Her Majesty's Mails

During the last century, the practice of granting warrants was exceedingly common; and they might be had on the most trivial pretences. It was not the practice to record such warrants regularly in any official book,[119] and few are so recorded: we can only guess at their number from the frequent mention made of them in the State trials of the period, and in other incidental ways. In 1723, at Bishop Atterbury's trial, copies of his letters were produced and given in evidence against him. A clerk from the Post-Office certified to the fact that they had passed through the post, and that he had seen them opened, read, and copied. Atterbury, as well he might, asked for the authority for this practice; and, especially, if the Secretary of State had directed that his letters should be interfered with? A majority in the House of Lords decided that the question need not be answered. It is pleasant to relate that twenty-nine peers recorded an indignant protest against this decision. One of them proposed to cross-examine the Rev. (!) Edward Willes, "one of His Majesty's Post-Office decipherers," but the majority going to a still greater length, resolved: "That it is the opinion of this House that it is not consistent with the public safety to ask the decipherers any questions which may tend to discover the art or mystery of deciphering."[120] Again, at the trial of Horne Tooke for high treason in 1795, a letter written to him by Mr. Joyce, a printer, was intercepted at the Post-Office, and was stated by the prisoner to be the immediate occasion of his apprehension. On his requiring its production, a duly certified copy was brought into Court by the Crown officers and given in evidence.