Note 86 — Chapter III

Mr Ashurst, as we are reminded in Mr Bolton King's “Mazzini” (pp. 88 and 104), was a solicitor who had been a friend of Robert Owen, and who made Mazzini's acquaintance at the time of the once famous Governmental letter-opening scandal which agitated the far-off 'forties, and caused Carlyle, Duncombe, Shiel, Macaulay, and many more people both in the House of Commons and out of it to denounce a practice which, as was only too truly said, through sending “a warning to the Bourbons, helped to entrap hapless patriots,” meaning the brothers Bandiera. The agitation led to the abolition of the custom of opening private letters entrusted for conveyance to the Post Office; or did so for a while. It is a custom that is very old, and has not lacked for apologists, as what evil custom ever did? During Bishop Atterbury's trial in 1723, a Post Office clerk deposed on oath that some letters which were offered in evidence were facsimiles made of actual documents stopped, opened, and copied in the office “by direction”; and on Atterbury's asking if the witness had received warrant for the act, the Lords put in the plea of public expediency, and the enquiry came to an end.