the
misconduct of the Post Office, as letters had been miscarried to
Dublin, which caused the merchants of Bristol considerable annoyance,
and this mismanagement without hesitation he declares was by design, in
order to try and overthrow this most excellent system of John Palmer's
post.

Early in 1787, Palmer had to represent to the Contractors that the Mails
must be carried by more reliable coaches.

"The Comptroller-General," he wrote to one Contractor, "has to complain
not only of the horses employed on the Bristol mail, but as well of
their harness and the accoutrements in use, whose defects have several
times delayed the Bath and Bristol letters, and have even led to the
conveyance being overset, to the imminent peril of the passengers.

"Instructions have been issued by the Comptroller for new sets of
harness to be supplied to the several coaches in use on this road, for
which accounts will be sent you by the harness-makers. Mr. Palmer stated
also that he had under consideration, for the Contractor's use, a
new-invented coach."

Soon after this, Palmer's active connection with the Post Office ceased.
He died at Brighton in 1818.

What he looked like at the age of 17 and 75 respectively, is shewn in
the illustrations, the former taken from a picture attributed to
Gainsborough.

[Illustration: [_By permission of "Bath Chronicle."_

JOHN PALMER AT THE AGE OF 75.]

CHAPTER V.

APPRECIATIONS OF RALPH ALLEN, JOHN PALMER, AND SIR FRANCIS FREELING,
MAIL AND COACH ADMINISTRATORS.

On the 25th April, 1901, the day after a visit to Bristol to celebrate
the establishment of the new steamship line to Jamaica, the Marquess of
Londonderry, then Postmaster-General, visited Bath to take part in a
ceremony in honour of Ralph Allen and John Palmer. These two great
postal reformers were both citizens of Bath, and are greatly honoured in
that city for their work in the Post Office, with the famous men of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By a happy thought there has
lately been started a movement to keep alive associations with the past
by placing tablets on the houses in which famous men lived. One of the
tablets unveiled by Lord Londonderry was placed on the house in which
Ralph Allen first conducted the business of the Bath Post Office, and
of his cross post contracts, and the other on the house in which John
Palmer was born.

Soon after noon on the eventful day, the Bath postmen's band, Mr.
Ke