RAILWAYS AND THE POST OFFICE—SPEED ON RAILWAYS.

Passengers, luggage, horses, carriages, dogs, merchandise, minerals and live stock constitute the whole of the traffic, as well as the whole of the receipts of railway companies, with one only exception. That exception is an important one: it is the conveyance of mails by railway.

From the day that railways were opened in England, the Post Office has resorted to them for the conveyance of its mails. The Liverpool and Manchester railway was opened for traffic, as already stated, on the 14th of September, 1830; on the same day the Post Office commenced using it, and mails were conveyed on it four times a day in each direction. The same happened at the opening of the Grand Junction between Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham on the 6th July, 1837; upon the completion of the line between London and Birmingham, on the 20th September, 1838, and so in succession with every leading railway throughout the kingdom.

The Post Office soon became jealous of the power and position of railway companies, and the expression of its jealousy culminated in the introduction, at its instance, of a bill into Parliament, in 1838, “for the conveyance of mails by railway.” The bill proposed to give power to the Post Office to run its own trains upon any line of railway open for traffic, without payment of toll. It was further to be authorised to remove all obstacles in the shape of passenger or other carriages out of the way of its trains; pains and penalties were to be amerced on the servants of companies if the “lawful commands” of the postal officials were disobeyed. The aid of the railway plant and of railway officials was commanded, and the remuneration to the companies for these services was to be this much, and no more—the cost of the wear, tear and deterioration that Post Office trains inflicted upon the rails!

Mr. Labouchere, now Lord Taunton, introduced the bill, and in doing so said that the country was at the mercy of railway companies which had bound the land in bonds of iron—bonds from which it was necessary that the land should be freed by the action of Parliament. Mr. Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, prince of jobbers, and for many years enjoying the sinecure and emoluments of Comptroller of the Exchequer, an office abolished at his death, warned all railway directors to beware of opposing the bill, threatening them, on the part of the Government, of which he was then a member, with more stringent measures, if they were so ill-advised.

The bill, nevertheless, met with vigorous opposition; at its head was Mr. George Carr Glyn, chairman of the London and Birmingham Company, and then, as now, the honoured member for the Borough of Kendal, whom Mr. John Francis truthfully describes in the dedication of his History of the English Railway[26], as “one of the earliest, as well as one of the most efficient allies of the system;”

The effect of the opposition was that an act was passed which differed essentially in character and conditions from the bill that had been presented to Parliament. The chief power given to the Post Office was that the railway companies were bound to convey mails at such hours as the Postmaster-General should direct; if required, they were to apply separate carriages exclusively to their conveyance, and remuneration was to be according to agreement between the Postmaster-General and the Directors, but in case of difference recourse was to be had to arbitration.

The era of postal reform commenced on the 10th of January, 1840. In the year previous to it, the number of letters circulating through the post was 82,471,000. In these were included 6,563,000 franks. The estimated number of newspapers conveyed by the post in 1839 was 44,500,000. In 1840 there were about 1,300 miles of railway open. What had before been an advantage to the Post Office, and to the letter-writing public, by the gain of speed which railways afforded, at once became a necessity to the department, in consequence of the sudden increase in the weight and the bulk of the mails. The number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom, in 1840, was more than double that of 1839. They were 168,768,000, and there was every indication that they would increase, if not in the gigantic ratio of the first year, at all events very rapidly; such was the case, for the number carried in 1841 showed an increase of nearly 28,000,000. Newspapers increased about 500,000 in 1840. It would have been supposed that the Post Office would have entered into negotiations, in a friendly spirit, with the officials of the railway companies; this, however, was not the case: on the contrary, from the earliest period of postal reform until recent years, the railway has experienced nothing but hostility and reproach from the department. Personal and friendly communication with its heads became out of the question, for the demeanour of one high official (whose name, without being mentioned, can easily be surmised) to many of the leading railway officials was such, that several declined to meet him; recourse was then had to arbitration, in accordance with the powers conferred on the Post Office by the provisions of the Act of Parliament. The result of references, many of which were very protracted, and in the course of which very minute and elaborate evidence was adduced on both sides, was that decisions were given much more favourable to the railways than the Post Office had expected. The proof that the demands of railway companies did not justify the appellations which the Post Office attributed to them was, that they were not much above the amounts awarded. But as regards the Post Office, the payments proposed by it, and those awarded differed very widely. This, however, did not make any difference in the crusading energy of the department. Long before the issue of Postmaster-General’s reports,[27] whenever an opportunity offered, either in giving evidence before a Committee of Parliament, or in furnishing information, there was sure to be an insinuation, an innuendo, or a more open attack upon the railway authorities who had succeeded in not allowing the Post Office to have it all its own way.

The Postmaster-General’s First Report partakes more of the character of an historic document than of a record of the transactions of an official year. There are, therefore, only some few unimportant remarks in it upon the subject of railways. It was otherwise in the second, as will appear by the following somewhat lengthy extract:—

The foregoing is in the body of the report, what follows appears as a foot-note.

