[154] The letters are also counted as they are struck with the stamp.
[155] See Appendix (F), in which the total sum for the year 1864-5 is given, from the Revenue Estimates, together with the different items to each railway company.
[156] On the arrival of the mail at Rugby, the bags for such places as Leicester, Derby, Lincoln, Leeds, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh were left: subsequently another branch of the railway post-office was started, which travelled from Rugby to York. After leaving Rugby, the mail continued its progress to Birmingham; thence by the Grand Junction Railway to Crewe, where the Irish letters were given off to go to Chester; thence to Parkside on the Liverpool and Manchester railway, where the bags for these two towns were left. The train then ran over the North Union Railway to Preston, and from Preston by the Preston and Lancaster line to Lancaster.—Penny Magazine. The above, with some few divergences, is now the mail route into Scotland.
[157] The construction of the offices have been entirely altered of late years with this view, being now as safe as they can well be made.
[158] The contrivance for exchanging mail-bags is now used at more than a hundred different railway-stations. At some stations it is used four, six, and eight times every working day. Mr. Ramsay, of the General Post-Office is said to have suggested the machinery in question; but his original invention was rude and somewhat unsatisfactory in application. Mr. Dicker made improvements in its construction so that it could be generally used. For his services, Mr. Dicker received from the Lords of the Treasury the sum of 500l. and the Postmaster-General found him a place as "Supervisor of Mail-bag Apparatus." Mr. Pearson Hill is credited with further improvements.
[159] Several individual cases of injury to the eyesight from railway travelling, or, what is still more probable, from an imperfect system of lighting, occur to us, but the general result may remain unquestioned.
[160] As the letter-carriers were not employed by Government, curious practices prevailed among them; they seem, in fact, to have performed their duties pretty much as they chose. As a picture not at all uncommon of this class of men and the style in which some of them performed their duties, a sentence from an autobiographical sketch of the period is most graphic: "One villanous old letter-carrier whom I remember was a drunken, surly, dishonest scoundrel, who used to carry the letters away from the office to a wretched den of his own, where I sometimes saw him sorting them on the floor, while he growled and snarled over them, like a dog over a heap of unsatisfactory bones." Not less graphic and true to the life of the period is the following picture of an old rural postman in the good old times, extracted from the pages of a popular work of fiction: "There was a post-office at H——, and an old fellow who stowed away the letters in any or all his pockets, as it best suited him. I have often met him in the lanes thereabouts and asked him for letters. Sometimes I have come upon him, sitting on the hedge bank, resting; and he has begged me to read an address, too illegible for his spectacled eyes to decipher. When I used to ask him if he had anything for me or for Holdsworth (he was never particular to whom he gave his letters, so that he got rid of them somehow and could set off homewards), he would say that he thought he had, for such was his invariable safe form of answer, and would then fumble in breast-pockets, waistcoat-pockets, breeches-pockets, and as a last resort in his coat-tail pockets; and at length tried to comfort me if I looked disappointed by telling me, 'Hoo had missed this toime but was sure to write to-morrow;' 'Hoo' representing with him an imaginary sweetheart."
[161] We still sometimes hear reports, to the effect that deliveries in some towns are not made unless there are a certain number of letters. Of course this is never so, but it reminds us of a (reported) postal regulation in a certain British dependency, where the postman (who is a person of intelligence) always reads the letters committed to his care, and delivers them only if important; otherwise, it is said, he makes them wait for the following mail!
[162] The postmaster sometimes transacts his business in another separate apartment, the control of the office, when he is not immediately present, devolving on the senior clerk on duty.
[163] Machines for letter-stamping have been in use for some time in London and Paris. They are not yet perfect enough for general use.
[164] It is generally allowed that the country postmen are, as a rule, such as we have described them. Edward Capern, the Wayside Poet, at the time a rural letter-carrier between Bideford and Buckland Brewer, Devonshire, walking thirteen miles a-day, Sunday included, for 10s. 6d. a-week has described their life in the following poem:—
In The Rural Postman's Sabbath, Capern seems to breathe a more contented strain. His poetical remonstrances, probably on account of their originality, were more successful than they might have been if given in prose. The authorities raised his salary, and relieved him of his Sunday labours. Few rural postmen now travel on Sundays. The poet-postman has also had a pension granted him from the Royal Bounty Fund. In Capern's case we find literary abilities of a high order in the very lowest ranks of the Post-Office. When we have mentioned the names of Mr. Anthony Trollope, Mr. Edmund Yates, and Mr. Scudamore, we have said enough to show that they exist also in the highest ranks of the service.
