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OUR SOCIAL BEES;
OR,
PICTURES OF TOWN & COUNTRY LIFE,
AND OTHER PAPERS.
BY
ANDREW WYNTER, M.D.
AUTHOR OF "CURIOSITIES OF CIVILIZATION, ETC
"Not in vain the distance beckons.
Forward, forward, let us range;
Let the great world spin for ever
Down the ringing groove of change."
TENNYSON
LONDON:
ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY.
1865
[-1-]
THE POST·OFFICE.
READER, if you be not entirely "used up," and can
still relish a minor excitement, take a stroll through the
General Post-office some Saturday evening, just as the
clock is upon the strike of six.
The scene is much more exciting than half the émeutes
which take place on the continent; considerably cheaper,
and much more safe. Stand aside amid the treble bank
of spectators on the right hand, and watch the general
attack upon the letter-takers. A stream of four or five
hundred people, who run as Doyle's pencil only can make
them run, dash desperately towards the open windows of
the receivers. Against this torrent a couple of hundred
who have posted, dodge and finally disappear. Wave
after wave of people advances and retreats, gorging with
billets the capacious swallow of the post. Meanwhile, a still
more active and vigorous attack is going on in the direction
where newspapers are received. A sashless window-frame,
with tremendous gape, is assaulted with showers of papers,
which fly faster and thicker than the driven snow.
Now and then large sackfuls, direct from the different
newsvenders and publishing offices; are bundled in and
bolted whole. As the moments pass, the flight of papers [-2-]
grows thicker; those who cannot struggle "to the fore"
whiz their missiles of intelligence over the heads of the
others, now and then sweeping hats with the force of
round shot. Letters struggle with more desperate energy,
which is increased to frantic desperation as the clock
slowly strikes, one-two-three-four-five-six; when,
with a nigh miss of guillotining a score of hands, with
one loud snap all the windows simultaneously descend.
The post, like a huge monster, has received its full supply
for the night, and, gorged, begins, imperceptibly to the
spectators, in quiet to digest.
If we enter behind the scenes, and traverse what might
be considered the vast stomach of the office, we shall
perceive an organization almost as perfect as that which
exists in the animal economy, and not very dissimilar to
it. The huge piles of letters, and the huger mountains of
newspapers, lie in heaps — the newly-swallowed food. To
separate their different atoms, arrange and circulate them,
requires a multiplicity of organs, and a variety of agents,
almost as numerous as those engaged in the animal
economy — no one interfering with the others, no one but
is absolutely necessary to the well-being of the whole.
So perfect is the drill, so clearly defined the duty of
each member of the army of seven or eight hundred men
the stranger looks down upon from one of the galleries,
that he can only compare its noiseless and unerring movements
to the action of some chemical agency.
Towards the vast table upon which the correspondence
of two millions of people for two days is heaped and
tossed, a certain number, performing the functions of the
gastric juices, proceed to arrange, eliminate, and prepare is [-3-]
for future and more elaborate operations; certain others
take away these eliminated atoms, and, by means of a subterranean
railway, transport them to their proper office on
the opposite side of the building; others, again, like busy
ants, carry the letters for the general delivery to the tables
of the sorters, when in a moment the important operation
of classing into roads and towns, sets all hands to work as
busily, as silently, and as purposefully as the restless things
we peep at through the hive-glass, building up their winter
sweets.
In an hour the process is complete; and the thoughts of
lawyers, lovers, merchants, bankers, swindlers, masters,
and servants, the private wishes of the whole town, lie
side by side, enjoying inviolable secrecy; and, bagged,
stringed, and sealed, are ready, after their brief meeting,
for their final dispersion over the length and breadth of
the land.
All the broad features of this well-contrived organization,
its economy and power, the spectator sees before him; but
much as he is struck thereby, it is only when he begins to
examine details, and to study the statistics of the Post-office,
that he sees the true vastness of its operations, and
estimates properly the magnitude and variety of its functions,
as the great metropolitan heart of communication
with the whole world.
