he service throughout
the country as distinguished from local services.

[533] The General Post Office only provided for the delivery of letters
within a restricted area. See _Ninth Report of Commissioners of Post
Office Inquiry_, 1837, p. 5.

[534] 12 Car. II, cap. 35, [S] 2.

[535] 9 Anne, cap. 10, [S] 6.

[536] 4 Geo. II, cap. 33. See D. Macpherson, op. cit., vol. iii., p.
169.

[537] _Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry_, 1837,
pp. 1 and 2.

[538] "We have said that to us who live at the end of the nineteenth
century it may appear incredible that up to April 1680 the General Post
Office in Lombard Street was the only receptacle for letters in the
whole of London. But it is by no means certain that our descendants may
not think it more incredible still that London, with all its boasted
progress, has only now recovered a post which, in point of convenience
and cheapness, at all approaches that which an enterprising citizen
established more than two hundred years ago."--H. Joyce, _History of the
Post Office_, pp. 41, 42.

[539] "No stage-coach entered London without the driver's pockets being
stuffed with letters and packets, and he was moderate indeed if he had
not a bagful besides. The waggoner outstripped his waggon and the
carrier his pack-horse: and each brought his contribution. The higgler's
wares were the merest pretext. It was to the letters and packets that he
looked for profit."--H. Joyce, ibid., p. 55.

[540] When threatened by the Postmasters-General with prosecution
"according to the utmost rigour of the law," he replied, according to
their account, that "he should not be so unjust to himself as to lay
down his undertaking at our demand, that his case was not as Mr.
Dockwra's was, neither did we live under such a constitution as he did
when the penny post was first set up (that is, an arbitrary government
and bribed judges)."--_Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office
Inquiry_, 1837, p. 71.

[541] 5 Geo. III, cap. 25, [S] 11.

[542] _Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry_, 1837,
p. 66.

[543] 5 Geo. III, cap. 25, [S] 14.

[544] 34 Geo. III, cap. 17.

[545] 41 Geo. III, cap. 7.

[546] _Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry_, 1837,
p. 6.

[547] 45 Geo. III, cap. 11.

[548] Clause 1.

[549] These changes followed the recommendations of the Commissioners of
Revenue Inquiry, who, in their Twenty-first Report (1830), rem