[165] It is matter of notoriety, furnishing a fruitful subject for reflection and comment, that the great majority of complaints reaching the Post-Office authorities take their rise with clergymen. As offering a curious commentary on the Divine injunction to be merciful, and to forgive "seventy times seven," we once saw a requisition from a clergyman for the dismissal of a post-office clerk—a man with a wife and several children, by the way—on the ground that he had twice caused his letters to be missent, in each case losing the clerical correspondent a post.
Our home and foreign mail-packet service is a costly and gigantic branch of the Post-Office establishment. During the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the service was under the control of the Post-Office authorities. We have already given many details of the packet management of the period. It was then transferred to the Board of Admiralty, in whose hands it continued up to so late as 1860. Even at the commencement of the present century, the service seems to have been carried on regardless of economy, and not without traces of that wastefulness—we might almost say corruption—in the management, which, a hundred years previously, would not have been regarded as very remarkable. The arrangements eighty years ago, were none of the best. At this period some of the vessels employed to convey mails were hired, without any tender, while some few were the property of the Crown. In 1788, the state of the marine mail service attracted parliamentary attention; for in that year we find a Committee of Fees and Gratuities reporting that the cost of the mail service had reached an unreasonable sum. They stated that for eighteen years that cost had been over a million sterling, or an average charge of 60,000l. annually. With regard to the manner in which the work was done, they found that many officers of the Post-Office, "even down to the chamber keepers," were owners of some of the packets employed to the exclusion of all else. This Committee, with a view to remedying these and other abuses, recommended that the Government should change the system entirely—the Government share of the packets to be sold, and the entire service offered by public and competitive tender. That this advice was not acted upon, is clear from the fact that four years afterwards, the Finance Committee urged upon the Government the necessity of complying with the recommendations of 1788. In 1810, the cost of the service had increased to 105,000l.; in 1814 to 160,000l.[166]
Steam vessels had been in successful operation for three years before they were introduced into the mail service. In 1818, the Rob Roy steam-packet plied regularly between Greenock and Belfast; in 1821, the year in which Crown packets were established, the Post-Office, or rather the Admiralty on behalf of the Post-Office, asked the help of steam. The Holyhead station for Ireland, and the Dover station for the Continent, were chosen for the experiment of mail-steamers. They were successful; and soon we find six steam-packets stationed at each place. Then we have the gradual introduction of mail contracts. The first of these commercial contracts was made in 1833, with the Mona Island Steam Company, to run steamers twice a week between Liverpool and Douglas, in the Isle of Man. Immediately after, the General Steam Navigation Company contracted to carry the Rotterdam and Hamburgh mails for 17,000l. a-year. In 1853 these mails were transferred to the Ostend route. The year 1839 was quite an epoch in the history of the packet service; Mr. Samuel Cunard of Halifax, Nova Scotia, having in that year contracted with the British Government for a fortnightly mail across the Atlantic, for the sum of 60,000l. a-year. The Cunard line of steamers is now universally known, and is unrivalled.
Little more than a hundred years ago, 50,000l. sufficed to pay for the entire mail service of the period; about half that sum being the extent of the charges properly appertaining to the Post-Office. Then, only a few continental mails and an occasional packet to the colonies of North America and the West Indies, were all that had to be sustained; even those were kept up at a considerable loss.[167] At that time the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia and New Zealand were in undisputed possession of these enormous colonies; the Dutch were then the only targets for the arrows of the Caffres in South Africa; Warren Hastings and Lord Clive were children at Daylesford and Market Drayton, and little dreamt of their subsequent career in the East; while the tide of emigration which has since carried Anglo-Saxon blood and Anglo-Saxon energy into every corner of the globe had not then, to any extent, set in. That a hundred years of unequalled internal progress has developed our great empire and called into life fresh and important agencies, what reflecting mind can doubt? For many recent years the packet service of the country, traversing every known sea to keep up a connexion with those whom the exigencies of life and commerce have dispersed so widely, has cost the nation something like a million sterling per annum!
In accordance with the provisions of an Act passed in the session of 1859-1860, the general control of the British packet service was transferred (on the 1st of April, 1860) to the Post-Office authorities, from whom it ought never to have been taken. It was considered that the Postmaster-General, under the Treasury, was the best judge of the requirements of the service, and could best set about reducing the enormous expenditure arising from contracts, which the Lords of the Admiralty, generally from political motives, had entered into. That this judgment was the correct one, three years have amply sufficed to prove. Contracts have been thrown open to public competition; and although many of the companies which had previously done certain services re-secured them, it was found that they had to engage to do the work at a much lower figure—in one or two cases, in fact, for half the amount they had been wont to receive. All the packet contracts, as they fall vacant, are advertised fully by the Post-Office authorities, and in sufficient time. Printed forms are issued, and intending contractors are required to fill them up, every arrangement being made to secure the efficiency of the work. Nearly all the contracts are now made terminable on twelve months' notice being given by the Postmaster-General.
