“Whereas their most excelent Maties King Wm and Queen Mary by their letters pattents have granted a Post Office to be set up in these partes of N. E. for the receiving and disspatching of letters and pacquetts from one place to another for their Maties speciall service and the benefit of theire Maties good Subjects in these parts. This court being willing to encourage so good a worke, doe order and enact that all such persons as shall be imployed by the Post Master Gen. in the severall stages within this Colony of Connecticut shall and may pass and repasse all and every ferry within this Colony, from the day of the date hereof for and during this courts pleasure, without payeing any rate or sume of money either for his own or horses passage.”
May, 1698,[61] in response to a complaint that posts and other travellers met with great difficulty in journeying through the colony, especially in the township of Stonington, the court ordered the selectmen to lay out convenient highways, kept cleared and open, unless they passed through ancient common fields, or the general or county court ordered otherwise, and “made good with sufficient causeis and bridges as need shall require,” failure to observe these instructions to be punished by a fine of £10 into the public treasury, and for a continuance of the offence by an annual fine of £10 to be levied upon the selectment or inhabitants.
In May, 1704,[62] the general court decreed that since the post was often impeded, “in cases extraordinarie the authoritie may grant a bill to the Constables for the defraying of such charges as are really necessary.”
Watson,[63] in his Annals of Philadelphia, bases on MSS. in the possession of the Pemberton family, his statement that as early as July, 1683, a weekly post was established by order of William Penn and a grant given to a certain Henry Waldy of Tekonay to hold one, and “supply passengers with horses from Philadelphia to New Castle or the Falls of the Delaware; the rates from the Falls to Philadelphia 3d., to Chester 5d., to New Castle 7d., to Maryland 9d., and from Philadelphia to Chester 2d., to New Castle 4d., to Maryland 6d..” Winsor, in the Narrative and Critical History, adds that the notices of the departure of the post were put on the meeting-house doors and in other public places.
The same year (1683)[64] a law was passed at Philadelphia directing the way in which official letters should be dispatched, in order that the governor might obtain “true and speedy information regarding public affairs, as well from Europe as the neighboring colonies and remote parts of this province and territories thereof.” “Be it Enacted by the authority aforesaid, That every Justice of the Peace, Sheriff or Constable within the respective counties of this province and territories thereof, to whose hands or knowledge any Letter or Letters shall come, directed to or from the governor, shall dispatch them, within 3 hours at the farthest, after the receipt or knowledge thereof, to the next Sheriff or Constable, and so forwards, as the Letter directs, upon the penalty of 20s. for every hour’s delay. And in such cases, all Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs or Constables are hereby empowered to press either man or horse for that service, allowing for a horse or man, 2 pence by the mile, to be paid out of the public stock.”
September 5th, 1700, Penn writes to Logan that he sends a package for Governor Blackeston[65] to be forwarded to the sheriff of New Castle, showing that the custom was in vogue seventeen years after its origin.
The Duke of Yorke’s Laws[66] under the laws made and passed by Benjamin Fletcher, governor of Pennsylvania, and the council and representatives, May 15th and June 1st, 1693, records one for the erection of a post office in Philadelphia by Andrew Hamilton, “from whence all letters & packets may be with all expedition sent into any of the parts of New England and other adjacent colonies in these parts of America, at which said office all returns and answers may be received.” Andrew Hamilton, or some other postmaster-general appointed by the king, was to demand and receive postage according to the following rates: single foreign letters 2d., and each packet 4d.; letters sent from Philadelphia to New York 4d. half penny, to Connecticut 9d., to Rhode Island 12d., to Boston 15d., to points beyond Boston 19d., to Maryland and Virginia 9d., and to every place within eighty miles of Philadelphia 4d. half penny. If foreign letters were left forty-eight hours uncalled for, they were to be delivered and one penny more for each demanded from receiver. Public letters were to go post free; ferriage was to be free for all, and constant posts were to be maintained from Philadelphia to New York and New Castle.
At an assembly held at Philadelphia,[67] May 20th, 1697, Joseph Growden, “chairman of the grand comittee appointed to consider of Andrew Hamilton’s memorial for encouragement to support the post,” reported “that it was the vote of the comittee that a bill be prepared for encouragement to support the post both by the publick and upon private letters.”
Since the charge of the office had much exceeded the postage,[68] the assembly, “being sensible of the benefit of the said office to trade and commerce, and to the province and territories in general if it be continued, and of the great loss that will happen to both if it should happen to fall for want of encouragement,” it was voted that the rates be raised on foreign letters received from 2d. to 4d., on those sent from Philadelphia to New York from 4½d. to 8d., and other rates proportionately. Hamilton was to receive £20 in the silver money of the province from the public treasury annually for three years, the period during which the law was to be in force.
In 1700, a bill was passed to be in effect seven years, which says:[69]