Her Majesty's Mails

The high rates, while they failed to increase the Post-Office revenue, undoubtedly led to the evasion of the postage altogether. Illicit modes of conveyance were got up and patronised by some of the principal merchants in the kingdom. Penal laws were set at defiance, and the number of contraband letters became enormous. Some carriers were doing as large a business as the Post-Office itself. On one occasion the agents of the Post-Office made a seizure, about this time, of eleven hundred such letters, which were found in a single bag in the warehouse of certain eminent London carriers. The head of the firm hastened to seek an interview with the Postmaster-General, and proffered instant payment of 500l. by way of composition for the penalties incurred, and if proceedings against the firm might not be instituted. The money was taken, and the letters were all passed through the Post-Office the same night.[76] For one case which was detected, however, a hundred were never made known. The evasion of the Post-Office charges extended so far and so wide that the officials began to declare that any attempt to stop the smuggling, or even to check it, was as good as hopeless. Prosecutions for the illicit conveyance of letters had, in fact, ceased long before the misdemeanours themselves.