As we pass the noble Post-office at St. Martin's-le-Grand,
with its ranges of Ionic columns, its triple porticos,
and its spacious and elegant quadrangle — a worthy outward
manifestation of the order, ingenuity, and intelligence that
reign within — we cannot help contrasting its present condition
with the postal operations of two or three centuries [-4-]
ago,— the noble oak of the present, with the little acorn of
the past.
No truer estimate of the national advance can be
obtained than by running down the stream of history in
relation to any of our great institutions which deal with
the needs and wishes of the masses of the people; and in
no one of them is our advance more clearly and correctly
shown than in the annals of the Post-office. They form,
in fact, a most delicate thermometer, marking the gradual
increase of our national vitality, and indicating, with
microscopic minuteness, the progress of our civilization.
In early times, the post was a pure convenience of the
king, instituted for the purpose of forwarding his despatches,
and having no dealing with the public whatsoever. Instead of St. Martin's-le-Grand being the point of departure,
"the court," wherever it might happen to be, "made
up the mails." How these mails were forwarded may be
imagined from the following exculpatory letter written by
one Brian Tuke, "Master of the Postes," in Henry the
Eighth's time. It would appear that Cromwell had been
pulling him up rather sharply for remissness in the forwarding
of despatches. The worthy functionary states that:—
"The Kinges Grace hath no moo ordinary postes, ne of
many days hathe had, but betwene London and Calais . . .
For, sir, ye knowe well, that, except the hackney horses
betwene Gravesende and Dovour, there is no suche usual
conveyance in post for men in this realme as in the
accustomed places of France and other parties; ne men
can keepe horses in redynes withoute som way to bere the
charges; but when placarde be sent for suche cause (to [-5-]
order the immediate forwarding of some State packet,) the constables many
tymes be fayne to take horses oute of plowes and cartes, wherein can be no
extreme diligence."
We should think not, Master Tuke. The worthy postmaster
further shows how simple and rude were the
arrangements of that day, by detailing the manner in
which the royal letters were conveyed in what we should
have considered to be one of their most important stages:—
"As to postes betwene London and the courte, there be
nowe but 2; wherof the on is a good robust felowe, and
was wont to be diligent, evil intreated many tymes, he and
other postes, by the herbigeours, for lack of horse rome
or horsemete, withoute which diligence cannot be. The
other hath been the meat payneful felowe, in nyght and daye, that I have knowen amongst the messengers. If he
nowe slak he shalbe changed, as reason is."
This was in the year 1533. In the time of Elizabeth
and James I., horse-posts were established on all the great
routes for the conveying of the king's letters. This postal
system was, of course, a source of expense to the Government —
in the latter reign of about £3,400 annually. All
this time subjects' letters were conveyed by foot-posts, and
carriers, whose expedition may be judged of by the
following extracts from a project for "accelerating" letters
by means of a public post first started in 1635:—
"If (say the projectors) anie of his Mats subjects shall
write to Madrid in Spain, hee shall receive answer sooner
and surer than hee shall out of Scotland or Ireland. The
letters being now carried by carriers or footposts 16 or 18
miles a-day, it is full two monthes before any answer from
Scotland or Ireland to London."
[-6-] This project seems to have been acted
upon, for three
years later we find a vast reform effected in the post. In
fact, it was put upon a foundation which lasted up to the
introduction of mail-coaches; as it was settled to have a
"running post or two to run night and day between Edinburgh
in Scotland, and the city of London, to go thither
and come back again in six days;" carrying, of course, all
the letters of the intermediate towns: the like posts were
established in the following year on all the great routes.
