now admit nearly every known substance which does not exceed four pounds in weight (this restriction does not apply to single books), and which from its nature is not liable to injure the mails or the persons of postal employés.
The railway mail service, including the “fast mail,” the character of which is from the necessity of the case peculiar, and which, in its methods and results, has reached a perfection attainable only in a country of great extent, was inaugurated in 1864 after a successful experiment upon a few of the large railroad lines with important termini. In 1865 one thousand and forty one miles of railway post-office service were in operation, employing sixty-four clerks. The service was reorganized in 1874 with eight territorial divisions, each in charge of a superintendent subordinate to a general superintendent at the seat of government. This service was one of the earliest exponents of a classified civil service in the more recent acceptation of that term in the United States, appointment of railway postal clerks having always been made for a probationary period, permanent appointment conditioned upon satisfactory conduct and service, and removal based upon good cause only. On 1st July 1884 there were about four thousand clerks in the railway mail service, and the length of the routes was 117,160 miles. The annual transportation (aggregate distance over which the mails were conveyed) was 142,541,392 miles. At the same date the length of the “star service” routes (i.e., mail service other than by railway or steamboat) was 226,779 miles and the annual transportation 81,109,052 miles, while the length of the steamboat routes was 15,591 miles with an annual transportation of 3,882,288 miles, which does not include conveyance of mails by sea to foreign countries.
The penny post existed in a number of cities of the Union in 1862, the carriers remunerating themselves by the collection of a voluntary fee of from one to two cents on each piece of mail delivered. A uniform free delivery system was first authorized by law on 3d March 1863, and was established on the succeeding 1st of July in forty-nine cities. The number of carriers employed the first year was 685. On 1st July 1884 there were 3890 lettercarriers in one hundred and fifty-nine “free delivery cities.” To the European reader this number will doubtless appear to be remarkably small in a country whose population, according to the census of 1880, was over 50,000,000, but it should be observed that, outside of the larger cities and towns, the people as a rule reside on detached farms of greater or less size, at considerable distances from each other, and not, as in many of the European states, congregated in small towns or villages, separated from their farms; from this circumstance it happens that rural factors or carriers have never been, and could not well be, employed as in European countries.
The registry system, in which great improvements have been made within the last few years, did not attain any degree of excellence until after 1860; and the money-order system was first established in 1864. The aggregate number of money orders, domestic and foreign, issued during the fiscal year 1883-84 was 8,314,963, of the value of $129,810,038’51. Postal notes for small sums, payable to bearer, and resembling the British postal orders except in that they are not drawn for fixed amounts, were first issued to the public in September 1883, and during the first ten months there were 3,689,237 notes sold of the aggregate value of $7,411,992’48. Money orders are exchanged, in pursuance of postal conventions for the purpose, with most of the important countries of the world which have money-order systems of their own.
The total staff of the post-office in 1884 numbered 71,671, of whom 50,017 were postmasters. For the same year the total number of letters delivered in 159 cities was 524,431,327. The number of post-cards delivered in the same cities was 166,652,429, and the number of newspapers 231,645,185. The number of registered letters and parcels sent through the mails was 11,246,545, and the total ascertained losses numbered 516, or in the ratio of 1 to 21,795. During the same year the total number of pieces of mail handled or distributed en route on the cars by railway postal clerks was 4,519,661,900, of which number 2,795,447,000 were letters,—a total increase over the previous year of 13£ per cent., the transactions of that year having themselves exceeded those of the year 1882 by nearly 16 per cent. The sales of stamps, &c., for the year amounted to $40,745,853’66, showing that almost the entire revenues of the service are derived from postages. The total estimated number of letters sent to foreign countries was 33,328,014, of post-cards 1,672,458, of packets of newspapers, &c., 20,712,464, and of packages of samples of merchandise 297,048. There were received from foreign countries 28,404,035 letters, 1,288,673 postcards, 21,747,784 packets of newspapers, <tc., and 519,561 packets of samples of merchandise. The total number of articles of undelivered mail received in the dead-letter office was 4,843,099, of which number 4,752,483 were letters, being nearly a million less than the number which reached the British returned-letter office. Useful printed matter which cannot be returned is distributed amongst the inmates of various hospitals, asylums, and charitable and reformatory institutions in the District of Columbia, and in 1884 23,152 magazines, pamphlets, <fcc., were thus disposed of.
Three years after the passage by the British parliament of the Electric Telegraph Act (1868-69) the subject of a similar transfer of the rights of the telegraph companies to the post-office of the United States was strongly urged by the postmaster-general of that country, Mr Creswell, and he renewed his recommendations the succeeding year; the subject also recurred at intervals in the annual reports of the post-office department for subsequent years. In 1882 Mr Howe admitted that he had been “forced to the conclusion that the time has fully come when the telegraph and postal service should be embraced under one management”; a yeaι∙ later, however, Mr Gresham states that he “should hesitate to sanction a measure providing that the United States shall become the proprietor of telegraph lines and operate them by its officers and agents.” Mr Hatton in his first report as postmaster-general, that for 1884, is silent upon this subject.
Mr Creswell took occasion in 1871 to recommend also the establishment of postal savings banks in the United States, and this subject he made of peculiar interest at the time by the suggestion that the money needed to purchase existing telegraph lines could be raised through the postal savings banks, certainly a timely suggestion to accompany the two simultaneous recommendations. The establishment of postal savings banks has also been the frequent subject of departmental and congressional discussion without decisive action. The utility and expediency of the measure have not been doubted, but singularly enough what has seemed to be an insuperable obstacle to the inauguration of the system has been encountered. The policy of the Government, with its vast surplus revenue of late years, has been to gradually and surely reduce the national debt, which, it would seem from the progress already made in that direction, is certain of ultimate extinction in the course of a few years. It is plain, however, although the difficulty does not seem to have occurred to many of the advocates in the United States of a savings banks system, that to be lasting it must be founded upon a permanent Government debt, a condition which does not and is not likely to exist in that country. Interest cannot be paid to depositors for funds which are not needed and which cannot be profitably employed. Until this problem is solved, it is not probable that this feature will be added to the postal system of the United States, where, however, the practice of careful economy has not yet become a common habit of the masses of the people, and where the security for small savings afforded by Government institutions would tend to foster habits of thrift. A Bill to establish a postal savings depository as a branch of the post-office department was introduced in the House of Representatives on 8th February 1882, and an elaborate report was made thereon, 21st February 1882, by the committee on the post-office and post-roads, to whom the Bill had been referred. The measure was never acted upon and has not since been revived. (W. B. C*.)
France.
