Her Majesty's Mails

"The oldest and ablest officers in the service" represented them "not only to be impracticable, but dangerous to commerce and the revenue."[56] The accounts of the way in which they met some of his proposals is most amusing and instructive. Thus, Palmer recommended Mr. Pitt to take some commercial men into his councils, and they would not fail to convince him of the great need there was for change. He also submitted that the suggestions of commercial men should be listened to more frequently, when postal arrangements for their respective districts should be made. Mr. Hodgson, one of the prominent officers of the Post-Office, indignantly answered that "it was not possible that any set of gentlemen, merchants, or outriders (commercial travellers, we suppose), could instruct officers brought up in the business of the Post-Office. And it is particularly to be hoped," said this gentlemen, with a spice of malice, "if not presumed, that the surveyors need no such information." He "ventured to say, that the post as then managed was admirably connected in all its parts, well-regulated, carefully attended to, and not to be improved by any person unacquainted with the whole. It is a pity," he sarcastically added, "that Mr. Palmer should not first have been informed of the nature of the business in question, to make him understand how very differently the post and post-offices are conducted to what he apprehends."