discovery of Coleman's papers, was then at the height. A cry was therefore raised that the penny post was a Popish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates, it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the scheme, and that the bags, if examined, would be found full of treason.[1] The utility of the enterprise was, however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation would be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an infraction of his monopoly; and the courts of law decided in his favour.[2]
The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committee of the House of Commons, after strict enquiry, had estimated the net receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of fifty thousand pounds; and this was then thought a stupendous sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand pounds. The charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eighty miles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage increased in proportion to the weight of the packet.[3] At present a single letter is carried to the extremity of Scotland or of Ireland for a penny; and the monopoly of post horses has long ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the department amount to more than eighteen hundred thousand pounds, and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand pounds. It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the number of letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number which was so conveyed at the time of the accession of James the Second.[4]
No part of the load which the old mails carried out was more important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like the
- ↑ Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680.
- ↑ Angliæ Metropolis, 1690.
- ↑ Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9; Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.
- ↑ I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,000£.; and the net receipt was about 1,200,000£. The number of letters conveyed by post was 478,000,000. (1857).
