The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Illustrated Edition). Robert Thomas Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ reference to fitness for the post. The apportionment of functions and responsibilities was often most bewildering in its nicety and complex elaboration; so that particular matters would be left without any supervision whatever, because it was impossible to determine whose business it was to look after them. Baron Stockmar, who, early in 1841, had drawn up a Memorandum on the subject at the request of the Queen and Prince Albert, wrote, with a certain sense of humour in the midst of his grave exposition, that the Lord Steward found the fuel and laid the fire, while the Lord Chamberlain lighted it; that, in the same manner, the Lord Chamberlain provided all the lamps, while it was the duty of the Lord Steward to clean, trim, and light them. The commonest repairs, such as are required in every house, could not be executed without the order passing through so many hands that months frequently elapsed before the desired result could be effected. The state of things, indeed, was such that Dickens’s Circumlocution Office can hardly be regarded as an exaggeration.

      “As neither the Lord Chamberlain nor the Master of the Horse,” said Baron Stockmar, “has a regular deputy residing in the Palace, more than two-thirds of all the male and female servants are left without a master in the house. They can come and go off duty as they choose; they can remain absent hours and hours on their days of waiting, or they may commit any excess or irregularity; there is nobody to observe, to correct, or to reprimand them. There is no officer responsible for the cleanliness, order, and security of the rooms and offices throughout the Palace.” The laxity of the system was so extreme as to be attended by certain very positive dangers. During the years 1840-41, a young chimney-sweep was more than once discovered hiding in one of the apartments. “The boy Jones” became the talk of the town; but the incident was decidedly unpleasant, although the lad does not seem to have had any evil intent. No such circumstance could have happened with any proper system of supervision; but of system there was positively none. Yet it was a matter of the utmost difficulty to bring about a change in this chaos of incompetence and corruption; and Sir Robert Peel, when consulted on the subject in 1841, deprecated any reform which should seem to impair the authority of the great officers of State. Prince Albert, however, held resolutely to his purpose, and, about the close of 1844, the heads of the several departments were induced to confer on the Master of the Household absolute authority over the whole internal economy of the Palace. From that time forward the Royal dwelling was managed with intelligence and economy.

      In relation to the State the position of the Prince was even more beset with thorns than in respect of his domestic arrangements. It was impossible that he should cut himself off from all interest in the great events of the time; yet he had no place in the Constitution, and it was most necessary that he should avoid even the semblance of interfering in the politics of the country on which he had been affiliated. His own idea was to constitute himself the Private Secretary and confidential adviser of the Queen; and this was the position which, after a while, he actually filled. He read the foreign despatches which it is the duty of Government to submit to the sovereign before sending them out; he wrote notes for the guidance of her Majesty’s judgment, and in many ways assisted the youth and inexperience of one who had been called, without much preparation, to the discharge of onerous duties. The suggestions of the Prince were not seldom accepted by Ministers; though of course it was necessary to regard them as coming from the Queen, as, indeed, by adoption they did. The domestic life of this period was cheered and exalted by reading, by music, by art, and by frequent visits to the theatre, especially to witness the plays of Shakespeare, then interpreted by a school of actors who in these days have scarcely any successors. Occasional visits to Claremont relieved the oppressive monotony of London existence.

      A few weeks before the marriage of Prince Albert, a social and administrative reform had been begun in Great Britain, which must have possessed a very deep interest for his humane and liberal mind. For many years, the Postage system of the country had been in a state wholly inadequate to the requirements of modern civilisation. When a regular Post Office was established in the reign of Charles I. (all communication until then being occasional and precarious), the number of persons who could read and write was small, and the needs of the public were proportionably trivial. But in the middle of the nineteenth century it was imperative that the transmission of letters should be cheap, rapid, and facile. Facile and cheap it certainly was not, and before the full elaboration of the railway system there could be no rapidity in the modern sense of the term. Education was spreading; yet, to relatives and friends divided by a few miles, the expense of a letter was so great that, in many instances, people forbore from writing altogether, or resorted to a number of curious and dishonest tricks for sending and obtaining some sort of intelligence without paying for it. Within a small radius of Charing Cross, London, letters of moderate weight could be transmitted for twopence; but beyond these bounds the tariff was so high as to be prohibitory to all humble folk. The variations in the scale were determined not merely by distance, but also by the weight, and even the size of a letter. For transmission between London and Brighton the charge was eightpence, while nothing could be sent from London to Aberdeen under one shilling and threepence-halfpenny; and the letters so taxed were not to exceed a single sheet, or they paid extra. Peers, members of the House of Commons, and Cabinet Ministers, had the right of “franking,” as the phrase was; that is, by writing their names on the outsides of letters, whether their own or those of other persons, they could secure their free conveyance. In the case of Ministers this privilege was without limits; in the other cases, the right was confined to a certain proportion of letters in the course of the year. The system of franking was bad in every way. It deprived the revenue of what was legitimately its due; it caused a large amount of petty vexation to the holders of the privilege; it humiliated those who went begging for the favour; and it spared the very people who were best able to afford the expenses of the post.

      No one requires to be told that, taking the whole mass of the population, there were but few persons sufficiently intimate with the great ones of the earth to obtain franks. The less fortunate were therefore driven to expedients of their own to evade a pressure which they were unable to bear. Illicit agencies for

      PRINCE ALBERT’S MUSIC ROOM, BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

      the transmission of letters at a cheaper rate were formed in various parts of the kingdom, and these were much employed by mercantile and manufacturing firms, who saved largely by the device. People lower in the scale exercised their wits in a number of contrivances, which were often extremely ingenious, and which it is impossible either to defend, or seriously to accuse. Newspapers were marked with strange dots and other understood symbols, which conveyed a few general facts from the sender to the recipient. Sometimes two or three words were written on one of the margins; but this was very likely to be detected. A much safer plan was to despatch a blank sheet of paper duly directed, the mere sight of which would sufficiently assure B, who received, that A, who sent, was alive and well. The letter could then be at once returned to the postman, on the plea that the postage could not be afforded. An incident of this nature came under the observation of Coleridge when wandering about the

      MR. (AFTERWARDS SIR) ROWLAND HILL.

      Lake district in the days of his early manhood; and there can be little doubt that the same thing was frequently done in many successive years. The evils of the Postal system were slightly mitigated by these stratagems, but only slightly; and, as a rule, the poor were almost entirely deprived of the knowledge of one another, if fifty miles or so separated the brother from the sister, or the mother from the son.

      Nevertheless, the revenue suffered from the several schemes for evading the high rates of postage. Between 1815 and 1835 the population of Great Britain increased thirty per cent.; education had made some progress; and travelling was so much more common that the stage-coach duty (though the railway system had begun by the latter year) had increased one hundred and twenty-eight per cent. Yet during the same time the receipts of the Post Office underwent no augmentation whatever, if, indeed, they did not fall off. It is clear, therefore, that the secret and illicit post must have enjoyed a good deal СКАЧАТЬ