s grown into the
Post-office establishment of the present day. These are now, almost
universally under the control of the State or sovereign power, and they
are certainly among the most important and beneficent of the
institutions of civil government.

It is said that the Assyrian and Persian monarchs had their posts, at a
day's journey from each other, with horses saddled, ready to carry with
the utmost dispatch, the decrees of these despotic rulers. In the Roman
Empire, couriers on swift horses carried the imperial edicts to every
province. Charlemagne, it is said, established stations for carriers who
delivered the letters and decrees of the court in the different and
distant parts of his dominions. As early as the XIth Century the
University of Paris had a body of pedestrian messengers, to carry
letters and packets from its thousands of students to various parts of
Europe, and to tiring money, letters and packets in return. Posts for
the transmission of Government messages were established in England in
the XIIIth Century, and in 1464 Louis XI. established a system of
mounted posts, stationed four French miles apart, to carry the
dispatches of the Government.

Government posts, as the convenience and interest of the people at large
began to receive some attention from their rulers, were at times allowed
to carry private letters, and private posts for the transmission of
general correspondence were sometimes established. This was at first but
an irregular and uncertain service, without fixed compensation; but
considerable regularity, order and system were the results of the public
appreciation of their convenience, and of the gradual improvements which
followed their more general employment.

In 1524 the French posts--which had previously carried only the letters
of the King and nobles--were first permitted to carry other letters; and
in 1543 Charles V., Emperor of Germany, established a riding post
throughout his dominions. It was not until the reign of James I. that a
system of postal communication was established in England, although
Edward IV., in 1481, had established posts twenty miles apart, with
riders, to bring the earliest intelligence of the events of the war with
the Scots. It was not until about 1644 that a weekly conveyance of
letters, by post, was established throughout that kingdom. Mail coaches
were first used at Bristol, in England, in 1784. They were placed on the
post routes in 1785, and their