postbags

Updated: May 9, 2025

The King's speech, the joint address of both Houses, the Association framed by the Commons, and a proclamation, containing a list of the conspirators and offering a reward of a thousand pounds for the apprehension of any one of them, were soon cried in all the streets of the capital and carried out by all the postbags. Wherever the news came it raised the whole country.

Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay - The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 4

Yes, O Citoyens, we are signaling; it is a device, this, worthy of the Republic; a thing for what we will call far-writing without the aid of postbags; in Greek it shall be named Telegraph. 'Telégraphê sacre, answers Citoyenism. For writing to Traitors, to Austria? and tears it down, Chappe had to escape and get a new legislative Decree.

- Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century: Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World

Some tracts which were thought likely to produce a great effect were given away in immense numbers at the expense of wealthy Jacobites. Sometimes a paper was thrust under a door, sometimes dropped on the table of a coffeehouse. One day a thousand copies of a scurrilous pamphlet went out by the postbags.

Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay - The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 3