The principle of posts for the people once established,
the deficit was soon changed to a revenue. Cromwell
farmed the Post-office for £10,000 a year, he being the first to establish the general office in London. It might
not be out of place to give an insight as to the scale of
charges for letters, then settled. A single letter could be
posted within eighty miles of London for 2d.; above that
distance for 3d. ; to Scotland for 4d. ; and to Ireland for 6d.; double letters being charged double price: not such
high charges these, considering the expenditure of horse-flesh and post-boys' breath; for every rider was obliged
to ride "seven miles an hour in summer and five in winter,
according as the ways might be," and to blow his horn
whenever he met a company, and four times besides in
every hour. Charles II. leased the profits of the Post-office
for £21,500 a year. The country, it was evident,
was rapidly advancing in commercial greatness and
activity, for in 1694 the profits of the Post-office were £59,972 14s
9d. In the next century the introduction
of mail-coaches gave an immense impulse to the transactions
of the Post-office, which augmented gradually until
the end of the year 1839, when the number of letters [-7-]
passing through all the offices in the kingdom amounted
to 75,907,572, and the net profit upon their carriage was £1,659,509 17s.
2¾d.
With the beginning of the year 1840 commenced that
vast revolution in the system so long projected by Sir
Rowland Hill — the Penny Postage.
The effect of that system upon the number of letters
passing through the post, and upon the manner of payment,
was almost instantaneous. During the last month of the
old high rates of postage, the total number of letters
passing through the general office was a little more than
two millions and a half; of these 1,159,224 were unpaid,
and only 484,309 paid. In the same time — a short
twelvemonth after the introduction of the cheap postage —the
proportion of paid to unpaid letters was entirely
changed; the latter had shrunk to the number of 473,821,
whilst the former had run up to the enormous number of
5,451,022. Since 1841 the flow of letters has been continually
on the increase. The return made to Parliament
in 1847 gave the following results:— Unpaid, 644,642;
paid, 10,957,033: the term "paid" includes, of course,
all those letters on which the penny was prepaid, and those
impressed with her Majesty's gracious countenance. The
prepayment of the penny was a vast benefit to the post,
and, together with the general introduction of letter-boxes
in private houscs, saved the whole time lost to the letter-carriers
whilst old ladies were fumbling for the postage;
but the introduction of the stamp was of still greater importance, as on its ultimate exclusive adoption a vast
saving was effected in the labour of receiving letters.
When stamps were first introduced by Sir Rowland Hill, [-8-]
he did not appear to anticipate the use that would be made
of them as a medium of exchange; but every one is aware
how extensively they are used in the smaller monetary
transactions of the country. Bankers, dealing in magnificent
sums, do not deign to take notice of vulgar pence:
the Government has, however, taken up the neglected coin,
and represented its value by a paper currency, which, if
not legally negotiable, yet passes from hand to hand unquestioned.
The Post-office now allows, and even recommends,
the use of postage-stamps as a medium of currency,
in order to discourage the sending of coins by post. With
this view, provision has been made in the London office
for exchanging postage-stamps for money, a small deduction
being made as commission on the transaction. It
would be impossible, of course, to ascertain the amount of
penny stamps that pass from town to town, and from man
to man, in payment of small debts; but without doubt it
must be very considerable — very much beyond the demand
for letters: as long, therefore, as this sum is floating, until
it comes to the post (its bank) for payment in shape of letter-carriage,
it is a clear public advance to the Exchequer.
The only good reason yet assigned against introducing these penny stamps, and those representing a higher value,
such as the colonial shilling stamp, as a regular currency,
is the fear of forgery. At the present time great precautions
are used to prevent such an evil; the die itself,
hideous and contemptible as it undoubtedly is as a work
of art, in intricacy of execution is considered a master-piece
at the Stamp-office. If you take one from your
pocket-book, good reader, and inspect it, you will doubtless
pronounce it to be a gross libel upon her Majesty's [-9-]
countenance, muddled in line, and dirty in printing; but those who know the trick, see in that confusion and jumble
certain significant lines, certain combinations of letters
in the comers, which: render forgery no such easy matter.
The great security against fraud, however, is that
letter-stamps
are placed upon the same footing as receipt or bill
stamps. Venders can buy them at first hand only of the
Government; and the consequent difficulty forgers would
have in putting sufficient spurious stamps in circulation to
pay them for their risk and trouble, seems to obviate all
risk of their being turned to improper account.
