[225] Ibid., p. 17.
[226] 1 German mile=7.5 kilometres. Distances are given throughout in German miles.
[227] H. von Stephan, op. cit., p. 62.
[228] Ibid., p. 18.
[229] "Dass unter solchen Umständen bei Ankunft der Posten namentlich an bedeutenderen Orten ein grosser Zusammenlauf von Menschen stattfand, ist begreiflich. Auch finden wir mehrere Rescripte wider das tumultuarische Treiben des Publicums vor den Posthäusern."—Ibid., p. 61.
[230] In 1662 the posts yielded 7,000 thalers surplus (revenue 17,000 thalers, expenditure 10,000 thalers); in 1672, 10,433 thalers (revenue 24,539 thalers, expenditure 14,106 thalers); in 1682, 29,058 thalers (revenue 51,959 thalers, expenditure 22,901 thalers); and in 1688, 39,213 thalers (revenue 79,971 thalers, expenditure 40,758 thalers). The net revenue of the posts was generally devoted to the payment of State officials, to the improvement of means of communication (building of canals, etc.), and to beneficence. For example, the Elector, during the severe illness of his first wife, made a vow to found an almshouse and ordered 6,000 thalers yearly to be assigned for its support. Of this sum 2,000 thalers were laid on the post revenues.—Ibid., p. 60.
[231] A groschen was roughly the equivalent of a penny. The value of money was then about four times its present value.
[232] The price of a bushel of rye in Berlin, which from 1740 to 1756 had varied from 23 groschen to a thaler, rose to 4 thalers.
[233] The edict of the 27th January proclaiming the higher rates remarked that the raising of the letter rate would be detrimental to the public and prejudicial to the credit of the service, and that "in spite of the high price of corn and the depreciation of money, raising of the letter rate could not be thought of, and that in the neighbouring States this measure, however soon it might be set aside, had worked to their disadvantage."—H. von Stephan, op. cit., p. 292.
[234] "The encouragement of a particular business or manufacture in a particular place; the better opposing of the competition of a neighbouring route; tenderness for existing difference in newly acquired districts; the difference in the price of corn in a province, and at an earlier date even of money, weight, length of the miles, as also, in the case of travelling post charges, the season of the year; all these circumstances were often brought into consideration in the fixing of postage rates."—Ibid., p. 296.