This plan was matured in 1782, and Palmer lost no time in securing the good offices of an influential friend to bring it to the notice of the “Heaven-born Minister,” Pitt, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. The time, however, was not propitious, for the ministry soon went out of office, and it was not until 1784, when he was again in power, that Palmer’s plan obtained a trial. Pitt was heartily in favour of it, and carried it into effect against the unanimously adverse opinions of the Post Office surveyors, who resented one outside their own sanctified and anointed caste daring to suggest that the methods of the department were capable of improvement. One was, or affected to be, unable to see why the post should be the swiftest conveyance in the kingdom; and to another it appeared that for guards and coachmen to carry arms would be to encourage the highwaymen--who assuredly would continue to attack the mail--to a greater use than before of pistols, so that murder would be added to robbery and the country run with blood. In conclusion, they were all amazed that any dissatisfaction or desire for change should exist, and from that amazement proceeded to argue that they really did not exist. If (they said) the mails were not frequent enough or swift enough, there were always the expresses ready to be specially hired. Now, as at that time a letter going a hundred miles by mail would cost fourpence, and the cost of an express--at threepence a mile and a two-and-sixpenny fee--would for the same distance be 27s. 6d., this surprise was not altogether unlike that of Marie Antoinette, who, hearing that the people were starving for lack of bread, wondered why they did not eat cakes instead. These official objections having been brushed aside at a Treasury conference held on June 21st, arrangements were made for a coach to run on the road from Bristol, through Bath, to London, pursuant to an order issued on July 24th, which stated that “His Majesty’s Postmasters-General, being inclined to make an experiment for the more expeditious conveyance of mails of letters by stage-coaches, machines, etc., have been pleased to order that a trial shall be made upon the road between London and Bristol, to commence at each place on Monday the 2nd August next.” On July 31st, 1784, five innholders--one in London, one at Thatcham, one at Marlborough, and two in Bath--entered into an agreement to horse the coach down that ancient turnpike. They received threepence a mile for their services. A conflict of testimony as to whether the first mail-coach started on August 2nd, 1784, or on August 8th, seems to be disposed of by the advertisement in _Bonner & Middleton’s Bristol Journal_ of July 31st in that year, although there is nothing in succeeding issues of that journal to show whether the service actually did or did not begin on the date announced:-- MAIL DILIGENCE. _To commence Monday, August 2nd._