An immediate reply summoned me for the next day.

In reference to my conversation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer I spoke to the Postmaster-General on the subject of assistance. I proposed that I should have as assistant-secretary some one in whom I had entire confidence, and who would be able to take my place in case of my absence, and I pointed out that for such duty a knowledge of Post Office details was unnecessary. His lordship expressed general concurrence, but said that he must speak on the subject with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. My wish was to obtain the appointment of my brother Frederic, but I forbore at the time to mention his name, as the Postmaster-General was in haste to reach the House of Lords.

To justify my selection I need only recount a few facts. My brother had been for sixteen years one of the Inspectors of Prisons; for twelve years in Scotland, and the remaining time in England. He was one of the first appointed under the Act of 1835, by which the office was created; and Lord John Russell, then Secretary of State for the Home Department, when assigning to the inspectors their districts, paid him the compliment of saying that he had given him Scotland because he knew that in that part of the kingdom there was most need of improvement.

On examination, my brother found that, with the almost sole exception of the Glasgow Bridewell, which was under the governorship of an admirable prison reformer, Mr. Brebner, the Scottish prisons were as bad as Lord John Russell had stated, and that indeed the great majority, instead of being places of reform, were the abodes of idleness and disorder, and not unfrequently of drunkenness and riot; in a word, of general demoralization. Although invested with no other power than that of inspection, and of making Reports to the Secretary of State, and, through him, to Parliament and the country, my brother, in a short time, effected a great change. He obtained the removal of a large number of bad officers, the appointment in their stead of persons qualified for their duties, including matrons (of whom till his nomination there had been only two or three in the whole of Scotland), with a proper corps of female assistants, and without waiting for the erection of new prisons, he succeeded, in most instances, in inducing the local authorities at once to turn to the best account the buildings at their command.

After a time he was authorized by Government to frame a bill for remodelling the whole system of prison government in Scotland in accordance with his recommendations. Although this bill was a good deal altered, and, as we both thought, much injured, in its passage through Parliament, the new system adopted under it was a great improvement on what had existed before. By the appointment of a general board, of which he was chosen a member, a directing authority was established which removed many obstacles to improvement. Thus, long before he quitted Scotland to take an English district, every prison there had either been so altered as to become well fitted for its use, or, if beyond improvement, had been replaced by a new building. In every prison productive work had been introduced, motives to diligence supplied, tread-mills and all other unproductive employment abolished, flogging and every kind of degrading punishment discontinued; good chaplains had everywhere been appointed, and provision made for ordinary elementary instruction; the health of the prisoners had much improved, good conduct had become the general rule, and, in many cases, means had been provided for maintaining some amount at least of supervision and friendly assistance after liberation. Finally, my brother practically showed that, under good arrangements, all prisoners of ordinary health and strength, and committed for even a moderate period, may be made to defray the entire cost of their maintenance and custody.

Any one who compares the most enlightened demands of the present day with this statement of facts, and yet more, the series of recommendations contained in my brother’s Reports, or more summarily in his work entitled “Crime; its Amount, Causes, and Remedies,” will find that my account of his services contains no exaggeration.

Having carried the work of prison reform thus far in Scotland, he exchanged his Scottish for an English district; but although he was able to accomplish a good deal there, he found among the country justices of the peace, who have the general charge of the county prisons, far more of vis inertiæ than he had encountered in Scotland. In the belief that in the Post Office, in conjunction with myself, he should have a new and wide field for the exercise of his knowledge of the principles of government and his powers of administration, and that he should be able to render me effectual assistance, he was ready to accept an appointment, should it be made, as assistant-secretary.

Of course I was well pleased with the prospect of constant aid from one of whose ability and trustworthiness I was so well assured; a prospect which, as the sequel will show, was amply realised. Upon my speaking more explicitly, the Postmaster-General made no objection to the appointment,[84] but feared that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would object to the necessary expense; an apprehension at which I could not but feel disappointed after all that had passed, but which, nevertheless, was confirmed on inquiry. Coupled with the announcement of this result, came new cause of anxiety, viz., a warning that Ministers would resign if beaten on an impending motion of Mr. Disraeli’s. Though, on the division, there was a majority in their favour, yet, as the difference was only fourteen, it was but too clear that the administration was by no means firm. It was important, therefore, to press on at once. I again called upon Mr. Hume; but though I found him very friendly, he still objected to giving me the letter I wanted, intimating that he should shortly effect the object by something which he was to say in the House. Naturally I could not share Mr. Hume’s confidence, particularly as I could at best but conjecture the tenour of his proposed remarks; and I must add, that though I have not the slightest doubt of Mr. Hume’s perfect good faith and earnestness in the matter, I cannot find, either in my records or in my recollection, that the intention was ever fulfilled.

