Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/57

Rh in Scotland. It is ordered that no other messengers nor foot-posts shall carry any letters, but those alone which shall be employed by the king's post-master-general, unless to places to which the king's posts do not go, with the exception of common known carriers, or messengers particularly sent on purpose, or persons carrying a letter for a friend. The mode of conveyance contemplated in this scheme was by persons riding on horseback, which indeed continued to be the general system of our post-office down to within the last fifty or sixty years; the proclamation directs that two-pence-halfpenny per mile shall be paid on the roads to the several post-masters for every single horse carrying the letters. We may observe that, if this post established by Charles I. actually made out the distance between London and Edinburgh in three days, it was a quicker conveyance than the public were possessed of a century later. "The conveyance of post-letters," says Giles Jacob, in the second edition of his Law Dictionary, published in 1732, extends to every considerable market-town, and is so expeditious that every twenty-four hours the post goes six score miles." But at the rate appointed in Charles's proclamation the post between Edinburgh and London must have gone fully seven score miles in the twenty-four hours. It is believed, however, that the project was not fully carried into effect. Witherings, who was now inland as well as foreign postmaster, was superseded in 1640 for abuses in the execution of both his offices; and they were sequestered into the hands of Philip Burlamachy, to be exercised henceforth under the care and oversight of the king's principal secretary of state. From that date, therefore, the Post-Office may be considered as a public establishment.

The continued growth of London affords another proof of the advancing condition of the national commerce, industry, and wealth. Repeated proclamations were published both by James and Charles, as they had been by Elizabeth, with the view of checking the further increase of the capital, which all forcibly attest how irresistibly the evil, as they imagined it to be, made head