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

The coachman, though not a Post Office servant— he was employed by the contractors— always wore a brilliant uniform; and the mail guard, an officer of the Postmaster-General, also arrayed in bright uniform, carried firearms. The mail guard had to see that time was kept, and especially that there was no delay in the time allowed for refreshments. The instructions to guards bring home to us the ways of the road a hundred years ago. At the beginning of the last century the chief superintendent of mail coaches was Thomas Hasker, an official of the Post Office. His instructions, written in homely language, seem to be instinct with a vitalising influence which was speeding up the whole system. What to him was the safety of mere passengers compared with the punctual delivery of his Majesty's mails? To the postmaster of Ipswich he wrote: “Tell Mr. Foster to get fresh horses immediately, and that I must see him in town next Monday. Shameful work— three hours and twenty minutes coming over his eighteen miles!” On the Exeter road the mail guards were instructed by him as follows: “You are not to stop at any place whatever to leave any letters at, but to blow your horn to give the people notice that you have got letters for them. Therefore if they do not choose to come out to receive them don't you get down from your dicky, but take them on to Exeter and bring them back with you on your next journey.” Again an instruction to the mail guards reads: “If the coachman go into a public-house to drink, don't you go with him and make the stop longer, but hurry him out.”