Her Majesty's Mails

It is certainly remarkable that neither in this nor in any other recorded instance have the posts in ancient times developed into one for the conveyance of private correspondence. It is certain that the Greeks and Romans, even when at the height of their civilization, had no regular public post. There are some traces of statores and stationes under the Roman Republic; and Augustus, we find, instituted posts on the principal trunk-roads, for the use of the Imperial Government. He also established a class of mounted messengers, called tabellarii, who went in charge of the despatches. That these messengers should have been strictly forbidden to convey letters for private persons, or that no provision was subsequently made for that purpose, is the more wonderful, when we consider the high character of the nations themselves, and the fact, often pointed out, that the progress of civilization has always been intimately and essentially connected with, and dependent upon, facilities for intercommunication--keeping pace, in fact, with the means which nations possessed for the interchange of person and property, and with them of thought and knowledge. That those nations to which we are so greatly indebted for so much that exalts the intellect and adorns life, should not have left us an example of such a useful and (considering the vast extent of their respective territories), we should have thought, indispensable institution as that of a public letter-post, is marvellous. Marco Polo, the famous Venetian, who travelled in China in the fourteenth century,[3] describes the government post as similar to that in use in Persia under Cyrus. The posts had existed in China from the earliest times. Every twenty-five miles there were posts, called jambs, where the imperial envoy was received. There were frequently as many as three or four hundred horses in waiting at one of these places. Polo further states that there were ten thousand stations of this kind in China, some of them affording sumptuous accommodation to travellers. Two hundred thousand horses are said to have been engaged in the service. The fact affords a curious commentary on the progress of civilization in the Celestial Empire, that, though this gigantic and elaborate establishment has been in existence so long and up to the present century, it is only within the last few years that provision has been made in China for public letter-posts.