Before this suspension of the Parliamentary posts, Mr. William Godard of Baltimore had proposed to establish "an American Post-office"; and in July, 1774, he announced that his proposals had been warmly and generously patronized by the friends of freedom, and that postmasters and riders were engaged. During the preceding six months he had visited several of the colonies in order to extend and perfect his arrangements, and there appears to have been a very general disposition to abandon the use of the British post and sustain that established by Mr. Godard. In May, 1775, Mr. Godard had thirty postmasters, but Mr. John Holt of New York City was the only one in this State. In that year partial arrangements for mail service in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Massachusetts were made by the Provincial Congress of each of those Colonies. The old Continental Congress first assembled in September, 1774; and on the 26th of July, 1775, it resolved "that a Postmaster-General should be appointed for the United Colonies who should hold his office at Philadelphia and be allowed a salary of $1,000 for himself and $340 for his secretary and comptroller; and that a line of posts should be appointed, under the direction of the Postmaster-General, from Falmouth, in New England, to Savannah, in Georgia." Dr. Franklin was then unanimously chosen Postmaster-General. The ledger in which he kept the accounts of his office is now in the Post-office Department. It is a half-bound book of rather more than foolscap size, and about three-fourths of an inch thick, and many of the entries are in Dr. Franklin's own handwriting. Richard Bache succeeded Dr. Franklin November 7, 1776, and Mr. Bache was succeeded by Ebenezer Hazard. The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1778, gave to the United States, in Congress assembled, "the sole and extensive right and power of establishing and regulating post-offices from one State to another"; but the increase of mail service was comparatively trifling until after the organization of the Post-office Department by the first Congress which assembled under the Constitution of the United States. This gave it efficiency and value, and provided for the early extension of its benefits to the inhabitants of the several States. The National Congress, organized under the Constitution, commenced its first session on the 4th of March, 1789, but it was not until September 22, 1790, that an Act was passed for establishing, or rather continuing, the postal service. The Act then passed provided that a Postmaster-General should be appointed, and that the regulations of the Post-office should be the same as they last were under the resolutions and ordinances of the Congress of the Confederation.