RALPH ALLEN,

THE MAN OF BUSINESS AND PHILANTHROPIST.

RALPH ALLEN,

THE MAN OF BUSINESS AND PHILANTHROPIST.

St. Blazey Highway has a clear title to being the birthplace of Ralph Allen; but his parentage is doubtful, owing to his name not appearing in the baptismal register, and to the obscurity caused by the two following entries in the Register of Marriages:

Ralph was born about 1694. His father kept a small inn called 'The Duke William'—sometimes 'The Old Duke'—(the site of which is now occupied by three or four dwelling-houses), and he seems to have been a man of good common-sense and sturdy disposition, judging from one or two slight anecdotes of him which have come down to us: doubtless he gave his boy Ralph good advice, if not much literary instruction. But the youngster primarily owed most of his remarkable success in life to the fact of his happening to be staying with his grandmother, who kept the St. Columb Post-office, when the Government Inspector came his rounds. This officer seems to have at once recognised the shrewdness and neat-handedness of the lad; and an appointment in the Post-office at Bath, to which place young Ralph was brought under the care of Sir John Trevelyan, was, before long, offered to him. Here he soon distinguished himself by detecting a plot to introduce into Bath illegally, in connexion with the Jacobite rising of 1715, a quantity of arms. This discovery he forthwith communicated to General Wade, who thereupon became his friend and patron, and whose natural daughter—so Pierce Egan tells us—a Miss Earl, became Allen's first wife. His first wife, but not his first love: her he magnanimously portioned, and yielded up to another man, with whom he thought she might be happier; and hence, probably, the reason why the basso-relievo of Scipio's resignation of his captive was selected as one of the principal decorations of the Hall at Prior Park. Farington thus refers to Allen's discovery of the Jacobite plot: 'When the rebellion burst out, a numerous junto in Bath took most active measures to aid the insurrection in the West of England; and Mr. Carte, the minister of the Abbey Church, when Allen detected the plot, was glad to escape from the constables by leaping from a window in full canonicals.'

On his becoming Deputy Postmaster at Bath, the anomalies and inconveniences attendant upon the postal system, as it was then worked, engaged Allen's serious attention. It will scarcely be believed that in those days a letter from Cheltenham or Bath to Worcester or Birmingham was actually sent first to London! To remedy this state of things Allen by degrees perfected that scheme of cross-posts throughout England and Wales with which his name will always be associated, and for which he was himself the contractor for many years; viz. from 1720 to 1764.[6] Accounts differ as to the profits which accrued to him under this contract, which was from time to time renewed; but there is no reason to doubt the story that ultimately he cleared by it no less a sum than half a million sterling.

In 1644, by a Resolution of the House of Commons, Edmund Prideaux, a Member of the House, was constituted Master of the Post Messengers and Carriers, and in 1649 he established a weekly conveyance to every part of the kingdom, in lieu of the former practice under which letters were sent by special messengers whose duty it was to supply relays of horses at a certain mileage. In 1658 Cromwell made Prideaux one of his Baronets; and he acquired great wealth. It is said that his emoluments in connexion with the Post Office were not less than £15,000 a year. (Maclean's Trigg Minor, vol. ii. pp. 210-11.) Thus, whilst to one West-countryman, who, if not indeed a Cornishman by birth (for the Prideauxes were lords of Prideaux, close to Allen's birth-place), was at least of Cornish extraction—Postmaster-General Edmund Prideaux, Attorney-General—we owe in a great measure the regular efficient establishment of the Post Office and its first becoming a source of revenue—to another Cornishman, the subject of these remarks, we are indebted for the important improvements referred to above.

In the Home Office Papers, 1761 (2nd and 5th December, Post Office Pl. 5, 385—'By-way and Cross-road Posts'), will be found 'a narrative of Mr. Allen's transactions with the Government for the better management of the by-way and cross-road posts from the year 1720 to the year 1762, whereby it will be seen how much he has been the instrument of increasing the revenue and encouraging the commerce of this kingdom during the whole of that long interval. Dated 2nd December, 1761.' The narrative shows that in 1710 the country postmasters collected quantities of 'by or way letters,' and clandestinely conveyed them. Correspondence was