Note 85 — Chapter VIII

The Post Office traducers of the railway are boastful enough of its services when it suits them to be so. Of Thurso it is thus written, at page 6 of the Postmaster-General’s Eleventh Report (undated)—“The most northern town of Scotland is Thurso, 755 miles distant from London, and the combined effect of these accelerations was to admit of a letter despatched from London on Monday night being delivered in Thurso early on Wednesday morning, and of its reply, if posted about four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon (“about;” is that the way in which letter receptacles are closed in the north of Scotland?), reaching London in time for the first delivery on Friday morning.” As the Post Office chooses to make unfair attacks upon railways, the Post Office must expect retaliation. Therefore, Mr. Seely, of the Admiralty, may we beg you to note there is no end of Post Office “pigs” that can be placed in your hands to work upon, and we beg you to take one, now, to start with. At the commencement of 1867, the department gave the year’s notice it is bound to give, to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, that its Mediterranean contracts should cease on the 31st of January, 1868. In March, 1867, advertisements were issued inviting tenders for the conveyance of these mails, the service to commence on the 1st of February, 1868. Attached to the form of tender are thirty-eight conditions. By the 31st of these it is stipulated that “the contract shall not be binding until it has lain on the table of the House of Commons for one month without disapproval, unless, previous to the lapse of that period, it has been approved by a resolution of the House.” We believe we were the first to call the public attention to the fact that, as the day for receiving tenders was Monday, the 16th of September, 1867, and as the new contractors would have to commence on the 1st of February, 1868, they would, in that case, not only incur all the risk of providing vessels and suitable arrangements for carrying on the service for a period that might last six years, but they would have actually commenced it several days before the contract could be laid upon the table of the House of Commons. This was in consequence of the House not usually meeting until the 3rd or 4th of February, and it might not be approved until the same date in the following month.