The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and RomanceHyde, James Wilson
History
The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance
Hyde, James Wilson
Postal service -- Great Britain
improvements mentioned in the memorial, of the lower or Coupar district,
the upper or Stormont district was, upon the first year's trial, above
one-half of its revenue to the Post-office, the second nearly or about
three-fourths, and continuing to increase in proportion. Coupar-Angus
revenue for the year ending 10th October last was £159, 3s. 7d., and
Blairgowrie £123, 4s. 10d. Now, if the Coupar district of country, which
contains in it a populous market-town, can produce no more than this
proportion for the whole district, it is evident that the district of
Stormont, with only as yet a little village for its head town, has more
correspondence in regard to its state of agriculture and improvement as
an infant district, than the parent district with its antiquity can lay
claim to, and equally well entitled at least to be protected and
nourished. Much is said of the memorialists' line of road, and of its
being one from time immemorial. I have said in a former paper that this
may be the case; many of the roads in Scotland, God knows, are old
enough. But unless the feudal system should still exist upon any of
them, I know of no law, no regulation, no compulsion, that can oblige
the post, more than any other traveller, to take these old beaten tracks
where they can find any other patent or better road. Nay, more,--as a
traveller, I am entitled to take any patent road I choose, good or bad;
and the moment this privilege is doubted in regard to the post, you
resign at once the power of all future improvements so far as it belongs
to your official situation to judge it, and let or dispose of in lease
the use of your posts to particular and local proprietors of lands, who
will be right to take every advantage of it in their power, and include
it specifically in the rental of their estates, as I have known to be
the case with inns in which post-offices had formerly been kept.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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