Its successful working is doubtless primarily due to the special time chosen for the conveyance of mails. The ordinary traffic disposed of, the mail-trains take its place, and through the long night the best part of the Post-Office work is accomplished. The good or bad management of railway companies may a.s.sist or r.e.t.a.r.d the efficiency of the Post-Office to an almost incalculable extent. The railway post-office is like a gigantic machine, one part interdependent on another, and all alike dependent on the motive power of the different contracting parties.

Railway accidents are fruitful sources of discomfiture to the Post-Office Department. The mail-trains have, within the last two or three years, enjoyed an immunity from any very serious calamity of this nature: yet even when this is not the case, it very seldom happens that the Post-Office arrangements suffer, except on the particular journey wherein the accident occurred. Fresh supplies of men and _materiel_ are summoned with a speed that would, or ought to, surprise some other commissariat departments, and the work proceeds the next day or night as if the equilibrium had never been disturbed.

As the question whether continual railway travelling is prejudicial to health has frequently been discussed of late, it may not be out of place to instance the case of the travelling _employes_ of the Post-Office, which seems to show that persons in the enjoyment of good health are benefited by railway travelling. The ratio of sickness among the Post-Office clerks and sorters engaged upon railways is certainly not greater, we are told, than among the same cla.s.s of officers employed at the London establishment. The fact seems to be that, were it not that the former travel generally at night-time, are exposed to sudden changes of weather, and are, on certain emergencies, forced to travel oftener and further than the authorized limits, the ratio would be considerably less than it is. Dr. Waller Lewis, the medical officer of the Post-Office, supplies us, in a recent report, with a number of cases that have come under his immediate notice, where incessant, and even excessive railway travelling, does not seem to have been at all detrimental to the health of those so engaged. "One of our best officers," says Dr. Lewis, "states that he has no doubt that, during the period of twenty years that he has been engaged in railway duties, he travelled, on an average, a hundred miles a-day, Sundays included. All this time he not only enjoyed excellent health, but he was stouter and stronger than he has been since leaving that duty." Dr. Lewis further tells us, that it is part of his duty to examine candidates for appointment in this department of the public service, and again to examine them after they have undergone a probation varying from six to eighteen months. "In reply to my question, addressed to such officers after a probationary term, of how they found the travelling agree with them, some stated that they had never been so well in their lives. A considerable number of them replied that they had not had an hour's illness since they commenced railway duty." Of course, these last-mentioned persons were _candidates_ for appointments in a lucrative branch of the Post-Office, and their statements must be received subject to this understanding and with due caution: still, it seems certain that the general testimony borne in the travelling offices is not unfavourable to the healthiness of the employment.

With regard to the question of injury to the eyesight from railway travelling, Dr. Lewis may again be supposed to speak authoritatively when he considers "it very injurious to allow the eyes to rest on external objects near at hand, such as telegraph-poles or wires, near trees or hedges, &c. whilst the train is in motion;" but, speaking of the same subject, he "does not find that in the travelling post-office much mischief is occasioned to the sight."[159] When we remember that the Post-Office work is generally performed by means of a strong artificial light, and much tedious deciphering of the addresses of letters necessarily occurs, as we have seen, during travelling, it must be admitted that the eyesight is here put to the strongest possible test.

We have now traced our letter, posted in the metropolis, through the travelling post-office into the establishment of a provincial town. We shall follow it presently, and not leave it till it is properly delivered at the rural village to which we saw it addressed; but we must take the opportunities as they occur to describe with minuteness each particular, whether bearing directly or collaterally on our subject, as well as to add now and then a timely exhortation to the reader. Thus, you are indignant, perhaps, that a certain letter you ought to have had is not to hand at the proper moment, but has suffered some delay in transit. However, just think how many letters you do get, which come to your desk as true as the needle to the pole. Just listen to the old gentleman yonder as he tells how long the same business letter from a certain old-established house used to be in arriving, and what was paid for it when it did arrive. Above all, pray think of the travelling caged officials--those wingless birds of the Post-Office--and of what they go through o' nights in order that you may have your letter or your newspaper--posted yesterday in some quiet corner of the country 500 or 600 miles away--with your b.u.t.tered toast to breakfast in town!