The following passage shows how kindly earnest Lord Clanricarde was on my behalf, even at a season of critical importance to himself:—

At my request he made an addition to his letter, for the purpose of securing the position of my clerks in the event of my being driven from office. After using every means to hasten action in the Treasury, he sent in the letter (which was very complimentary to me) by his private secretary. The Treasury promptly replied, authorizing the advancement of my salary in a letter, from which the following is an extract:—

Again, however, the immediate alarm passed away. After fruitless attempts to form an administration, Lord Stanley withdrew, and the old ministers returned to office. My great pleasure at this relief was, however, soon damped by the revival of former difficulties, the Treasury again pressing for that amalgamation of the two corps of letter-carriers which, without undivided authority, it would be, as I well knew and had often represented, impossible for me to effect, and highly dangerous to attempt. The Postmaster-General admitted the difficulty,[85] and undertook to speak to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject. In the meantime I pointed out to his lordship that the question of assistance had been left to him, and I urged immediate action in this matter. He replied that, notwithstanding the power that had been given him, he must still consult the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He intimated that the Ministry were still in a precarious position. This appeared to me anything rather than a reason for delay; and I particularly pressed the appointment of an assistant-secretary, strengthening my former reasons with others of great weight.

It will easily be believed that I was not a little impatient at these inexplicable and hazardous delays; but happily relief was coming.

My father died in his eighty-ninth year—a longevity not unprecedented in our family. So remarkable was his retention of mental power, that in this, his last illness, he devised a new process for ascertaining, by mental arithmetic, the incidence of Easter Sunday in any given year; a process which, at his desire, I put to the test of practice, with a result completely satisfactory.

To return to the subject of this narrative. In thus accepting the offer of assistance, I could not but feel that, notwithstanding all my protestations, I weakened my present claim to that great change, so long the object of my desire, since concession, however insufficient, could not be closely followed by further demand. Nevertheless, so great was the pressure upon me, so serious the danger of my breaking down altogether, that I had no alternative. Some estimate of my difficulties may be formed from the following simple statement. Though reference was made to me in all cases of serious difficulty, whatever their nature, and though the secretarial charge of the Money-Order Department was exclusively in my hands, the amount of assistance at my command hitherto was limited to my private secretary and four or five clerks, while that under Colonel Maberly consisted of a private secretary, an assistant-secretary, competent to act as an occasional deputy, and probably not less than fifty or sixty clerks. Still I naturally regarded the late accession to my force,—particularly as it gave me the aid of my brother—with great satisfaction.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIX.

PROGRESS OF REFORM FROM THE BEGINNING OF 1849 TO THE
MIDDLE OF 1851.

Having thus carried the general narrative to this important point, I pause to describe those concurrent proceedings[87] which could not be conveniently mentioned in their chronological order, remarking, however, that the chief improvements effected within the period have been mentioned as they took place, and that those of my readers who have little desire to know more on the subject may easily pass over so much as they please of what follows. For convenience I resort to classification.

MONEY ORDER DEPARTMENT.

Economy, Self Support.

Various measures of economy were adopted; not, for the most part, of sufficient importance to be mentioned in detail, though of considerable value in their aggregate effect. One, however, by its magnitude, claims distincter record, being the release for other duties of such a number of clerks as reduced the Money Order staff, in proportion to its amount of business, by nearly forty per cent.; an economy effected by the mere simplification of accounts and modes of procedure. Two others may be mentioned as curious, the first being a saving of probably about £800 a-year through the substitution for “guard books” of an apparatus invented by Mr. Walliker, one of the clerks (now Postmaster of Hull), and the second the saving of £700 a year by a mere reduction, and that not the first, in the size of the letter of advice. By the various improvements thus introduced into the Money Order Office since it came under my superintendence it was found—the accounts being at length for the first time balanced—that the annual loss of more than £10,000 had been converted into a small gain. It should be mentioned that, in fetching up the arrear of accounts, debts, which ought long since to have been claimed, were found owing by various deputy postmasters, and had to be recovered, in some instances, of their sureties; a proceeding sometimes involving much hardship. In one case, at Bilston, where the payment thus enforced amounted to £230, the postmaster had been dead some years.

