The influence of wealthy merchants upon the Post-Office is perhaps in our own day as great as is convenient. But a hundred years ago it was infinitely greater. For the General Post-Office, which has now grown into something resembling a populous town, was then itself scarcely larger than the office of any considerable merchant. Between St. Martin’s le Grand, as we know it, and the office of whatever city firm, there may be interchange of views, but there can be no intimate association; and it is exactly this which existed between the Post-Office in Lombard Street, in 1793, and the neighbouring offices, which were as large, if not as important, as itself. The Post-Office Packets in those days were carriers of news as well as of the mails. The officers had instructions to record most carefully in their journals full details of any events of public importance occurring in the countries which they visited. These journals, which frequently contained news later and more authentic than any which had yet reached London, were sent up from Falmouth immediately after the arrival of the Packets, and lay at the Post-Office open to the inspection of the merchants, who were thus continually in the office, inquiring and commenting on every detail connected with the administration of the Packets, proffering suggestions, and criticizing in season and out of season. This constant association with the clerks of the Post-Office placed in the hands of the West India merchants very great opportunities of pressing their views about the armament of the Packets, and they did press them with such pertinacity and vehemence that it must have required courage on the part of Lords Chesterfield and Carteret to announce the resolution not to increase those armaments, but to cut them down, and to send the Packets to sea in future totally unfit to resist Privateers of their own size. Such was the new policy, arranged in concert with the Navy Board. It was not lacking in audacity. The Packets stationed at Falmouth were of different sizes and varying rig. In future, all new vessels were to be of a certain fixed design, of 179 tons burden, carrying a crew of twenty-eight men and boys, with four 4–pounders, two 6–pounders, for use as chasers, and a proportionate quantity of small arms.