In 1660, on the Restoration, the law of 1657, constituting the Post Office and regulating the letting of post-horses, was re-enacted. By some new provisions and amendments of old ones, travellers might now hire horses wherever they could if the postmasters could not supply them within half an hour. This concession, together with that which repealed the power given by the earlier Act for horses to be seized, was evidently made in deference to the indignation of travellers delayed by lack of horses in the hands of the only persons who could legally hire them out, and by the fury of private individuals who had seen their own choice animals not infrequently requisitioned in the King’s name and hack-ridden unconscionable distances by travellers or King’s messengers whose first and last thoughts were for speed, and who had not the consideration of an owner for the steeds that carried them. The term “postage,” occurring in the Act of 1660, shows that a widely different meaning was then attached to the word: “Each horse’s hire or postage” is a phrase that sufficiently explains itself.
Such were the methods and costs of riding horseback when stage-coaching began. The Government monopoly, however, was infringed with increasing impunity as time went on, and as the letter-carrying business of the Post Office developed, so was the “travelling post” allowed to decay. The growing number and increasing convenience of the coaches, too, helped to make the monopoly less valuable, for when travellers could be conveyed without exertion by coach at from twopence to threepence a mile, they were not likely to pay threepence a mile and a guide’s groat at every ten miles for the privilege of bumping in the saddle all day long. Those who mostly continued in the saddle were the gentlemen who owned horses of their own, or those others to whom the chance company of a coach was objectionable.
The Post Office monopoly in post-horses was, accordingly, not worth preserving when it was abolished by the Act of 1780. From that time the Postmasters-General ceased to have anything to do with horse-hire, and anything lost by their relinquishing it was amply returned to the State by the new license duties levied upon horse-keepers or postmasters, and coaches. A penny a mile was fixed as the Government duty upon horses let out for hire, whether saddle-horses or to be used in post-chaises. All persons who made that a business--generally, of course, innkeepers--were to take out an annual five-shilling license, and were under obligation to paint in some conspicuous place on their houses “Licensed to let Post-Horses.” In default of so doing the penalty was £5. As a check upon the business done, travellers hiring post-horses were to be given a ticket, on which the number of horses so hired, and the distance, were to be specified. These tickets were to be delivered to the turnpike-keeper at the first gate, and the vigilance of these officials was made a matter of self-interest by the allowance to them of threepence in the pound on all tickets thus collected. At certain periods the tickets were delivered to the Stamp Office, and the innkeepers and postmasters themselves were visited by revenue officers, who required to see the books and the counterfoils from which these tickets had come.
