"
In his early messages to Congress, Washington was accustomed to call
the attention of members to "facilitating the intercourse between
distant parts of our country by a due attention to the post-offices
and post roads." This was no new power given to the Central Government
as was the right to encourage learning, but it had even more
possibilities of extension through interpretation. The monopoly of
carrying the mails, now generally claimed by all governments, may be
traced to the assumed prerogatives of the Stuarts in England. A few
attempts had been made in the dependent days by individual colonies
to regulate the carriage of letters, but the provisions of an act of
Parliament in Queen Anne's reign for appointing deputy postmasters-
general in the colonies placed the posts directly under the care of the
royal Government.
The use of the mails without government censorship was essential to
the patriots in the American Revolution for carrying out their plans.
Nearly a year before independence, the Continental Congress set up a
revolutionary postal system to replace the express riders which they
had thus far used.
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