framers. Provision had been made for the disposal of that increase of revenue which was looked for: "the full, clear, and entire Weekly Sum of Seven Hundred Pounds of Lawful Money of Great Britain" was to be paid out of the revenues of the Post Office "towards

the Establishment of a good, sure, and lasting Fund, in order to raise a present Supply of Money for carrying on the War and other her Majesty's most necessary Occasions."[44] This £700 was to be paid entirely from the proceeds of the increase in the rates. The existing revenue of £111,461 a year was to be disposed of as theretofore. All pensions and charges on the revenue were to continue, and were to have preference over the payment of £700 a week. Of the surplus over and above the £111,461 a year and the £700 a week, one-third part was to be at the disposal of Parliament, the rest to be paid into the Exchequer with the £111,461.

But the increase of revenue was so small that some of these provisions remained for many years inoperative. The increase of rate was found burdensome. Merchants resorted to every available means of avoiding the additional expense.[45] A large clandestine traffic in letters grew up. The very postboys were found carrying letters outside the mail for what fees they could obtain. In 1710 the net revenue had been £66,822. In 1721 it was £99,784, an increase of £32,962. After the deduction, therefore, of the £700 a week (or £36,400 a year), the payment of which had preference over all other payments chargeable on the Post Office revenue, excepting only the expenses of management, the actual net revenue of the Post Office available for the purposes prescribed by the Act was in 1721, £63,384, or less than the revenue of 1710 by £3,438. The Act provided that one-third of the surplus of the yield of postage over and above the sum of £147,861 (£111,461 plus the £700 a week) should be at the disposal of Parliament for the use of the public; but although the gross revenue had exceeded that sum, there was no surplus for the use of the public, the explanation being that the sum mentioned in the Act, viz. £111,461, was the amount of gross revenue, which could only serve as a basis provided the cost of management remained stationary. As a

matter of fact, the cost so greatly increased that the net revenue was not sufficient to provide the sum of £700 a week and also a revenue equal to that obtained before 1711. As Mr. Joyce has pointed out, the Treasury had confounded gross and net revenue.[46]

The essentially fiscal character of the rates of 1711 is evidenced by a provision of the Act that from and after the 1st June 1743 the rates charged under the previous Acts were to be restored.[47] But after 1743, although they were without legal sanction, the rates of 1711 continued in operation, and by an Act of 1763 they were made perpetual.[48]

The fifty years following the Act of the 9th of Anne were uneventful.[49] The chief development was in connection with the cross posts; a development which, although not having direct reference to the question of the rates of postage, was yet of importance. At the commencement of the eighteenth century the main system of the Post Office still centred on London. All the main post routes radiated from London, and the great bulk of the letters passing by post were either for or from London, or passed through London. But there were, of course, numbers of letters which were not sent to London at all: letters between two towns on a post road, or letters between towns on different post roads, which could be sent direct and not by way of London. These letters were known as bye letters and cross post letters.[50] Since they were not handled in London, the authorities had not the same

means of checking their numbers, and the postmasters' accounts of postage in respect of them, as could be applied in London, and grave irregularities arose. The revenue was continually defrauded by the failure of the postmasters to bring to account the postage on such letters. No record was made in respect of many of them, and their transmission became so notoriously unsafe that illicit means of conveyance were constantly resorted to. The matter was already so serious that a special clause was included in the Act of the 9th of Anne, providing that for the suppression of the abuse any postmaster found guilty of embezzling the postage of bye or way letters should forfeit £5 for every letter and £100 for every week during which he continued the practice.[51] Even this penal clause was insufficient to check the abuse, as owing to the unsatisfactory method of dealing with bye and way letters there was small risk of detection in fraud.

In 1719 Ralph Allen, then postmaster of Bath, proposed to the Postmasters-General that the management of the bye and cross post letters should be leased to him for a term of years, and offered a rent one and a half times as great as the revenue from the letters at that time. The offer was accepted, and the lease, which in the first instance was for seven years, was renewed from time to time. Allen, whose discovery was merely that of a method of check on the receipts of the postmasters from the bye and cross letters, was able to pay the rent agreed upon, largely to suppress the illicit transmission of the letters, and to make a handsome profit.[52] The

chief importance of Allen's work lies, however, not so much in the fact of his rendering the bye and cross post letters subject to effective check, as in the fact that in order to retain his lease he, on each occasion of renewal, undertook the provision of additional facilities. By this means a daily post was gradually extended to almost all the post routes.[53]

In 1765 the inland rates for short distances were reduced, and a new standard of charge was introduced. Hitherto, all charges had