“As nearly as it can be estimated it appears that, while the whole number of book packets conveyed annually by the Post Office is probably over stated at three millions, the number of newspapers[29] passing through the post has decreased by about twenty-five millions, or by more than eight times the number of all the book packets. Besides this reduction in number, there has been a decrease in the average weight of the newspapers sent through the post; and the combined effect of these changes has been to reduce the total weight of the newspapers by an amount more than nine times as great as the total weight of all the book packets.”

There never has been anything to show, either at the time those paragraphs were written, or subsequently, that cheap postage has tended to increase railway traffic. We are therefore at a loss to understand why such an assertion should be adduced as an argument. The same remark applies to the connection attempted to be set up between the amount paid by the Post Office for the transmission of mails through the country, and the tax which railway companies pay to the Government as their contribution to the fiscal burdens, unavoidably and of necessity imposed upon industry by the State: and it must also be considered strange that the Post Office should make a Postmaster-General’s Report the medium of conveying to arbitrators its opinion as to the mode in which they should arbitrate between it and the companies.

However, we pass over these minor and insignificant points, to come to the very serious misrepresentation which is embodied in the foot-note. If the reader will be so good as to read it again, he will see words, which, if they mean anything, mean that the number of newspapers circulating through the post was 25,000,000 less in 1855, than it was in 1854, the object being to show that although 3,000,000 of book packets were carried through the post in 1855, railways were not sufferers thereby, as these packets only formed one-eighth of the number of newspapers that had been withdrawn from postal circulation, owing to the abolition of the compulsory stamp duty. Now we know that in consequence of the reduction in 1836 of the Stamp Duty upon newspapers,[30] from nominal 4d. and real 3¼d. each, to 1d., the number posted had steadily increased each year. Therefore, if the assertion of the foot-note were correct, newspapers posted would have suddenly fallen, in 1855, to 46,000,000, that is to only 1,500,000 more than they were in 1839; yet at page 19 of the identical Second Report, it is stated that 71,000,000 of newspapers were posted in 1855. Thus at page 15, to serve one purpose, figures are given which would show that only 46,000,000 were posted, but four pages farther, to serve another purpose, that of showing how postal business has increased, they are stated at 71,000,000.

Let us now turn to the Third Report. At page 10, the number of newspapers transmitted through the post in 1856, is stated to be 71,000,000. If this statement be correct, it would show, either that the number transmitted in 1855 had in reality been about 71,000,000, or that, on the mechanical principle of action and reaction being equal and contrary, there had been a fall of 25,000,000 in 1855, and that precisely the same rise had taken place in 1856. This rise in one year would have to be considered all the more remarkable, inasmuch as the total number, not only of newspapers, but of book post packets transmitted in 1865, was 97,250,000 according to one statement, 2,766 more according to another. Owing to the unceasing changes in the mode of imparting information to the public by means of the Postmaster-General’s reports, the number of newspapers, exclusive of book post packets, cannot be given, but, including these latter, there was, according to the Postmaster-General’s Twelfth Report, an increase of only 26,250,000 in ten years, as against an alleged fall of 25,000,000 in one year, and a recovery to the same amount in the next.

We come now to deal with the Report, dated the 29th February, 1856, by Mr. Edward Page, an excellent officer within the limits of his duties as Inspector-General of Mails, as well as a courteous and agreeable gentleman. He is consequently much esteemed and respected.

But before going farther, let us premise that the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, in the course of the inaugural address which, as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, he delivered on the 8th of January, 1856, made the following observations upon the connection between the Post Office and the railways:—

These words called forth Mr. Page’s Report, and, as the public usually feels interested in matters relating to the Post Office, we have given it in full as an Appendix. We also have done very nearly the same with the Reply to Mr. Page, which Mr. Stephenson read to the Institution on the 20th of May, 1856. Combinedly these documents are long; nevertheless, we think they will repay perusal; at all events, our readers, if they choose to read, will get both views of the question, about which we also wish to say something.

Mr. Page, as it will be seen, passes by “bulk,” and deals, in all his arguments, with weight only. Yet the difference between them, even in the case of mails, the most favourable for the Post Office is very great indeed. Let us, for illustration, take the case of our Eastern mails; being all conveyed in parallel-sided boxes,[31] filled to the uttermost their inner dimensions will permit, they pack closely, and there is no loss of space, as must be in the case of bags, which, even when full, do not lay compactly together. Thus, the weight of one mail conveyed from Southampton to the East, in 1864, was 46 tons; its measurement was 99 tons, and the weight of the heaviest Eastern mail conveyed vi Southampton, in 1865, was 49½ tons; its measurement 106½ tons. Weight to bulk in mail bags is nearer to 1 to 4 than to any other quantity. Had the weight (or bulk) of chargeable letters only increased about eight-fold between 1839 and 1855, no doubt the addition to the mails would not have been considerable. But Mr. Page, “no doubt without any intention whatever to mislead,” omits from his calculations matters which it is surprising that an officer of his intelligence and experience should have allowed to escape him. In the first place, he omits the fact that “chargeable letters” were very different in their character in 1855 from what they were in 1839. Then chargeable letters were, as has been stated by Mr. Page, about 7 per cent. of the total weight of the mails, but in 1855 letters quite equal in weight to the weight of those chargeable, viz., parliamentary and official franks, are excluded from Mr. Page’s calculation. It is well known that the correspondence of all the public departments has largely increased in the last thirty years, because, owing to the increased magnitude of the business of the nation, the number of clerks in the old offices has been greatly added to, and because several new branches of the public service have been created. To take a few examples at random. The Steam branch of the Admiralty consisted in 1838 of five or six persons; now, owing to rapid and frequent additions, an immense staff is necessarily connected with it. The Railway and the Navigation, the Education and the Scientific Departments of the Board of Trade, “Science and Art” and South Kensington, the Civil Service Commissioners, &c., have either been created or the staff of each has been added to. So that the substitutes for franks should be included among the letters of the general public, and it is quite certain that the weight and bulk of official letters has kept pace with the weight and bulk of ordinary letters. Between 1839 and 1855, notwithstanding the foot-note about newspapers at page 15, of the Postmaster-General’s Second Report, the number circulating through the post had increased from 44,500,000 to 71,000,000, and although the weight per newspaper had slightly diminished in the interval, still the increased weight of newspapers to be carried by the mails was nearly 50 per cent. over that of 1839.

