Lords of
Trade of the passage by the New York Assembly of "an Act for enforcing
and continuing a post-office," which he recommended His Majesty to
confirm "as an act of necessity," without which the post to Boston and
Philadelphia would be lost.

In 1710 the British Parliament passed an Act authorizing the British
Postmaster-General "to keep one chief letter-office in New York and
other chief letter-offices in each of His Majesty's Provinces or
Colonies in America." Deputy Postmasters-General for North America were
afterwards, and from time to time, appointed by the British
Postmaster-General in England. Dr. Franklin was appointed to that office
in 1755, and it is said that in 1760 he startled the people of the
colonies by proposing to run a "stage waggon" from Boston to
Philadelphia once a week, starting for each city on Monday morning and
reaching the other by Saturday. In 1763 he spent five months in
traveling through the Northern Colonies for the purpose of inspecting
and improving the post-offices and the mail service. He went as far east
as New Hampshire, and the whole extent of his five months' tour, in
going and returning, was about sixteen hundred miles. He made such
improvements in the service as to enable the citizens of Philadelphia to
write to Boston and get replies in three weeks instead of six weeks, the
time previously required.

In 1774 Dr. Franklin was removed from office; and on the 25th of
December, 1775, the Secretary of the General Post-Office gave notice
that, in consequence of the Provincial Congress of Maryland having
passed a resolution that the Parliamentary post should not be permitted
to travel on a pass through that province, and of the seizure of the
mails at Baltimore and Philadelphia, the Deputy Postmaster-General was
"obliged, for the present, to stop all the posts." It is supposed that
this terminated the regular mail service in the old Thirteen Colonies,
and that it was never resumed under British management.

Before this suspension of the Parliamentary posts, Mr. William Godard of
Baltimore had proposed to establish "an American Post-office"; and in
July, 1774, he announced that his proposals had been warmly and
generously patronized by the friends of freedom, and that postmasters
and riders were engaged. During the preceding six months he had visited
several of the colonies in order to extend and perfect his arrangements,
and there appears to have been a very general disposition