The French postal system was founded by Louis XI. (19th June 1464), was largely extended by Charles IX. (1565), and received considerable improvements at various periods under the respective Governments of Henry IV. and Louis XIII, (1603, 1622, 1627 sç.). In the year last-named (1627) France, so often during long ages preeminent in “teaching the nations how to live,” originated a postal money-transmission system, expressly prefaced by those cautions about transmission of coin in ordinary letters which are now familiar to all eyes in the windows of English post-offices (but which no eyes saw there a dozen years ago), and in the same year it established a system of cheap registration for letters. The ’ postmaster who thus anticipated 19th-century improvements was Pierre d’Alméras, a man of high birth, who gave about £20,000 (of modern money) for the privilege of serving the public. The turmoils of the Fronde wrecked much that he had achieved. The first farm of postal income was made in 1672, and by farmers it was administered until June 1790. To increase the income postmasterships for a long time were not only sold but made hereditary. Many administrative improvements of detail were introduced, indeed, by Mazarin (1643), by Louvois (c. 1680 s7.), and by Cardinal de Fleury (1728); but many formidable abuses also continued to subsist. The revolutionary Government transferred rather than removed them. Characteristically, it put a board of postmasters in room of a farming postmaster-general and a controlling one. The keen and far-seeing mind of Napoleon (during the consulate) abolished the board, recommitted the business to a postmastergeneral as it had been under Louis XIII., and greatly improved the details of the service: Napoleon’s organization of 1802 is, in substance, that which obtains in 1885, although, of course, large modifications and developments have been made from time to time.
The university of Paris, as early as the 13th century, possessed a special postal system, for the abolition of which in the 18th it received a large compensation. But it continued to possess certain minor postal privileges until the Revolution.
Mazarin’s edict of 3d December 1643 shows that France at that date had a parcel post as well as a letter post. That edict creates for each head post-office throughout the kingdom three several officers styled respectively (1) comptroller, (2) weigher, (3) assessor; and, instead of remunerating them by salary, it directs the addition of one-fourth to the existing letter rate and parcel rate, and the division of the surcharge between the three. Fleury’s edicts of 1728 make sub-postmasters directly responsible for the loss of letters or parcels; they also make it necessary that senders should post their letters at an office, and not give them to the carriers, and regulate the book-post by directing that book parcels (whether MS. or printed) shall be open at the ends. In 1758, almost eighty years after Dockwra’s establishment of a penny post in London, an historian of that city published an account of it, which in Paris came under the eye of a man of similar spirit and enterprise to Dockwra. Claude Piarron de Chamousset obtained letters-patent to do the like, and, before setting to work or seeking profit for himself, he issued a tract with the title, Mémoire sur la petite-poste établie à Londres, sur la modèle de laquelle on pourrait en établir de semblables dans les plus grandes villes d'Europe. The reform so worthily begun was successfully carried out.
By this time the general post-office of France was producing a considerable and growing revenue. In 1676 the farmers had paid to the king £48,000 in the money of that day. A century later they paid a fixed rent of £352,000, and covenanted to pay in addition one-fifth of their nett profits. In 1788—the date of the last letting to farm of the postal revenue—the fixed and the variable payments were commuted for one settled sum of £480,000 a year. The result of the devastations of the Revolution and of the wars of the empire together is shown strikingly by the fact that in 1814 the gross income of the post-office was but little more than three-fifths of the nett income in 1788. Six years of the peaceful government of Louis XVIII. raised the gross annual revenue to £928,000. On the eve of the revolution of 1830 it reached £1,348,000. Towards the close of the next reign the post-office yielded £2,100,000 (gross). Under the revolutionary Government of 1848-49 it declined again (falling in 1850 to £1,744,000); under that of Napoleon III. it rose steadily and uniformly with every year. In 1858 the gross revenue was £2,296,000, in 1868 £3,596,000.
The most important postal reforms in France (other than those which we have already noticed) are briefly these :— (1) the extension of postal facilities to all the communes of the country,—effected under Charles X., placing the France of 1829 in certain postal particulars in advance of the United States of 1879; (2) the adoption of postage stamps,—effected under the presidency of Louis Napoleon (1849); (3) the organization of an excellent system of not only transmitting but insuring articles of declared value, whatever their nature, — effected under Napoleon III. (1859); (4) the issue of postal notes payable to bearer (1860); (5) the establishment of a post-office library (1878); (6) the creation of postal savings banks (1880).
France, as we have seen, possessed a postal moneytransmission service as early as 1627. But for almost two centuries the thing the remitter delivered at the post-office was the thing given to the payee, whether it were coin or paper money. In 1817 the money-transmission service became a money-order service. In that year the aggregate value of inland money orders was £364,000, in 1830 £528,000, in 1845 £844,000, in 1864 £4,520,000, in 1868 £6,280,000, in 1877 £9,238,644, in 1878 £11,036,712, in 1881 £18,793,188, in 1882 £19,655,117, in 1883 £20,770,078. The average amount of each order varied very little during the fifty-eight years 1821 to 1878, ranging only between 28 francs 62 centimes and 30 francs (twenty-four shillings). The number of orders was in the first-named year only 317,642. In 1868 the number was (in round figures) 5,320,000; in 1878 it had grown to 9,304,840, in 1881 to 14,626,117, in 1882 to 15,791,774, and in 1883 to 16,808,627. The average amount of each order has been, since 1878, somewhat upon the increase. France may also fairly claim to have been in advance of the United Kingdom not only in facilities for the safe transmission of money and other precious commodities but also in the facilities of book post and parcel post. In the tariff for ordinary correspondence, however, it has always contrasted unfavourably. Whilst under the regulations of January 1849 and of July 1854 respectively the letter tariff was double that of Great Britain, it has come to be treble since the adoption by the latter country of the one-ounce unit of charge; l⅛d. is the French rate under the regulation (Μ. Cochery’s) of 1st May 1878 for a half-ounce letter; Id. is the English rate for an ounce letter. Postcards are charged double the English rate. The growth of postal correspondence in France prior to the great check inflicted by the calamities of 1870-71 may, very briefly, be shown thus :—
Table XVIII.— Comparative Numbers of Letters, Newspapers, • and Books conveyed. [table]
The ingenuity of the French postal authorities was severely tried by the exigencies of the German War of 1870-71; but they proved themselves singularly successful in maintaining a correspondence, inland and foreign, under difficulties which were probably greater than any postal staff had ever before had to encounter since posts were known. The first contrivance was to organize a pigeon service, carrying microscopic despatches prepared by the aid of photographic appliances. The number of postal pigeons employed was 363, of which number fifty-seven returned with despatches. During the height of the siege the English postal authorities received letters for transmission by pigeon post into Paris by way of Tours, subject to the regulations that no information concerning the war was given, that the number of words did not exceed twenty, that the letters were delivered open, and that 5d. a word, with a registration fee of 6d., was prepaid as postage. At this rate the postage of the 200 letters on each folio was £40, that on the eighteen pellicles of sixteen folios each, carried by one pigeon, £11,520. Each despatch was repeated until its arrival had been acknowledged by balloon post; consequently many were sent off twenty and some even more than thirty times. The second step was to establish a regular system of postal balloons, fifty-one being employed for letter service and six tor telegraphic service. To Μ. Durnouf belongs very much of the honour of making the balloon service successful. On the basis of experiments carried out by him a decree of 26th September 1870 regulated the new postal system. Out of sixty-four several ascents, each costing on the average about £200, fifty-seven achieved their purpose, notwithstanding the building by Krupp of twenty guns, supplied with telescopic apparatus, expressly for the destruction of the postal balloons. Only five were captured, and two others were lost at sea. The aggregate weight of the letters and newspapers thus aerially mailed by the French post-office amounted to about eight tonsand a half, including upwards of 3,000,000 letters; and, besides the aeronauts, ninety-one passengers were conveyed. The heroism displayed by French balloon postmen was equalled by that of many of the ordinary letter-carriers in the conveyance of letters through the catacombs and quarries of Paris and its suburbs, and, under various disguises, often through the midst of the Prussian army. Several lost their lives in the discharge of their duty, in some cases saving their despatches by the sacrifice. No less than eighty-five faced the extremity of danger. During the war the Marseilles route for the Anglo-Indian mails was, of course, abandoned. They were sent through Belgium and Germany, by the Brenner Pass to Brindisi, and thence by Italian packets to Alexandria. The French route was resumed in 1872.