It is our intention to confine ourselves mainly, in this
article, to the operations of the General Post-office; but in
order to give our readers an idea of the vast amount of
correspondence which annually takes place in the United
Kingdom, it may be as well, perhaps, to take a glance at the
general postal transactions of the country. Make a round
guess at the number of letters which traverse the broad
lands of Britain, which circulate in the streets and alleys
of our great towns, and which fly on the wings of steam,
and under bellying sail, to the uttermost parts of the
earth. You cannot? Well, then, what say you to
544,000,000 , To that enormous amount had they arrived
in the year ending 31st December, 1859.
The number of letters posted in the metropolis and in
the country is subject at stated times to a very great
augmentation. In London, for instance, on Saturday
night and Monday morning, an increase in letters of from
thirty to forty per cent, takes place, owing to the Sunday
closing of the Post-office. Valentine's Day, again, has an
immense effect in gorging the general as well as local posts [-10-]
with love epistles. Those who move in the higher circles
might imagine the valentine to be "a dead letter;" but
the experience of the Post-office shows that the warm old
saint still keeps up an active agitation among tender
hearts. According to the evidence given by Sir Rowland
Hill, the increase of letters on the 14th of February is not
less than half a million throughout the United Kingdom.
We have spoken hitherto only of the conveyance of
letters, but they form an inferior portion of the weight
carried by the Post-office. The number of newspapers
and book packets posted in London throughout the week
is something enormous. Several vanfuls of the Times,
for instance, are despatched by every morning and evening
mail; other morning papers contribute their sackfuls of
broad-sheets; and on Saturday evening not a paper of any
circulation in the metropolis, but contributes more or lese
largely to swell that enormous avalanche of packets which
descend upon the Post-office. In the long room lately
added to the establishment of St. Martin's-le-Grand, which
swings so ingeniously from its suspending rods, a vast
platform attracts the eye of the visitor; he sees upon it
half a dozen men struggling amid a chaos of newspapers,
which seem countless as the heaped-up bricks of ruined Babylon. As they are carried to the different tables to be
sorted, great baskets with fresh supplies are wound up by
the endless chain which passes from top to bottom of the building. The number of books and papers passing
through all the post-offices in the kingdom is not less
than 81,000,000 per annum. Of late years the broadsheet
has materially increased in size and weight, each
paper now averaging five ounces; so that tens of thousands [-11-]
of tons weight of papers annually are posted, full half of
which pass through St. Martin's-le-Grand, and thence to
the uttermost ends of the earth — to India, China, or Australia — for one penny; whilst if they were charged by the
letter scale, tenpence would be the postage; so that, if
weight were considered in the accounts of the Post-office,
there would be a loss in their carriage of ninepence on
every newspaper. Of course this loss is mostly nominal,
as the railways take the mails without calculating their
weight; and to the packets, tons or hundredweights make
no earthly difference. Even if this cost were real, the
speedy transmission of news to all parts of the kingdom
and its colonies is a matter of so much importance, that
it would not by any means be purchased dearly.
We are continually seeing letters from subscribers in the
Times, complaining that their papers do not reach them,
and hinting that the clerks must keep them back purposely
to read them. If one of these writers were to catch a
glance of the bustle of the office at the time of making up of
the mails, he would smile indeed at his own absurdity. We
should like to see one of the sorting clerks quietly reading
in the midst of the general despatch; the sight would be
refreshing. The real cause of delays and errors of all kinds
in the transmission of newspapers, is the flimsy manner in
which their envelopes and addresses are frequently placed
upon them. Two or three. clerks are employed exclusively
in endeavouring to restore wrappers that have been broken off. We asked one of these officials once what he did
with those papers that had entirely escaped from their
addresses? "We do, sir," said he, very significantly, "the best that we
can," at the same time packing up the [-12-]
loose papers with great speed in the first broken wrappers
that came to hand. The result of this chance medley
upon the readers must be funny enough; a rabid Tory
sometimes getting a copy perhaps of the Daily News, a
Manchester Rad a Morning Post, or an old dowager down
at Bath, a copy of the Mark Lane Express.
