reshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns
have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of that
description will be found, except at places where strangers are likely
to be detained by business or pleasure.

The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant places
may excite the scorn of the present generation; yet it was such as might
have moved the admiration and envy of the polished nations of antiquity,
or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and Cecil. A rude and imperfect
establishment of posts for the conveyance of letters had been set up by
Charles the First, and had been swept away by the civil war. Under the
Commonwealth the design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds of
the Post Office, after all expenses had been paid, were settled on the
Duke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and came in only
on the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of Lincolnshire, and
among the hills and lakes of Cumberland, letters were received only once
a week. During a royal progress a daily post was despatched from the
capital to the place where the court sojourned. There was also daily
communication between London and the Downs; and the same privilege was
sometimes extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when those
places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on horseback day
and night at the rate of about five miles an hour. [156]

The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the charge
for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was entitled to
furnish post horses; and, from the care with which this monopoly was
guarded, we may infer that it was found profitable. [157] If, indeed, a
traveller had waited half an hour without being supplied he might hire a
horse wherever he could.

To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and another was
not originally one of the objects of the Post Office. But, in the
reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen of London, William
Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny post, which delivered
letters and parcels six or eight times a day in the busy and crowded
streets near the Exchange, and four times a day in the outskirts of
the capital. This improvement was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The
porters complained that their interests were attacked, and tore down the
placards in which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitement
caused