MAIL-COACHES 39 



to the fact that the Post Office Insisted on the improve- 

 ment of the roads, yet they contributed nothing towards 

 their upkeep. 



A toUkeeper was bound to have the gate open for the 

 mail to go through, if he negle6led to do so he was liable 

 to a fine of 40s. Should he attempt to delay its passage 

 in any way he could be fined ^5, whilst for a like offence 

 an innkeeper was deprived of his licence. An attempt 

 at robbery entailed the sentence of transportation for 

 life, and punishments in proportion were provided for 

 carriers, and other users of the road, who did not in- 

 stantly "give the road" to the mails. 



In consequence of these stringent rules and regulations, 

 the mail-coaches were regarded with great veneration, 

 turnpikes flew open at the sound of the guard's horn, 

 innkeepers were deferential, drivers of other vehicles 

 hastened to efface themselves in the nearest ditch in 

 order that His Majesty's arrogant mails might keep to 

 the middle of the road. Indeed, a mail-coach lighted by 

 powerful lamps, thundering along at the rate of ten 

 miles an hour, was no inconsiderable thing to meet in a 

 narrow country road on a dark night. 



So omnipotent were the Mails that William Hazlitt 

 declared that even "the brother-in-law of a mail-coach 

 driver is himself no mean man," whilst he regarded what 

 would have been insupportable discomforts on a stage- 

 coach, as quite bearable on a mail: "On the outside of 

 any other coach on the tenth of December, with a Scotch 

 mist drizzling through the cloudy moonlight air, I should 

 have been cold, comfortless, impatient, and no doubt wet 



