Her Majesty's Mails

The Duke of Argyll succeeded Lord Canning in the management of the Post-Office in 1855, and his years of office are distinguished by many most important improvements and reforms. One important change consisted in the amalgamation of the two corps of London letter-carriers, effected soon after the installation of the Duke of Argyll at the Post-Office. The two classes of "General Post" and "London District" letter-carriers were perhaps best known before 1855, by the former wearing a red, and the latter a blue, uniform. The object of this amalgamation, for which Mr. Hill had been sedulously striving from the period of penny postage, was to avoid the waste of time, trouble, and expense consequent on two different men going over the same ground to distribute two classes of letters which might, without any real difficulty, be delivered together. The greatest objection in the Post-Office itself to completing the change, arose from the different status of the two bodies of men, the one class being paid at a much higher rate of wages and with better prospects than the other class. This difficulty was at length surmounted, when the benefits of this minor reform became clearly apparent in earlier and more regular deliveries of letters. Inside the Post-Office the work was made much more easy and simple, and the gross inequality existing between two bodies of public servants whose duties were almost identical, was done away.[131]