Another change which the Post-Office authorities have made is a radical but a necessary one, and bids fair to make the mail-packet service, at no distant date, self-supporting, so far as the mother-country is concerned. Under the new principle already applied to India and Australia, the British colonies are required to pay half the cost of their respective services, the English Government paying the remainder. The result in some instances has been an increase in postage rates, but we hope this will not long be considered necessary.
According to the Postmaster-General's Ninth Report—from which much of the information concerning the present state of the mail service is taken—we find that the total number of steam-ships employed in the mail-packet service, exclusive of tenders, &c., is no less than ninety-six, with an aggregate of 140,000 tons, and of 36,000 horse-power. The largest and most powerful mail-packet in the service is the Cunard paddle-wheel steam-ship Scotia, of 3,871 tons burden, and 1,000 horse-power. It belongs to the contractors for the North American service, Messrs. Cunard, Burns, and Maciver. The smallest packet, according to the same authority, was stated to be the Vivid, of 300 tons, and 128 horse-power, the property of Mr. Churchward. It is more than probable, however, that this packet is not now in the service, as Mr. Churchward's contracts have subsequently been given to the Belgian Government.
The mail-packet contracts are divided into those of the Home and those of the Foreign services. The most important home service is that for carrying the Irish mails, entered into by the City of Dublin Steam-packet Company. They are required to keep four powerful steam-vessels to ply twice a-day between Holyhead and Kingstown, for a yearly payment of 85,900l. This contract lasts until 1865. The least important contract in the home service, if we may judge by the terms imposed, is that for the daily conveyance of mails between Greenock and Belfast, entered into by Mr. Burns of Glasgow. Mr. Burns undertakes to perform this service in all weathers, free of expense, and to pay an annual sum of 100l. as penalty for general improper performance of the duty!
The home contracts dwindle into insignificance before those of the foreign service. The foreign packets travel over the immense distance of 3,000,000 of statute miles each year. As the cost of the whole service is nearly a million pounds annually, the average charge per mile is 6s. 4d. The average speed of the foreign packets is ten miles an hour. The principal contracts are those for the Indian and Chinese mails, entered into by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam-navigation Company, and for which the sum of 253,000l. is paid yearly. In this service, packets sail four times a month from Southampton, and other mails are met at Marseilles at the like intervals. A fleet of steamers, of not less than 1,100 tons, are engaged for a system of relays established in the Mediterranean, and also between Suez and Bombay, Suez and Calcutta, and Bombay and China. The Australian mails are carried out to Ceylon in the Indian packets, when, on arrival at that point, another fleet of steamers, engaged from the same company on a supplementary contract of 134,672l. a-year, carry them between Point de Galle and Sydney. An additional line of packets to the Antipodes, viâ Panama, will be run in January, 1865. The West Indian are the worst paying of all the foreign mails, costing twice as much as they yield.[168] The Royal Mail Steam-packet Company is paid the enormous sum of 270,000l. a-year for their conveyance. The North American mails are carried by Messrs. Cunard & Co. for the sum of 176,340l. a-year. Eight steam-vessels are employed by this firm, leaving Liverpool once a-week, and travelling also between New York and Nassau once a-month. Sir Samuel Cunard himself contracts for the Canadian mails, receiving the yearly sum of 14,700l. These supplementary packets sail from Halifax, on the arrival of the Cunard steamers from Europe, to Bermuda and St. Thomas, and also to Newfoundland. The Canadian contract costs less than any other on the foreign service.
The most distant point to which English mails are conveyed by the British packet service is Auckland, New Zealand, about 15,000 statute miles from Southampton. This service is rendered by the Intercolonial Royal Mail-packet Company, with a fleet of four strong steamers, for 22,000l. annually. Of course, this company only performs the journeys between Sydney in New South Wales and Auckland in New Zealand. The nearest point from England is Calais, twenty-six miles from Dover.
Notwithstanding the extraordinary length of some of the journeys of the different mail packets, the Postmaster-General informs us that, except in case of accident, the packets, even when late, arrive within a few hours of their time, sometimes within a few minutes. As examples of remarkable punctuality, which is now the rule, and not the exception, he gives several instances, from which we select the following:—"The mails for the West Indies and Central America, despatched from Southampton on the 17th of September, were delivered at the Danish island of St. Thomas, distant more than 4,000 miles, at the precise moment at which they were due. On the same voyage, the mails for Jamaica and Demerara, conveyed in each case by a separate branch-packet, were delivered within a few minutes of the time at which they were due; the mails for parts of Central America and for the Pacific were delivered at Colon, on the eastern coast of the Isthmus of Panama, distant 5,400 miles, thirty minutes after time, the packet having been detained at sea that precise period by H.M.S. Orlando; while the mails for Chili, after having been conveyed with others across the Isthmus of Panama, were delivered at Valparaiso, distant nearly 9,000 miles from Southampton, two hours before the appointed time."