Before dealing with the latest statistics of the French postal system, it may be of interest to cite from L' Union Postale of Bera (ii. 87 sq. ) a brief comparison of the mail matter within the limits of Paris with that of the state at large in the year 1874 (Table XIX.). [table]
The reader will observe on glancing from this table to Table XVIII. that in 1874 the ordinary correspondence of France had not recovered its former extent, as it stood in 1868, although a large relative increase is shown in the number of registered letters during 1874 as compared with those of 1868. Taken as a whole, the postal traffic did not fully recover itself until 1878; and even then, although the mailed articles exceeded those of the year immediately preceding by 124,310,199, the gross revenue accruing from letters, newspapers, and parcels showed a diminution of £788,150 as compared with the gross revenue of 1877. Thenceforward the progress is rapid. The chief postal laws now in force are of 6th May 1827, 4th June 1859, 25th January 1873, 3d May 1876, 6th April 1878, 5th February 1879, and 9th April 1881.
The comparative postal statistics for all France during the years 1881, 1882, and 1883 stand thus [table]
Table XX.— Number of Letters and Post-Cards.
In 1882 the gross revenue of the entire French postal service was £6,170,146, the total expenditure £5,338,273, and the nett revenue £831,873. In 1883 the gross revenue amounted to £6,429,101, the expenditure to £5,678,851, and the nett revenue to £750,250. In 1881 the number of post-offices throughout France was 6158 plus 53,182 letter-boxes, making the total number of postal receptacles 59,340. In 1884 the number of post-offices proper had increased to 6565. The aggregate of the postal and telegraphic staff was 49,121 persons in 1881, 50,268 in 1882, and 52,636 in 1883. The relative number of letters (including post-cards) to each inhabitant was 16 in 1881 as compared with 27 to each inhabitant in the United States, and with 38 to each in the United Kingdom. In 1882 the proportion was 16 τ ⅞ as compared with 40√⅛ in Great Britain, in 1883 16⅛ and 41- 1 %∙ respectively. Were it possible to deduct in each case the useless, the merely undesired advertising communications, France would contrast with Britain, and still more with America, far less disadvantageously than, on the mere face of the figures, it seems to do.
The savings banks system of France, so far as it is connected with the postal service, dates only from 1875, and began then (at first) simply by the use of post-offices as agencies and feeders for the pre-existing banks. Prior to the postal connexion the aggregate of the deposits stood at £22,920,000. In 1877 it reached £32,000,000. Postal savings banks, strictly so called, began only during the year 1881. At the close of 1882 they had 210,712 depositors, with an aggregate deposit of £1,872,938 sterling; and on 31st December 1883 375,838 depositors, with an annual deposit of £3,097,765. A convention lately made between France and Belgium enables depositors in either country to transfer their accounts to the other free of charge. Μ. Auguste de Malarce has greatly distinguished himself in tlιe promotion of savings banks of all kinds, and most especially in urging the formation of penny banks and school banks. These, however, are not directly connected with the postal service.
The union of the telegraph with the post-office dates only from 1878. Prior to the amalgamation the number of telegraph offices was 4561; in 1883 it was already increased to 6448. At the former date (1878) the lineal extent of the telegraphs was 57,090 kilometres (35,453 miles); it is now (1885) upwards of 87,000 (54,027 miles). The postal administration having begun its new work by obtaining a credit for further extensions and for plant, amounting to nearly £100,000, the tariff was reduced (21st March 1878) to one halfpenny for each word, with a minimum charge of 5d. s In April 1884 France had 5535 subscribers to postal telephonic exchanges (against about 4000 in all Germany at the same date, according to the Revue des Postes), working under post-office licences of five years’ duration, and paying (as in Great Britain) a royalty of 10 per cent. The postal telephonic system began in 1879. Up to the close of 1883 the royalties had produced £17,324. At Rheims, Troyes, Roubaix, Tourcoing, and St Quentin the post-office has its own exchanges. The aggregate number of inland postal money orders issued in France in 1881 was 14,626,117. In 1882 the number of inland orders increased to 15,791,774 (value £19,655,117), in 1883 to 16,808,627 (value £20,770,078). As compared with the population, the figures for 1883 show an average of 45√⅛ to every
100 inhabitants, the corresponding figure for England being 70 1 2 δ , for the United States 17√⅛, and for Italy 14 1 ⅞. The French parcel post forwarded in 1883 11,494,072 inland parcels, and 944,795 parcels abroad. A word must be added upon a special feature of the French post-office. Many years ago it began to collect books upon postal subjects; but up to 1878 it had less than 900 volumes, and less than 200 visits to consult them were made in a year. In 1884 there were about 8000 volumes—postal, telegraphic, statistical —and the annual visits for consulting them averaged 2500. These books are made accessible to the general public as well as to the postal staff, five rooms being set apart for the books, periodicals, and readers.
On the whole, it may be said that the recent record of the French postal service is a very honourable record, giving good augury of further improvements to come. Nor is it one of the least honourable items in that record to observe that, when the minister proposed to the chamber of deputies in 1877 an increased vote of £18,200 for the better remuneration of the rural letter-carriers, the chamber voted £69,600 instead.
Bibliography.— P. d’Ahnéras, Réglement sur le Port des Lettres, 1627; Le Quien de la Neufville, Usages des Postes, 1730; Rowland Hill, Report to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the French Post-Office, 1837; Annuaire des Postes, 1850-84; Μ. Du Camp, “De ΓAdministration . . . et de ΓH<>tel des Postes,” in Revue des Deux Mondes, ser. 3, 1865; Revue des Postes et Télégraphes, 1870-84; A. de Rothschild, Histoire de la Poste-aux-Lettres, 1875; “Entwickelung des Post-u. Telegraphenwesens in Frankreich,” in Archiv f. Post u. Telegraphie, 1882; “Die französischen Postsparkassen,” and other articles, in L’Union Postale, Bern, vols, viii., ix.
Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy.
1. Austria-Hungary.— The Austrian postal system is amongst the oldest on record. Vienna, too, possessed a local letter post and a parcel post, on the plan of prepayment, as early as May 1772, at which date no city in Germany possessed the like. Curiously enough, this local post was established by a Frenchman (Μ. Hardy) and managed by a Dutchman (Schooten). Thirteen years after its organization it became merged in the imperial post. The separate postal organizations of the empire (Austria) and of the kingdom (Hungary) date from 1867. In Austria the post-office and the telegraph-office are placed under the control of the minister of commerce, in Hungary under that of the minister of public works. In Austria the department has twenty-one travelling post-offices; in Hungary it has ten such. Within the limits of the whole Austrian empire the lineal extent of the postal telegraph lines was 20,875 English miles in 1877, and in 1883 32,380 miles. The total number of telegraph stations was 3958. The aggregate number of telegraphic messages in 1877 (Austria-Hungary) was 5,358,544, in 1883 9,974,993. The aggregate of mailed articles in Austria was 357,352,270 in 1877, and in 1878 358,427,000. Deducting from these figures the number of newspapers, book-packets, and parcels, there remains for letters and cards, jointly, an aggregate of 233,801,870 in 1877, and of 232,867,000 in 1878. In 1880 the letters and cards were 245,660,700, in 1881 255,618,100. In Hungary the aggregate of letters and post-cards was 61,064,856 in 1877, in 1878 59,612,000, in 1880 78,080,804, in 1881 82,592,040. The gross revenue from posts and telegraphs stood thus in 1882 (according to the financial estimates for that year): Austria £2,307,300, Hungary £2,128,065, total £4,435,365, of which sum the postal revenue proper (i.e., letter and parcel services) supplied about two and a half millions. In 1883 the gross revenue of Austria was £2,002,073; that of Hungary was £790,839; in the same year the respective expenditures were £1,647,373 and £605,185. In November 1881 a collecting service for bills and invoices was organized. In January 1883 the unit of weight for inland letters was increased from half an ounce to two-thirds of an ounce, the rate being l⅛d.; and in June of the same year the collection service above-named was made international between Austria-Hungary and the German empire, on ’the basis of the country of origin retaining all fees, and the country of payment remitting all sums collected by money orders at the usual rate of commission. In 1882 and 1883 the chief postal statistics of both divisions of the empire were as follows (Table XXL) [table]
2. German Empire. — The Prussian postal system—now developed (mainly by the ability and energy of Dr Stephan, to whom the organization of the International Postal Union is so largely indebted) into the admirably organized post and telegraph office of the empire—began with the Great Elector, and with the establishment in 1646 of a Government post from Cleves to Memel. Frederick II. largely extended it, and by his successor the laws relating to it were consolidated. In Strasburg a messenger code existed as early as 1443. A postal service was organized at Nuremberg in 1570. In 1803 the rights in the indemnity-lands {Entschädigungsländer) of the counts of Taxis as hereditary imperial postmasters were abolished. The first mail steam-packet was built in 1821; the first transmission of mails by railway was in 1847; the beginning of the postal administration of the telegraphs was in 1849; and, by the treaty of postal union with Austria, not only was the basis of the existing system of the posts and telegraphs of Germany fully laid but the germ was virtually set of that International Postal Union which is now become so widely fruitful. That pregnant treaty was made for ten years on 6th April 1850, and was immediately accepted by Bavaria. It came into full operation on the 1st July following, and then included Saxony, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and Holstein. Other German states followed; and the treaty was renewed in August 1860.
Between 1850 and 1860 the number of post-offices in Prussia increased by 20⅜ per cent., that of letters conveyed by 115 per cent. The postal staff during that term increased from 9029 to 15,471. In 1860 the aggregate number of letters was 135,377,086, that of ordinary parcels 13,765,336, that of registered parcels, with value declared (£178,937,360), 10,807,293. In 1872 the post-offices of the empire, exclusive of those in Bavaria and Wiirtemberg (each of which countries retains in postal and telegraphic matters its own organization), numbered 5784, in 1883 11,646. Adding the number of letter-boxes, the total of postal receptacles in those years respectively was 33,362 and 65,175. The aggregate postal staff was 49,945 persons in 1872, in 1883 74,393. These figures include large numbers of persons who are connected with the transit of travellers, as well as with that of letters, parcels, and telegraphic messages. In 1872 the aggregate number of letters, cards, bookpackets, and newspapers conveyed was 718,233,000, in 1883 1,468,315,000, or, with the addition of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, 1,649,845,000.
For Berlin itself a private letter and parcel post was established by the commercial guild of the grocers and druggists in September 1800, and continued to work under their rule until 1806, when it was abolished. A regular delivery by letter-carriers, attached to the state postal organization, existed in Berlin as early as 1712. In 1876 the Berlin office employed a special staff of 3705 persons, which in 1883 had increased to 6120. It delivered in 1883 postal articles amounting to 199,500,000 in number. It received an annual income for postage of £796,517 in 1883.
The nett revenue accruing from the whole of the imperial postal and telegraphic service in 1874 was only £349,301 sterling; in 1881 it was £1,060,310 sterling, in 1882 £1,066,860, and in 1883 £1,172,343. The lineal extent of telegraphic lines in the whole of Germany was 74,313 kilometres (46,148 miles) at the close of 1882 as compared with 72,577 kilometres (45,070 miles) in the preceding year. There were 10,803 telegraphic offices (10,308 in preceding year). The aggregate number of messages transmitted in 1883 was 15,300,816 as against 12,721,290 in 1879. Collectively, the total number of money orders issued by the postal service throughout the German empire in 1882 was 52,537,440, showing an annual average a little exceeding one to each inhabitant; in 1883 53,935,556 money orders, worth a total of £161,622,221, were issued. In 1883 the aggregate number of ordinary inland parcels forwarded by the German parcel post was 79,245,700, that of registered parcels with declared value was 5,410,800, the aggregate declared value being £201,469,460. The parcels sent abroad were—ordinary 3,231,970, registered with declaration of value 262,620.
Bibliography.— Von Beust, Versuch einer ausführlichen Erklärung des Postregals, . . . insbesondere in Anschauung d. h. röm. Reichs Deutscher Nation, 3 vols., Jena, 1747-48; Avis instructif au Public . . . pour la petite Poste [de Vienne], 1772; Ueber die kleine Post in JVien, 1780; A. Flegler, Zur Gesch. d. Posten, 1858; Stephan, Hein. Gesch. d. preuss. Post, 1859; Fischer, Die Verkehrsanstalten des deutschen Reichs, 1873; Von Linde, Haftverbindlichkeit d. Postanstalt; W. Kompe, Das Handelsgesetzbuch u. das Postrecht ; Gad, Die Haftpflicht d. d. Postanstalten, 1863; Eug. Hartmann, Entwickelungsgesch. d. Posten, 1868; P. D.