So far as regards the long established articles of conveyance by the Post Office. Let us now come to those of more modern date. The year before the commencement of the penny postal system, the number of money orders issued was 188,921. In 1855 they had risen to 5,807,412. Now, taking the advices that must be sent to each office upon which an order is issued, the returns that are forwarded daily to the accountant’s office in the metropolis of each part of the United Kingdom in which each Post Office Order has been issued, the remittances unceasingly sent from the provincial offices to the metropolis, and from the metropolis to the provincial offices, the receipts for these remittances and the correspondence which they entail, the weekly advices that are sent to London, and the correspondence connected with them, there were at least twelve millions more of letters or documents from this source in 1855 than there were in 1839. None of these letters or documents does Mr. Page bring into calculation, although, each being official, the certainty is that they are heavier in weight and greater in bulk than a like amount of chargeable letters; all these are carried free in the letter bags. And it is a question that it is not necessary to discuss at present, whether they and the letters and documents (we shall see presently that these are enormous in number, and very great as regards weight) connected with the new services and functions which the Post Office performs, should not be brought into account as a postal charge against the department. The other revenue departments, such, for instance, as the Customs, Inland Revenue, &c., transmit large masses of documents necessary in the transaction of their business with their sub-offices all over the kingdom; but these documents are each subjected to postal charges which are regularly debited in the account of the transmitting department.

In 1839 all expenditure was made by the postmasters throughout the kingdom, and the voucher for each item was retained in their offices.

In 1855 the expenditure was made as heretofore, and as it now continues to be, but instead of the vouchers being retained, every tradesman’s bill and every other item of expenditure that is incurred at a provincial office, no matter how small the item may be, is, with the voucher, sent up to its metropolitan office. To specify the number of these documents would be impossible, but there must be tons weight of them through the post every year.

In 1839 there were no postage stamps. In 1855 the gross revenue of the Post Office was £2,716,420. Taking about a fourth of this amount, or, say £700,000 as the value of those sent through the post for distribution in every post town in the kingdom, their number (in penny stamps) 168,000,000; their dead weight (packed) would be about ten tons, not including the weight of materials in which they were packed, and excluding from the calculation the very considerable number of post office envelopes sent all over the empire, one of which envelopes would weigh as much as two dozen stamps[32].

At the commencement of the new postal system, the number of post offices throughout the United Kingdom was 4,028, of which about a fourteenth, or 300, were head post offices, that is offices sending bags to and receiving bags from London. In 1855 there were 10,498 post offices in the United Kingdom, of which “920[33] were head post offices and 9,578 sub post offices or receiving offices.” Therefore not only had the number of bags going from or coming to London from this one cause been trebled in number, but for the reasons just stated the weight in them had also trebled. In 1839 there were four or five day mails to and from London. In 1855 upwards of fifty, all of which required bags for working them, and their tributary cross posts in every part of the kingdom, but as Mr. Page’s arguments have reference principally to night mails, let them be excluded.

As London is the depÔt from which the immense and unceasing supply of new bags for the whole postal system of England and Wales (as Dublin is for Ireland, and Edinburgh for Scotland) is furnished, every one of the bags for the night mails, the day mails, the railway mails, the mail coach mails, the mail cart mails, the horse mails, the foot mails, and the private bag mails, required, in no matter what part of the Kingdom, are considered by the Post Office as postal matters, and are sent post-free accordingly, and when bags are dilapidated or injured they find their way to London, just in the same inexpensive manner as new bags find their way from it. “The supply and repair of mail bags” in England and Wales involve an annual cost of nearly £6,000, exclusive of the cost of supplying and painting the 22,000 to 25,000 mail boxes per annum required for the despatch of our Eastern mails; and one man is borne on the books of the establishment for no other purpose than, as the estimates tell us, to label mail bags. In Ireland there is an annual outlay of £800, in Scotland of £900, for new bags and mendings. In short, empty mail bag transit must have been in 1855 a quarter of all that, whether filled or empty, of 1839.

