The guard of the Southampton Mail had long been suspected of smuggling, and at last the Customs officers at that port, determined to search the mail. They accordingly attempted to stop it one evening, but the guard himself levelled his blunderbuss at them, swearing he would blow out the brains of the man who should lay a hand upon the horses or seek to search “His Majesty’s Royal Mail,” and so he got off, with the hind boot stuffed to bursting with excisable but unexcised goods in the nature of spirits and tobacco. A long correspondence between the Postmaster-General and the Commissioners of Customs arose out of this incident, each official jealous of his own Department’s rights as only Government officers can be; but the Postmaster-General, although declaring himself an enemy to smuggling, was indignant at the idea of the mail being searched and possibly detained; and although warning the guard, approved his conduct. It needs no great imaginative powers to picture that guard embarking upon a colossal smuggling scheme after finding himself thus secured from being searched.
Although the mail-guards were as a body a brave and devoted class of men, determined to do their duty and to carry his Majesty’s mails in the face of all difficulties of snowstorms, winds, and floods, yet they gave Thomas Hasker, Chief Superintendent of Mail-coaches, a good deal of trouble. They numbered 268, and he exercised the supreme control of them. Complaints continually reached him from one quarter or another of the mails being late, of the guards being impertinent, and of the hind-boot, sacred to the mail-bags, being used by the guards as a receptacle for things quite unauthorised and unofficial. To stop some of these practices he was obliged to issue this notice, which reads somewhat curiously nowadays: “In consequence of several of the mail-guards having been detected in carrying meat and vegetables in the mail-box, to the amount of 150 pounds weight at a time, the superintendents are desired to take opportunities to meet the coaches in their district, at places where they are least expected, and to search the boxes, to remedy this evil, which is carried to too great a length. The superintendents will please to observe that Mr. Hasker does not wish to be too hard on the guards. Such a thing as a joint of meat, or a couple of fowls, or any other article for their own families, in moderation, he does not wish to deter them from the privilege of carrying.”