A PROVINCIAL POST-OFFICE.

Thirty years ago the arrangements in the north country town of the district to which our imaginary letter was addressed, and which we are engaged to visit, were of the most primitive kind. It has always been an important town. Even anterior to the first establishment of the British Post-Office, it was the first town in the county in which it stands.

Subsequently, it was on the direct line of one of the princ.i.p.al mail-routes in the kingdom, and now, in these days of railroads, it is a kind of junction for the district. Postally speaking, it was, and is, a place of importance, including within its boundaries nearly a hundred villages, all deriving their letter-sustenance from it. At the period of time in question the post-office was situated in the most central part of the town, the outside of the building partaking of the ugly and old-fashioned style of the shops of that day. It was then considered quite sufficient for the business of the place that there should be a small room of about twelve feet square devoted to postal purposes; that there should be a long counter, upon which the letters might be stamped and charged, and a small set of letter-boxes for the sorting processes.

Added, however, to the proper business of the neighbourhood, there used to be a kind of work done here which was confined to a few towns only on the line of mails, selected for this supplementary business on account of their central positions. The mail-coaches, as they pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed northwards and southwards, stopped here for half an hour until certain necessary sorting operations could be performed with a portion of the letters. In this way our particular town held the style and designation, and with it the _prestige_, of a "Forwarding Office."

The public required little attention, and got but little. Being prior to the time of postage-stamps, and we may almost add of money-orders, not to speak of savings' bank business, few applications were ever made to the officers--consisting of a postmaster, his wife, and another clerk--for anything but stray sc.r.a.ps of information relative to the despatch of mails. The communication with the public was anything but close, being conducted in this town--and, in fact, in all others of our acquaintance--through a trap-door in a wooden pane in the office-window.

Near to it was a huge slit, being a pa.s.sage to a basket, into which letters and newspapers were promiscuously thrown. The princ.i.p.al labour incident to the old style of postage was in regulating the amount to be paid on the different letters. Those posted in the town for the town itself were delivered for a penny; twopence was charged into the country places surrounding; letters for the metropolis cost a shilling; and Scotch letters eightpence-halfpenny at least, the odd halfpenny being the charge as a toll for the letter crossing the Tweed. The delivery of the letters in the town took place at any time during the day, according to the arrival of the mails, and it was effected by a single letter-carrier.[160] Private boxes for the princ.i.p.al merchants in the town, and private bags for the country gentlemen, were almost indispensable to those who cared for the proper despatch and security of their correspondence. Many gentlemen who did not arrange to have private bags (at a great yearly expense) were compelled to make frequent journeys to the town to ascertain if any letters had arrived for them.

Some letters for places within a few miles of the town would be known to be at the office for days and weeks unguessed at, till perhaps some one would hear, through one of many channels, that a letter was lying at the post-office for persons of their acquaintance, and inform them of the fact. Letter-delivering in the rural districts was then a private concern, and, in consequence, those letters destined for one particular road were laid aside till a sufficient number were acc.u.mulated to make it worth while to convey them at a charge of a penny the letter.[161]

Owing to the wretched system then in force, many country places round a post-office were, to all intents and purposes, more remote than most foreign countries are at this hour. One letter-carrier sufficing for the wants of the town, we need scarcely say that the number of letters received was exceedingly small. Not more than a hundred letters were posted or delivered, on an average, each day, though the town was the seat of many brisk manufactories, and was, besides, in the heart of the colliery districts. _Now_, a single firm in the same town will cause a greater amount of daily postal business.

Our purpose will not allow of our describing all the attendant circ.u.mstances of the state of things existing at this early period, or more fully than we have already done the postal arrangements of the past. But there were the "_expresses_," which ought not to be forgotten.

Designed to supply some sudden emergency, they were of great use where quick intelligence was urgently required. For this purpose they might be had from the post-office people at any hour, and generally they were procured through the night. A special mounted messenger might be despatched, under this arrangement, with a single letter, marked "Haste!

post haste!" carrying with him a way-bill, to account for the time it had taken him to perform the journey. The charge for expresses was at the rate of a shilling a mile, the speed at which they travelled averaging ten miles an hour.

