Waukesha, Wis.
What country first established a postal system for transmitting the mail? When was postal communication established in America? Give us a few facts on this subject.
J. J. S.
Answer.—Couriers for carrying royal or government dispatches are mentioned in histories of the earliest times. Royal posts existed in Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The name postoffice originated in the posts, or stations, at intervals along the roads of the Roman Empire, where couriers were kept in readiness to start on the instant. But such posts were not used for transmitting private letters. The first postal system for commercial and private correspondence appears to have been established between the Hanse Towns early in the thirteenth century. In the reign of the Emperor Maximilian I., of Germany, letter posts were established by the Princes of Thurn and Taxis, connecting the chief cities of Austria and Lombardy, and later, 1516, the same princes connected Vienna and Brussels in the same way. Maximilian’s successor, Charles V., encouraged still further extension of this private postal system by repeated enfeoffments or special franchises, until all the great commercial centers of his vast empire, from Vienna to Madrid, from the Adriatic to the North Sea, and intervening places, were brought into regular postal communication. Far back in the twelfth century the University of Paris, whose students, gathered from all civilized nations, numbered not long after this over 25,000, employed foot-runners to carry letters for its members to all parts of Europe. But not until 1524 was permission granted to the royal French posts to carry other letters than those for the government and the nobility. London merchants established a postal communication of their own with France and other continental countries as early as the fifteenth century, and it is evident that, although the royal post of England established in the thirteenth century was intended and long restricted to the transmission of government dispatches only, it had gradually become a vehicle for private correspondence. In 1581 Thomas Randolph was appointed the “Chief Postmaster” for England, with authority to establish and supervise post-houses and regulate the fees charged by postmen, but apparently without authority to receive and handle mail matter, which was left largely to the discretion of the postmen themselves. Not until the time of James I. of England was a postmaster for foreign parts appointed, and steps taken by the government to establish regular running posts, going day and night, for the transmission of letters for the general public. In 1635 such a mail was established to run weekly between London and Edinburgh, and soon eight other lines were instituted.
In this country, Massachusetts provided by legislation for the postal system as early as 1639, and Virginia in 1657. A monthly post between Boston and New York was instituted in 1672. In the beginning, letters arriving in this country from beyond the seas were delivered on board the ship. Letters not called for were left by the captain at a coffee-house near the wharf, where they were spread on a table or shelf, awaiting call. Persons calling not only took charge of their own letters, but of those of acquaintances in their neighborhood, either delivering them in person or leaving them at the minister’s or some magistrate’s office to be inquired for, or announced in church. These coffee-houses gradually grew into common use for letters between cities and the interiors, until regular posts were instituted. One of the first acts of the Continental Congress was the establishment of a general postoffice department, and the appointment of Benjamin Franklin, who had enjoyed large experience in the British colonial postal service, as the first Postmaster General.
FINANCIAL CONDITION OF FRANCE.
Hamilton, N. M.
What is the financial condition of France as compared with other European countries? Is she prepared to cope with Great Britain in case of a war between them?
E. L. Easdale.