The carriage of magazines and other books is an entirely
new feature in post-office transactions, introduced by Sir
Rowland Hill. At the end of every month the sorting
tables at the Post-office are like publishers' counters, from
the number of quarterlies, monthlies, magazines, and
serials, posted for transmission to country subscribers.
The lighter ones must all be stamped at the Stamp-office,
like newspapers; and any magazine under two ounces with
this talisman pressed upon it, passes without further question
to any part of the United Kingdom free, whilst books
under sixteen ounces can be forwarded for fourpence. This
arrangement is a wise and liberal one, recognizing as it does the advantage of circulating as widely as possible the
current literature of the country. Many a dull village,
where the current literature of the day penetrated not a
few years ago, by this means is now kept up level in its
reading with the metropolis.
The miscellaneous articles that pass through the post
under the new regulations are sometimes of the most extraordinary
nature. Among the live stock, canary birds, lizards, and dormice, passed not long ago, and sometimes
travelled hundreds of miles under the tender protection of
rough mail-guards. Leeches are also very commonly sent,
sometimes to the very serious inconvenience of the post-men.
Ladies' shoes go through the general office into the [-13-]
country by dozens every week; shawls, gloves, wigs, and
all imaginable articles of a light weight, crowd the Post-office;
limbs for dissection have even been discovered (by
the smell), and detained. In short, the public have so
little conscience with respect to what is proper to be forwarded, that they
would move a house through the post if
they could do it at any reasonable charge. Considerable
restrictions have, however, lately been placed on this promiscuous
use of the post.
The manner in which a letter will sometimes track a
person, like a bloodhound, appears marvellous enough, and
is calculated to impress the public with a deep sense of the
patience and sagacity of the Post-office officials. An immense
number of letters reach the post in the course of
the week, with directions perfectly unreadable to ordinary
persons; others — sometimes circulars by the thousand — with only the name of some out-of-the-way villages upon
them; others, again, without a single word of direction.
Of these latter, about eight a day are received on an
average, affording a singular example of the regularity
with which irregularities and oversights are committed by
the public. All these letters, with the exception of the
latter, which might be called stone blind, and are immediately
opened by the secretary, are taken to the Blind Letter-office,
where a set of clerks decipher hieroglyphics without
any other assistance than the Rosetta stone of experience,
and make shrewd guesses at enigmas which would have
puzzled even the Sphinx. How often in directing a letter
we throw aside an envelope because the direction does not
seem distinct — useless precaution! the difficulty seems to
be to write so that these cunning folks cannot understand. [-14-]
Who would imagine the destination of such a letter as
this, for instance?—
L. Moses,
Ratliuhiuai.
Some Russian or Polish town immediately occurs to one
from the look of the word, and from its sound; but a
blind-letter clerk at once clears up the difficulty, by
passing his pen through it and substituting — Ratcliffe
Highway.
Letters of this class, in which two or three directions
run all into one, and garnished with ludicrous spelling, are
of constant occurrence, but they invariably find out their
owners. Cases sometimes happen, however, in which
even the sharp wits of the Blind Letter-office are non-plussed.
The following, for instance, is a veritable address:—
Mrs. Smith
At the back of the Church,
England.
Much was this letter paused over before it was given up. "It would have been such a triumph of our skill," said one
of the clerks to us, "to have delivered it safely; but we [-15-]
could not do it. Consider, sir," said he, deprecatingly,
"how many Smiths there are in England, and what a
number of churches!" In all cases like this, in which it
is found impossible to forward them, they are passed to
what is called the Dead Letter-office, there opened and
sent to their writers if possible. So that out of the many
millions of letters passing through the Post-office in the
course of the year, a very few only form a residuum, and
are ultimately destroyed.
The workings of the Dead Letter-office form not the
least interesting feature of this gigantic establishment.