The mail packets employ a force, including officers, of more than 8,000 men. In addition to these, there is a staff of thirty-three naval officers—all officers of the royal navy, though maintained by the Post-Office—employed upon such packets as those for the Cape and the west coast of Africa, and charged with the care and correct delivery of the mails. They are further required to do all they can to guard against delay on the voyage, and to report on nautical questions affecting in any way the proper efficiency of the service. Other officers, besides, are fixed at different foreign stations to direct the transfers of mails from packet to packet, or from packets to other modes of conveyance. Then, again, in growing numbers, another class of officers travel in charge of mails, such as the Indian and Australian, and on all the North American packets, who, with a number of sorters, are employed in sorting the mails during the voyage, in order to save time and labour in the despatch and receipt of mails at London and Liverpool respectively. There are now twenty-eight of this new class of working mail officers, who, of course, are substituted for the old class of naval agents. On the less important mail packets no naval officer is specially appointed, but the mails are taken in charge by the commander.
In past years few casualties, comparatively, have occurred in this service. The loss of the mail packet Violet, on her journey between Ostend and Dover, in 1856, will be remembered by many. One incident in that melancholy shipwreck deserves mention here, affording a gleam of rich sunshine amid a page of dry though not unimportant matter. Mr. Mortleman, the mail officer in charge of the bags, on seeing that there was no chance for the packet, must have gone down into the hold and have removed all the cases containing the mail bags from that part of the vessel; and further, placed them so that when the ship and all in it went down, they might float—a proceeding which ultimately led to the recovery of all the bags, except one, containing a case of despatches. On another occasion, the mail master of a Canadian packet sacrificed his life, when he might have escaped, by going below to secure the mails intrusted to him. Other cases of a similar devotion to duty have, on several occasions of exposure to imminent danger, distinguished the conduct of these public officers, proving that some of them regard the onerous duties of their position in a somewhat higher light than we find obtains in the ordinary business of life.
During the last year, however, an "unprecedentedly large number of shipwrecks"[169] are on record, no less than five valuable packets having been totally lost. In the early part of the year, the Karnak, belonging to Messrs. Cunard and Co., was wrecked in entering Nassau harbour. Shortly after, the Lima struck on a reef off Lagarto Island, in the South Pacific Ocean, and went down. The only loss of life occurred in the case of the Cleopatra, the third packet which was lost. This last-named vessel, belonging to the African Steam-ship Company, the contractors for the Cape service, was wrecked on Shebar reef, near Sierra Leone, when an officer and four Kroomen were washed from a raft and drowned in endeavouring to reach the shore. Towards the close of 1862, the Avon, belonging to the contractors for the West Indian service, was wrecked at her moorings in the harbour of Colon, New Granada; and, lastly, the Colombo (conveying the Australian mails from Sydney) shared the same fate on Minicoy Island, 400 miles from Ceylon. The greatest loss of correspondence was caused by the failure of the last-mentioned packet, though, from the care of the Post-Office authorities, and the prompt arrangements of the contractors, the loss was not nearly so great as it might otherwise have been if the proper appliances had not been ready to hand. The mails were rescued from their ocean bed and brought to London, where every effort that skill could devise was made to restore them to their original condition. They were carefully dried, in order that the addresses of the letters and newspapers might be deciphered. When dried it was requisite that they should be handled most carefully to prevent them crumbling to pieces—so much so, in fact, that many were unfit to travel out of London without being tied up carefully, gummed, and placed in new envelopes, and re-addressed, providing that the old address could by any means be read or obtained. Notwithstanding all the care and attention bestowed, a great number of letters remained, in the words of the Post-Office people, "in a hopeless state of pulp." An Australian carte de visite, which arrived with the rescued mails from the Colombo, and now before us, may have been a gem of art from one of the antipodean "temples of the sun," but we have not now the means of judging, as a yellow bit of paper, with an indistinct outline upon it, is all that remains.
[166] At this period the packets were worked at a considerable loss; though this large item was occasioned by the war, yet the sea-postage never amounted to half the cost of the maintenance of the mail-packets.
