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1
435
Her Majesty's Mails
·
William Lewins
307
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
60,000l.
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]
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