Fischer, Die d. Post-und Telegraphie-Gesetzgebung, 1876; O. Dambach, Das Gesetz über lias Postwesen des deutschen Reichs, 1881; Archiv f. Post u. Telegraphie, 1873-85; F. X. von Neutnann-Spallart, Uebersichten über Verkehr in d. Weltwirth-schäft, 1885; Deutsche Verkehrszeitung, 1881-85; W. Lenz, Katechismus d. d. Reichspost, 1882.
3. Italy. — The history of the Italian post-office is in many respects one of special interest. But the limits of this article admit only of a very brief statement of results. Its origin may be traced virtually to Venice and to the establishment of the “Corrieri di Venezia” early in the 16th century. As early as 1818 the Sardinian post-office issued stamped letter-paper. The total number of letters, newspapers, and book-packets conveyed in 1862 was but 111,733,319. Ten years later there was an aggregate of 232,242,677, and in 1882 one of 333,242,148. The comparative growth of postal traffic in letters and post-cards may be shown thus: in 1869 the aggregate number was 87,613,348, in 1870 89,430,261, in 1880 189,207,627, in 1881 194,587,021, in 1882 204,644,355, in 1883 216,944,382.
The growth of postal savings banks in Italy is on the whole satisfactory, as will be seen by a glance at the following table [table]
In the year 1881 the accounts opened were 143,410 and 249,741 in 1883; those closed were 12,161 in 1881 and 35,771 in 1883. The average of each deposit increased (omitting fractions) from £1, 4s. 3d. in 1876 to £3, 16s. Id. in 1881, and decreased to £3, 4s. 8d. in 1883. The average sum standing to the credit of each depositor was £5, 12s. lid. in 1881 and in 1883 £5, Ils. 3d. The number of accounts opened in 1883 was 249,741 as against 144,485 opened in 1882. This rapid increase, and the corresponding diminution in the average amount of each deposit and of the average sum standing to the credit of each depositor, are due to the regulation of 18th February 1883, which came into operation on 1st May following, and by which post-office savings banks were authorized to accept as deposits cards bearing sufficient ten-centime postage stamps to make up the sum of one lira (9⅞d.). Between 1st May and 31st December 193,763 such cards were deposited. The financial results of the post-office savings banks service for 1883 show a nett gain of £29,768; the total gain from 1876 to 1883 was £90,345. It is the purpose of the postal administration to make by degrees the number of the postal savings banks identical with that of the post-offices. That administration is now (1885) a dependency upon the ministry of public works. There were issued in 1883 for Italy itself 4,207,544 money orders, valued at £21,706,968, and for countries abroad 17,087, valued at £164,174.
The Italian parcel post despatched in the first three months of 1882 489,687 articles, in the corresponding period of 1883 869,280; it received respectively 486,814 (1882) and 978,559 (1883). The number of parcels, both inland and foreign, conveyed in 1882 was 2,877,201. In 1883 3,747,182 inland and 180,828 foreign parcels were despatched by parcel post. The nett postal revenue in 1882 was £197,257 (against £152,676 in 1881), to which sum the parcel post contributed £27,078. The nett postal revenue in 1883 was £213,537. The parcel post of Italy dates only from 1881 (October), since which time it has carried more than nine millions of parcels, which it registers, paying for loss or damage during transit. But the service is so excellently organized that the administration has hitherto (1885) had to pay but a very insignificant sum as compensation.
Postal Congresses and International Postal Union at Bern.
Substantially, the first step towards an effectual postal union was taken at Paris in June 1863, when delegates from France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Switzerland, Denmark, the Hanseatic towns, the United States of America, and Costa Rica met in congress, under the presidency of Μ. Vandal, the then postmaster-general of France. The conference recommended (1) an optional prepayment of foreign letters, with a reduction of the differential charge between paid and unpaid; (2) a readjustment of the regulations concerning the international weighing and taxing of letters: (3) a reduction of the transit tariff; (4) an improved regulation as to the choice of routes of transit for letters addressed to remote parts of the world; and (5) great improvements in the international money-order system, and in the postal transmission of articles of special value. Thus a basis was practically laid for the treaty of Bern of 1874. What was achieved in 1874 and extended in 1878 had also been largely promoted by the proceedings and example of several local conferences on postal affairs held at various dates in Germany. Certain intermediate international conferences, more or less largely constituted, also helped to prepare the way for the great results of 1874. Though here necessarily limited to brief notices of the treaty of Bern and of the congress at Paris (four years later), a word or two must be afforded to a curious anticipation by an enterprising Swiss of a social reform destined to be realized at a distance of almost two centuries. Amongst the many political schemes which the dread of the advance of France towards a predominating sway in Europe gave rise in the 17th century was that of Beatus Fischer, who strove zealously to seat at Bern a postal union—representing Austria, the empire, the electorate of Brandenburg, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland—which should organize and administer a great network of postal routes, independently of France. But France was still too strong, and the incidental difficulties too great. The attempt, however, led to minor postal reforms in various places.
At Bern in 1874 postal delegates of twenty-two states assembled, representing an aggregate population of 350 millions. An eminent Frenchman had given a great impulse to the initiatory movement in 1863; a Belgian (Μ. Vinchent) and a Prussian (Dr Stephan) were the principal leaders of its development in 1874. Both had already rendered distinguished service to their respective countries. A half-ounce unit of weight for ordinary letters; a uniform charge, wholly irrespective of distance, of 2∣d. for a letter from any one country within the Union to any other; uniform rates for newspapers (Id. for 4 oz.) and for book-parcels, law-papers, mercantile samples (Id. for every 2 oz.); a transit rate greatly reduced; a regulation (very fruitful in good results) that “each post-office shall retain its own collections, and that payments due for transit shall be estimated only from accounts taken twice in each year,” were among the chief improvements effected. Μ. Vinchent (17th September 1874) suggested the creation of an international board; and the proposal met with the zealous support of Dr Stephan, of Dr William Günther (whose death in December 1882 was a great loss to the post-office of Germany), and of other leaders of the conference. The office so established is supported by contributions, graduated roughly—not merely according to extent of postal traffic but in part according to national rank—from the several administrations. There are six classes of such contributories. Each country in the first class contributes 25 parts of the total expense, each of the second class 20 parts, of the third 15, of the fourth 10, of the fifth 5, and of the sixth 3 parts. It is covenanted that the total expense shall not exceed £3000 a year. No rule was laid down as to the composition of the board. But the persons entrusted -wisely determined that “it should be international in composition as in attributions.” All its proceedings are reported in its official organ, L ’ Union Postale, which is trilingual (German, French, English) and appears monthly. Dr Stephan did not err by over-enthusiasm when he said at the close of the proceedings, “You enter upon one of the most important fields of action in the intercourse of nations; . . . you are promoting an eminent work for their peace and their prosperity.” The work so successfully begun at Bern was extended at Paris, when from representing twenty-two states the Union came to represent thirty-three, and the 350 millions of (in a certain sense) its “constituents” had grown to 653 millions.
