doubtless the Amrita Bazar Patrika, with its enlightened staff, its splendid circulation and carefully printed addresses would scarcely maintain the same opinions now.

The Post Office of India must be congratulated upon its good fortune in never having been regarded by Government as a revenue-producing Department, and as long as it paid its way with a small surplus the Powers were satisfied. Any excess was devoted to improvements in the service, and full advantage has been given to this concession in past years by the introduction of many reforms destined to meet the growing needs of the country. Recently, postage rates were reduced to such an extent that for a few years the Post Office worked at a loss, a most unsatisfactory state of affairs; however, a marked recovery is noticeable already and it is again a self-supporting institution, the gross revenue for the year ending the 31st March, 1918, being more than 416 lakhs[4] of rupees, which gave a net surplus of nearly 50 lakhs on the year's working.

From being merely an agency for the conveyance and distribution of letters and light articles, the Post Office has gradually undertaken an enormous amount of what may be called non-postal work. It deals with vast numbers of money orders, collects the price of goods for tradesmen, pays pensioners, sells quinine, deals in Government loans, and is the poor man's bank, all of which matters will be dealt with separately. It is to be hoped that no new line of business is going to be taken up in the near future, such as the sale of railway tickets, which was once seriously proposed, or else the principal duty of the Department may be forgotten in the turmoil of the side shows.

CHAPTER II
THE ORIGIN OF THE POST OFFICE

The Postal System of India, like that of other countries, had its origin in the necessity of maintaining communication throughout the various parts of a great Empire in order that the Emperor might be kept continuously informed of what was taking place and might be able to keep in constant touch with the officers in charge of Provinces at a distance from the Capital. When Ibn Batuta was travelling in India in the middle of the fourteenth century he found an organized system of couriers established throughout the country governed at that time by the great Mahomed Din Tughlak. The system seems to have been very similar to that which existed in the Roman Empire, and is thus described:

"There are in Hindustan two kinds of couriers, horse and foot; these they generally term 'El Wolak.' The horse-courier, which is generally part of the Sultan's cavalry, is stationed at a distance of every four miles. As to the foot-couriers there will be one at the distance of every mile occupying stations which they call 'El Davah' and making on the whole three miles; so that there is, at the distance of every three miles, an inhabited village, and without this, three sentry boxes where the couriers sit prepared for motion with their loins girded. In the hands of each is a whip about two cubits long, and upon the head of this are small bells. Whenever, therefore, one of the couriers leaves any city he takes his despatches in one hand and the whip, which he keeps constantly shaking, in the other. In this manner he proceeds to the nearest foot-courier and, as he approaches, shakes his whip. Upon this out comes another who takes the despatches and so proceeds to the next. For this reason it is that the Sultan receives his despatches in so short a time."

Some of the oldest runners' lines in India were established for the purpose of conveying fruit and flowers to famous temples, and Colonel Broughton in his most interesting book, Letters from a Mahratta Camp, describes one such line between Udeypore and Pushkar in Rajputana. In his Historical Sketches of the South of India, Colonel Wilks tells us that among the earliest measures of Raja Chick Deo Raj of Mysore, who came to the throne in 1672, was the establishment of a regular post throughout his dominions. The Post Office in Mysore was not merely an ordinary instrument for conveying intelligence, but an extraordinary one for obtaining it. The postmasters were confidential agents of the Court and the inferior servants were professed spies, who made regular reports of the secret transactions of the districts in which they were stationed. This system, which was more fully developed by Hyder Ali, became a terrible instrument of despotism. The Moghul Emperors kept up a regular system of daks, and Ferishta tells us that Sher Shah, during his short reign of five years, 1541-1545, was the first who ever employed a mounted post in India. He constructed a road from Sonarung in Bengal to the banks of the Indus in Sind, a distance of two thousand miles, and placed two horses on the road at every two miles. The Emperor Akbar had post houses built at stages ten miles apart on the principal roads and swift Turki horses were placed at each stage. One of these post houses can still be seen on the road between Agra and Sikandra.

The British do not appear to have found any established system of communication when they began to extend their dominion in India, and in the beginning of the eighteenth century it was a matter of no small difficulty to send a letter more than a distance of one hundred miles. A regular postal system was first introduced by Lord Clive in 1766, and the zemindars or landholders along the various routes were held responsible for the supply of runners to carry the mails. For this service a deduction was made in their rents in proportion to the number of runners supplied. The order recorded in the Minutes of Consultations of the 24th March is as follows:—

"For the Better Regulation of Dauks"

"Ordered that in future all letters be despatched from the Government House; the postmaster or his assistant attending every night to sort and see them sent off; that the letters to the different Inland Settlements be made up in separate bags, sealed with the Company's seal; that none may open the packets except the Chiefs at the different places, who are to open only their own respective packets; and

"Ordered that they be directed to observe the same rule with respect to the letters sent down to Calcutta."

The following is an extract from the Public Proceedings 7th July, 1766;—

"As there have been of late frequent miscarriages of packets to and from