The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

Then there was the franking privilege, by means of which all letters franked by peers and members of Parliament went free. Members of Parliament sometimes signed franks by the packet and gave them to constituents and friends. A trade was actually carried on in franks by the servants of members of Parliament, and their practice was to ask their masters to sign the franks in great numbers at a time. Forgery of franks was a frequent offence. About seventy years ago an old Irish lady informed a Post Office servant that she seldom paid any postage for letters, and that her correspondence never cost her friends anything. The official asked her how she managed this. “Oh,” she said, “I just wrote 'Fred. Suttie' in the corner of the cover of the letter and then, sure, nothing more was charged for it.” She was asked, “Were you not afraid of being hanged for forgery?” “Oh, dear, no,” she replied, “nobody ever heard of a lady being hanged in Ireland, and troth I did just what everybody else did.” The system of payment on delivery of a letter was the cause of perpetual delays and numerous frauds. When a postman was obliged to collect at every house the necessary postage, it was extremely difficult to regulate his rounds. The temptation to defraud the Post Office, his master, was also frequently yielded to by him. A large amount of money was every year obviously being lost to the Post Office in these different ways. A public opinion was in existence that the charges of the Post Office were unjust and excessive, and the moral sense of the community was not always alive enough to recognise any wrong in dodging the Government.