[167] In the American Colonies, Benjamin Franklin was the last and by far the best colonial Postmaster-General. He had forty years experience of postal work, having been appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737. Mr. Pliny Miles, in his history of the Post-Office in America, New York Bankers' Magazine, vol. vii. p. 360, has furnished many interesting particulars of this period. It appears that Franklin notified his appointment in his own newspaper as follows: "Notice is hereby given, that the Post-Office at Philadelphia is now kept at B. Franklin's in Market Street, and that Henry Pratt is appointed riding-postmaster for all stages between Philadelphia and Newport, Virginia, who sets out about the beginning (!) of each month, and returns in twenty-four days, by whom gentlemen, merchants, and others may have their letters carefully conveyed." What follows is also interesting. It would seem that Franklin was somewhat unceremoniously dismissed from his post, upon which he wrote, by way of protest, that up to the date of his appointment "the American Post-Office never had paid anything to Britain. We (himself and assistant) were to have 600l. a-year between us, if we could make that sum out of the profits of the office. To do this, a variety of improvements were necessary; some of these were, inevitably, at the beginning expensive; so that in the first four years the office became above 900l. in debt to us. But it soon after began to repay us; and before I was displaced by a freak of the Minister's we had brought it to yield three times as much clear revenue to the Crown as the whole Post-Office of Ireland. Since that imprudent transaction," adds Franklin, with a bit of pardonable irony, "they have received from it—not one farthing!"
[168] The amount of sea-postage collected has never reached within late years to more than half the entire cost of the mail-packet service. In 1860, this cost was 863,000l. and the postage collected amounted to 409,000l.
[169] Postmaster-General's Ninth Report, p. 84.
The history of postage-stamps is somewhat remarkable. First used, as many of our readers will remember, in May 1840, the postage stamp has only just passed out of its years of minority, and yet at this present moment there are more than fifteen hundred different varieties of its species in existence, and the number is increasing every month. The question as to who invented the postage-stamp would not be easily settled; it appears to be the result of innumerable improvements suggested by many different individuals. We will not enter far into the controversy, and would only urge that the discussion as to its origin has once more served to exemplify the truth of the saying of the wise man, "The thing which hath been, it is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun." Post-paid envelopes were in use in France as early as the reign of Louis XIV.[170] Pelisson states that they originated, in 1653, with a M. de Velayer, who established, under royal authority, a private penny post in Paris, placing boxes at the corners of the streets for the reception of letters, which should be wrapped up in certain envelopes. Shopkeepers in the immediate neighbourhood sold the envelopes, some of which are still extant.[171]
In England, stamps to prepay letters were most probably suggested by the newspaper duty-stamp, then, and for some time previously, in use. Mr. Charles Whiting seems to have thrown out this suggestion to the Post-Office authorities in 1830.[172] Afterwards, Mr. Charles Knight proposed a stamped cover for the circulation of newspapers. Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, claims the credit of having suggested that letters should be prepaid with them, as early as 1834.[173] No steps, however, were taken in regard to any recommendations on the subject till the proposals for post reform; and, consequently, the credit of the improvement has fallen, to a considerable extent, to Sir Rowland Hill. The use of postage-stamps was scarcely part of his original scheme, though it followed almost as a matter of course: and, indeed, this public benefactor, crowned with so many well-won laurels, may easily afford to dispense with the adornment of this single one.
Mr. Hill's famous pamphlet on Post Reform went through three editions rapidly. In the first edition, which was published privately, we find no mention of the use of stamps—though prepayment of letters was always a principal feature in his proposals—money payments over the counter of the receiving-office being all that was suggested under this head. Immediately after the publication of the first edition, the members of the Royal Commission on the Post-Office, which had been sitting at intervals since 1833, called the author before them. In connexion with the subject of the prepayment of letters, the officers of the Stamp Office—Mr. Dickenson, the paper-maker, and several others—were also examined, and the subject was thoroughly discussed.[174] Almost, as it would seem, as a consequence of the proceedings before Committee, Mr. Hill, in the second edition of his pamphlet, recommended definitely the use of some kind of stamps or stamped envelopes as a means of prepayment. When the Committee of the House of Commons met in 1837-8 to investigate the merits of Mr. Hill's penny-postage scheme, they were, of course, required to express an opinion as to the desirability or otherwise of prepayment by means of stamps. A favourable opinion was given on the subject, so that when the Government brought in and carried the Penny-Postage Act, a clause for their use formed a component part of it.
