[540] When threatened by the Postmasters-General with prosecution "according to the utmost rigour of the law," he replied, according to their account, that "he should not be so unjust to himself as to lay down his undertaking at our demand, that his case was not as Mr. Dockwra's was, neither did we live under such a constitution as he did when the penny post was first set up (that is, an arbitrary government and bribed judges)."—Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry, 1837, p. 71.
[541] 5 Geo. III, cap. 25, § 11.
[542] Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry, 1837, p. 66.
[543] 5 Geo. III, cap. 25, § 14.
[544] 34 Geo. III, cap. 17.
[545] 41 Geo. III, cap. 7.
[546] Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry, 1837, p. 6.
[547] 45 Geo. III, cap. 11.
[548] Clause 1.
[549] These changes followed the recommendations of the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry, who, in their Twenty-first Report (1830), remarked strongly on the intricacy and confusion of the boundaries of the posts in London, viz. the General Post, the Foreign Post, the twopenny post (town delivery), and the twopenny post (country delivery). All these had different delivery areas, and in addition there was the "threepenny post town delivery," comprising the area lying between the limits of the General Post delivery and those of the town delivery of the twopenny post.