In 1839 there was one departure a month of the East India mail vi Marseilles and one vi Southampton, yet the weight of the mails by the two routes was under five tons, in bulk about twelve tons. In 1855, with two departures a month vi Marseilles, and two vi Southampton, the Eastern mails were about twenty tons weight. In 1839 the West India and Brazilian mails were despatched once a month, in the notorious ten-gun “coffins”; yet although the letters were then always sent in triplicate, because the certainty then was that one in three would be lost, and the chances were it might be one in two, nevertheless the letters were only about 200,000 a year; in 1855 they had risen to 700,000. In 1839 letters between Great Britain, the United States, and Canada were conveyed by the American “Liners,” they were under a million per annum; in 1855 they had risen to about 2,500,000, besides letters “in transit” between the United States, Europe, India, China, and Australia.

In 1839 the community had not the benefit of a “British Postal Guide,[34] containing the Chief Public Regulations of the Post Office, with other information, published Quarterly by command of the Postmaster-General.” The first number was issued on the 1st of July, 1855, seven months before Mr. Page wrote his Report. The cost of each number for two or three years was Sixpence. As we learn by the cover that they are “Printed, Published, and Sold by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty,” and that they are “to be had also of all Booksellers and the Principal Postmasters in the United Kingdom.” It therefore follows that these Postal Guides were, from the date of their first appearance, transmitted by the Railways in the Post Office bags all over the Kingdom. We have seen them, from the earliest period of their publication, exhibited and advertised at the post offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Cork, and other places, and almost every postmaster receives one or more copies for the use of his office. Each number contains 234 pages at present, besides the pages devoted to advertisements, and they cost 2d. each for transmission if sent by book post. In 1858, the price per copy was raised to 1s.; but in 1864 it was reduced to 6d., and the sale has become very great.

But whatever their number or weight was in 1855, it escaped Mr. Page’s recollection to mention them in his comparison between the weights transmitted in that year, and those of 1839.

The foregoing items supply some of the omissions made by Mr. Page in his calculations, and furnish reasons for dissenting from his assertion, that whilst “in 1838 the gross weight of the night mails despatched from London was 4 tons 6 cwt. 1 qr., the total weight of the night mails despatched in a single evening at the present time, may be stated (the italics are ours) at about 12 tons 4 cwt. 3 qrs.”

Mr. Page estimates the gross weight of mails per annum for the entire Kingdom, including guards, clerks, &c., as being considerably under 20,000 tons, “a large portion of which was not conveyed by railway at all.” Mr. Page adds, “Assuming, however, that the whole of it had gone by the railways, it would appear that the Post Office paid 1/23 part of the total earnings for the conveyance of less than a 1/400 part of the total weight.” Mr. Page must excuse us for asserting that the total weight of mails in 1855 was nearer to 80,000 tons than to 20,000, and that by bulk it was nearly 200,000 tons, of which more than half was carried by railway.

Until September 1838, fifty-two horses started every evening from London, with thirteen mail coaches behind them, to convey the mails that are now carried by the Scotch Limited Mail. The weight of mails carried by the coaches was about four tons, their bulk about ten tons measurement. The horses travelled gallantly up hill and down dale over first-class roads at the rate of more than ten miles an hour, and at the end of six or seven miles they were replaced by others of the same mettle. They were guided by thirteen first-class “whips” of the olden time, and no matter what the weather was, or how rough any portion of the road might be temporarily, the great ambition was, not to be a second after time at appointed places. In charge of these four or ten tons, as the case may be, were thirteen guards, to whom the custody of the mails was entrusted. They were responsible for their safe and faithful transmission between St. Martin’s-le-Grand and their destinations.

Each mail coach was considered to require a horse a double mile, to maintain its contract time. As Stafford is 133 miles from London, 133 multiplied by 13 gives the number of horses required, 1,729. The average weight which each mail coach carried was 4 cwt., taken as bulk it was half a ton. The maximum weight that, by the terms of the contract, could be imposed upon it was 15 cwt., a total, for thirteen mails, of 195 cwt.—five less than five tons.

In 1867 one horse—of the railway the iron-clad—invented, not conceived, not created—a living, but lifeless thing—yet withal of terrible power, draws, in addition to the same number of passengers that the fifty-two horses could draw, the mails which are to be carried to Stafford and beyond it. Instead of the weight being four tons, it is often nearly twenty, and instead of bulk being ten, it is seldom less than forty, often fifty, and sometimes it mounts up to even four or five tons further. But no matter, the iron horse is ready to take its load, and does take it at speed four times as great as the speed of thirty years ago.

If we had to go back to mail coaches, and each were only to carry the average of 1837, we should require 100 mail coaches and 13,300 horses; but if each were loaded to its Post Office maximum of former times, then only 27 coaches and 3,591 horses would be requisite. At what cost for 27 coaches? Certainly, the former average of 2½d. a mile would no longer be attainable. More than double would be demanded. 13s. 6d. a mile per diem for 133 miles, multiplied by 365 days, is £32,785. Yet the highest price that the London and North-Western ever had for its night mail service was 4s. the double mile, £9,709.

This is one answer to the assertion of Mr. Page in his report, “Not only, therefore, would penny postage without railways have been both practicable and remunerative, but it would have been even more profitable[35] (assuming the increase of letters) than it is now.”