According to a return moved for by Mr. T. Duncombe in
1847, there were in the July of that year 4,658 letters
containing property consigned to this department, representing
perhaps a two months' accumulation. In these
were found coin, principally in small sums, of the value of £310 9s. 7d.; money-orders for
£407 12s.; and banknotes
representing £1,010. We might then estimate the
whole amount of money which rests for any time without
owners in the Dead. Letter-office, to be £11,000 in the year. Of this sum the greater portion is ultimately restored
to the owners — only a very small amount, say one-and-an-eighth per cent., finding its way into the
public exchequer.
A vast number of bank post-bills and bills of
exchange .are found in these dead letters, amounting in the
whole to between two or three millions a year; as in nearly
all cases, however, they are duplicates, and of only nominal value, they are destroyed with the permission of the owners.
According to Mr. Greer's return of 1858, 30,000 letters
containing property reached the Dead Letter-office.
Of the miscellaneous articles found in these letters, there
[-16-]
is a very curious assortment. The ladies appear to find
the Post-office a vast convenience, by the number of fancy
articles of female gear found in them. Lace, ribands, handkerchiefs,
cuffs, muffettees, gloves, fringe — a range of articles,
in short, is discovered in them sufficient to set up a dozen pedlars' boxes for
Autolycus. Little presents of jewellery
are also very commonly to be found: rings, brooches, gold
pins, and the like. These articles are sold to some jeweller,
whilst the gloves and handkerchiefs, and other articles
fitted for the young bucks of the office, are put up to
auction and bought among themselves. These dead letters
are the residuum, if we may so term it, of all the offices
in England, as, after remaining in the local posts for
a given time, they are transferred to the central office.
The establishments of Dublin and Edinburgh, in like
manner, collect all the same class of letters in Ireland and
Scotland.
In looking over the list of articles remaining in these
two letter-offices, one cannot help being struck with the
manner in which they illustrate the feelings and habits of
the two peoples. The Scotch dead letters rarely contain
coin; and of articles of jewellery, such as form presents sent
as tokens of affection, there is a lamentable deficiency;
whilst the Irish ones are full of little cadeau and small
sums of money, illustrating at once the careless yet affectionate
nature of the people. One item constantly meets
the eye in Irish dead letters — "A free passage to New
York." Relations, who have gone to America and done
well, purchase an emigration ticket, and forward it to some
relative in the "ould country" whom they wish to come
over to join them in their prosperity. Badly written and [-17-]
worse spelled, many of them have little chance of ever
reaching their destination, and as little of being returned
to those who sent them: they lie silent in the office for a
time, and are then destroyed, whilst hearts, endeared to
each other by absence enforced by the sundering ocean,
mourn in sorrow an imaginary neglect.
When one considers it, the duties of the Post-office are
multifarious indeed. Independently of its original function
as an establishment for the conveyance of letters, of late it
has become a parcel-de1ivery company and banking-house.
In the sale of postage-stamps it makes itself clearly a
bank of issue, and in the circulation of money-orders it
still more seriously invades the avocations of the Lombard-street
fraternity.
The money-order system has sprung up almost with the
rapidity of Jack the Giant-killer's bean-stalk. In the
year ending April, 1839, there were only 28,838 orders
issued, representing £49,496. 5s. 8d.; whilst in the year
ending December, 1859, there were sold 6,969,108, value
£13,250,930, or nearly one order to every four persons of
the entire population of the kingdom. The next ten years
will in all probability greatly enhance this amount, as the
increase up to the present time has been quite gradual. It
cannot be doubted that the issuing of money-orders must
have seriously infringed upon the bank-draft system, and
every day it will do so more, as persons no longer confine
themselves to transmitting small amounts, it being frequently
the case that sums of £50 and upwards are
forwarded in this manner by means of a multiplication of
orders. The rationale of money-orders is so simple, and fully understood by all persons, that they must rapidly [-18-]
increase, and we do not doubt that Sir Rowland Hill's
suggestion of making them for larger amounts will before
long be carried into execution, as it is found that the
public cannot be deterred, by limiting the amount of the
order, from sending what sums they like, and the making
one order supply the place of two or three would naturally
diminish the very expensive labour of this department.
