Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/587

Rh 1533-1836.] POST-OFFICE 565 It was during the possession of the post-office profits by the duke of York that a London penny post was estab lished by the joint enterprise of William Dockwra, a searcher at the customs house, and of Robert Murray, a clerk in the excise office. The working-out of the plan fell to the first-named, and in his hands it gave in April 1680 although but for a short time far more extensive postal facilities to the Londoners than even those so memorably afforded 160 years later by the plans of Sir liowland Hill. The London of that day was small, and easily manageable. Dockwra carried, registered, and in sured, for a penny, both letters and parcels up to a pound in weight and 10 in value. He took what had been the mansion of Sir Robert Abdy in Lime Street as a chief office, established seven sorting and district offices (thus anticipating one of the most recent improvements of the present time) and between 400 and 500 receiving-houses and wall-boxes. He established hourly collections, with a maximum of ten deliveries daily for the central part of the city, and a minimum of six for the suburbs. Outlying villages, such as Hackney and Islington, had four daily deliveries ; and his letter-carriers collected for each despatch of the general post-office throughout the whole of the city and suburbs. Suits were laid against him in the court of King s Bench for infringing on the duke of York s patent, and the jealousies of the farmers eventually prevailed. The penny post was made a branch of the general post. Dockwra, after the Revolution of 1688, obtained a pension of 500 a year (for a limited term) in compensation of his losses. In 1697 he was made comptroller of the London office. Eleven years later his improvements were outvied by Charles Povey, the author of schemes for im proving coinage, and also of a very curious volume, often wrongly ascribed to Defoe, entitled The Visions of Sir Heister Ryley. Povey took upon himself to set up a foot- post under the name of the &quot; halfpenny carriage,&quot; appointed receiving-houses, and employed several persons to collect and deliver letters for hire within the cities of London and Westminster and borough of Southwark, &quot;to the great prejudice of the revenue,&quot; as was represented by the post master-general to the lords of the treasury. Povey was compelled to desist. At this period the postal system of Scotland was distinct from that of England. It had been reorganized early in the reign of Charles II., who in September 1662 had appointed Patrick Grahame of Inchbrakie to be postmaster-general of Scotland for life at a salary of 500 Scots. But it would seem from the proceedings of the Scottish privy council that the rights and duties of the office were ill denned ; for immediately after the appointment of Grahame the council commissioned Robert Mein, merchant and keeper of the letter-office in Edinburgh, to establish posts between Scotland and Ireland, ordained that Linlithgow, Kilsyth, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Dumboag, Ballantrao, and Portpatrick should be stages on the route, and granted him the sum of 200 sterling to build a packet- boat to carry the mail from Portpatrick to Donaghadee. 1 The colonial post-office at this period was naturally more rudi mentary still. Perhaps the earliest official notice of it is to be seen in the following paragraph from the records of the general court of Massachusetts in 1639. &quot;It is ordered that notice be given that Richard Fairbanks his house in Boston is the place appointed for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas, or are to be sent thither to be left with him ; and he is to take care that they are to be delivered or sent according to the directions ; and he is allowed for every letter a penny, and must answer all miscarriages through his own neglect in this kind.&quot; That court in 1667 was petitioned to make better postal arrangements, the petitioners alleging the frequent &quot; loss of letters whereby merchants, especially with their friends and employers in foreign parts, are greatly dam nified ; many times the letters are imputed (?) and thrown upon the Exchange, so that those who will may take them up, no person, without some satisfaction, being willing to trouble their houses therewith.&quot; In Virginia the postal system was yet more primitive. The colonial law of 1657 required every planter to provide a messen ger to convey the despatches as they arrived to the next plantation, and so on, on pain of forfeiting a hogshead of tobacco in default. 1 Lang, Historical Summary of the Post-Office in Scotland, 4, 5. datiou The Government of New York in 1672 established &quot;a post to goe monthly from New York to Boston,&quot; advertising &quot;those that bee disposed to send letters, to bring them to the secretary s office, where, in a lockt box, they shall be preserved till the messenger calls for them, all persons paying the post before the bagg be sealed up.&quot; 2 Thirty years later this monthly post had become a fort nightly one, as we see by the following paragraph in the Boston News -Letter. &quot;By order of the postmaster - general of North America. These are to give notice, That on Monday night, the 6th of December, the Western Post between Boston and New York sets out once a fortnight, the three winter months of December, January, and February, and to go alternately from Boston to Say- brook, and Hartford, to exchange the mayle of letters with the New York Ryder ; the first turn for Saybrook, to meet the New York Ryder on Saturday night the llth currant ; and the second turn he sets out at Boston on Monday night the 20th currant, to meet the New York Ryder at Hartford, on Saturday night the 25th currant, to exchange Mayles ; and all persons that sends letters from Boston to Connecticut from and after the 13th inst. are hereby notified first to pay the Postage on the same.&quot; 3 This office of post master-general for America had been created in 1692. We have now traced the postal communications of dif- Act of ferent portions of the British empire from their earliest consoli- beginnings until the eve of the passing of the Act of the 9th of Queen Anne which consolidated them into one establishment, and which, as to organization, continued to be the great charter of the post-office until the date of the important reforms of 1838-50, mainly introduced by the energy, skill, and characteristic pertinacity of Sir Rowland Hill. The Act of Anne largely increased the powers of the postmaster-general. It reorganized the chief letter-offices of Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York, and settled new offices in the West Indies and elsewhere. It established three rates of single postage, viz., English, 3d. if under 80 miles and 4d. if above, and 6d. to Edinburgh or Dublin. It continued to the postmaster-general the sole privilege &quot; to provide horses to persons riding post.&quot; And it gave, for the first time, parliamentary sanction to the power, formerly questionable, of the secretaries of state with respect to the opening of letters, by enacting that &quot;from and after the first day of June 1711 no person or persons shall presume ... to open, detain, or delay. . . any letter or letters. . . after the same is or shall be delivered into the general or other post-office,. . . and before delivery to the persons to whom they are directed, or for their use, except by an express warrant in writing under the hand of one of the principal secretaries of state, for every such opening, detaining, or delaying.&quot; Nine years after the passing of the Act of Anne the Cross- cross-posts were farmed to the well-known &quot; humble &quot;road Ralph Allen, the lover of peace and of humanity. 4 pos Allen became the inventor of the cross-roads postal system, having made an agreement that the new profits so created should be his own during his lifetime. His improvements were so successful that he is said to have netted during forty- two years an average profit of nearly 12,000 a year. The postal revenue of Great Britain, meanwhile, stood thus : TABLE I. Gross and Nett Income, 1724-1774. Gross Produce. Nett Revenue. s. d. s. d. 1724 178,071 16 9 96,339 7 5 1734 176,334 3 1 91,701 11 1744 194,461 8 7 85,114 9 4 1754 214,300 10 6 97,365 5 1 1764 225,326 5 8 116,182 8 5 1774 313,032 14 6 164,077 8 4 2 Miles, History of the Post - Office, &quot; in the American Banker s Magazine, n. s., vii. 358 sq. 3 Buckingham, Specimens of Newspaper Literature (Boston, 1850), i. 16, 17 4 &quot; Is there a variance ? enter but his door, Balked are the courts ; the contest is no more.&quot; Pope s &quot;humble Allen&quot; was also the &quot;Allworthy &quot; of Fielding.