THE EARLY MAIL-COACHES 165 



supreme in fact, although nominally responsible 

 to the Postmasters-General. At this period the 

 Post Office, which had staggered on from job to 

 job from its very inception, and had been purged 

 from time to time only to settle down on every 

 occasion into a ncAV era of corruption and theft of 

 every degree, from the most pettifogging 2)ilfering 

 up to malversation of funds on a monumental 

 scale, was riddled through and through with 

 scandals. There had long been a succession of 

 joint Postmasters-General from 1690, when Sir 

 Robert Cotton and Mr. Thomas Prankland were 

 appointed ; and that double-barrelled office, 

 although conducted by those first incumbents in 

 an efficient and altogether praiseworthy manner, 

 had long degenerated into a political appointment. 

 Cotton and Prankland had l)een more than official 

 figureheads. They had resided at the General 

 Post Office, and were hard-working and con- 

 scientious servants of the pul)lic. Their successors 

 degenerated into impracticable officers of State, 

 who usually only took part in Post Office work 

 to the extent of signing official documents they 

 never read, and never actively interfered but to 

 perpetrate some new job, or — for they commonly 

 were violently jealous of one another — for the 

 purpose of undoing some already existent scandal 

 set agoing by their fellow Postmaster-General. 



It was Palmer's misfortune to go to the Post 

 Office at a time when these gilded figureheads 

 were not perhajis more efficient, but certainly 

 more interfering, than the generality, and, being 



