POST OFFICES

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3305, 4 June 1931, Page 7

POST OFFICES

Public postal services are not modern. There were effective systems of communication many years ago in Persia, Macedonia and the Roman Empire. Emperors had to maintain control over vast areas, and by means of regular messengers they sent commands and reports to the governors of outlying provinces and colonies. The Roman Emperor Augustus greatly improved and increased the official postal service throughout the Mediterranean. In medieval days governments did not concern themselves with the communications of private individuals, and the postal services were largely maintained by the merchant guilds or by the universities. In England Queen Elizabeth was the first ruler to take steps to establish State control, but this was a precautionary measure against revolution rather than an attempt to improve the system. She issued a proclamation forbidding the delivery of letters to and from “countreys beyond the seas” except by messengers authorised by the Government. Oliver Cromwell was responsible for the first Post Office Act in 1657. He appreciated that a centralised post office was essential to the prosperity of the country. In 1680 Dockwra, a London merchant, copying the example of Louis XIV., who had established a local post in Paris at a fixed price of one sou, founded the London penny post. As soon as it became a paying concern Dockwra was accused of breaking the law for the then Duke of York asserted that he himself had the monopoly of the post office revenues. In 1784 the first mail coach was run regularly from London to Bath, and later to Norwich, Liverpool, Manchester, ’Exeter and other large towns. Postage was charged according to the distance travelled, and the price was frequently too high for orl- - people. To send a letter 700 miles cost 17d. In the middle of the nineteenth century Rowland Hill introduced the now familiar practice whereby the fee is prepaid by stamp, and the rates are fixed according to weight, and not according to distance.