The thirteen millions of money in round numbers represented
by these orders, of course includes the transactions
of the whole country, but they are properly considered under the head of the General Office, as all the accounts are
kept there, and there every money-order is ultimately
checked. About 18,000 money-orders are issued daily in England and Wales, and a duplicate advice of every
order is sent to the Chief Office in London for the purpose
of recording the transaction and checking the Postmaster's
accounts. These' advices are examined and entered by
upwards of 100 clerks. Formerly 200 were employed.
Thus, while the work has increased, the establishment of
clerks has been considerably reduced, a most commendable fact in a Government office. On the sale of money-orders
the Government gains £4 10s. per thousand (in number)
issued, and this more than covers the whole expense
of the greatest monetary convenience for the body of the
people ever established.
There is one room in the Post-office which visitors
should not fail to inquire for — the late Secret Office.
When Smirke designed the building he must have known
the particular use to which this room would be put; a
more low-browed, villanous-looking apartment could not
well be conceived. It looks the room of a sneak, and it [-19-]
was one — an official sneak, it is true, but none the less a
sneak. As we progress in civilization, force gives place to
ingenious fraud. When Wolsey wished to gain possession
of the letters of the ambassador to Charles V. he did so
openly and dauntlessly, having ordered, as he says,
"A privye watche shoulde be made in London, and by a
certain circute and space aboutes it; in the whiche watche,
after mydnyght, was taken passing between London and Brayneford, be certain of the watche appointed to that
quarter, . one riding towards the said Brayneford ; who,
examyned by the watche, answered so closely, that upon
suspicion thereof, they searched hym, and founde secretly
hyd aboutes hym a little pacquet of letters superscribed in Frenche."
More modern ministers or state liked not this rough
manner, but turning up their cuffs, and by the aid of a
light finger, obtained what they wanted, without the sufferer
being in the least aware of the activity of their digits.
In this room the official letter-picker was appropriately
housed. Unchallenged, and in fact unknown to any of
the army of a thousand persons that garrisoned the Post-office, he passed by a secret staircase every morning to his
odious duties; every night he went out again unseen.
He was, in short, the man in the iron mask of the Post-office.
Behold him, in the latter day of his pride, in 1842,
when the Chartists kept the north in commotion, and Sir
James Graham issued more warrants authorizing the
breaking open letters than any previous Secretary of State
on record, — behold him in the full exercise of his stealthy art!
[-20-] Some poor physical-force wretch at Manchester or Birmingham
has been writing some trashy letters about pikes
and fire-balls to his London confederates. See the springes
a powerful government set to catch such miserable game !
Immediately upon the arrival of the mails from the north
the bags from the above-mentioned places, together with
one or two others to serve as a blind to the Post-office
people, are immediately taken, sealed as they are, to the
den of this secret inquisitor. He selects from them the
letters he intends to operate upon. Before him lie the implements
of his craft — a range of seals bearing upon them the
ordinary mottoes, and a piece of tobacco-pipe. If none of
the seals will fit the impressions upon the letters, he carefully
takes copies in bread; and now the more serious
operation commences. The tobacco-pipe red-hot pours a
burning blast upon the yielding wax; the letter is opened,
copied, resealed, and returned to the bag, and reaches the
person to whom it is directed, apparently unviolated.
In the case of Mazzini's letters, however (the opening
of which blew up the whole system), the dirty work was
not even done by deputy; his letters were forwarded
unopened to the Foreign-office, and there read by the
minister himself. The abuses to which the practice was
carried during the last century were of the most flagrant
kind. Walpole used to issue warrants for the purpose of
opening letters in almost unlimited numbers, and the use
to which they were sometimes put might be judged by the
following:—
"In 1741, at the request of A., a warrant issued to
permit A.'s eldest son to open and inspect any letters
which A.'s youngest son might write to two females,
[-21-]
one of whom that youngest son had imprudently married."
