This is the story told in the ensuing pages. It is taken up from the year 1793, because that year, the first of the great struggle for mastery on which no Englishman can look back without pride, serves well to mark the commencement of the new order of things. Moreover, much more is to be known about the Packet Service from 1793 onwards than can be gleaned concerning the earlier period. The departmental records are fairly complete thenceforward; some account, at least, of every sea fight is preserved; and among piles of brown and dusty papers, from some of which the ink is fading fast, there has lain untouched for ninety years, not only the story of a piece of administrative work, as difficult and as useful to this country as any that has ever been carried through by patient effort, but also a whole series of naval actions, of which the Post-Office was once proud, and of which Cornishmen are proud still, though they have forgotten the details of most. CHAPTER III. A FIRMER RULE. At the beginning of the year 1793, then, while the relations of this country with France were quickly growing desperate, the two statesmen who, according to the custom of the time, jointly filled the office of Postmaster General, were engaged in endeavouring to set their Department in order, and to reduce the expenses of administration, as the House of Commons Committee had directed. The difficulty of any interference in a system which had grown up through a whole century was obviously very great. Malpractices which four generations of officers at Falmouth had learned to regard as their natural privileges would not be given up at the first word of rebuke from headquarters. The profits of smuggling would not be dropped without a struggle. Laxity of discipline, remissness, carelessness of the credit of the Department—these were faults which, where they existed, could be cured only by a firm rule and in course of years. One decision had, however, been taken, and was already being carried out, from which important results proceeded, and which upon the whole effected much good. Throughout the whole existence of the Falmouth Packets up to this time it had scarcely been questioned that on the long Atlantic voyages the safety of the mails was directly proportionate to the heaviness of the armament. The West India merchants were perpetually forcing this point on the Postmaster General, and whenever a mail for Barbados or Jamaica was lost, the General Post-Office was beset with an indignant throng of merchants, loudly demanding that more and more guns should be assigned to every Packet which had to run the gauntlet of the West India Islands.