Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Unfortunately, English precedent held out little hope for the unhampered
development of a freely competitive postal service. In 1591 the Crown had
issued a proclamation granting itself the monopoly of all foreign mail, and in
1609 the Crown's proclamation extended its own monopoly to all mail foreign
or domestic. The purpose of this postal monopoly was quite simple: to
enable governmental officials to read the letters of private citizens in order to
discover and suppress "treason" and "sedition."
Thus, when the Privy Council decided in 1627 to allow merchants to operate
an independent foreign post, the king's principal secretary of state wrote
sternly: "Your lordship best knoweth what account we shall be able to give in
our places of that which passeth by letters in or out of the land, if every man
may convey letters under the course of merchants to whom and what place he
pleaseth . . . how unfit a time this is to give liberty to every man to write and
send what he list. . . ." And in 1657 when the Commonwealth Parliament
continued the English governmental postal monopoly, the preamble of the act
stated a major objective: "to discover and prevent many dangerous and bigoted
designs, which have been and are daily contrived against the peace and
welfare of this Commonwealth, the intelligence whereof cannot well be communicated,
but by letter of script."
The first government meddling in the postal service in America came as
early as 1639 in Massachusetts. At that time the government appointed
Richard Fairbanks to be a receiver and deliverer of foreign letters for the
price of one penny; no monopoly privilege was granted, and no one was prevented
from using other postal intermediaries. The Dutch government in
New Netherland went far beyond this when in 1657 it awarded itself a compulsory
monopoly of receipt of foreign mail; anyone presuming to board a
vessel first to obtain his own mail was fined thirty guilders. Ship captains
were fined heavily for carrying letters for anyone except the government
postal monopolist.
The first governmental postal service was established by Governor Lovelace
in New York in 1673, primarily for carrying intergovernmental mail between
New York and Boston, but the Dutch wars rendered this attempt abortive.
Massachusetts and Connecticut established government posts in 1673 but only
for governmental and not for private letters. In 1677 Massachusetts appointed
John Hayward to carry private mail, and in 1680 Hayward was granted the
monopoly of the postal business in the colony. Pennsylvania established a
public but not monopoly post for private mail in 1683.
The specter of a single colonial monopoly was now beginning to loom on
the horizon. Parliament had granted the revenues of the British post office to
the Duke of York, and Governor Dongan of New York outlined in 1684 an
ambitious scheme for a vast intercolonial system of post houses, a good part of
the profit of which would also accrue to the Duke of York. The rates charged
were to be three pence a letter, and more for letters carried over one hundred
miles. This and similar plans, however, again proved abortive
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