CONCLUSION The important points in the history of the British Post Office are necessarily somewhat obscured by the great mass of less important characteristics which accompanied its development. Organized at the beginning of the sixteenth century as a means for the conveyance of state letters, its messengers, by tacit consent, were allowed to carry the letters of private individuals. The advantage so afforded for the control of seditious correspondence led to the monopolistic proclamations of the closing years of the sixteenth and the opening years of the seventeenth century. Before 1635 the state obtained no direct revenue for the conveyance of private letters. The messengers or postmen who were supposed to be paid by the state, derived the larger part of their income from the postage on these letters and from letting horses to travellers. The object in retaining for the Royal Posts the sole right to carry the letters of private individuals assumed a new form in the seventeenth century. Witherings showed that by diverting the postage on private letters from the postmen to the state the Post Office might be made self-supporting. Legal rates were imposed, letters were carried at a much higher speed, and the system of packet posts was extended over the great roads of England. The supervision of private correspondence became a matter of only secondary importance. The struggle between the King and Parliament resulted in securing popular control over the posts of the kingdom. At the same time, during the political unrest, competing systems of posts were repressed with difficulty. The inability of government officials to meet the increasing needs of a growing metropolis led to the establishment of a Penny Post in London by Dockwra, a private individual. The first part of the eighteenth century saw the extension of a postal system in the colonies and an attempt on the part of the Post The first forty years of the last century saw the Post Office at its best as an instrument of taxation. But this very fact drew attention to the lack of other and more important objects. Rates had been forced so high that people resorted to legal and illegal means to evade paying them. The feeling was growing that a tax upon correspondence was not only a poor method of raising money but that its ulterior effect in restricting letter writing was producing undesirable results upon the people of England industrially and socially. A great mistake had been made by the Post Office in acquiring steam packets. They suffered severely from private competing lines and were always a loss to the Government. A partial remedy was attained by the transfer of all the packets to the Admiralty. Eventually the popular cause, championed by Hill and Wallace, forced itself upon the attention of the Government. A Parliamentary committee, after listening to the evidence of representative witnesses, declared itself in favour of low and uniform rates of postage for the United Kingdom, the result being the adoption of inland Penny Postage in 1840. Among the numerous changes which have characterized the development of the Post Office since 1840 are the successive reductions in rates; the transfer of the packet boats from the Admiralty, followed by the resolution of the Government to revert to the old principle of depending upon private enterprise for the sea carriage of the mails; the extension in the use of the railways as a medium of conveyance; the establishment of a parcel post; and the decision of the government to provide banking and assurance |