POST AND POSTAL SERVICES. The history of postal services goes back to the early days of the great empires of the east, when the permanent maintenance of control over a wide area was seen to depend on the organization and maintenance of rapid and frequent communication. The posts of the Persian em pire under the successors of Cyrus are the first great example ; the Macedonian successors of the Persian kings appear to have maintained, on a smaller scale, a similar service. In fact one of the earliest postal documents, now in the Berlin Postal Museum, is an interesting letter bill—the forerunner of many millions of successors—of the mail for the court of one of the Ptolemies. The Roman empire brought the official postal service to a very high degree of perfection ; but with the collapse of the Western empire and the relapse into barbarism there was a long eclipse of this as of the rest of the machinery of the imperial government.
The provision of a regular system of private communication formed no part of the cares of ancient or mediaeval governments, and during the middle ages such private posts as existed were main tained by the universities or.by the gilds of merchants. With the renaissance of civilization the need for private communication forced itself inevitably upon the notice of the governments of the day; and in its gradual growth and expansion the policy followed can be traced to three distinct motives, the relative importance of each of which has varied considerably from century to century. These are the desire to ensure an official control or censorship, mainly of international correspondence; the search for additional sources of revenue ; and the wish to provide an efficient service.
The first motive is prominent in a proclamation of Queen Eliza beth dated 1591, which prohibits the carriage of letters to and from "the Countreys beyond the seas" except by messengers duly authorized by the master of the posts. This was directed at the private posts maintained by the foreign merchants in London and seems to have been effective at the moment in bringing them to an end. In 1609 James I. extended the prohibition to the inland as well as the foreign post ; but in this case the motive may have been the protection of the postmaster general's revenue. The
importance of state control emerged again during the protectorate; and in Cromwell's Post Office Act of 1657 stress is laid on the importance of a centralized post office as a means not only of promoting trade but of discovering and preventing "many danger ous and wicked designs which have been and are daily contrived against the peace and welfare of this Commonwealth, the intelli gence whereof cannot well be communicated but by letter of escript." Postal censorship, long discontinued, was revived during the World War.
a The growth in intelligence and prosperity which marked the I 7th century soon led to deep dissatisfaction with the limited and somewhat inefficient services which prevailed under Eliza beth and James I. ; and the reign of Charles I. saw the first of the great postal reformers in the person of Thomas Witherings. Witherings began his career as "postmaster of England for foreign parts" and carried out sweeping reforms of the foreign post, including the very remarkable measure of organizing a service through France, with the consent of the French Government, by his own direct employees. In 1635 he was authorized to bring into operation a reorganization of the inland posts, which he proposed to make self supporting, instead of being a charge to the crown, by the simple method of making them efficient and cheap. Wither ings' scheme consisted in the organization of posts travelling night and day on each of the great post roads, and covering a minimum distance of 120 miles a day, with branch posts working to and from the post towns on the way. A letter could thus be sent to Edinburgh and a reply received in six days—an enormous im provement on anything hitherto attempted. A regular tariff of rates was established, based on the "single letter," i.e., one sheet of paper. This method of charging and the zone system of post age rates remained as the underlying principles of the postal service until the reforms of Rowland Hill.