businesses to the utmost lymitts of itt, would (if messengers were purposely prest) put the country to an annuall greate expense for prevention whereof, Be it enacted that all letters superscribed for the service of his Majesty or publique shall be imediately conveyed from plantation to plantation to the place and person they are directed to under the penalty of 350 pounds of tobacco to each defaulter.”

March 2d, 1692/3,[74] an act was passed for encouraging the erection of a post office in each county of the colony, Thomas Neale and his deputies to settle and establish the post at their own cost. Rates were to vary according to bulk and distance, state letters and public orders of the governor and council were to be sent free, and merchants were not to be prohibited from sending letters by the masters of vessels or others. The act was to be in force during the term granted by their majesties’ letters patent to Thomas Neale.

Cooper’s Statutes at Large of South Carolina[75] records an enactment regarding the post, of September 10th, 1702, by John Grenville, Esq., Pallatine, and the other lords and proprietors of the province of Carolina with the consent of the other members of the General Assembly. A certain Ed. Bourne was appointed postmaster and ordered to fix an exact list of letters received and dispatched in some public place in his house for thirty days, for each packet or letter receiving one-half royal, and for any neglect of duty forfeiting 40s. July 12th, 1707, an act[76] to erect a general post office was ratified and continued for two years.

The first act regarding a post office in North Carolina was in 1787.[77]

The correspondence of the period shows when the post became an established fact. About 1700, letters begin not with the names of the bearers, but with expressions such as the following: “The post is just blowing his horn and cannot help it that I write no more particularly.”[78] “I had not time to say more by the last post than I did.” “Sent by post last week.” “Having no letter from you by the post.” Individual bearers were still made use of, often probably for the reason which Logan gives in a letter to Penn, written February, 1708.[79] “I send this chiefly to accompany the enclosed to Wm. Aubrey, I therefore request thee to peruse it ... and to let it be sealed up, directed in some hand like mine, as J. Jeffreys, and delivered. I send it thus without cover to save postage, which is now very high to Boston.” It is to be hoped that Lovelace’s description of the first post as “active, stout and indefatigable,” would apply equally to his successors, for they too went laden with “letters, portable goods and divers bags.” Wait Winthrop writes from Boston to Fitz-John Winthrop, “Gov^r of his Maj^ts Collonye of Conecticott in New London,” “I have had yours by the post with little bundle;” “If Sudance can bundle up John’s freise Jacket & Mingoe’s cloth Jacket in an old towell pray let the post bring them.” “Post will bring you a pair of Simpsons ... could not goe to direct the man about the glass, or els it had gone by this Post” and “If Anthony has lamed the horses he may dispatch them quite that they may be no further trouble; but if their legs are fit to bring them, I desire they may be sent by the post, unless some safer opportunity present in two or three days.”[80]

The early history of the colonial post office ends in 1710. With Queen Anne’s Act of that year a new era began, introducing a system of greater uniformity, of greater detail and of closer connection with the home government.

Mary E. Woolley.

PATENT TO THOMAS NEALE.