Her Majesty's Mails

[55] Vide Report of the Committee of House of Commons in 1797, on "Mr. Palmer's Agreement for the Reform and Improvement of the Post-Office and its Revenue," p. 115. [56] Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the state of the Public Offices in 1788. [57] Post-Office robberies had been exceedingly numerous within a few years of the change which Palmer succeeded in inaugurating. Though one prosecution for a single robbery cost the authorities no less a sum than 4,000l., yet they regarded the occurrences as unavoidable and simply matters of course. [58] Mr. M. D. Hill, in Fraser's Magazine, November, 1862. [59] The Liverpool merchants were the first to petition the Treasury for the new mail-coach. "This petition being complied with in the course of a few months, the letters from London reached Liverpool in thirty hours. At first these coaches were small vehicles, drawn by two horses, which were changed every six miles. They carried four passengers, besides the coachman and guard, both dressed in livery, the latter being armed to the teeth, as a security against highwaymen."--Baines's History of Liverpool. In October, 1784, York applied for a mail-coach, to pass through that place on its way to the North. [60] This velocity was not attained without considerable misgivings and distrust on the part of travellers. When the eight was increased to ten miles an hour, the public mind was found to be in different stages of alarm and revolt. Vested interests indulged in the gloomiest forebodings on those who should thus knowingly spurn the way of Providence. Lord-Chancellor Campbell relates that he was frequently warned against travelling in the mail-coaches improved by Palmer, on account of the fearful rate at which they flew, and instances were supplied to him of passengers who had died suddenly of apoplexy from the rapidity of the motion.