The work before the convention at Paris in June 1878 consisted mainly in the application of four years’ experience, in the postal administrations of the constituent states, to the improvement of details. It made improved regulations with respect to transit between countries within the Union and those which still remained outside of it. It guaranteed rights of transit throughout the entire Union. It extended stipulations, made at Bern, to postal exchanges between members of the Union and extraneous countries, in cases wherein the postal service of two at least of the contracting countries were employed. It provided that expenses of transit should be borne by the country of origin. In some cases it slightly enhanced the unit of charge whilst considerably extending the unit of weight. It made valuable improvements in the regulations concerning compensations for loss during transit. Finally, it made provision for a postal congress to revise and to improve all pending rules and matters at least once in every five years. The last congress was held at Lisbon in February 1885. One of the matters which claimed its attention calls imperatively for some notice here. Whilst the growing action of the Postal Union tends constantly to simplification and identity of postal systems, there still exists great diversity of national practice and of national law on the important point of the ownership of a letter whilst in transit. In Great Britain it lies, for the time being, in the queen, as represented by her postmaster-general and her secretary of state. Neither sender nor addressee can claim to interfere with a letter whilst in the post-office. Only the warrant of a secretary of state can stay its delivery. In Her Majesty’s Indian empire, however, the sender has virtually a property in the letter until delivery, and may (under regulations) recall it. So is it in Belgium, in Austria and Hungary, in Portugal, in Russia, and in the Scandinavian states, whilst in Canada the letter belongs to its addressee as soon as it is posted. In the Netherlands there is no precise law, but the sender may claim return prior to actual postal despatch; the case is virtually similar in France. In Italy, in Spain, and in Greece the addressee (as in Canada) has an absolute property in the letter when once posted. A very recent decision of the French council of state extends the French provision, practically, in favour of the sénder up to actual delivery, leaving it to the postal administration to regulate the forms.
Subjoined is a tabular view (Table XXIII.) of postal statistics of the principal countries comprised within the Postal Union for the year 1883.
[table]
Table XXIII. — Comparative Table of the position of the Postal Service in the principal Countries belonging to the Postal Union, for the year 1883.
The crowning improvement in postal matters, that of an international transit entirely free, is merely a question of time. It is the logical, the necessary complement of the work initiated at Paris in 1863, organized at Bern in 1874, revised and methodized again at Paris in 1878. One postal territory, one code of postal regulations, one uniform postal tariff, free conveyance between nation and nation, will be the outcome of this important movement.
Comparing the postal traffic of the various quarters of the globe for the year 1882 we find that out of a total of 8,280,000,000 articles mailed European countries claimed nearly two-thirds, while America had considerably more than one-fourth. The total was distributed as follows :— [table]
Bibliography.— In addition to books already quoted the reader may consult K. Loeper, Stammbuch der neueren Verkehrsmittel, 18S1; “Die Post in d. Weltliteratur,” in L'Union Postale, ix. 12-161, 1884; and “Die Disinfection der Postentsendungen als Schützmassregel gegen die Einschleppung der Cholera,” in Archiv f. Post, April, 1884. See also J. G. Borel, L’Europe synoptique des Postes et des Télégraphes, 1882; Recueil de Renseignements sur le Régime postale en vigueur dans le Service interne des Pays de TUnion Postale Universelle. Postage Stamps.
For all practical purposes the history of postage stamps begins in the United Kingdom, and with the great reform of its postal system in 1839-40. A post-paid envelope was in common use in Paris in the year 1653. Stamped postal letter-paper (carta postale bollatd) was issued to the public by the Government of the Sardinian states in November 1818 (above, p. 583), and stamped postal envelopes were issued by the same Government from 1820 until 1836. Stamped wrappers for newspapers were made experimentally in London by Mr Charles Whiting, under the name of “go-frees,” in 1830. Four years later (June 1834), and in ignorance of what Mr Whiting had already done, the stamp-office authorities, in a letter addressed to Lord Althorp, then chancellor of the exchequer, by Mr Charles Knight, recommended similar wrappers for adoption. Finally, and in its results most important of all, the adhesive stamp was made experimentally by Mr James Chalmers in his printing-office at Dundee in August 1834. These experimental stamps were printed from ordinary type, and were made adhesive by a wash of gum. Their inventor had already won local distinction in matters of postal reform by his strenuous and successful efforts, made as early as the year 1822, for the acceleration of the Scottish mails from London. Those efforts resulted in a saving of forty-eight hours on the double mail journey, and were highly appreciated in Scotland. There is evidence that from 1822 onwards his attention was much directed towards postal questions, and that he held correspondence with the postal reformers of his day, both in and out of parliament. It is also plain that he was far more intent upon aiding public improvements than upon winning credit for them. He made adhesive stamps in 1834, and showed them to his neighbours, but took no step for publicly recommending their adoption by the post-office until long after such a recommendation had been published—although very hesitatingly —by the author of the now famous pamphlet, entitled Post-Office Reform Ninth Report of Commissioners of Post-Office Inquiry, 1837, pp. 32, 33, reprinted in Sir R. Hill’s “History of Penny Postage” (Life, &c., ii. 270). ? Mr Hill brought the adhesive stamp under the notice of the commissioners of post-office inquiry on 13th February 1837. Mr Chalmers made no public mention of his stamp of 1834 until December 1837.
