1836-1842.] P O S T-O F F I C E 567 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 excep tion 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 post- office attracted parliamentary attention. In that year the " com missioners 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 in quired 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 post master-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 III. Cost of Packet Service, 1820-1829. 1 18202 85,000 1822 115,429 1824 116,002 1825 110,838 1827 159,250 1829 108,305 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. Year. Gross In come. Charges of Collection, &c. Charges per cent of Gross Income. Net* Revenue. Population of United Kingdom. 1S08 1,552,037 451,431 29 1,100,606 1815-16 2,193,741 594,045 27 1,599,696 19,552,000 1818-19 2,209,212 719,622 32J 1,489,590 1820-21 2,132,235 636,290 29 1,495,945 20,928,000 1824-25 2,255,239 655,914 29 1,599,325 22,362,000 1826-27 2,392,272 747,018 31 1,645,254 1836-37 2,206,736 609,220 27* 1,597,516 25,605,000 1838-39 2,340,278 686,768 29 1,659,510 Before passing to the reform of 1839 we have to revert to that important feature in postal history, the interference with corre- spondence for judicial or political purposes. We have already seen (l) 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. 4 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 post- office and copied, and sent forward as directed." Hereupon Atter bury 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 -second Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry, 4-6. Last year of exclusive sailing packets. 3 First year of steam-packets. 4 Report of Secret Committee on the Post-Office (1844), p. 9. Twenty -nine peers recorded their protest against this decision. 5 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 com plaints 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." 6 A committee of inquiry was appointed, and after receiving its report the House resolved that it was " an high infringement of the privi leges 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 Rowland Hill s Reforms (1836-1842). Rowland Hill s pamphlet (Post-Office Reform} of 1837 Rowland took for its starting-point the fact that, whereas the postal Hill>s revenue showed for the past twenty years a positive though P r 1JOS slight diminution, it ought to have showed an increase of f onu . 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 stage coach 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 miscellane ous charges. A further analysis of the primary distribu tion 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 y^ of a penny for each, of which T 2 (A) was cos ^ f transit and ~^ 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 T --Q, or less than -^ 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 propor tion, since it reduced the apparent cost of transit, on the average, to the thirty-sixth part of one penny. Hill in- 5 Lords Journals, xxii. 183-186 ; Howell s State Trials, xvi. 540 sq.
6 Parliamentary History, ix. 842 sq.