PREFACE.

The following pages give some particulars of the changes that have taken place in the Post Office service during the past hundred years; and the matter may prove interesting, not only on account of the changes themselves, but in respect of the influence which the growing usefulness of the Postal Service must necessarily have upon almost every relation of political, educational, social, and commercial life. More especially may the subject be found attractive at the close of the present year, when the country has been celebrating the Jubilee of the Penny Post.

Edinburgh,
December 1890.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
[Frontispiece—Mail-Coach in Thunderstorm.]
Past and Present contrasted,[1]
Liberty of Subject and Public Opinion,[5]
Abuses of Power,[7]
Slow Diffusion of News,[17]
[Illustration—Analysis of London to Edinburgh Mail of 2d March 1838]
State of Roads and Insecurity of Travelling,[27]
Foot and Horse Posts,[33]
[Illustration—The Mail, 1803]
The Mail-Coach Era,[40]
[Illustration—The Mail, 1824]
[Illustration—Modern Mail "Apparatus" for Exchange of Mails]
[Illustration—The Mail-Coach Guard]
Dear Postage,[80]
[Diagrams—Roundabout Communications]
Streets first Numbered,[88]
Postmasters as News Collectors,[91]
[Illustration—The Bellman]
Mail-Packet Service,[96]
[Illustration—Holyhead and Kingstown Packet "Prince Arthur"]
Penny Postage,[111]
[Illustration—Handbill used in Penny Postage Agitation]
Various Business of the Post Office,[119]
Staff of the Post Office,[123]
[Illustration—Tontine Reading-Rooms Glasgow]
Value of Early News by Post,[130]
Diffusion of Parliamentary News by the Telegraph and Press,[136]
Results of Rapid Communications,[139]