Palmer was, therefore, no impecunious adventurer, but a theatrical proprietor and manager, accustomed to secure the highest talent for his houses in this resort of fashion. His native energy, that brought him success in beating up for talented actors and actresses all over the country, stood him in good stead when the idea of entirely remodelling the carrying of the mails occurred to his active mind. Nothing, indeed, short of the utmost persistence and determination could have surmounted the obstacles to reform that were placed in his way by the Post Office officials. The mails he had perceived to be the slowest travelling in the kingdom, and he decided that they ought to be, and should be, the quickest. His own frequent journeys had shown him the possibilities, and long observation at Bath had displayed how far short of these the postboys’ journeys always fell. Thirty-eight hours were generally taken to perform the 109 miles between the General Post Office and Bath, at a time when travellers posted down in post-chaises in one day. Other objections to postboys existed than on the score of insufficient speed. It was, he declared, in the last degree hazardous to entrust the mail-bags--as inevitably was often done--to some idle boy, without character, and mounted on a worn-out hack, who, so far from being able to defend himself against a robber, was more likely to be in league with one. Post Office postboys, it should here be said, were, like the postboys who drove the post-chaises, by no means necessarily boys or youths. They included, it is true, in their ranks all ages, but the great majority of them were grown-up, not to say aged, men. Some people, indeed, recognising the absurdity of calling a decrepit old man a “postboy,” preferred to give him the title of “mailman,” by which name a postal servant who got drunk and delayed the Bath mail in 1770 is styled in a contemporary newspaper, which says, “The mail did not arrive so soon by several hours as usual on Monday, owing to the mailman getting a little intoxicated on his way between Newbury and Marlborough and falling from his horse into a hedge, where he was found asleep by means of his dog.” [Illustration: JOHN PALMER. _From the painting by Gainsborough, R.A._ ] Instead of exposing letters to these and other risks, Palmer proposed that a service of mail-coaches should be established on every great road.