The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

In establishing a post to Blairgowrie it was neither ignorant nor arbitrary to take the line by Isla Bridge, which was the centre of the country meant to be served by it--that is, the Coupar and the Stormont and Highland district. It is of some consequence to observe here, that with all the great and rapid improvements mentioned in the memorial, of the lower or Coupar district, the upper or Stormont district was, upon the first year's trial, above one-half of its revenue to the Post-office, the second nearly or about three-fourths, and continuing to increase in proportion. Coupar-Angus revenue for the year ending 10th October last was L159, 3s. 7d., and Blairgowrie L123, 4s. 10d. Now, if the Coupar district of country, which contains in it a populous market-town, can produce no more than this proportion for the whole district, it is evident that the district of Stormont, with only as yet a little village for its head town, has more correspondence in regard to its state of agriculture and improvement as an infant district, than the parent district with its antiquity can lay claim to, and equally well entitled at least to be protected and nourished. Much is said of the memorialists' line of road, and of its being one from time immemorial. I have said in a former paper that this may be the case; many of the roads in Scotland, God knows, are old enough. But unless the feudal system should still exist upon any of them, I know of no law, no regulation, no compulsion, that can oblige the post, more than any other traveller, to take these old beaten tracks where they can find any other patent or better road. Nay, more,--as a traveller, I am entitled to take any patent road I choose, good or bad; and the moment this privilege is doubted in regard to the post, you resign at once the power of all future improvements so far as it belongs to your official situation to judge it, and let or dispose of in lease the use of your posts to particular and local proprietors of lands, who will be right to take every advantage of it in their power, and include it specifically in the rental of their estates, as I have known to be the case with inns in which post-offices had formerly been kept.