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 Office to obtain the postage on letters passing over the cross-roads of England. The increase in England's colonial possessions and her growing trade with foreign countries produced a corresponding growth in the packet service. The last part of the century saw the establishment of Palmer's mail coaches in order to meet competition from the post coaches. The great increase in revenue which accompanied the industrial revolution led to corruption among the postal officials, resulting in the reform of 1793. The period of rapid growth had passed, and the close of the eighteenth century was a period of consolidation for the new offices which had been created, and better coÖperation in the work which they performed.

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 facilities for the thrifty person of small means. But the greatest departure in the field of the department's activities has been the acquisition of the telegraphic system of the Kingdom. Misled by their advisers as to the capital cost and induced by popular pressure to abandon strictly business methods of administration and extension, the telegraphic experiments of the department have not been a financial success. Not only has this been the case, but, in their efforts to protect the revenue, successive Governments have hindered the development of telephonic communication. At this late date we can safely assume that in 1870 the department should either have granted the telephone companies far greater powers or should themselves have assumed the burden of providing an adequate system of telephonic communication. In 1911, the property and franchises of the telephone companies will pass to the control of the Government, thus vastly increasing the work of the department if, as seems probable, the Government should assume direct management, and greatly enlarging the number of dissatisfied members of that part of the civil service under the control of the Post Office.