Her Majesty's Mails

The cost of running a train may be reckoned, in most cases, at fifteen pence per mile; and thus the Post-Office, for the use of a fraction of a train, may be said constantly to be paying at the rate of from sixty to three hundred per cent. in excess of the whole cost of running! The Postmaster-General stated that the terms upon which one railway company would undertake postal service was totally disproportionate to those of a neighbouring company. On the other hand, all the companies were alike dissatisfied, however dissimilar the contracts, or the terms imposed and agreed to.[133] Moreover, it was declared next to impossible to secure regularity and punctuality in the conveyance of mails, and to agree to amicable arbitration for the services which were done, until the Legislature should lay down reasonable laws, binding all the companies alike. A Bill was introduced into the House of Lords regulating the arrangements between the Post-Office and the different companies. Though it was carefully prepared, it was strongly opposed by the railway interest in Parliament. The opposition was all the more unreasonable, inasmuch as many of its clauses sought to remove objections to the existing law which railway companies had frequently complained of. As far as the Post-Office was concerned, it seems to have been the extent of the wish of the authorities that the question of remuneration might be based on the actual cost of running the trains, making due allowance, on the one hand, for the benefits accruing to the companies from their connexion with the mail service, and adding, on the other hand, compensation for any special extra expenses to which the companies might be subjected by the requirements of that service, together with a full allowance for profit.[134] The Bill also provided for the more extensive employment of ordinary passenger trains,--not, however, to the supercession of the regular mail-trains--for the exclusive employment of certain trains for postal purposes, for penalties, &c. The measure had been brought in late in the session, and was eventually withdrawn. The Bill itself, with its twenty-one clauses, forms part of the Appendix to the Postmaster-General's fourth report; and as the basis of arrangements between the two interests is still unsettled and uncertain, the Duke of Argyll there commends it to the careful attention of the public, as well as to the fair consideration of the railway authorities themselves.