Nor can we stay, much as we should like to do so, to picture the old mail-coach--its glittering appearance, its pawing horses; or to describe the royal-liveried guard, "grand and awful-looking in all the composure of a felt superiority." In the old times it used to pull up at the half-wooden inn near the post-office, and, during the half-hour allowed for postal business, was the observed of all observers. The half-hour was one of unusual bustle both at the office and at the inn; but, as soon as the time was up, the pa.s.sengers would take their seats (the guard occupying a solitary one at the end of the coach), the mails were thrown as a small addition to the load of bags at the top, and off the cavalcade would start, to the tune, perhaps, of the "Blue Bells of Scotland," if the mail was going northwards, or, if southwards, may be "The Green Hills of Tyrol," from the clear silver key-bugle of his Majesty's mail-guard.

Now, this is changed, and almost all postal arrangements prior to the days of Sir Rowland Hill are as so many things of the past. And into what a grand establishment the Post-Office itself is metamorphosed! The part now dedicated to the public might be part of a first-cla.s.s banking establishment. Entering by a s.p.a.cious doorway, with a lofty vestibule, there is accommodation for a score of people to stand in the ante-room and leisurely transact their business. Then there runs along the whole length of the first or public room a substantial mahogany counter, behind which the clerks stand to answer inquiries and attend to the ordinary daily business. There is a desk for the money-order clerk, and drawers in which postage-stamps are kept. Close by we see one or two ranges of boxes; one for callers' letters--"_the poste restante_"--and another for those who prefer to engage private boxes to having their letters delivered by letter-carriers.

Outside things are changed also. The wooden pane--nay, the window itself--has disappeared to make way for a more modern structure; and instead of the single letterbox, there are several. Late letters are now provided for in a separate box, and so also are newspapers. The princ.i.p.al post-office work is accomplished in an interior apartment, from which the public are studiously excluded.[162] A large table stands in the centre of the room; a smaller one, well padded with leather, stands near, and is used specially for letter-stamping; a number of letter-benches--for boxes are not used much now--are arranged against three of the four walls and in the middle of the room, on which the letters and newspapers are sorted. Empty canvas bags of different sizes, with tin labels attached (if the name of the town is not _painted_ on them), books, printed papers of different kinds, bundles of string, &c.

make up the furniture of the apartment, and complete the appearance of it immediately prior to the receipt of the early-morning mail.

Long before the ordinary workmen in our towns are summoned from their repose, the Post-Office work in the provinces may be said to commence by the mail-cart clattering through the now silent streets to the railway station, there to await the arrival of the first and princ.i.p.al mail, and its first daily instalment of bags. At the given time, and only (even in the depth of winter) very occasionally late, the train emerges out of the darkness, its two shining lamps in front, into the silent and almost empty station. The process described in our account of the travelling post-office is here gone through; a rapid exchange of bags is made, and each interest goes its separate and hurried way. During the interval, and just before the mail-cart deposits its contents at the door of the post-office, the clerks and letter-carriers will have been roused from their beds, and somewhat sulkily, perhaps, have found their places in time. They look sleepy and dull, but this is excusable; the hour is a drowsy one, and half the world is dozing. The well-known sound of the mail-cart breaks the spell, however, and soon they are all thoroughly alive, nay, even interested, in the duties in which they are engaged.

