Palmer had calculated that sixteen hours ought to suffice for the London and Bath coach when covering the distance between the two cities. The time usually spent on the road was thirty-eight hours. The first mail-coach which started from Bath to London under his auspices in 1784 performed the journey in seventeen hours, proving with what nearness to absolute accuracy he had made his calculations. For a while seventeen hours became the customary time-limit. Not long after this date mail-coaches were plying on all the principal roads.
Before the first of Palmer's coaches went to Liverpool, that seaport was served by one letter-carrier. Ten years later, six were needed. One postman had sufficed for Edinburgh; now four were required. Manchester till 1792 had but one letter-carrier, and its postal staff consisted of an aged widow and her daughter. Previous to 1794 the Isle of Wight was served by one postmaster and one letter-carrier only.
Before Palmer took over the management of the coaches they were robbed, along one road or another, at least once a week. It was not till his rule was ten years old that a coach was stopped or robbed; and then it was not a highwayman, but a passenger who did the looting. Before 1784 the annual expenditure incurred through prosecution of the thieves had been a heavy charge on the service, one trial alone—that of the brothers Weston, who figure in Thackeray's “Denis Duval”—having cost £4,000. This burden on the Post Office revenue henceforth shrank into comparatively insignificant dimensions.
Palmer traversed the entire kingdom along its coach routes, making notes of the length of time consumed on each journey, calculating in how much less time it could be performed by the newer vehicles, and always keeping an observant eye on other possible improvements.
Before the end of the eighteenth century Dockwra's London penny post[64] had fallen upon evil days. Neglect and mismanagement had been its lot for many years; there was a steady diminution of its area, and no accounts were kept of its gains. Palmer looked into the condition of the local post, as, in addition to the mail conveyance, he had already looked into the condition of the newspaper post and other things which stood in need of rectification; and, later, the old penny post, now transformed into a twopenny post, was taken in hand by Johnson, who, from the position of letter-carrier, rose, by sheer ability, to the office of “Deputy Comptroller of the Penny Post.”
As a rule, Palmer was fortunate in choosing subordinates, of whom several not only accomplished useful work long after their chief had been dismissed, but who introduced reforms on their own account. Hasker, the head superintendent of the mail-coaches, kept the vehicles, horses, accoutrements, etc., to say nothing of the officials, quite up to Palmer's level. But in another chosen man the great reformer was fatally deceived, for Bonner intrigued against his benefactor, and helped to bring about his downfall.
One reform paves the way for succeeding reforms. Palmer's improved coaches caused a marked increase of travelling; and the establishment of yet better and more numerous vehicles led to the making of better roads. By this time people were beginning to get over the ground at such a rate that the late Lord Campbell, when a young man, was once, in all seriousness, advised to avoid using Palmer's coaches, which, it was said, owing to the speed at which they travelled between London and Edinburgh, and elsewhere, had caused the death of several passengers from apoplexy! “The pace that killed” was 8 miles an hour. By the time the iron horse had beaten the flesh-and-blood quadruped out of the field, or rather road, the coaches were running at the rate of 12 miles an hour.
Everywhere the mails were being accelerated and increased in number. For now the science of engineering was making giant strides; and Telford and his contemporary MacAdam—whose name has enriched our language with a verb, while the man himself endowed our thoroughfares with a solid foundation—were covering Great Britain with highways the like of which had not been seen since the days of the Roman Conquest.
And then arrived the late 'twenties of the nineteenth century, bringing with them talk of railways and of steam-propelled locomotives whose speed, it was prophesied by sanguine enthusiasts, might some day even rival that of a horse at full gallop. The threatened mail-coaches lived on for many a year, but from each long country highway they disappeared one after another, some of them, it is said, carrying, on their last journey, the Union Jack at half-mast; and, ere long, the once busy roadside inn-keepers put up their shutters, and closed the doors of their empty stables. More than half a century had to elapse before the hostelries opened again to the cyclists and motorists who have given to them fresh life and energy.