The machinery for the dispersion of letters was very simple. For Post Office purposes the kingdom was divided into six roads--the North Road, the Chester or Holyhead Road, the Western Road, the Kent Road, and the Roads to Bristol and to Yarmouth; and these roads were presided over by a corresponding number of clerks in London whose duty it was to sort the letters and to tax them with the proper amount of postage. At the present time, when, owing to the system of prepayment, there is comparatively little taxing to be done, no less than 2800 clerks and sorters are engaged every evening in despatching the letters into the country. Two hundred years ago the whole operation was performed, both sorting and taxing together, by the six clerks of the roads, and they had not even a sorter to assist them until 1697. The letters, as soon as they had been sorted, were despatched into the country, the usual hour of despatch being shortly after midnight; but, of course, with a force to prepare them of only six persons, a rigid punctuality such as that which now distinguishes the operations of the Post Office could hardly be observed. An instance remains on record of the disturbance caused by any unusual pressure. The 25th of February 1696, we are told, was a foreign post night, and it happened that the letters for the country as well as abroad were more than ordinarily numerous. On this occasion the mails which should have gone out before three o'clock in the morning could not be despatched until between six and seven. Once clear of London, the letters passed into the hands of the postmasters, who were alone concerned in their transmission and distribution. At the present time, multifarious as the duties of a postmaster are, it is not one of them to transport the mails from town to town. But such was not the case in 1690. The post roads were then divided into sections or, as they were commonly called, stages; and these stages were presided over by a corresponding number of postmasters, whose duty it was to carry the mails each over his own stage. This had been the original object of their appointment, the object for which they had been granted the monopoly of letting post-horses, and it still remained their primary duty, to which every other was subordinate. And yet traces of this original function were already beginning to disappear. The posts settled on the six main roads of the kingdom had not been long in extending themselves to other roads; and on these branch roads one postmaster would be charged with the carrying of the mails over two or more stages, leaving another without any transport duty at all. Kendal, for instance, lay on a branch road leaving the Holyhead Road at Chester; and from Wigan the letters for Kendal were fetched by the postmaster of Preston, who passed not only his own town but the town of Lancaster on his way.