Meanwhile the postmasters from America, ejected from their offices, had been flocking to this country and pleading for pensions on the English establishment. The packets were meeting with a series of disasters so far beyond the experience of former wars as to excite the most hostile comment. During the seven years ending August 1782 no less than thirty-seven were captured by the enemy. Of these four belonged to the Post Office, and sums for that time prodigious were expended to replace them. The others were owned by the captains who commanded them, and the owners received as compensation for their loss the sum of £85,000. Even the fabric of the buildings partook of the general decay. In Edinburgh the Post Office had had to be abandoned at a moment's notice, the arch which supported the main part of the structure having given way. In Dublin the roof had fallen in. In both Dublin and Edinburgh new Post Offices were being erected at heavy expense; while in London search was being made for new premises on the plea that those in Lombard Street were insufficient for present requirements. To crown all, ugly rumours were afloat, rumours imputing corruption in the highest quarters. The postmasters-general were indeed to be pitied. The Post Office in more senses than one was falling about their ears. CHAPTER XII JOHN PALMER 1782-1792 The apathy of the Post Office about this time is incomprehensible. More than twenty years before, the General Convention of the Royal Boroughs of Scotland had called the attention of the postmasters-general to the intolerable slowness of the post on the Great North Road. "Every common traveller," they wrote, "passes the King's mail on the first road in the kingdom." At the present time the clerks of the roads were giving as one of the reasons why they were undersold in the matter of newspapers that, whereas they sent their wares by post, the booksellers and printers availed themselves of the more expeditious conveyance by stage-coach. Yet it seems never to have occurred to the postmasters-general that what was being done by others they might do themselves. The lesson that was lost upon the postmasters-general was to be learnt and applied by John Palmer, proprietor of the theatre at Bath.