The greatest improvement in the English mail service, during the eighteenth century, was the introduction of mail coaches. This was brought about by the energy and perseverance of John Palmer, Esq. Like most of those who introduce great improvements, he was an "outsider," one unacquainted by business habits and associations, with the postal service.

At that time (about 1783) stage coaches, with passengers, traversed the country over all the principal roads, and ran from five to seven miles an hour. The mails, however, had never had any better conveyance than that of a horse or a gig, managed by a man or boy. The whole mail service was on a most irregular footing; mail robberies were frequent, and the speed did not average over three and a half miles an hour.

Mr. Palmer's plan was, to have the mails transferred to the stage coaches, that the swiftest conveyance which the country afforded should carry the mails. For so obvious an improvement, we would suppose that there would be little or no opposition. Parliamentary Committees were appointed, Post Masters General reported, and all the officials were against it! Statesmen took it up; the proposition was debated in Parliament; and, after many years of persevering labor, Mr. Palmer saw his plan adopted.

But opposition did not end here. There were more reports against it, and those who opposed at first from ignorance, and a belief that no improvement would result, now kept up their opposition from a dread of being thought false prophets. But there were those who appreciated the improvement, and Mr. Palmer got a pension from Government of three thousand pounds a year for life, and afterwards a grant of fifty thousand pounds, for the benefit his improvement in the mail service had been to the revenue of the country.

We have, from a well known post-office reformer,[2] a nice piece of sarcasm for the special benefit of those who oppose great improvements, and then deny their value after they have been adopted and proved.

A report from the English Post Master General says: "From a comparison of the gross produce of inland postage: for four months, and from every other comparison they have been able to make, they were perfectly satisfied that the revenue has been very considerably decreased by the plan of mail coaches."

This report gives the opinions of the Lords of the Treasury, and enlarges on the innumerable inconveniences which the change had occasioned. The great post-office reformer, forty years after this, makes the following comment:—

"Heavy must be the responsibility on those who thus persisted in folly and mischief; and wonderful is it that Mr. Palmer should have been able to beguile the Government and the legislature into sanctioning his mad career! Who was the statesman, unworthy of the name, that thus gave the rein to audacity; that thus became, in his besotted ignorance, the tool of presumption? Who stood god-father to the vile abortion, and insisted on the admission of the hideous and deformed monster into the sacred precincts of Lombard Street, the seat of perfection? His name—alas! that the lynx should be guided by the mole! that Samson should be seduced by Delilah! Palimirus allured by a dream!—his name was William Pitt."