Only a fortnight before his examination by the above-named commissioners Mr Hill, in his letter to Lord Monteagle (then Mr Spring Rice and chancellor of the exchequer), seemed to have no thought of the adhesive stamp. He recommended to the treasury that “stamped covers and sheets of paper be supplied to the public from the stampoffice, or post-office, . . . and sold at such a price as to include the postage. . . . Covers at various prices would be required for packets of various weights. Each should have the weight it is entitled to carry legibly printed with the stamp. . . . Should experience warrant the Government in making the use of stamped covers universal, most important advantages would be secured. The postoffice would be relieved altogether from the collection of the revenue.” Then, upon suggestion, it would seem, of some possible difficulty that might arise from the occasional bringing of unstamped letters to a post-office by persons unable to write, he added: “Perhaps this difficulty might be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash.” It is a quite fair inference that this alternative had been suggested from without. In reviewing the subject, long afterwards, in his History of Penny Postage, Sir R. Hill says: “The post-office opinions as to the use of stamps for . . . prepayment were, on the whole, favourable.” In a paper of 1839, entitled On the Collection of Postage by means of Stamps, the author continued to look upon “stamped covers or envelopes as the means which the public would most commonly employ; still believing that the adhesive stamp would be reserved for exceptional cases.” Mulready’s well-remembered allegorical cover came into use on 1st May 1840, together with the first form of the stamped letter-paper, and the adhesive labels. by the appearance of the new penny-post devices for envelopes, half-sheet letters, and bits of sticking-plaster for dabbing on to letters. . . . [The elephants on the Mulready cover] are symbolic of the lightness and rapidity with which Mr Rowland Hill’s penny-post is to be carried on. . . . Withal the citizens are rude enough to believe that these graphic embellishments will not go down at the price of Is. 3d. per dozen for the envelopes, . . . and of Is. Id. per dozen for the . . . sticking-plaster.” This good-humoured banter is from the money article of an eminent daily paper. ] They all met at first, but only for a few days, with a large sale. That of the first day yielded £2500. Soon afterwards the public rejection of the “Mulready envelope,” writes Rowland Hill, “was so complete as to necessitate the destruction of nearly all the vast number prepared for issue.” Whilst, on the other hand, the presses of the stamp-office were producing more than half a million of [adhesive] labels, by working both night and day, they yet failed to meet the demand.” It was only after many weeks, and after the introduction of a series of mechanical improvements and new processes, due to the skill and ingenuity, in part of Mr Edwin Hill of the stamp-office, in part of Mr Perkins, an engraver, that the demand could be effectually answered. To find an obliterating ink which worked effectually, without damaging the letters, was also a special difficulty.
In the production of the stamps both cheapness and security against forgery had to be combined. “The queen’s head was first engraved on a single matrix, the effigy being encompassed with lines too fine for any . . . but the most delicate machinery to engrave. The matrix, being subsequently hardened, was employed to produce impressions on a soft steel roller of sufficient circumference to receive twelve, and this, being hardened in turn, was used under very heavy pressure to produce and repeat its counterpart on a steel plate,” capable of working off, at each impression, 240 stamps. Engravers, printers, chemists, and artificers of several kinds had to combine their efforts before the desired results could be secured. Long afterwards (June 1856) a question was raised in the House of Commons as to an alleged preference of one manufacturing firm over all its virtual competitors without preliminary inquiry or actual competition. The operation, it was replied, was confided to Messrs De La Rue & Co., because they “had the best means of accomplishing it (i.e., the production of the adhesive stamp) within the time required. No public notice calling for tenders for printing and gumming was given to the trade, nor is there any trade to which such notice could have been given, the operation being the making of the stamps, as well as the printing and gumming, and that operation being to a great extent experimental.” The total cost of the manufacture of each million of stamps was £30, 0s. lid. (viz., paper, £5, 14s. 5d.; printing and gumming, £22, Is. 9d.; perforating, £1, 8s. Id.; salaries, 16s. 8d). To this is to be added a sum of £45, 2s. 4d. for poundage and commission upon the sale, making in all £75, 3s. 3d., the whole of which forms a deduction from the produce of sale. In the event about three thousand millions of stamps were produced from the original matrix. At the end of fifteen years a second matrix was obtained, after the deepening of the lines by hand, from the first. From 1st May 1840 up to the end of the year 1884 more than thirty-one thousand three hundred millions of postage stamps had been printed, [table]
varying in value from £5 to a halfpenny. The details are as follows (Table XXIV.) :—
The first contract for the ordinary stamped envelope, with the embossed queen’s head, was entered into with Messrs Dickinson à Longman on 22d May 1840. The average cost of each million of this envelope was £376; of which sum £359, 6s. was repaid by the produce of its sale, over and above the value of the stamp, leaving a nett deduction from the aggregate value of £16, 14s. upon each million sold. In November 1850 a second contract was entered into with Messrs De La Rue à Co., the contractors for the adhesive stamp. In the ten years 1847 to 1856 inclusive the aggregate number of envelopes manufactured and sold was 186,124,000. Under both these contracts the outside of the envelope was impressed with a coloured embossed device in the place of a seal. And this small device—the cost of which was infinitesimal—whilst it obviously improved the appearance of the envelope, added still more to its security. Of late years the device has been omitted, and the security of letters impaired for a very contemptible saving.
The little canton of Zurich was the first foreign state to adopt postage stamps, in 1843. The stamps reached America in the same year, being introduced by the Government of Brazil. That of the United States did not adopt them until 1847; but a tentative issue was made by the post-office of New York in 1845. An adhesive stamp was also issued at St Louis in the same year, and in Rhode Island in the next. In Europe the Swiss cantons of Geneva (1844) and of Basel (1845) soon followed the example set by Zurich. In the Russian empire the use of postage stamps became general in 1848 (after preliminary issues at St Petersburg and in Finland in 1845). France issued them in 1849. The same year witnessed their introduction into Tuscany, Belgium, and Bavaria, and also into New South Wales. Austria, Prussia, Saxony, Spain, Italy, followed in 1850. The use of postage stamps seems to have extended to the Sandwich Islands (1851 ?) a year before it reached the Dutch Netherlands (1852). Within twenty-five years of the first issue of a postage stamp in London, the known varieties, issued in all parts of the world, amounted to 1391. Of these 841 were of European origin, 333 were American, 59 Asiatic, 55 African. The varieties of stamp issued in the several countries of Oceania were 103. Of the whole 1391 stamps no less than 811 were already obsolete in 1865, leaving 580 still in currency.
It was not until 1853 that the admirable improvement of perforating the stamp-sheets was introduced by the purchase for £4000 (pursuant to the recommendation of a select committee of the House of Commons of 1852) of a perforating machine invented by Mr Henry Archer. Other improvements of value have also been made in the obliterating process. The defacement mark now serves to show the official consecutive numbers of the town in which each particular letter was posted. For England that number appears within circular lines; for Scotland, between parallel lines ; for Ireland, it appears diamond-wise. The general post-office mark also denotes the hour of posting. The metropolitan district marks indicate the office number within oval lines under the initials of each district. Paper for the embossed stamps of all the recognized values is received by the Board of Inland Revenue from all persons who offer it, under favourable regulations.
The collection and sale of specimen postage stamps as a branch of commerce has already attained dimensions little anticipated by those who watched the origin of the new pursuit, as a sort of toy for children, some quarter of a century ago. Before stampcollection became conspicuous commercially, it came to have a recognized educational value, in its degree, as an amusing aid to the early knowledge of geography, more especially in the political aspect.
When the legislation of August 1848 directed the introduction of postage stamps into France the first endeavour of the postal administration was to make a contract for their manufacture in England. But the terms proposed were thought to be too high. A contract was then made with Μ. Hulot of the Paris mint, and the die approved of was engraved by Μ. Barre, also of that establishment. Μ. Hulot became “director of the manufacture of postage stamps,” and under the early contracts was allowed, in lieu of salary, one franc (10d.) on each thousand stamps for the first two hundred millions, 9d. per thousand for the next two hundred millions, and 8d. per thousand for all above. In 1869 these terms were reduced to 6d. per thousand upon the first five hundred millions, and 5d. upon all above. The cost of mere manufacture was slightly below that of the stamps of the United Kingdom, each million being estimated to cost about £25, 10s., of which sum paper, printing, and gumming absorbed somewhat more than £20.
