18 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. m. 



and, as civilization advanced, arrangements were made 

 for the conveyance of letters at a comparatively small 

 cost. A Post Office for the public service was first estab- 

 lished by some Continental merchants in the fourteenth 

 century; but it was not till the time of Charles I. that 

 anything of the kind was to be found in England, and 

 then it was mainly for the purpose of keeping up a com- 

 munication between London and Edinburgh, and the 

 intervening large towns, for Government purposes. It 

 was, however, the starting-point of our existing postal 

 system, which has been gradually extended under the 

 direction of the King's Postmaster General, and has con- 

 tinued to be a Government monopoly to our day. The 

 letters were carried on horseback till 1783, when mail 

 coaches were first introduced; and these led to a great 

 improvement in our main roads, and the extension of 

 the postal service to every town and village in the 

 kingdom. 



But even with good roads and mail coaches, the actual 

 time taken in the despatch of a letter to a distant place 

 was little if any less than had been possible from the 

 earliest times, by means of relays of runners on foot or 

 by swift horsemen. The improvement consisted in the 

 regularity and economy of the postal sendee. The in- 

 troduction of railways and steamships enabled much 

 greater speed to be secured; but the greatest and most 

 beneficial improvement in the administration of the 

 Post Office was that inaugurated by Rowland Hill in 

 1840. The rule then first introduced, of an uniform 

 charge irrespective of distance, is one of those entirely 

 new departures so many of which characterize our cen- 

 tury, and which not only produce immediate beneficial 





