[174] The people of to-day who have never known the old postal system can have no idea of the unanimity and strength of that voice. Memory of the former state of things was still fresh in men's minds; and, with perhaps one exception, no person wished for its return. “Hill, you are the most popular man in the kingdom,” one day exclaimed an old friend. The exception—there might have been more than one, but if so, we were none the wiser—was one of the Bentincks who, so late as the year 1857, suggested in the House of Commons a return to franking on the score that penny postage was one of the greatest jobs and greatest financial mistakes ever perpetrated. Sir Francis Baring advised Mr Bentinck to try to bring back the old postal rates, when he would see what the country thought of the proposal.—(“Hansard,” cxlvi. 188, 189.)
[175] By this time Mr Wallace had retired from public life, and only a short while later became involved in pecuniary difficulties. By the exertions of his friends and admirers, an annuity was secured to him—a provision which, though small in comparison with his former prosperity, placed the venerable ex-Parliamentarian well above want. He died in 1855, aged eighty-two.
[176] “Life,” ii. 9, 10.
[177] “Life,” ii. 58.
[178] The Times (Parliamentary Debates), 15th June 1864. The Money Order Office dates from 1792. It was first known as “Stow & Co.,” being started as a private undertaking by three Post Office clerks; and its mission was to enable small sums of money to be safely transmitted to our sailors and soldiers. Later, all classes of the community were included in the benefit, the remittances to be forwarded being still restricted to small sums. Each of the three partners advanced £1,000 to float the enterprise, and division of the profits gave to each about £200 a year. The commission charged was 8d. in the pound, of which 3d. each went to the two postmasters who received and paid the orders, and 2d. to the partners. The Postmaster-General sanctioned the measure, which clearly supplied a felt want, but refrained from interference with its management. In 1838 “Stow & Co.” ceased to exist, becoming thenceforth an official department, and the then partners receiving compensation for the surrender of their monopoly. The fees were thereupon fixed at 6d. for sums not exceeding £2, and 1s. 6d. for sums of £2 to £5, the rates being still further reduced in 1840.
[179] “Life,” ii. 59, 60.
[180] “Life,” ii. 257.
[181] “Life” ii. 260.
[182] Reputed author of the well-known saying that “Life would be endurable were it not for its pleasures.”
[183] “Life,” ii. 304-307. In 1871 the amount of unclaimed money orders was £3,390. In that year the Lords of the Treasury put an end to this disposal of unclaimed money except in regard to the then existing recipients of the aid; and the accumulated capital, together with the interest thereon, about £20,707, was paid into the Exchequer.—(Editor, G.B.H.'s, note at p. 306.)
[184] “Life,” ii. 365. (Note by its Editor.)
[185] “Life,” ii. 122. On the famous 10th of April 1848 (Chartist day) Colonel Maberly likewise showed his martial spirit and strong sense of the virtue of discipline when he requested Rowland Hill to place his own clerks and those of the Money Order Office—in all about 250—under his, the Colonel's, command, thus making up a corps of special constables some 1,300 strong. All over London, on and before that day, there was great excitement; a large supply of arms was laid in, defences were erected at Governmental and other public buildings, very little regular work was done, and there was any amount of unnecessary scare, chiefly through the alarmist disposition of the Duke of Wellington—seldom, rumour said, averse from placing a town in a more or less state of siege, and ever ready to urge upon successive Governments the desirability of spending huge sums on fortifications whose destiny ere long was to become obsolete—though partly also because there were many people still living who could remember the Gordon riots immortalised in “Barnaby Rudge,” and who feared a repetition of their excesses. But the Chartists were a different set of men from Gordon's “tag, rag, and bobtail” followers. On the morning of the 10th, my father, driving to the Post Office, came up in Holborn with the long procession marching in the direction of Kennington Common (now a park), preparatory to presenting themselves with their petition at the Houses of Parliament. Calling on the cabman to drive slowly, my father watched the processionists with keen interest, and was much struck with their steady bearing, evident earnestness, and the bright, intelligent countenances of many of them. On close inspection, not a few terrible revolutionists are found to look surprisingly like other people, though the comparison does not invariably tell in favour of those other people.