Though it was agreed on all hands that stamps, or stamped paper of some sort, should come into use with the advent of cheap postage, it was by no means easy to hit upon a definite plan, or, when a number of plans were submitted, to decide upon the particular one to be adopted. Stamped paper, representing different charges, was first suggested. Folded in a particular way, a simple revenue-stamp would then be exposed to view, and frank the letter. Another suggestion was that a stamped wafer, as it was called, should be used, and, placed on the back of a letter, seal and frank it at the same time. The idea of stamped envelopes, however, was at first by far the most popular, and it was decided that they should be the prepaying medium. Plans and suggestions for the carrying out of this arrangement being required at once, the Lords of the Treasury issued a somewhat pompous proclamation, dated August 23d, 1839, inviting "all artists, men of science, and the public in general," to offer proposals "as to the manner in which the stamp may best be brought into use." So important was the subject considered, that Lord Palmerston, the then Foreign Secretary, was directed to apprise foreign Governments of the matter, and invite suggestions from any part of the civilized world. Three months were allowed for plans, and two prizes of 200l. and 100l. were offered for proposals on the subject, "which my Lords may think most deserving of attention." The palm was carried off by the late Mr. Mulready, Royal Academician, who designed the envelopes now known by his name. These envelopes, which allegorically celebrated the triumphs of the post in a host of emblematical figures, were of two colours; the one for a penny being printed in black, and the other, for the twopenny postage, in blue ink. They gave little satisfaction, however, and at the end of six months were withdrawn from use. There was little room left on the envelope for the address. They left to the common and vulgar gaze, as Miss Martineau, we think, has pointed out, emotions of the mind which had always best be kept in the background, and instead "of spreading a taste for high art," which had been hoped, they brought it into considerable ridicule.[175]
Before the postage-envelope was finally withdrawn from use, the Treasury issued another prospectus, offering a reward of 500l. for the best design and plan for a simple postage-label. It was made a condition that it should be simple, handy, and easily placed on paper, and of a design which would make forgery difficult, if not impossible. About 1,000 designs were sent in, but not one was chosen. Eventually, the ugly black stamp, said to be the joint production of some of the officers of the Stamp- and Post-Offices, was decided upon and brought into use. Two years afterwards, this black stamp was changed to brown, principally with a view to make the obliterating process more perfect, and the better to detect the dishonesty of using old stamps. For the same reasons, the colour was again changed in a short time to red, and so it has remained to the present time. The twopenny stamp has been from the first blue. Up to this date, at different intervals, six other stamps have been issued, as the necessities of the inland or foreign postage required them. The tenpenny stamp, of an octagonal shape and brown colour, is now scarcely ever used, if it be not even withdrawn from circulation. The list comprises, besides the stamps we have mentioned, the sixpenny (lilac), the shilling (green), the fourpenny (vermilion), the threepenny (rose), and the ninepenny (yellow). The last two were issued only two or three years ago. The whole of the English labels bear the impression of the head of Queen Victoria, and are all of the same size and shape (if we except the tenpenny stamp), the sole difference being in the colour, and in the various borderings round the Queen's portraits. Besides these distinguishing marks, however, they all tell the tale of their own value.[176]
Soon after the introduction of postage-stamps, stamped envelopes were again proposed. This time the proposition was a very simple one, only consisting of the usual kind of stamp embossed on the right-hand corner of a common envelope; the shape to be oval, round, or octagonal, according to the value of the envelope. For the envelopes themselves, a peculiar kind of paper was prepared by Mr. Dickenson, and was considered on all hands to be the best possible preventive of forgery. This paper, which was manufactured with lines of thread or silk stretched through its substance, has been used ever since. Russia, in adopting the stamped envelope, guards against forgery by means of a large water-mark of a spread eagle running over the envelope.
The English Stamp-Office affords every facility in the matter of stamped paper and envelopes, and private individuals may indulge their tastes to almost any extent. The officers of Inland Revenue, Somerset House, will place an embossed stamp on any paper or envelope taken to them, equal to the value of any of those above mentioned, or to a combination of any of them, under the following regulations:—
A recent concession made by the Board of Inland Revenue may be regarded as one of the latest novelties in the advertising world. Under the arrangement in question, the Stamp-Office permits embossed rings with the name of a particular firm, e. g. "Allsop & Co., Burton-on-Trent," "De la Rue & Co.," to be placed round the stamp as a border to it.
In 1844, after the exposé of the letter-opening practices at the General Post-Office, Mr. Leech gave in Punch his "Anti-Graham Envelopes," and his satirical postage envelope, afterwards engraved by Mr. W. J. Linton, and widely circulated, represents Sir James Graham sitting as "Britannia." About the same time there might have been seen in the windows of booksellers of the less respectable class, a kind of padlock envelope, exhibiting the motto, "Not to be Grahamed."
For eight long years, the English people may be said to have enjoyed a complete monopoly in postage-stamps. Towards the close of 1848, they were introduced into France, and subsequently into every civilized nation in the world. Last year they even penetrated into the Ottoman Empire, and strange as it appears, when viewed in the light of Mohammedan usage, the Sultan has been prevailed upon to allow his portrait to appear on the new issues of Turkish stamps.
