Circumstances so far favoured Allen that the demise of the Crown, which must in any case have terminated his contract, took place within a fortnight of the date on which the contract would have expired in the ordinary course. The period of seven years for which it was made expired on the 24th of June 1727, and the King died on the 11th. A renewal of the contract could not in justice be refused. Not only had Allen been obstructed in the execution of his plan and put to heavy expenses which, except for such obstruction, would not have been necessary, but in fixing the amount of his rent a mistake had been made to his prejudice. He had agreed to pay half as much again as the bye and cross-road letters had ever produced, and it is true that the postage represented by these letters had amounted to £4000 a year; but it had been overlooked that the whole of this amount had not been collected, and that for the purpose of fixing the rent the sum of £300 should have been deducted on account of letters which could not be delivered, and on which, therefore, no postage had been received. Allen, while making no claim for the return of the amount overpaid, pleaded the fact of overpayment as an additional reason for enlarging his term. The postmasters-general were not less solicitous than Allen himself that his services should be continued. They had, during the last seven years, received on account of bye and cross-post letters £6000 a year, where before they had received only £4000, or, allowing for the sum not collected, £3700; and during the same period the country letters, far from falling off as had been predicted, had improved to the extent of £735 a year, a result which was attributed to the vigilance of Allen's surveyors. These reasons were regarded as conclusive, and, subject to the condition that he should appoint an additional surveyor and lose no time in completing his plan, Allen's contract was extended for a further period of seven years.
While Allen is perfecting his arrangements, it may not be amiss to glance at the condition of affairs as he found them. Houses were still unnumbered. On letters even to persons of position the addresses could be indicated only by their proximity to some shop or place of public resort. "For the Rt. Honable. the Lady Compton next door to Mr. Massy's Wachmaker in Charles Street near St. James's Square, London." "To the Right Honble. Lady Compton next door to the Dyall in Charles Street near St. James Squir—London." "Pray derickt for me att my Lady norrise near the Theater in Oxford."[44] To the Court and the Downs the post went every day; but to no town, however large, did it go more than thrice a week. Of cross-posts there were only two in the kingdom, the post from Exeter to Chester and the post from Bath to Oxford. Outside London, Chester was the only town in England which could boast of two Post Offices; and these two Post Offices were not for letters in the same direction. One was for general post letters, and the other for letters by the Exeter cross-road, an arrangement which presupposed a knowledge of topography not probably possessed even in the present day. The cathedral town of Ripon had no Post Office at all. Not many years before, the inhabitants had asked for one and the request had been regarded as little less than audacious. "We could not think it reasonable," wrote the postmasters-general, "to put Her Majesty to the expense of a salary to a Deputy att Ripon." The utmost concession that could be obtained was that the letters for that town should be made up into a packet by themselves and put into the mouth of the Boroughbridge bag, and, on arrival at Boroughbridge, be despatched to Ripon at once by a messenger on horseback. This messenger was to deliver them with all expedition, and to remain at Ripon for replies, leaving only in time to catch the return-mail from the North. Charges on letters over and above the legal postage were general. Not a single letter passed between Yarmouth and the Great North Road without a charge of 3d. as the postmaster's perquisite. At Gosport a perquisite of similar amount was claimed on every bye-letter. In the neighbourhood of Chesterfield the inhabitants paid for every letter they received in no case less than 2d. in addition to the postage, and in some cases as much as 4d.; and so it was, with variations as to the amount, in every part of the kingdom. Only the wealthy could afford to use the post, and even they, on account of the want of facilities, used it sparingly. How far the post was at this time removed from being a matter of common concern might, if other evidence were wanting, be inferred from one solitary fact. In 1728 a book was published,[45] one chapter of which professed to give a detailed account of the posts of the period, and assuredly the account it gave was detailed enough; but of the posts as we understand them, that is to say, as a vehicle for the transmission of letters, there was from the beginning to the end of the chapter not a single word. By the term posts nothing more was meant than the post for travellers, and, for anything that appeared to the contrary, the letter post might have had no existence.
And perhaps this may be a convenient place to say a few words about those who had presided over the Post Office during the first five or six years of Allen's connection with it. Edward Carteret and Galfridus Walpole, who had succeeded Cornwallis and Craggs in 1721, possessed in a high degree the qualities which endear men to their subordinates,—a sense of justice, consideration for others, and a rooted dislike to high-handed proceedings. In these respects they bore a striking contrast to their immediate predecessors. We will give instances.