Condition of Clerks Improved.

The Money Order Department being thus made self-supporting, I felt justified in recommending not only a considerable increase in the salaries of the probationary clerks, but also an addition to those of the lowest grade on the staff. I was also enabled to extend and regulate the leave of absence in the department. A few months afterwards, the Postmaster-General thus described the latter measure in the Upper House, reporting afterwards that the Lords were much struck with it:—

New Head of Department.

In the course of this period, on the sudden death of Mr. Barth, the President of the Money Order Office, the vacancy was filled, much to my satisfaction, by the appointment of Mr. Jackson, who had zealously seconded me in improving the department, and who, I am glad to say, retained his post many years, much to the advantage of the service and the benefit of the public.

A Paradox.

There remains to mention a ludicrous perplexity, showing how easy it is, amidst complicated changes, for even those who have best opportunity of judging, and are most interested in arriving at the truth, to fall into misconception. In the early part of 1850, when we confidently believed that correspondence of all kinds was, as usual, on the increase, we remarked, to our surprise, a falling-off in the number of letters passing through the Inland Office, and speculated much as to its cause. Mr. Bokenham attributed it to a decrease in Sunday letter-writing; but the mystery was at length explained by our simply calling to mind that the natural effect of a recent improvement in the Money Order Department was to relieve the Inland Office of about forty-six thousand packets per week, a number somewhat more than enough to account for the decrease.

GENERAL ECONOMIC MEASURES.

Clerks in Charge.

There was an abuse demanding correction, of which the following is a specimen. A clerk in the chief office, in receipt of about £82 per annum, was sent to act temporarily as clerk to one of the surveyors, and, for one cause or other, his exceptional employment was prolonged from two months to fourteen. Further, it happened that during two months of the fourteen he had charge of the Gloucester Post Office. By this lucky combination of circumstances, his emoluments for the time were at the annual rate of £452, or between five or six times his ordinary income. I took some steps with a view of putting things on a juster footing, but found the abuse too strongly sustained to allow me much hope of removing it until I should obtain more uncontested authority.

Prepayment.

I again considered the question of totally abolishing prepayments in money. Both Mr. Tilley and Mr. Johnson (the excellent surveyor of the home district), whom I consulted, agreed in the practicability of the measure, and spoke strongly of its importance, as greatly simplifying, and therefore economising, the mechanism of the department; but, for fear of inconvenience to the public, I hesitated to take the step all at once. To Mr. Tilley, however, I mentioned, in confidence, a plan which I had conceived for dealing with unpaid letters, viz., that wherever posted they should be sent in the first instance to the Metropolitan office, thence to be forwarded to their respective destinations. This arrangement would have tended much to economy, as it would have wholly superseded the “by-accounts,” i.e., the accounts between one provincial office and another. This device I must myself have afterwards forgotten, for certainly it was never acted upon. Some years later, it was attempted to make prepayment in respect of inland letters absolutely compulsory, but public objection proving too strong, the attempt was abandoned. I believe that this forgotten plan would still be the best step towards attaining the desired end.

Mail Conveyance.

I discovered instances in which the serious expense of railway conveyance was incurred, when, speed being unimportant, a cheaper mode served equally well. It is obviously of no use to a place that its letters should arrive in the middle of the night, every purpose being answered if they come in time to be included in the earliest practicable delivery. Consideration of this led me to propose, in such cases, the substitution of mail-carts. In one such case this year the effect was an annual saving of about £800, and in one in the following year more than £2000.[89]

A Summary.

A statement of the savings which, without counting the rejection of applications for needless increase of force or salary, I had secured by the end of 1850, either by prevention of unnecessary augmentation in expenditure, or by positive reductions, showed an amount of nearly £40,000 a year; although I believe my clerks, in hastily preparing the statement (for it was suddenly required) had made several omissions.

