MAIL-GUARDS 263 



restaurants, to pay for the privilege of receiving 

 fees and tips. The salary Avas, in fact, merely 

 a nominal retaining-fee, to give the Department 

 a hold upon them. But there were a number of 

 cross-country mails that were not nearly so profit- 

 able as those that ran direct from London, and 

 it is to be feared that their guards did not always 

 do so particularly well. Nor even did those on 

 the great mail-coaches keep their handsome incomes 

 at the last. Railways impoverished many a mail 

 before they were finally withdrawn, and it was 

 then that the guards agitated for higher salaries. 

 Their perquisites had reached the vanishing-point, 

 and at last the Post Ofiice agreed to a new scale of 

 pay. From 1842 the guards were to receive from 

 £70 to £120 a year, according to length of service, 

 but at the same time Avere forbidden to receive 

 gratuities. This looks like a concession made by 

 some malevolent humorist, for already most of 

 the mails had been withdrawn. 



But mail- guards were, as a class, more 

 fortunate than their brethren of the stage-coaches 

 when railways ran them off the road. It is true 

 that they keenly felt the loss of the great popu- 

 larity they had enjoyed, and more keenly still did 

 they miss the very handsome incomes they in 

 many instances had made ; but as officials directly 

 employed by the Post Office, it Avas incumbent 

 upon that Department to find them employ or to 

 pension them. No such assured future could, or 

 did, cheer the lot of the coachmen of the mails, or 

 the coachmen or the guards of the stages. 



