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“The Post-office is properly a mercantile project. The Government advances the expenses of establishing the different offices, and of buying or hiring the necessary horses or carriages, and is repaid with a large profit by the duties upon what is carried.”—Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

In the earlier periods of society, communication between the parts of a country was a rare and difficult undertaking. Individuals at a distance, having little inclination and less opportunity for such intercourse, were naturally satisfied with their limited means of communicating one with another.

As civilization advanced and trade became a national feature, these communications became more important and, of course, more frequent. Our readers will observe, as we progress in this work, how it assumes at last one of the most important branches of a government. Indeed, this it was destined to become from the fact that it originated with the people, and their interest made it a part and portion of the great postal system.

Posts and post-offices, as understood in modern parlance, are identified with trade and commerce, and in their connection with letters. The word post, however, was used long before post-offices were established, implying a public establishment of letters, newspapers, &c. In the Roman Empire, couriers, on swift horses, passed from hand to hand the imperial edicts to every province. Private letters were sent to their destination by slaves, or intrusted to casual opportunities.

Although we are apt to stigmatize two of the greatest nations of the earth—the Greeks and Romans—as being uncivilized, and historically termed barbarians, yet were they highly educated in many of the branches of literature, art, and science. The posts were well known among the Romans; yet is it difficult to trace with certainty the period of their introduction. Some writers carry it back to the time of the Republic,—posts and post-offices, under the name of statores and station, having been then, it is said, established by the Senate. Whether this was the case or not, Suetonius assures us that Augustus substituted posts along the great roads of the Empire. At first, the despatches were conveyed from post to post by young men running on foot and delivering them to others at the next route. Post-horses are mentioned in the Theodosian Code, decursu publico; but these were only the public horses for the use of the government messengers, who, before this institution was established, seized everything that came in their way.

Horace speaks of the post as “means of conveying rapid intelligence.” Flying posts in the days of Richard III. were used for military purposes, imparting news of war, victory, &c. “Equi positi”—post-horses—were common even before the idea of a general postage-system was conceived. “Post-haste” is a familiar phrase among the old poets. Drayton says,—

“A herald posted away

The King of England to the field to dare.”

The post of gods is come!”

Virgil, in one of his sublime epics, makes use of this expression:—

“Now Jove himself hath sent his fearful mandate through the skies:

The post of gods is come!”

After the introduction of letters and the conveyance of messages, written and printed, the word post was understood to mean “to ride or travel with post-horses;” “with speed or despatch of post-horses.” What it means now in such connection can only be explained by calculating the speed of lightning.

The modern post and post-office form a part and portion of a government, and act in concert with other great agents of civilization in the formation of permanent institutions.

The post-office is one of those tests by which the progressive prosperity of a country may be ascertained. In this respect, perhaps no other nation in the world presents a more extended view of such progress, in connection with the postal system, than does that of the United States. In the short space of eighty years she has set an example, by the action and the enterprise of her people, to nations who boast of a political and national existence of centuries.

The literary treasures of England,—accumulating from Alfred, Bede, and Chaucer, through a succession of enlightened ages, swelling up in their onward progress the vast catalogue of science, connecting with their recorded mental wealth the names of men who consecrated with their genius the age in which they flourished,—did less for her commercial interest, throughout all those periods, than has the United States in less than fifty years. Enterprise came forth under the light of liberty, and extended its operations to every department of trade, commerce, art, and science. England became alive to the fact that a new people had created and given a living principle to the mechanical workings in the world of trade and commerce. Its operations gave vigor to action, and infused a spirit into merchants and traders which, heretofore, followed in the wake of monarchial follies,

“As peddlers from town to town.”

We purpose to speak now of the post being a branch of the government, and, in some respects, one of the most important.

The post-office department should be, but it is not, a social agent. The peculiar character of a republican government is such that the post becomes essentially a great political one. Its connection with an administration is one of the links connecting party with its political interests, and which becomes broken immediately on the success attending that of a rival. It is rotary in its motion; hence the various changes which necessarily occur at elections have a tendency to retard, rather than advance, the postal system on its road to perfection. Indeed, it is not assuming too much if we say that civil liberty, practically speaking, partly consists in these changes; for opposition is an essential and vital element of such liberty, and opposition, with these possible changes, would have little or no meaning. If, however, they were limited to the heads of the department, and not extending down to the humblest workers in the office, the evil effects ever attending on such changes would not so materially operate against its interests, and, of course, that of the community. A general sweep of the employees of any one State or government department makes the whole system a gigantic political, rather than what it should be, a social, institution.

In whatever light, however, we view the post-office, it presents to us a subject of the highest interest. Connect it with commerce, and it assumes the power of a “Merlin,” whose magic wand, raised in the ages of superstition, astonished the world! Connect it with the arts, and nations are brought together by the mere stroke of the pen! Associate it with science, religion,—in fact, with any of the prominent features which make up civilized life,—it becomes at once the great medium through which their mysteries and developments are made manifest to all.

Viewed historically, we trace the history of the post to Moses, and the peopled countries, even to the children of Canaan, in the swamps of Egypt. We link it with the hieroglyphic, or symbolical, characters of that age, long before Hermes substituted alphabetical signs. We follow it up, through sacred and profane history, to the exclusive royal messengers in Persia mentioned by Herodotus, and the grant of the postal establishment as an imperial fief, made by Charles V. to the princely family of Thurn and Taxis, and from that down to the establishing of that system which is now followed by all civilized nations.

The making a branch of a government an hereditary one, particularly that of the postal, could only have originated under the genial rule of Charles. The family of Thurn and Taxis held the post-office as a fief, given to them by the Emperor Charles V., and they continued to hold it long after the different German States had become independent. Of course, like all such fiefs, (even those of Saxon notoriety,) it became, in time—instead of what the true meaning implied, “fealty or fidelity,” to “keep and sustain any thing granted and held upon oath, &c.”—a most vile and corrupt institution.1