We learn from Mr. Howell, the Secretary of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Company, that on Australian mail mornings the weight of mails is 46 tons; to carry these at the rate of 15 cwt. per mail coach from London to Southampton, 78 miles, it would he necessary to have 61 coaches and 4,758 horses, besides guards and coachmen. As mails, although not near so heavy as the Australian, are continually arriving at and departing from Southampton, it would be necessary to keep up at least the above stock both of bi-and quadru-peds for these 78 miles, at a cost of about £30,000 a year; but reference to the Post Office estimates will show that the annual payment made by the department to the London and South-Western Company is £21,950, and for that sum the Post Office has the right not only to receive and despatch its sea-going mails, but to use every one of the Company’s trains over the 503 miles which constitute its system, for Post Office inland business. How, it may be asked again, can any officer of the department assert in a report (designated by the Postmaster-General “an able report”) that the penny postage “would have been even more profitable without railways than it now is”?

There is a point in connection with this subject that may as well be referred to here. The Isthmus of Suez Railway[36] was opened for traffic in 1858, the same year that the Australian mail service by way of Egypt was commenced. The India and China mails had increased very rapidly during the few previous years, and the greatest trouble and difficulty were experienced in getting them across the desert. The addition of the Australian mails would have overwhelmed the service, but for the opening of the railway. For let it be asked, What number of camels would be required, or what time would they require to take some fifty tons of mails (adding to the transmissions vi Southampton, those from England and France vi Marseilles, and from Germany vi Trieste) across the desert? By means of the Suez Railway, the cost to this country for the conveyance of the mails outwards and inwards through Egypt is £8,000 a year, and eight Janissaries accompany the mails in both directions, for which they are paid £750 per annum. The cost of a combined army of camels, camel drivers and Janissaries would be at least £60,000 a year, and it would be simply impossible to perform the service satisfactorily.

We think we have demonstrated that even in 1855 the Post Office services of the country must have totally broken down, were it not for railways. But between 1855 and 1865 the postal business has increased enormously. The number of receptacles for letters[37] has risen from 10,498 to 16,246, the number of letters delivered from 456,276,176 to 720,467,007, of newspapers and book parcels,[38] from 71,000,000 to 97,252,766; samples and patterns, an item of Post Office transmission introduced in 1863, 1,286,116. The amount, in money, of the Money Orders issued has increased from £11,009,279[39] to £17,829,290. With the increase comes the concomitant increase of transmissions through the post. The weight of the Eastern mails has risen from 250 tons a year to nearly 2,000.

In 1861, the operations of the Post Office Savings Banks commenced, and by the 31st December, 1865, 3,321 banks had been established all over the kingdom. The total number of persons who had become depositors from the commencement was 857,701, of whom 245,882 had closed their accounts, leaving 611,819 on the books. The total number of deposits received had been 3,895,135. The total withdrawals 1,011,379. Without railways, the operations of those banks could never have been attempted. See what they have to carry? Every person on making his first deposit receives gratis, a numbered book, in which all deposits are to be entered. The weight of this book is about three quarters of an ounce; advice of each deposit is to be sent on the day of its receipt, by the Postmaster to the Post Office, London. The amount of the deposit is to be acknowledged, and the acknowledgment is to be transmitted by post to the receiver. Every depositor’s book must be forwarded each year (even from the remotest part of the kingdom), on the anniversary of the day on which the first deposit was made, to London, in a cover to be obtained at any savings bank. This cover exempts the book from postage charge, and it is also returned free from the London office to the depositor. Every necessary letter of inquiry respecting deposits in savings banks, and their replies are carried by the railways, and travel free of postage. If a depositor want to withdraw a part or the whole of the amount to his credit, he must make application on a form a copy of which can be obtained at any savings bank. It is sent free to London, as also the warrant from London payable at the place named by the applicant. The warrant when paid and receipted is returned by the Postmaster to London.

If the reader will be so good as to multiply the amount of correspondence caused by one depositor, by the total number, viz., 857,701, he will then be able to estimate what is the annual amount of work that is involved in the carrying out of the Post Office Savings Bank system, and also how completely it depends for its success upon railways. It is pleasant—it is more than pleasant—it is deeply gratifying and satisfactory, to know that the business increases, and will continue to increase, for the reason that the humblest classes of the community have now learned to appreciate the facilities which these institutions offer for the safe and fructifying deposit of their little earnings. To Mr. Gladstone is due the honour of their introduction. It was on the 8th of February, 1861, that he presented to the House of Commons the resolution that affirmed the principle upon which they are based, and both Houses of Parliament responded so promptly, that by the 17th of May following, an Act, the title of which is, “An Act to grant additional facilities for depositing small savings at interest with the security of the Government[40] for the due repayment thereof,” received the Royal assent. Mr. Gladstone, you have done many great and many good acts in your time, but you have never done one greater or better than this.[41]

