Her Majesty's Mails

PREFACE. This volume is the first of a contemplated series designed to furnish some account of the history and ordinary working of the revenue departments of the country--to do for the great Governmental industries what Mr. Smiles has so ably done (to compare his great things with our small) for the profession of civil engineering and several national industries. Few attempts have ever been made to trace the rise and progress of the invaluable institution of the Post-Office. We have more than once seen the question asked in Notes and Queries--that sine quâ non of the curious and the learned--where a continuous account might be found of English postal history. In each case, the inquirer has been referred to a short summary of the history of the Post-Office, prefixed to the Postmaster-General's First Report. Since that, the Messrs. Black, in the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, have supplied an excellent and more extended notice. Still more recently, however, in an admirable paper on the Post-Office in Fraser's Magazine, Mr. Matthew D. Hill has expressed his astonishment that so little study has been given to the subject--that it "has attracted the attention of so small a number of students, and of each, as it would appear, for so short a time." "I have not been able to find," adds Mr. Hill, "that even Germany has produced a single work which affects to furnish more than a sketch or outline of postal history."