The bags just arrived are immediately seized by one of their number, who hurriedly cuts their throats, and then empties the contents upon the huge table in a great heap: somewhere in the heap our letter is safely deposited. The bundles of letters are quickly taken to the letter-stampers, through whose hands they must first pa.s.s. With a speed and accuracy which rivals machinery,[163] an agile letter-stamper will soon impress a copy of the dated stamp of the office upon the back of a hundred letters, and this done, they are pa.s.sed over to the clerks and sorters to arrange them in the different boxes, the process being repeated till the whole are disposed of. The newspapers and book-packets are taken from the table without being stamped, and sorted by the letter-carriers. As soon as the first or preliminary sorting is over, each sorter will proceed upon distinctive duties; some will prepare the letters for the letter-carriers, by sorting each man's letters together, according to their different number. When this is done, the letters are handed to the carriers, who retire to a separate room, looking with its desks very like a small schoolroom, and there arrange them in order to deliver them from house to house. Other officers will prepare the letters for the sub-officers and rural messengers. When all the letters, &c. for a certain village are gathered up, they are counted and tied up in bundles; if any charged letters are sent, the amount is debited against the sub-postmaster of the place on a letter-bill--something like an invoice--which invariably accompanies every Post-Office letter-bag despatched from one post-town to another, or from one head office to a sub-office. If any registered letters are of the number to be sent, the name of each addressee is carefully written on the letter-bill. Private and locked bags for the country gentry still survive, and may be obtained for an annual fee of two guineas. They are attended to with some care, and are carried to their destination with the other made-up bags. When the mails are ready, they are sent from the Post-Office in various ways. Those for one or two country roads are sent to a local railway station, and taken in charge by the railway guard, who drops the bags at the different points on the line according to their address; others are carried by mail gigs under one or more private contractors, while the rest are taken by country-walking postmen, who make certain journeys during the day, returning in the evening with the letters and bags they have gathered during their travels. Of course the rural messengers take out loose letters as well; _e. g._ those for detached dwellings on their line of road. Our letter falls into the hands of one of those hard-working and deserving men.[164] The village, or rather hamlet, to which it is addressed is too small for a post-office, but a rural postman pa.s.ses through it on his daily journeyings about ten o'clock each morning, delivering with scrupulous fidelity everything committed to his care. Thus, posted where we saw it last night, it pa.s.ses from hand to hand all through the long night, and eventually reaches that hand for which it was intended 300 odd miles away, nearly as surely as if we had travelled to deliver it ourselves.

But to return. While some of the officers are attending in this way to the wants of the country, others are serving the interests of the town.

A hundred or two gentlemen, bankers and manufacturers, pay an extra guinea yearly in order to secure certain special privileges at the Post-Office. These privileges consist, in brief, of having their letters arranged in private boxes, each labelled with their names, and delivered from these boxes by one of the clerks as soon as the office is opened, or the moment the letter-carriers emerge from it to enter upon any of the daily deliveries of letters. Of course these letters must be prepared previously.

The office is open to the public for money-orders and for the transaction of the business of the new savings' banks at nine o'clock, and continues open on every day, except Sat.u.r.days, until six, on which day two hours longer are allowed. It is not necessary to describe the arrangements in these branches, seeing that the public are familiar from daily experience with them. It will suffice to say that separate clerks are usually delegated to these duties in our large towns, and are answerable to the postmaster for the correctness of their accounts. The same clerk attends to the sale of postage-stamps, keeping an account with the postmaster of the quant.i.ty _sold_, and also of the stamps _bought_ from the public under the recent arrangement. In larger towns where one clerk is specially retained for these duties, he is known as the "window clerk," as it devolves upon him to answer all applications and inquiries.

Throughout the day, the quietness of the post-office proper is broken in upon and varied by the arrival of some small mail. On one of these occasions, namely, on the receipt of the day-mail from London, the operations of the morning are gone over again on a small scale, and for a short time the office presents an appearance of some of its early bustle. Letters are delivered in the town, but those arriving for the country places remain at the office till the next morning.