The Government Insurance and Annuities Act, which received the Royal assent on the 14th July, 1864, enables persons proposing to effect insurances on their lives, or to purchase deferred monthly allowances, to transmit their proposals, and to send and receive all correspondence between themselves and the Post Office relating to their proposals free of all postal charges. The Postmaster-General is compelled to admit, in his Twelfth Report, that the proposals, from their bulk, “present a somewhat formidable appearance.” But, thanks to railways, these formidable-looking documents go free through the post. So do also their acknowledgments from head quarters; the numerous and minute inquiries made to friends and medical referees as to the proposer’s age, health, habits, and occupation, likewise the replies to all these inquiries. If these replies are deemed satisfactory, a letter is transmitted to the proposer, post free, directing him to present himself for examination to a medical man, and the report of the latter often leads to much correspondence, all of which goes without postal charge. If the proposer be rejected he is informed accordingly by a free letter, and there is an end of the matter; but if he be accepted, the insurance or annuity contract is sent to the Post Office at which the proposer desires to receive it, and he is apprised to that effect by another free letter. The system is in its infancy as yet, but the postal transmissions which it will involve, even at its greatest, will never be of the same extent as those connected with the Post Office Savings Banks. Nevertheless, they will be considerable, for every payment to an annuitant, and every receipt of money from a person assured, must be transmitted either from or to London, as the case may be. So that, in addition to the proposals of the “somewhat formidable appearance,” thousands of documents per annum in connection with that business will find their way into the mail bags.

Let us hark back to say that no rejoinder to Mr. Stephenson’s answer was ever given. Nevertheless, the answer, complete and conclusive as it was, had no effect on Post Office intentions, for during the session of 1857, the Duke of Argyll,[42] then Postmaster-General, was induced by the permanent officers of the establishment to introduce a bill into the House of Lords for making “further Provision for the Conveyance of Mails by Railway.” Mr. William Lewins[43] tells us, in his book called Her Majesty’s Mail, that His Grace deserves the gratitude of his country for introducing it. But it was well known that His Grace, like most of the Postmasters-General who have preceded him during the last twenty years, took but little interest in the working of the department over which he nominally presided, and knew little, probably nothing, of the bill, the obnoxious contents of which he was called upon to father.

It was, however, justly viewed with great apprehension by all the railway interests of the kingdom, and in consequence of the hostility excited by its appearance, it was withdrawn before it reached a second reading. In the very lame defence of it, given in the Fourth Annual Report, we find it mildly stated, that “taken as a whole, the bill certainly cannot fairly be represented as a measure opposed to railway interests.” Whether this be correct or not, at all events it can be stated that the department has never since proposed any similar enactment. From 1858 it has also ceased to use language such as “experience has satisfied me, that as the law now stands, it is impossible either to secure regularity in the conveyance of the mails, or to have that full use of the railways which the public demand, which the department is anxious to afford, and which would be beneficial to the companies themselves.”[44] The relations between the companies and the department have been amicable during the last seven or eight years, and there is now scarcely a railway in the kingdom upon which mails are conveyed that has not adopted a system of general contracts. The Post Office acquires, by means of them, the right, for a fixed gross payment per annum, of using all the trains of the company for the transport of mail bags. There are certain trains which of course must be run for the convenience of the Post Office, such as the night mail trains to and from London, with their branch trains and ramifications. The same as regards Dublin, and, in a lesser degree, Edinburgh. But the expenses of these trains to the companies is considered in coming to a decision as to the total price to be paid. These arrangements are based altogether upon the voluntary principle, but when agreed to, they are necessarily embodied in legal contracts.

We have no earlier return of postal railway mileage than 1855; that was at the height of the antagonism with the Post Office. The miles run were then 27,109 per diem, but so rapidly had friendly arrangements been entered into, that in 1862 (the last year for which a mileage return is published) it had risen to 49,782 miles per diem. Had these returns been continued to the present time, they would have exhibited an increase to 60,000 per diem, for in 1863, there were three hundred and ninety-three towns having a night and day mail from London, fifty having 3 mails daily from London, seven having 4, three having 3, and three having 4. But in 1865, the number had increased as follows: four hundred and ten having a night and day mail from London, fifty-seven having 3 daily from London, nine having 4, and six having 5.

The gross sum paid by the Post Office to the railways of the United Kingdom in 1866 was £570,500, only £170,500 more than, as Mr. Page states, were paid to railways in 1855; but at that time the Post Office, with only few exceptions, did not run more than one day and one night mail train in each direction on the greater portion of the 8,280 miles which then constituted the railway system of the kingdom; but on the first of January, 1866, the railway system was 13,289 miles, over about 12,000 miles of which, the Post Office was able by its contracts, to send mail bags by whatever trains, whether goods or passenger, they chose to select from. At the present time (as already stated) the railway service of the Post Office cannot be less than 60,000 miles a day[45].

The following statement exhibits the amount paid by the Post Office to the Railway Companies of the United Kingdom in 1866, together with the mileage length of most of them. Of the total sum of £570,500, the London and North-Western, with its 1,320 miles of railway, naturally earns the largest share, £132,997. The other railways come as follows:—Great Western (1,311 miles), £50,789; North Eastern (1,229), £41,397; North British (732), £8,696; Great Eastern (710), £22,357; Midland (695), £44,600; Caledonian (574), £29,101; London and South-Western (503), £21,950; Great Northern (441), £9,805; Lancashire and Yorkshire (403), £6,500; South Eastern (330), £23,571; London, Brighton and South Coast (320), £1,977; Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire (246), £2,618; North Staffordshire (144), £1,000; Bristol and Exeter (134), £9,888; Cambrian (130), £2,413; South Devon (110), £7,485; London, Chatham and Dover (94), £268; Brecon and Merthyr (68), £50; Cornwall (66), £5,500; Taff Vale (63), £1,000; Shrewsbury and Hereford (51), £2,030; Llanelly (46), £39; Monmouthshire (44), £147; Birkenhead (43), £2,500; North Union (40), £4,878; Maryport and Carlisle (28), £841; West Cornwall (27), £1,500; Isle of Wight (12), £31; Whitehaven Junction (6½), £363. There were not any contracts in 1866 with the Furness Company (85), the Somerset and Dorset (66), nor with the Metropolitan Underground (4¾), but the Post Office has recently entered into contracts for the conveyance of mails on the first and the third of the three.

