The King's Post: Being a volume of historical facts relating to the posts, mail coaches, coach roads, and railway mail services of and connected with the ancient city of Bristol from 1580 to the present timeTombs, Robert Charles
History
The King's Post: Being a volume of historical facts relating to the posts, mail coaches, coach roads, and railway mail services of and connected with the ancient city of Bristol from 1580 to the present time
Tombs, Robert Charles
Postal service -- England -- Bristol
ANTHONY TODD.]
September 16, 1784:--"Our mail diligence still continues its course with
the same steadiness and punctuality. Yesterday its coachman and guard
made their first appearance in Royal livery, and cut a most superior
figure. It is certainly very proper that the Government carriages should
be thus distinguished; such a mark of His Majesty's approbation does the
contractors great honour, and it is with much pleasure we see so great a
change in the conveyance of our mail--not only in its speed and safety,
but in its present respectable appearance, from an old cart and a ragged
boy."
December 16, 1784:--"A writer, under the signature of 'An Enemy to
Schemers,' having published in the _Gazette_ several letters against the
new mode of conveying the mail, another writer, under the signature of
'Lash,' has in a masterly manner replied to all his arguments in that
paper of Monday, and has severely censured the conduct of Mr. Todd of
the Post Office."
December 16, 1784:--"Dear Sir,--I have just received some newspapers
from a friend in Bath containing an abusive letter against my post
plan, and two answers to it under the signature of 'Lash.' I rather
think that the latter may be yours, and think myself much obliged to you
for the warmth with which you have taken the matter up, but could wish
you would take no further notice of it. The letter, if I recollect
right, merely contains the refuse of the observations, sent from the
Post Office to the Treasury, which have been fully refuted to the board.
It might appear these are like doubting the justice of that Court were I
to suffer myself to be decoyed or provoked into another. Two years have
already been wasted in wrangling, and I am heartily weary of it. Since
my return I have the satisfaction to find the public, if possible, still
more pleased from the experience they have had of the punctuality as
well as the expedition of the post in all possible cases, in every
variety of weather our climate gives. And those who express their
surprise that the plan is not extended yet to other parts of the kingdom
I have taken care to tell the plain truth--that it is entirely Mr.
Todd's fault. I could not express my sense of his exceeding ill conduct
at the commencement of the trial (so very different from his
profession) in a stronger manner than in my memorial to the Treasury;
nor could they do me ampler justice than in the resolutions they passed
on the occasion and sent to the Post Office. It should not therefore be
stated to the public his stopping the Norfolk and Suffolk service by his
assertion of the enormous expenses of the new beyond the old system, and
his strange declaration that the number of letters sent by the Bath and
Bristol post had decreased and in consequence of its improvement are so
ill-supported by the statements sent to the Treasury, and the reverse of
these charges so fully established in my answers that I believe there is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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