The work of the Post-Office commences before "grey dawn," and long before the usual period of ordinary business in our towns; it lasts also far into the "dewy eve." When merchants lock up their desks and offices, and complete their last round of duties by posting their letters, the serious work of the Post-Office, for the second time during the day, may be said to begin. The hour before the despatch of the princ.i.p.al mail in any provincial Post-Office, thanks in great part to the dilatoriness of the public in general, is an hour of busy activity, seldom witnessed in any other branch of industry whatever. Almost at the same moment the country mail-gigs from their different rides, mail-carts from the local railway stations, the rural postmen from their walks, and the receiving-house keepers from the outskirts of the town, approach the post-office door, and speedily cause the office to groan as it were under the weight of letters and bags. All the force of the office is now engaged, and engaged with a will, if the bags are to be ready for the London night-mail due from Scotland at the railway station in sixty minutes. Again, the same round of bag-opening, checking, stamping (only now the stamps must be obliterated, as the letters are about to be despatched for the first time), and sorting, which we described in the morning, is again repeated. The sorted letters are examined, tied up in bundles of sixty or seventy each, and then despatched in the bags received at the beginning of the day from the London mail. The bags are tied, sealed, and hurried away to the station. Now, at length, the postmaster and his staff breathe freely. For a full hour they have been engaged as busily, yet as silently, as so many bees in a hive; but now that the work is finished, the thoughts of rogues, lovers, bankers, lawyers, clergymen, and shopkeepers; the loves and griefs, the weal and woes, of the town and country lie side by side, and for a few hours at least will enjoy the most complete and secret companionship. Every working day, and to some extent on Sunday, the same routine of work is prescribed and accomplished with little variation.

In all this consists the _prose_ of Post-Office life; but who shall describe its _poetry_? Scarcely a day pa.s.ses in any of our provincial post-offices without some incident occurring calculated to surprise, amuse, or sadden. Very probably within a few minutes one person will have come to make a complaint that a certain letter or letters ought to have arrived, and must have been kept back; another will make an equally unreasonable request, or propound some strange inquiry which the poor post-office clerk is supposed to be omniscient enough to answer. Most often, however, the cases of inquiry disclose sorrowful facts, and all the consolation which can be offered--supposing that the clerk has any of "the milk of human kindness" in him, a quality of mind or heart, much too rare, we confess, in the Post-Office service--will likely be the consolation of hope. The official sees now and then brief s.n.a.t.c.hes of romance; perhaps the beginning or the end, though seldom the transaction throughout. Amusing circ.u.mstances are often brought out by requests tendered at the Post-Office, that letters which have been posted may be returned to the writers. A formal, but most essential rule, makes letters once posted the property of the Postmaster-General until they are delivered as addressed, and must not be given up to the _writers_ on any pretence whatever. One or two requests of this kind related to us we are not likely soon to forget. On one occasion, a gentlemanly-looking commercial traveller called at an office and expressed a fear that he had inclosed two letters in wrong envelopes, the addresses of which he furnished. It appeared from the account which he reluctantly gave, after a refusal to grant his request, that his position and prospects depended upon his getting his letters, and correcting the mistakes, inasmuch as they revealed plans which he had adopted to serve two mercantile houses in the same line of business, whose interests clashed at every point. He failed to get his letters, but we hope he has retrieved himself, and is now serving one master faithfully.

Another case occurred in which a fast young gentleman confessed to carrying on a confidential correspondence with two young ladies at the same time, and that he had, or feared he had, crossed two letters which he had written at the same sitting. We heartily hope a full exposure followed. Writing of this, we are reminded of a case where a country postmaster had a letter put into his hand through the office window, together with the following message delivered with great emphasis: "Here's a letter; she wants it to go along as fast as it can, cause there's a feller wants to have her here, and she's courted by another feller that's not here, and she wants to know whether he is going to have her or not." If the letter was as explicit as the verbal message to which the postmaster involuntarily lent his ear, no doubt the writer would not be long in suspense. These cases, however, are uninteresting compared to one related by another postmaster. A tradesman's daughter who had been for some time engaged to a prosperous young draper in a neighbouring town, heard from one whom she and her parents considered a creditable authority, that he was on the verge of bankruptcy. "Not a day was to be lost in breaking the bond by which she and her small fortune were linked to penury." A letter, strong and conclusive in its language, was at once written and posted, when the same informant called upon the young lady's friends to contradict and explain his previous statement, which had arisen out of some misunderstanding. "They rushed at once to the Post-Office, and no words can describe the scene; the reiterated appeals, the tears, the wringing of hands, the united entreaties of father, mother, and daughter for the restoration of the fatal letter."

But the rule admitted of no exception, and the young lady had to repent at leisure of her inordinate haste.