The foregoing, with some payments to minor companies, make the total which the English and Welsh Companies receive from the Post Office, £407,512. Some of these minor companies, however, are not over-handsomely paid; for instance, the Colne Valley, 6½ miles long, receives the modest sum of £15 a year; the Tenbury, 5¼ miles long, which nevertheless has a Board of Directors consisting of seven members, and is presided over by a noble Baron, receives only £7. Never having heard of the Pontop and Jarrow Railway, we looked in all the usual sources of information without success, but we perceive by the Post Office estimates that the company earns £5 a-year for the services it renders to the department. If the amounts paid by the Post Office to English Railways be divided by its total mileage, it makes the average payment per mile per annum to them a little less than £58.

The Irish railways receive £84,508 per annum from the Post Office, of which the Great Southern and Western (420 miles), obtains £29,500; the Midland Great Western (261), £14,920; Irish North-Western (145), £1,540; Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford (107), £4,700; Ulster (106), £5,800; Belfast and Northern Counties (100), £2,950; Great Northern and Western (83), £2,349; Waterford and Limerick (77), £3,150; Dublin and Drogheda (75), £4,700; Dublin and Belfast Junction (63), £6,000; Londonderry and Enniskillen (60), £3,150; Belfast and County Down (44), £206; Londonderry and Coleraine (36), £1,300; Cork and Youghal (34), £1,150; Waterford and Kilkenny (31), £486; Cork and Limerick direct (25), £50; Cork and Bandon (20), £757. There are three companies that only receive £30 each, and two have twice as much as the Pontop and Jarrow. They have £10 each. The average Post Office payment per mile (assuming that the Post Office sent mails by all the railways in Ireland, which is not the case) is about £44. 10s.

The Scotch railways receive £78,482, of which the North British and Edinburgh and Glasgow (748) has £8,696; Caledonian (573), £29,101; Scottish Central and Scottish North-Eastern (459), £22,136; Great North of Scotland; (257), £3,830; Glasgow and South-Western (249), £3,436; the Highland Railway (245), £10,454. The average per mile per annum paid to Scotch railways by the Post Office, assuming that it availed itself of the whole of them, is £36.

There is no branch of the connection between the railways and the Post Office in which the former has gained more conspicuously than in that of speed;[46] and precisely the same may also be said with respect to the general community.

As has already been stated, the average speed of mail coaches was a little under ten miles an hour in 1837, that of stage coaches under eight, that of waggons two; and that the latter were used in the middle of the last century, at all events, we have pictorial evidence, through the pencil of Hogarth, and written testimony from the writings of his contemporaries, as well as from those of subsequent men of letters.

The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, substituted between its two termini an average speed of 17 miles an hour. Speed has increased steadily year by year, as we shall now endeavour to make manifest.

In 1842 the night mail train left Euston Station at 8·30 p.m., and reached Lancaster (241 miles) at 7·0 a.m. Since the 1st of October, 1860, the Scotch Limited Mail leaves Euston Station every evening at 8·35 p.m., it arrives at Perth at 8·59 a.m. the next day; the distance is 449 miles, and it is performed, including ten stoppages, at the rate of 37½ miles an hour. There were more stoppages for mail trains in 1840 than since 1860, but, apart from this fact, the time that the mail train required to complete 449 miles is the same as that which it required to complete only 15 miles more than half that distance, twenty years previously.

The Irish express mail completes the journey from London to Holyhead (263 miles), with three stoppages only, for passenger accommodation, in 6 hours 40 minutes, or at the rate of 38½ miles an hour.

For a short run, involving only one stoppage for the engine to take water, the most rapid on the narrow gauge[47] in England is between London and Dover, by the South-Eastern Railway, 88 miles in 2 hours and 5 minutes, 42 miles an hour. But on Australian mail nights (the 26th of each month), the Post Office employs, in addition to the ordinary “down” mail, a special one for the conveyance of such bags and boxes as can be got ready by 7 p.m. This train travels between London and Dover in 1 hour and 45 minutes. There is one stop for water. The rate of speed, including the stop, is a little over 50 miles an hour, excluding it, the rate is 54.

There is a train on the Great Western, which although not carrying mails, is the fastest in England. It completes the distance from London to Exeter, 194 miles, with 4 stops, amounting to 20 minutes, in 4½ hours; or at the rate of 43 miles an hour. A little more than a quarter of the time occupied by the “Quicksilver” Mail in the olden days; but the “Quicksilver” only went over 160 miles, the roadway distance between London and Exeter, or 24 miles less than by the Great Western and Bristol and Exeter Railways.

