It was a bold scheme, and seemed to most of those to whom it was unfolded rash and unworkable. To quite understand this attitude of mind on the part of Palmer’s contemporaries, both inside and outside the Post Office, it is essential to project ourselves mentally into those closing years of the eighteenth century, when no one travelled save under direful compulsion, when correspondence between sundered friends and relatives was fitful and infrequent, and when even business relations between the newly-risen industries of the great towns and the rural districts were carried on in what we now consider to have been a most leisurely and somnolent manner. The world went very well then for the indolent, and they resented any quickening of the pace; and that the average acute business men of that age considered the course of post reasonable seems evident when we consider that it was not from their ranks that this reforming project came, and that they are not found supporting it until the first mails had been put on the road and proved successful. _Then_ that imagination which had been altogether lacking or dormant in business minds was aroused, and the great towns and cities not at first provided with these new facilities eagerly petitioned the Post Office authorities for mail-coaches. Palmer contended that mail-coaches could be established at no greater expense than that of the postboys and horses, who cost threepence a mile. At a time, he continued, when stage-coaches cost their proprietors about twopence a mile, it was quite certain that adventurers could be found to establish mail-coaches if the Government would consent to pay them at the same rate as the postboys, to exempt them from the heavy tolls to which ordinary traffic was liable, and to permit passengers to be carried to enable these speculative persons to earn a profit on their enterprise. The proposed exemption from toll was very reasonable when we consider how onerous were the turnpike charges on the Bath Road, typical as it was of others. The charges for a carriage and four horses between London and Bath were not less than 18s., or about twopence a mile. These mail-coaches, he considered, should travel at about eight or nine miles an hour. They should carry no outside passengers, but were to be provided with a guard, who, for the better protection of the mails, should be armed with two short guns or blunderbusses. The coachman, too, should be armed, but his equipment was to be two pistols, for with his reins to hold with one hand he could not, like the guard, bring his weapon to the shoulder. The journey, for example, between London and Bath, it was thought, could be performed in sixteen hours, including stoppages; and this unusual expedition, together with the assured safety, would result in the projected coaches being well patronised by the public.