In pursuance of a recommendation of a select committee of the House of Commons which sat in 1852, a perforating machine was purchased from Mr. Henry Archer, the inventor, for the sum of four thousand pounds.[177] The same committee could not decide, they said, on the "conflicting evidence" whether copper-plate engraving or surface printing would best secure the stamps against forgery, but they considered that the accurate perforation of the sheets would be a valuable preventive against forgery, "inasmuch as it would be exceedingly difficult to counterfeit sheets, and sheets badly done would at once excite suspicion when offered for sale." The invention of the perforating machine is said to have been attended with considerable labour, as, undoubtedly, it was by skill and ingenuity. To the Post-Office and the public the patent was sufficiently cheap. For a number of years the stamps had to be separated from each other by knives or scissors; now one stamp may be torn from the other with ease and safety. The process of puncturing the narrow spaces round each stamp—an undertaking not so easy as it seems—is the last the sheet of stamps undergoes before it is ready for sale.
With regard to the other processes, little is known out of the Stamp-Office, beyond what may be gathered from a close inspection of the postage-stamps themselves. For obvious reasons, it has never been thought desirable to publish any account of the manufacture of stamps. We may simply say that all English postage-labels are manufactured at Somerset House, and the entire establishment, which is distinct from the other branches of the Inland Revenue Department, is managed at the annual expense of thirty thousand pounds.[178] Of this sum, nineteen thousand pounds is the estimated cost for the present year, 1863-1864, of paper for labels and envelopes, and for printing, gumming, and folding. About five thousands pounds will be necessary to pay the salaries of the various officers, including five hundred pounds to the supervisor, and one hundred pounds to the superintendent of the perforating process. Mr. Edwin Hill, a brother of Sir Rowland Hill, is at the head of the department. A large number of boys are employed at the machines, under the superintendence of three or four intelligent superintendents. The paper used for the stamps is of a peculiar make, each sheet having a water-mark of two hundred and forty crowns; the blocks used are of first-rate quality, and only subjected to a certain number of impressions. The blocks are inked with rollers as in letter-press printing. Of course, the stamps are printed in sheets, though each one is struck with the same die or punch. After the printing, and before the sheets are perforated, they are covered on the back with a gelatine matter to render the label adhesive.
Great precaution is taken in the printing of the stamps to provide against forgery. All the lines and marks, as well as the initial letters in the corner, are arranged so as to make the whole affair inimitable. The best preservative, however, in our opinion, against a spurious article, is the arrangement under which stamps are sold. Only obtainable in any large quantity from the Stamp or Post-Offices, any attempt on the part of the forger to put a base article into circulation is encumbered with difficulties. Stamps, while they do duty for coin, are used almost exclusively for small transactions, and generally among people well known to each other. Other precautions are nevertheless very necessary; and besides the initial letters on each stamp—different in every one of the two hundred and forty in the sheet—which are regarded as so many checks on the forger, this pest to society would have to engrave his own die, and cast his own blocks, and find a drilling-machine, perhaps the most difficult undertaking of all. The paper, besides, would be a considerable obstacle, and not less so the ink, for that used in this manufacture differs from ordinary printer's ink, not merely in colour, but in being soluble in water.
When postage-stamps were first introduced in England, it was little thought that they would become a medium of exchange, and far less that they would excite such a furore among stamp collectors. The same stamp may do duty in a number of various ways before it serves its normal purpose. It may have proceeded through the post a dozen times imbedded within the folds of a letter, before it becomes affixed to one, and gets its career ended by an ugly knock on the face—for its countenance once disfigured, it has run its course. Besides their being so handy in paying a trifling debt or going on a merciful errand, the advertising columns of any newspaper will shew the reader many of the thousand and one ways in which he may turn his spare postage-stamps to account. You may suddenly fall upon a promise of an easy competence for the insignificant acknowledgment of half-a-crown's worth of this article. Friends to humanity assure you a prompt remittance of thirteen Queen's heads will secure you perfect exemption from all the ills that flesh is heir to. For the same quantity another who does the prophetic strain, will tell you which horse will win the Derby, "as surely as if you stood at the winning-post on the very day." "Stable Boy," promises all subscribers of twelve stamps that if they "do not win on this event, he will never put his name in print again." Of course all this is quackery, or worse; still the reader need not be told how in innumerable bonâ fide cases the system of postage-stamp remittances is exceedingly handy for both buyer and vendor, and how trade—retail at any rate—is fostered by it. As a social arrangement, for the poorer classes especially, we could not well over-estimate its usefulness. Again we see a good result of the penny-post scheme. Since 1840, not only has the use of postage-stamps in this way never been discouraged (as it was always thought that fewer coin letters would be sent in consequence), but the Post-Office authorities have recently made provision for taking them from the public, when not soiled or not presented in single stamps. This arrangement is already in force at the principal post-offices, and will ultimately extend to all. In America, as will be familiar to most readers, postage-stamps have formed the principal currency of small value almost since the breaking out of the present fratricidal war. More recently, the United States Government has issued the stamps without gum, as it was found inconvenient to pass them frequently from hand to hand, after they had undergone the gelatinizing process. Under an Act, "Postage Currency, July 17th, 1862," the Federal authorities have issued stamps printed on larger sized paper, with directions for their use under the peculiar circumstances.