The grandest exceptional run ever made on railways was on the 5th January, 1862, the occasion being, when answers were brought to the despatches sent to Washington, requiring the surrender of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who had been taken out of the “Trent,” Royal West India Mail Steamer, by orders of Commodore Wilks. The steamer arrived at Queenstown at 10·5 p.m.: at 11·28 p.m., Irish time,[48] the special train started from Cork, and accomplished the journey to Dublin (166 miles) in four hours and three minutes; or at the rate of 41 miles an hour, including stoppages. The mail steamer “Ulster” arrived at Holyhead at 8·15 a.m. The special train started at 8·28, and it is from this point that the most remarkable part of the express journey was accomplished. The run from Holyhead to Stafford, 130½ miles, occupied only 145 minutes, being at the rate of 54 miles an hour, and although so high a rate of speed was not attempted over the more crowded parts of the line approaching London, the whole distance from Holyhead to Euston was performed by the London and North-Western Company in exactly five hours, or at a speed of 52¾ miles an hour—a speed unparalleled for so long a distance on a line crowded with traffic. By means of the invention for supplying the tender with water from a trough in transitu, respecting which details will be given in a subsequent page, the engine was enabled to run from Holyhead to Stafford without pulling-up to take water. This is the longest run ever made by an engine without stopping; but the engines of the Irish Limited Mail Trains, owing to this trough, run twice a day in each direction without stopping, between Holyhead and Chester, 84½ miles. The weight of these trains, exclusive of the engine and tender, is fully 80 tons; but the weight of the American special express, exclusive of engine and tender, did not exceed 20.

A few words with respect to the fastest trains on the Continent. Previous to the 1st of April of this year, the mail trains between Calais and Paris completed 203 miles, with 15 minutes of stoppages for passenger accommodation, in 5 hours and 50 minutes, about 33¼ miles an hour. Since the opening of the railway between Calais and Boulogne, the mail trains go to and come from Paris vi Boulogne. The distance is shortened to 186 miles, and the journey is performed, 15 minutes of stoppages for passenger accommodation being allowed, in 5½ hours, or at the rate of 34 miles an hour.

The “Rapide,” the night mail train from Paris to Marseilles, completes 537 miles in 15 hours 45 minutes, or at the rate, for this long journey, of 34 miles an hour. The day mail train from Paris to Bordeaux takes 10½ hours, a distance of 366 miles, or at the rate of 34¼ miles an hour. It is the fastest mail or express train in France that goes over a large extent of railway mileage, but its pace is 3¼ miles an hour less than the Scotch Limited Mail as far as Perth, 4¼ less than that of the Irish Express Mail, and 8¾ less than the express train of the Great Western from London to Exeter.

There is, however, one train in France that travels more rapidly for a short distance,—the 1·0 p.m. express from Paris to Rouen. It completes 85 miles without a stoppage in 2 hours 22 minutes, or at the rate of 35½ miles an hour. Comparing this speed with that of the London and Dover express mail trains, it is less by 6½ miles an hour.

There are two express mail trains in Belgium analagous to those between London and Dover. They are the fastest in that kingdom. They complete the 78 miles between Brussels and Ostend in 2 hours and 17 minutes, with 3 short stoppages, or, at the rate of about 34¼ miles an hour.

There is a double daily postal service between Cologne and Berlin. The distance, 391 miles, is accomplished in 12½ hours, or at the rate of a little more than 31½ miles an hour, including stoppages for the refreshment of the passengers, amounting to nearly an hour on the whole journey.

It is a fact well known to railway officials of all grades, but not appreciated by the public, that it is much more difficult to keep time with trains stopping at many stations, than with express trains. Yet the explanation is very easy. People who travel by stopping trains are of totally different habits from those who travel by express. The greater part of the passengers of the former belong to the agricultural classes; and it is just this,—the farmer is not accustomed to be hurried, and he won’t be hurried, neither are the farmer’s wife, the farmer’s sons, the farmer’s daughters; the tradesman in farming towns and villages is like the farmer, he won’t be hurried, and it is the same with the tradesman’s wife, his sons and his daughters; neither will the workman, nor the workman’s wife, nor his sons, nor his daughters, be hurried and flurried. In fact, no one is ever in a hurry, except in large towns and cities. The country was not made for people who are always in a hurry, therefore it is impossible to get country people in and out of trains with the same speed as railway servants can manage with town and city people, and the effect of all this is, a stopping train is, much more frequently than “fast” or express trains, unpunctual, and it is especially so when it exceeds very much its ordinary amount of traffic. It is then sure to be very late, solely from circumstances beyond the control of the company, but of course the company gets all the discredit of the delay. On the other hand, express trains call only at a few first-class stations, and all the passengers’ business can be satisfactorily and comfortably accomplished in the time that the train is compelled to stop while the engine is taking in fuel and water. Let it not be imagined that in this respect “they manage things better in France.” It has been occasionally our misfortune to travel by stopping trains, not only in France, but in other parts of Europe. There is one of two undeviating and unvarying rules with regard to them. Either they are unpunctual, or they are timed for so slow a speed, and with such delays at stations, that unpunctuality by them is impossible. There are many passenger trains on the continent that do not average a running speed of more than fourteen or fifteen miles an hour.