Further Economy in Conveyance.

The surveyor for the South of Ireland had recommended that the night mails to Waterford should be conveyed by a new line of railway between Carlow and that city. The entry on the subject in my Journal (13th of January, 1851) thus concludes:—

RURAL DISTRIBUTION.

On July 15th, 1850, I learned that the Postmaster-General had sanctioned what I regarded as a very important measure:—

This measure, however, though sanctioned by the Treasury, and ordered to be carried into immediate effect, to this day, notwithstanding constant progress, still incomplete, mainly, I believe, through objections on the part of the surveyors to the apparent anomaly of intermittent posts; though the necessary consequence is that many houses, and perhaps even some hamlets, must remain altogether unvisited by the postman.

PACKET SERVICE.

I was asked to prepare a confidential memorandum on the subject of an experimental despatch of the mails to North America from Galway, which I did accordingly, the results of my investigation, however, not being such as, in my opinion, to justify the experiment. I scarcely need add that some years later the course thus deprecated was taken by Government, not indeed in expectation of profitable results, but as a concession to Irish demands; that the attempt was altogether unsuccessful, and besides absorbing a large sum from the revenue, occasioned disastrous loss to all who held shares in the packets.

POSTAL TREATIES.

Although postal treaties with foreign countries had but little direct connection with my particular reforms, yet their indirect bearing was important; and still greater their relation to the general postal interests of the country; so that though, ever since my removal from the Treasury they had been managed for the most part without reference to me, I nevertheless had now frequent opportunities of suggesting improvements, and in the end the arrangement fell almost entirely into my hands.

The Postmaster-General directed my attention to the state of our treaty with France. The British Office had proposed that the international rate should be reduced from tenpence to sixpence, but this was objected to by the French Government, because it was coupled with a demand for an equitable division of postage between the two Offices. It may be remembered that through a blunder made by our Office in 1843 an undue advantage was given to France, which I then estimated at £4000 per annum; but by a modification made subsequently to my reappointment, but entirely without my knowledge, our annual loss had been raised to £8000. I explained all this to the Postmaster-General, and he regretted that I had not been consulted in the matter; he thought, however, that the French Government could not refuse such concession as would at least rectify the latter error.

The Postmaster-General had been led to suppose that the original error was committed at the Treasury; but I was able to satisfy him that, so far from that being the case, the Treasury had on my report, carefully warned the Post Office on the very point. As the matter stands at the present time (1868), the annual loss in our transactions with the French Post Office, by irretrievable errors, is probably not less than £10,000.

SALARIES AND PROMOTIONS.

On the subject of salaries I found a strange, not to say absurd, discrepancy between form and practice. The clerks were, indeed, very properly arranged in classes, the salaries varying according to position, and promotion taking place as vacancies occurred, on formal attestation of a candidate’s fitness for the duties of the higher class; but all this classification, whatever merit it apparently had, was rendered worthless by the simple fact that difficulty of duties did not correspond with rank of class. Thus the Government was really paying £300 or £400 a year to clerks whose work was nowise superior in quality or quantity to that performed by others whose annual salary was but £70.[90] All this I pointed out to Mr. Hayter.[91] He admitted that the odium of rectification, so far as Government usage would allow rectification to be made, should not rest upon me alone, and promised to use his influence to get a Commission appointed for the revision of salaries generally. The Chancellor of the Exchequer hesitated to adopt the suggestion; but, as applications were coming in for particular augmentations which could not be satisfactorily dealt with until some general principle was adopted and reduced to a rule, I obtained authority to press the matter on the Treasury. Although, however, this was done, and although after the lapse of a year the Postmaster-General himself wrote a minute on the subject, yet a second year passed before this important step was taken.

RECTIFICATION OF ACCOUNTS.

As already shown, I had striven to present to the public mind a true statement as to the fiscal results of my reforms, or, to speak yet more comprehensively, as to the real earnings of the Post Office. This struggle was forced upon me by constant attempts to lead the public mind into error on this important point. That which I have repeatedly spoken of as the fallacious return[92] was, in one form or other, ever and anon revived, nor is misconception altogether removed even at the present moment. Of other corrections, also, I have already spoken, and I purpose now to continue the narrative.