The foregoing is from the Report of the Secret Committee
appointed to investigate the practice in 1844,
and which contains some very curious matter. Whole
mails, it appears, were sometimes detained for several days
during the late war, and all the letters individually
examined. French, Dutch, and Flemish enclosures were
rudely rifled, and kept or sent forward at pleasure. There
can be no doubt that in some cases, such as frauds upon
banks or the revenue, forgeries, or murder, the power of
opening letters was used, impartially to individuals and
beneficially to the State; but the discoveries made thereby
were so few that it did not in any way counterbalance
the great public crime of violating public confidence and
perpetuating an official immorality.
Thus far we have walked with our reader, and explained
to him the curious machinery which acts upon the vast correspondence of the metropolis with the country, and of
the country generally with foreign parts, within the
establishment at St. Martin's-le-Grand. The machinery
for its conveyance is still more vast, if not so intricate.
The foreign mails have at their command a fleet of steamers
such as the united navies of the world can scarcely match,
threading the coral reefs of the "lone Antilles," skirting
the western coast of South America, touching weekly at
the ports of the United States, and bi-monthly traversing
the Indian Ocean — tracking, in fact, the face of the deep
wherever England has great interests or her sons have
many friends. Even the vast Pacific, which a hundred
years ago was rarely penetrated even by the adventurous [-22-]
circumnavigator, has become a highway for the passage of
her Majesty's mails; and letters pass to Australia and
New Zealand, our very antipodes, as soon as the epistles of
old reached the Highlands of Scotland or the western
counties of Ireland. This vast system of water-posts, if so they might be called, is kept up at an annual expense
of over £1,000,000 sterling.
The conveyance of inland letters by means of the railways
is comparatively inexpensive, as many of the companies are liberal enough to take the bags at rates usually
charged to, the public for parcels, the total cost for their
carriage in 1854 being only £446,000. Every night
and morning, like so much life-blood issuing from a great
heart, the mails leave the metropolis, radiating on their
fire-chariots to the extremities of the land. As they rush
along, the work of digestion goes on as in the flying bird.
The travelling post-office is not the least of those curious
contrivances for saving time consequent upon the introduction
of railroads. At the metropolitan stations from
which they issue, a letter-box is open until the last moment
of their departure. The last letters into it are, of
course, unsorted, and have to go through that process as
the train proceeds. Whilst the clerks are busy in their itinerant office, by an ingenious, self-acting process, a
delivery and reception of mail-bags is going on over their
heads. At the smaller stations, where the trains do not
stop, the letter-bags are lightly hung upon rods, which are
swept by the passing mail-carriage, and the letters drop
into a net suspended on one side of it to receive them.
The bags for delivery are, at the same moment, transferred
from the other side to the platform. The sorting of the
[-23-]
newly-received bags immediately commences, and by this
arrangement letters are caught in transitu, sorted, arranged
in districts, ready to be transferred to the district
offices in the metropolis, without the trouble and loss of
time attendant upon the old mail-coach system, which
necessitated the carriage of the major part of such letters
to St. Martin's-le-Grand previous to their final despatch.
There have been a great number of pillar and wall letterboxes
erected since they were first introduced about four
years ago, and the plan is found to be so convenient and
economical that their erection continues at the rate of about
500 a year. In most cases, the public prefer these pillar-boxes
to receiving houses, as their letters are safe from the
scrutiny of curious post-mistresses and their gossips.
The success of Sir Rowland Hill's system, with its
double delivery, its rapid transmissions, and its great
cheapness, which brings it within the range of the very
poorest, is fast becoming apparent. Year by year it is
increasing the amount of revenue it returns to the State, its profits for 1859 being
£1,135,960, a falling off, it is
true, of of some £500,000 a year from the revenue derived
under the old rates, but every day it is catching up this
income, and another ten years of but average prosperity
will, in all probability, place it far beyond its old receipts,
with a tenfold amount of accommodation and cheapness to
the public. As it is, the gross earnings have already done so by nearly
£250,000 a year; but the cost of distribution
has, of course, vastly augmented with the great increase
of letters which pass through the post under the penny
rate.