Her Majesty's Mails

He might have added that such had been the experience with the post-boys under the régime which he was endeavouring to perpetuate. Mr. Palmer stipulated, that the mail-guards should in all cases be well armed and accoutred, and such officers "as could be depended upon as trustworthy." But the Post-Office gentlemen objected even to this arrangement. "There were no means of preventing robbery with effect,[57] as the strongest cart or coach that could be made, lined and bound with iron, might easily be broken into by determined robbers," and the employment of armed mail-guards would only make matters worse. Instead of affording protection to the mails, the following precious doctrine was inculcated, that the crime of murder would be added to that of robbery; "for," said the wonderful Mr. Hodgson, "when once desperate fellows had determined upon robbery, resistance would lead to murder"! These were peace and non-resistance principles with a vengeance, but principles which in England, during the later years of Pitt's administration, would seldom be heard, except in furtherance of some such selfish views as those which the Post-Office authorities held in opposition to Mr. Palmer's so-called innovations. Mr. Palmer's propositions also included the timing of the mails at each successive stage, and their departure from the country properly regulated; they would thus be enabled to arrive in London at regular specified times, and not at any hour of the day or night, and might, to some extent, be delivered simultaneously. Again: instead of leaving London at all hours of the night, he suggested that all the coaches for the different roads should leave the General Post-Office at the same time; and thus it was that Palmer established what was, to the stranger in London for many years, one of the first of City sights. Finally, Mr. Palmer's plans were pronounced impossible. "It was an impossibility," his opponents declared, "that the Bath mail could be brought to London in sixteen or eighteen hours."