was proved that a letter could be carried to the Antipodes for 1d.—indeed, ½d. would amply remunerate the shipowner. If a letter could be sent by rail from New York to San Francisco (8,000 miles) for 1d., why not from Liverpool to New York (8,000 miles) by sea for 1d.? The charge for conveying valuable goods half way round the world being £2 per ton, why should the Post-Office charge postage at the rate of £1,792 per ton? Why should it charge 1d. for conveying the Times, weighing 4 ounces, to Australia, and exact 4s. for a letter of the same weight, and sent in the same bag to Australia?
The explanation was that the Government was paying some £640,000 a year to the steamship companies in subsidies for building and maintaining vessels available as cruisers and transports in times of war; these payments being also intended to encourage British commerce, and to promote the shipbuilding and carrying trades. The ships, however, also served to carry the mailbags, and though these bags occupied but a small fraction of the space for freight, the whole subsidy was charged against the Post-Office. That wealthy and apathetic department thereupon protested that it could not reduce the postal rates.
Up to 1858 the subsidies were charged to the Admiralty. In that year the burden was transferred to the Post-Office, although it was notorious that the packets were not established primarily for postal purposes. Thus the West India packets were to cost £250,000 a year, though the postage was only expected to be £40,000 a year. There was a postal deficit (allowing for subsidies) of £200,000 for India alone.
I am old enough to be suffered to tell one of my favourite stories over again. An M.P., staying in Lincolnshire, saw an old woman come into the local post-office and ask the amount of postage to her son in Australia. On learning that it was sixpence, she said she had not so much, and was tottering away, almost in tears, when the M.P. paid the trifle required.
