Her Majesty's Mails

Letter-franking also commenced in this year. A Committee of the House of Commons which sat in the year 1735 reported, "that the privilege of franking letters by the knights, &c. chosen to represent the Commons in Parliament, began with the creating of a post-office in the kingdom by Act of Parliament." The proviso which secured this privilege to members cannot now be regarded otherwise than as a propitiatory clause to induce a unanimous approval of the bill in general. The account[18] of the discussion of the clause in question is somewhat amusing. Sir Walter Earle proposed that "members' letters should come and go free during the time of their sittings." Sir Heneage Finch (afterwards Lord Chancellor Finch) said, indignantly, "It is a poor mendicant proviso, and below the honour of the House." Many members spoke in favour of the clause, Sir George Downing, Mr. Boscowen, among the number, and Sergeant Charlton also urged "that letters for counsel went free." The debate was, in fact, nearly one-sided; but the Speaker, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, on the question being called, refused for a considerable time to put it, saying he "felt ashamed of it." The proviso was eventually put and carried by a large majority. When the Post-Office Bill, with its franking privilege, was sent up to the Lords, they threw out the clause, ostensibly for the same reasons which had actuated the minority in the Commons in opposing it, but really, as it was confessed some years afterwards, because there was no provision made in the Bill that the "Lords' own letters should pass free." A few years later this important omission was supplied, and both Houses had the privilege guaranteed to them, neither Lords nor Commons now feeling the arrangement below their dignity.