The obliteration of postage-labels in their passage through the post, requires a passing notice. Different countries obliterate their stamps variously and with different objects. In France they obliterate with a hand-stamp having acute prominences in it, which, when thrown on the stamp, not only disfigures, but perforates it with numerous dots placed closely together. In Holland, the word "Franco" is imprinted in large letters. Some countries, e. g. Italy, Austria, and Prussia, mark on the label itself, the name of the despatching town, together with the date of despatch. In England, the purpose of the defacement marks is primarily to prevent the stamp being used again. It also serves to show—inasmuch as the obliterating stamp of every British Post-Office is consecutively numbered—where the letter was posted, in the event of the other dated stamp being imperfectly impressed. For this purpose the British Postal Guide gives a list of the post-towns and the official number of each. The mark of St. Martin's-le-Grand is a changeable figure in a circle, according to the time of day during which the letter has been posted and struck; for the London district offices, we have the initials of the district, and the number of the office given in an oval. The figures in England are surrounded by lines forming a circle; in Scotland by three lines at the top and three at the bottom of them; in Ireland the lines surround the figures of the particular office in a diamond shape.
It only remains to refer for a moment to the timbromanie, or stamp mania. The scenes in Birchin Lane in 1862, where crowds nightly congregated, to the exceeding annoyance and wonderment of policeman X—where ladies and gentlemen of all ages and all ranks, from Cabinet-ministers to crossing-sweepers, were busy, with album or portfolio in hand, buying, selling, or exchanging, are now known to have been the beginnings of what may almost be termed a new trade. Postage-stamp exchanges are now common enough; one held in Lombard Street on Saturday afternoons is largely attended. Looking the other day in the advertisement pages of a monthly magazine, we counted no fewer than sixty different dealers in postage-stamps there advertising their wares. Twelve months ago, there was no regular mart in London at which foreign stamps might be bought; now there are a dozen regular dealers in the metropolis, who are doing a profitable trade. About a year ago, we witnessed the establishment of a monthly organ for the trade in the Stamp-collector's Magazine; at this present moment there are no less than ten such publications in existence in the United Kingdom. England is not the only country interested in stamp-collecting. As might be expected, the custom originated in France, and has prevailed there for a number of years. In the gardens of the Tuileries, and also to some extent in those of the Luxembourg, crowds still gather, principally on Sunday afternoons, and may be seen sitting under the trees, sometimes in a state of great excitement, as they busily sell or exchange any of their surplus stock for some of which they may have been in search. The gathering of a complete set of postage-stamps, and a proper arrangement of them, is at least a harmless and innocent amusement. On this point, however, we prefer, in conclusion, to let Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, speak,[179] and our readers to judge for themselves. "The use and charm of collecting any kind of object is to educate the mind and the eye to careful observation, accurate comparison, and just reasoning on the differences and likenesses which they present, and to interest the collector in the design or art shown in their creation or manufacture, and the history of the country which produces or uses the objects collected. The postage-stamps afford good objects for all these branches of study, as they are sufficiently different to present broad outlines for their classification; and yet some of the variations are so slight, that they require minute examination and comparison to prevent them from being overlooked. The fact of obtaining stamps from so many countries, suggests to ask what were the circumstances that induced the adoption, the history of the countries which issue them, and the understanding why some countries (like France) have considered it necessary, in so few years, to make so many changes in the form or design of the stamp used; while other countries, like Holland, have never made the slightest change.
"The changes referred to all mark some historical event of importance—such as the accession of a new king, a change in the form of government, or the absorption of some smaller state into some larger one; a change in the currency, or some other revolution. Hence, a collection of postage-stamps may be considered, like a collection of coins, an epitome of the history of Europe and America for the last quarter of a century; and at the same time, as they exhibit much variation in design and in execution as a collection of works of art on a small scale, showing the style of art of the countries that issue them, while the size of the collection, and the number in which they are arranged and kept, will show the industry, taste, and neatness of the collector."