The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

It is usual, in telling the story of the Post Office, to go as far back as Greek, Roman, and Jewish times. In almost every book and article on the subject we are reminded that Ahasuerus sent letters into all provinces concerning his wife Vashti, and that Queen Jezebel has at least one urbane action to her credit in that she despatched the first recorded circular letter. Then we are reminded that Cicero and Pliny were accomplished correspondents, and that St. Paul wrote letters which have had a wide circulation. But these instances usually belong to the history of letter-writing and have little relation to our subject. It is obvious that so soon as letters began to be written in any nation they must have been despatched by some means or other to the persons for whom the communications were intended. Ancient history has many instances of posts specially created for the delivery of perhaps only one letter. The story of the Post Office can only properly begin at the time when the first efforts were made to systematise what was already a prevailing habit of the people. The history of the British Post Office as a system can be divided into three periods. There was the age of the post-horses and postboys, extending from the time of the Tudors far into the eighteenth century. There was the age of the mail coaches, the romantic age of the General Post Office, full of stirring deeds and adventures. Indeed the title “His Majesty's Mails” would have accurately described the whole of the business transacted by the British Post Office during these centuries. Lastly there is the age in which we are living, the age of the mail train, which has produced a wide extension of the duties of the Department, and the despatch and delivery of letters is now only one of its activities. There is possibly another age in the near future of which we can already distinguish the dawn, that of the airship and aeroplane, but we are dealing in these pages with only accomplished facts.