Notice of motion having been accordingly given by my friend Mr. Thornley, M.P. for Wolverhampton, the Treasury, as usual, referred to the Post Office, to learn whether there were any objection to granting the return. The consequence being that Mr. Tilley came to me, by Colonel Maberly’s desire, to show me a note written in reply, in which, to my amusement, I found the opinion given that the return should be withheld, “in fairness to Mr. Hill.” Of course I explained the whole matter to Mr. Tilley, and, the supposed obstacle being removed, the return was ordered without opposition, and the duty of preparing it was committed by the Postmaster-General to me.

Of the unfairness of charging the whole cost of the packet-service to the Post Office, I had striking evidence shortly afterwards.

So that, according to the practice of which I complained, the Post Office was made chargeable with heavy expenses, incurred not only without its request, but without its consent or even knowledge. The inexpediency of such proceedings happened to receive further illustration on the same day; Mr. Cunard calling upon me (of course now too late) to say that he had come to England for the purpose of proposing to undertake the West Indian mails at half the price then paid for their conveyance, thus tantalising us by proving that an opportunity had been lost of saving £120,000 per annum.

In a return called for by the House of Lords, I found that the number of letters for the year had been arrived at by treating the year as consisting of twelve months of four weeks each, so that the total given was that for forty-eight weeks instead of fifty-two. It would have been hardly fair to mislead the House of Lords without doing the same good office to the House of Commons. Accordingly, upon the Lower House calling for a return of the amount of transit postage paid to France, the sum reported, without any note to prevent misunderstanding, instead of being the total amount, was merely the balance of account between the two Offices. After recording this fact, my Journal proceeds as follows:—

Fortunately I saw the return before its issue, and it was of course corrected.

The following shows that, six months later, blundering remained unabated:—

FOREIGN AND COLONIAL EXTENSION.

United States.

While my attention was, of course, mainly absorbed in the improvement of our own postal system, I was always glad to hear of corresponding progress abroad, whether in the colonies or in foreign countries.

In short, Congress was so well satisfied with the result of its previous reductions, that, early in the year 1851, it changed what had been its minimum rate, viz., twopence-halfpenny, into its maximum, establishing a three-halfpenny rate for distances under three thousand miles.[93]

India.

Mr. Porter showed me the letter, and I learnt, much to my amusement, the reason why Lord Dalhousie had not addressed me more directly. He mentioned that he had formerly been acquainted with me; but feared I might by this time have forgotten him. It will be seen hereafter how successfully this first move was followed up.

France.

Early in 1850 I received from M. Piron a copy of a report showing the results obtained during the past year, the first in France of reduced postage. Though it was a time of great commercial depression, the gross postal revenue had fallen but twenty-two per cent., while the number of letters had increased by thirty per cent. At the same time the proportion of prepayments had risen from ten per cent. to twenty-five, notwithstanding that the charge was alike on prepaid and post paid. This was a remarkable indication of the convenience of stamps, showing that when, in 1839, Mr. Spring Rice proposed, without any reduction of postage, to try “the principle of stamps,” his proposal might have proved not so absolute a mockery as I then supposed it to be.

General Summary.

In short, progress was so general and so rapid that, as I was able truly to remark in my speech at Greenock already referred to, cheap postage was gradually extending throughout the civilized world.

NUMBER OF LETTERS.

In 1849 the year’s increase of letters was unusually small, though, perhaps, as great as could be expected in a time of so much political agitation and commercial depression. The increase next year (1850) was but little larger; the two years, however, making up a total of three hundred and forty-seven millions, and raising the increase under penny postage to about 4⅔-fold.

REVENUE.

The postal revenue also had, by this time, as measured by the gross amount, nearly fulfilled my original prediction, being within £82,000, or less than four per cent., of that received in 1838. That the net revenue had not kept pace with my expectations was due, not only to the various errors in management and obstacles to economy already mentioned, but also, in great degree, to the abandonment of charge for secondary distribution, and the increasing demands of the railway companies.

This subject has been more than once touched on in this narrative, but, perhaps, scarcely enough has been said to make the public fully aware how much the establishment of railways, so beneficial in regard to celerity and exactitude, has increased the expense of conveying the mails. To many the following entry will doubtless be startling, to some, perhaps, incredible:—