We have only s.p.a.ce to close with a graphic extract from the reminiscences of a post-office official, in which the everyday life of a country post-office is admirably described: "For the poor we were often persuaded both to read and write their letters; and the Irish especially, with whom penmanship was a rare accomplishment, seldom failed to succeed in their eloquent pet.i.tions; though no one can realize the difficulty of writing from a Paddy's dictation, where 'the pratees, and the pig, and the praiste, G.o.d bless him!' become involved in one long, perplexed sentence, without any period from beginning to end of the letter. One such epistle, the main topic of which was an extravagant lamentation over the death of a wife, rose to the pathetic climax, 'and now I'm obleeged to wash meself, and bake meself!'" The officers of the Dead-Letter Office could a tale unfold, one would think, only an essential rule of the service binds them to honourable secresy. The Post-Office official often, however, and in spite of himself, learns more than he cares to know. "For," as the writer continues, "a great deal can be known from the outside of a letter, where there is no disposition to pry into the enclosure. Who would not be almost satisfied with knowing all the correspondence coming to or leaving the hands of the object of his interest? From our long training among the letters of our district, we knew the handwriting of most persons so intimately, that no attempt at disguise, however cunningly executed, could succeed with us. We noticed the ominous lawyers' letters addressed to tradesmen whose circ.u.mstances were growing embarra.s.sed; and we saw the carefully ill-written direction to the street in Liverpool and London, where some poor fugitive debtor was in hiding. The evangelical curate, who wrote in a disguised hand and under an a.s.sumed name to the fascinating public singer, did not deceive us; the young man who posted a circular love-letter to three or four girls the same night, never escaped our notice; the wary maiden, prudently keeping two strings to her bow, unconsciously depended upon our good faith. The public never know how much they owe to official secresy and official honour, and how rarely this confidence is betrayed. Petty tricks and artifices, small dishonesties, histories of tyranny and suffering, exaggerations and disappointments were thrust upon our notice. As if we were the official confidants of the neighbourhood, we were acquainted with the leading events in the lives of most of the inhabitants."

Once more, "Never, surely, has any one a better chance of seeing himself as others see him than a country postmaster. Letters of complaint very securely enveloped and sealed pa.s.sed through our hands, addressed to the Postmaster-General, and then came back to us for our own perusal and explanation. One of our neighbours informed the Postmaster-General, in confidence, that we were 'ignorant and stupid.' A clergyman wrote a pathetic remonstrance, stating that he was so often disappointed of his _Morning Star and Dial_, that he had come to the conclusion that we disapproved of that paper for the clergy,[165] and, from scruples of conscience, or political motives, prevented it--one of 400 pa.s.sing daily through our office--from reaching his hands whenever there was anything we considered objectionable in it."

CHAPTER III.

ON THE MAIL-PACKET SERVICE.

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 60,000_l._ 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 compet.i.tive 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 105,000_l._; in 1814 to 160,000_l._[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 17,000_l._ 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 60,000_l._ a-year. The Cunard line of steamers is now universally known, and is unrivalled.

Little more than a hundred years ago, 50,000_l._ 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 pa.s.sed 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 compet.i.tion; 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 85,900_l._ 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 100_l._ 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 6_s._ 4_d._ The average speed of the foreign packets is ten miles an hour. The princ.i.p.al 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 253,000_l._ is paid yearly. In this service, packets sail four times a month from Southampton, and other mails are met at Ma.r.s.eilles 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 134,672_l._ a-year, carry them between Point de Galle and Sydney. An additional line of packets to the Antipodes, _via_ 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 270,000_l._ a-year for their conveyance. The North American mails are carried by Messrs. Cunard & Co. for the sum of 176,340_l._ a-year. Eight steam-vessels are employed by this firm, leaving Liverpool once a-week, and travelling also between New York and Na.s.sau once a-month. Sir Samuel Cunard himself contracts for the Canadian mails, receiving the yearly sum of 14,700_l._ 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 22,000_l._ 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s of working mail officers, who, of course, are subst.i.tuted for the old cla.s.s 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 Na.s.sau 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 sh.o.r.e. 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.