During the war, in November 1870, a contract was entered into between the Provisional Government and a Μ. Delebecque and others for the manufacture of postage stamps at Bordeaux. The contractor bound himself to deliver, after a day determined, 4000 sheets of stamps daily, each containing 300 stamps, at the price of 3d. for each sheet. The stamps were to be of the several values of 8d., 4d., 3d., 2d., Id., ⅜d., and of one, two, three, and four centimes respectively, in such proportions as the post-office should direct. The first plate which was sent to the press was made from a matrix drawn with the pen; afterwards lithographic processes λvere employed. The post-office suspended the contract by notice in March 1871, but was immediately obliged by the communal insurrection to license its continuance, and the manufacture was resumed at Bordeaux until June. On the whole, 125,387,075 postage stamps were produced from the presses at Bordeaux.
The first postage stamp used in Germany was issued in the kingdom of Bavaria in 1849. It is of quite inartistic character, though originating in a state so famous for its cultivation of the plastic arts. The earliest type shows with the name of the country only the postal tariff. None of the many subsequent varieties displays the royal effigy; even the embossed royal arms were not used until
1866. Stamps made specially for the use of the army bear the figure sometimes of a Bavarian trooper, sometimes of an infantryman or artilleryman. The earliest Prussian stamp is of November 1850, and bears the effigy—laureated—of King William, in filigree, to which in 1861 succeeded the Prussian eagle. The duchy of Anhalt and several petty principalities placed themselves under its wing by adopting almost from the outset the Prussian stamp. Three weeks after its first appearance in Prussia, Hanover (December 1850) issued a stamp bearing the name of the kingdom with the royal arms. The first stamp having the royal effigy is an envelope of 1857. The effigy appears first upon adhesive stamps in 1859. The earliest Saxon type (1850) shows merely the postal tariff, but the second, of the same year, bears the king’s head. The first Baden stamp resembles that of Saxony. The head of the grandduke appears upon an envelope of October 1858. From 1860 the adhesives bear the arms of the duchy. Within the Thurn and Taxis district stamps were first used in 1852, and they continued until 1866. The earliest stamp of Schleswig-Holstein is that of an insurrectional Government patronized by Prussia and bears the national arms. The insignia of Denmark take their place in 1852 and continue until 1864. In that year separate stamps appear for Schleswig and for Holstein, to be succeeded for a short time by a common one in 1865.
In January 1868 the postage stamps of Prussia, Hanover, Saxony, Oldenburg, of the two Mecklenburgs, of Brunswick, of Schleswig-Holstein, and of the free cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck virtually disappear and are replaced by the new stamp of the North German Confederation. For a while the postage envelopes of such of those states as had issued any continued to appear, but with the significant super-addition of the confederation stamp. That, in its turn, after a currency of nearly four years, made room (15th December 1871) for the imperial stamp of the new Germany. The grand-duke of Baden presently adopted it. Only Bavaria and Wiirtemberg retain their special postage stamps and their separate administration. Certain tariff stamps, however, for merely fiscal purposes continue to be used in Saxony, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Brunswick, Oldenburg, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Schaumburg-Lippe, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, and in the city of Bremen.
This brief review of atelic phenomena in Germany alone—the limits of this article make it impossible to give similar details for the rest of Europe—may suffice to show that the pretension of stamp-collectors to illustrate, in degree, the course and currents of political geography has its justification in fact.
The earliest postage stamps of Austria-Hungary date from 1850, and display the imperial arms. It is only in 1858 that the emperor’s head takes their place. In 1863 and 1864 the armorial eagle reappears, followed again and continuously, as regards adhesive stamps, by the imperial effigy. The stamped wrappers for newspapers and books bear sometimes a figure of Mercury, sometimes the double-headed eagle. Stamped envelopes were first issued in 1861; they bear, indifferently, the imperial effigy or the armorial eagle. The imperial stamps are adopted in the principality of Liechtenstein. The special stamps for Hungary bear date from 1868. The postal card is of Austrian origin, and was first issued in August 1869. Taking all kinds of postal stamps together, the aggregate number of types (39) and of varieties (123) issued throughout the empire from 1850 amounted in 1883 to 162.
In the Russian empire the province of Finland takes the initiative. As early as 1845 its lion within a crowned escutcheon appears upon a postal envelope. Its adhesive stamps (1856) date a few months earlier than the earliest formalized issue for the empire generally (1857). These Finnish stamps are of similar type to the envelopes, but they continue to bear the arms of the province only until 1860. The Russian stamps bear the imperial eagle and the imperial crown; but none of them bears the head of the emperor. For a short time (1858-1864) unhappy Poland has the appearance —it is little more—of a certain differentiation in the stamps issued at Warsaw from those of the empire at large. But early in 1865 these slight peculiarities disappear, along with the local postal administration of Warsaw. All the Polish stamps are now obsolete, and have been superseded by those of the Russian empire. Many other local posts, however, survive in all parts of the empire; and their stamps have peculiarities which are eminently curious. Some bear the arms, as in the case of Finland, of a province or of a great town. Others, and the greater part, bear symbolic and curious emblems: at Kherson, a wheatsheaf, a scythe, and a rake; at Elizabethgrad, an open book, sheaves, a scythe, and a plume of feathers interlaced; at Tamboff, a beehive; at Bogorodsk, Saint George on horseback. The varieties of Russian local stamps are so great, and some of them so scarce, as to cause to the ardent collector many a heartache. Μ. Koprowski has of late come to his solace by devoting a volume to their history. Stamp-collecting has for some years past possessed a literature large enough to fill a respectable bookcase; it bids fair ere long to need a large library for its storage. Of Russian stamps, general and local together, the total number of types exceeded 135 up to the year 1875.
The table (XXV.) which follows will give the reader the chronological sequence of postage-stamps in all parts of the world. [table] [table]
The extent of the commercial traffic which has so rapidly grown out of the increasing taste for collecting postage stamps is marked (sufficiently for our purposes) by a record of three facts: (1) the aggregate number of manuals, periodicals, and current catalogues relating thereto, in English, French, and German alone, exceeds seventy; (2) for a collection of postage stamps, made by Sir Daniel Cooper (of Australia) between 1862 and 1878, £3000 sterling was given in the last-named year by Μ. Philippe de Ferrari; (3) the Galliera collection at Paris is said, upon credible authority, to have cost, up to 1883, in acquisition and arrangement together no less a sum than £57,600 (1,440,000 francs). Next to these two collections ranks that of Μ. A. de Rothschild.
