The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

Down to this period the mails from London to Scotland were carried on horseback with something like tolerable speed, taking previous performances into account, for in 1689 it is noted that parliamentary proceedings of Saturday were in the hands of the Edinburgh public on the ensuing Thursday. This rate of travelling does not appear to have been kept up, for in 1715 the post from London to Edinburgh took six days to perform the journey. When it is considered that nearly a century before, the same distance could be covered in three days, this relapse seems to bespeak a sad want of vitality in the Post-office management of the age. The cause of the slow travelling, which appears to have continued for over forty years, comes out in a memorial of traders to the Convention of Burghs in 1758, wherein dissatisfaction was expressed with the existing arrangements of the post,--the mail for London on reaching Newcastle being there delayed about a day, again detained some time at York, and probably further delayed in the south; so that the double journey to and from London occupied eleven days instead of seven or eight, as the memorial deemed sufficient. To the Post-office mind of the present age, this dilatory method of performing the service of forwarding mails is incomprehensible, and the circumstance reflects discreditably both on the Post-office officials who were cognisant of it, and on the public who submitted to it.