Her Majesty's Mails

FOOTNOTES: [166] At this period the packets were worked at a considerable loss; though this large item was occasioned by the war, yet the sea-postage never amounted to half the cost of the maintenance of the mail-packets. [167] In the American Colonies, Benjamin Franklin was the last and by far the best colonial Postmaster-General. He had forty years experience of postal work, having been appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737. Mr. Pliny Miles, in his history of the Post-Office in America, New York Bankers' Magazine, vol. vii. p. 360, has furnished many interesting particulars of this period. It appears that Franklin notified his appointment in his own newspaper as follows: "Notice is hereby given, that the Post-Office at Philadelphia is now kept at B. Franklin's in Market Street, and that Henry Pratt is appointed riding-postmaster for all stages between Philadelphia and Newport, Virginia, who sets out about the beginning (!) of each month, and returns in twenty-four days, by whom gentlemen, merchants, and others may have their letters carefully conveyed." What follows is also interesting. It would seem that Franklin was somewhat unceremoniously dismissed from his post, upon which he wrote, by way of protest, that up to the date of his appointment "the American Post-Office never had paid anything to Britain. We (himself and assistant) were to have 600l. a-year between us, if we could make that sum out of the profits of the office. To do this, a variety of improvements were necessary; some of these were, inevitably, at the beginning expensive; so that in the first four years the office became above 900l. in debt to us. But it soon after began to repay us; and before I was displaced by a freak of the Minister's we had brought it to yield three times as much clear revenue to the Crown as the whole Post-Office of Ireland. Since that imprudent transaction," adds Franklin, with a bit of pardonable irony, "they have received from it--not one farthing!"