[186] The Mercury's article (25th April 1850) was so good that it seems worth while to quote some of it. “Macaulay informs us that the post, when first established, was the object of violent invective as a manifest contrivance of the Pope to enslave the souls of Englishmen; and most books of history or anecdote will supply stories equally notable. But we really very much doubt whether any tale of ancient times can match the exhibition of credulity which occurred in our own country, and under our own eyes, within these last twelve months.... Nearly 6,000 people have been relieved from nearly six hours' work every Sunday by the operation of a scheme which was denounced as a deliberate encouragement to Sabbath-breaking and profanity.”
[187] À propos of never answering attacks in the Press and elsewhere, my father was not a little given to quote the opinion of one of the Post officials who “goes so far as to declare that if he found himself charged in a newspaper with parricide, he would hold his tongue lest the accusation should be repeated next day with the aggravation of matricide.”—“Life,” ii. 235.
[188] This relief, proposed in November 1849, became an accomplished fact a few days before the year died out.
[189] “Life,” ii. 138.
[190] Ibid. ii. 137.
[191] In those slower-going days a large part of the holiday would be taken up by the journey home and back.
[192] A frequent and always welcome visitor at my father's house was this son of America—“the learned blacksmith,” as he was habitually called. He was one of the most interesting as well as most refreshingly unconventional of men, but was never offensively unconventional because he was one of “Nature's noblemen.” Sweet-tempered, gentle-mannered, and pure-minded, he won our regard—affection even—from the first. He could never have been guilty of uttering an unkind word to any one, not even to those who were lukewarm on the slavery question, who did not feel inspired to join the Peace Society, or who were languid in the cause of “ocean penny postage.” On the last-named subject he had, as an entire stranger, written to my father a long letter detailing his scheme, and urging the desirability of its adoption; and it was this letter which led to our making Elihu Burritt's acquaintance. He became a great friend of my elder sister, and maintained with her a many years' long correspondence. Once only do I remember seeing him angry, and then it was the righteous indignation which an honest man displays when confronted with a lie. It was when unto him had been attributed the authorship of my father's plan. He would have nothing to do with a fraudulent claim to which sundry other men have assented kindly enough, or have even, with unblushing effrontery, appropriated of their own accord. Elihu Burritt and Cardinal Mezzofanti were said to be the two greatest linguists of the mid-nineteenth century; and I know not how many languages and dialects each had mastered—the one great scholar a distinguished prince of the Roman Catholic Church, the other an American of obscure birth and an ex-blacksmith. Another trans-atlantic postal reformer, though one interested in the reform as regarded his own country rather than ours, was Mr Pliny Miles, who in outward appearance more closely resembled the typical American of Dickens's days than that of the present time. In his own land Mr Miles travelled far and wide, wrote much, spoke frequently, and crossed the Atlantic more than once to study the postal question here. He was an able man, and a good talker. I well remember his confident prophecy, some few years before the event, of a fratricidal war between the Northern and Southern States; how bitterly he deplored the coming strife; and how deeply impressed were all his hearers both with the matter and manner of his discourse. I believe he had “crossed the bar” before hostilities broke out.
[193] “Life,” ii. 241.
[194] “Life,” ii. 227-230.
[195] “My notion is,” wrote the diarist, “to run a train with only one or two carriages in addition to those required for the mail, and to stop only once in about 40 miles.” A long distance run in those days. The speed was fixed at 40 miles an hour, stoppages included. This was considered very quick travelling in the 'fifties.
[196] “It is curious,” says my father, “how inveterate is the mistake in question. Columbus expected to reach Cathay more quickly by sailing westward, but was stopped by the American continent. The projectors of the 'Darian Scheme' hoped to enrich themselves by making their settlement a great entrepot between Europe and the East Indies; and Macaulay, in his interesting narrative of the enterprise ('History of England,' vol. v. p. 200), considers their mistake to consist mainly in the assumption that Spain would permit a settlement on its territory; but it seems not to have occurred to him that, in any event, the scheme was intrinsically hopeless, seeing that the old route by the Cape of Good Hope, besides avoiding the cost and delay of transhipment, surpasses the Darian route even in shortness” (“Life,” ii. 292). It is also well known that the discoverer of certain rapids on the great river St Lawrence believed himself to be nearing the country of Confucius when he called them “La Chine.”
[197] Thus the agitation for an “all red route” is a mere revival.
[198] Sixth Annual Report of the Postmaster-General.