When Cornwallis and Craggs assumed the direction of the Post Office, their first step was to dismiss the secretary, Henry Weston. The circumstances were peculiarly hard. Weston's father had been receiver-general for the county of Surrey, and in this capacity he had contracted a heavy debt to the Crown. It was the son's ambition to pay off this debt and to provide a home for his mother and sisters. By force of industry and self-denial he had just succeeded in securing both objects when a change of postmasters-general resulted in his summary dismissal. Weston naturally appealed against so arbitrary an act. Cornwallis and Craggs, to whom his antecedents were well known, while commending the young man as an object worthy of the royal benevolence, resented as unreasonable and little short of impertinent his reluctance to give up a situation which they desired for a nominee of their own.
Far different was the treatment accorded by Carteret and Walpole to those who were committed to their charge. Mary Lovell had for more than thirty years kept the receiving office in St. James's Street. On the 11th of March 1725 the Earl of Abercorn entered this office, holding in his hand a letter addressed to his son at Cambray, and inquired what postage had to be paid upon it. The woman replied that there was only 1d. to pay, this being the charge by the penny post, and that the remaining postage of 3s. would be payable on delivery. Abercorn questioned the accuracy of this information, and insisted on paying the entire sum at once. Lovell, feeling sure that a mistake had been committed, and anxious about the consequences, hurried to the Post Office, and having there ascertained that she should have received only 1d., called at Abercorn's residence, and with a humble apology refunded the difference.
Nothing more was heard of the matter until the following July, when a second very similar mistake appears to have revived the recollection of the first. Abercorn, who was then at Tunbridge Wells, took to the Post Office there a letter addressed to his son at Luneville and handed it to Comer, the postmaster, impressing upon him the importance of its prompt despatch, and desiring him to pay whatever postage might be required. It should be explained that at that time letters for Germany had to be prepaid, or else they were returned to the writers, whereas letters for France could not be paid except on delivery. Comer, jumping to the conclusion that Luneville was in France, paid no more than the inland postage of 6d., the consequence being that three or four days afterwards the letter, after being opened in London, was returned as insufficiently paid. Abercorn, naturally enough, was very angry, and, as is apt to be the case with angry persons, was not altogether reasonable. Luneville, without the addition of Lorraine or Germany, was an incomplete address. For this he would make no allowance; neither would he admit that it was necessary to open the letter in order to return it, and that the impression on the seal, a coronet and coat of arms, was not sufficient indication of the writer.
All this was natural enough; but it was strange that he should have reverted to the earlier of the two mistakes, and directed his resentment less against Comer than against Mary Lovell. He now charged her with insolence and an attempt at imposition, and declared that nothing would satisfy him except her dismissal. In pursuance of this object Abercorn proceeded to the Post Office, where he was received by Carteret and Walpole. Walpole said little, and what little he said was said courteously. Carteret spoke in both their names. He expressed surprise that the return of the amount overcharged on the letter to Cambray, accompanied as it had been by Lovell's humble apology, had not been considered satisfactory, and inquired what further satisfaction could be expected. Abercorn replied that he expected her to be turned out of her office as a person unfit to retain it. Carteret expostulated. Such a step, he said, would not be in accordance with Post Office usage; she was a poor and unprotected woman, no previous complaint had been made against her during the thirty years she had held the office; he had seen her himself, and felt sure that her professions of regret that she had given offence to his lordship were sincere. Impatient of what he afterwards described as an irksome expostulation, Abercorn rose to leave. Carteret and Walpole rose also, and accompanied him to the door. "I owe it to the North British peers," said Abercorn, turning on the threshold, "to acquaint some of their representatives with the treatment that I, their peer, have met with." "And I," haughtily retorted Carteret, "should care not if all the sixteen North British representing peers were present at this moment."
Allen's plan consisted in a system of vouchers and what he called post-bills, by means of which the postmasters might act as a check upon each other. The post-bill which accompanied the letters throughout their course was designed to distinguish the bye-letters from others, and to shew the total amount of postage to be collected; the voucher appears to have been nothing more than the acknowledgment which each postmaster gave of the amount to be collected by himself; and these two documents were sent periodically, once a month or once a quarter, to Allen's office in Bath, where they underwent a rigid scrutiny. Simple as this check was, it was only by ceaseless vigilance on Allen's part that he could get it carried out. To make in the post-bills entries which should have been made in the vouchers, to omit to send the vouchers to headquarters, to confound the bye-letters with the London and country letters—these were only some of the devices to which recourse was had in order to defeat the check.
Allen was better qualified probably than any other man living for the task he had set himself to perform. Of a temper which nothing could ruffle, with ample means at his command, and accountable to no one but himself for their disposal, and possessed of an amount of local knowledge which even at the present day is perhaps unrivalled, he enjoyed a combination of advantages which might have been sought elsewhere in vain. His patience indeed was inexhaustible. No subterfuge, not even a transparent attempt at imposition, would call forth more than a passing rebuke. "'Tis faulty," he would write, "'tis blameable"; and then, perhaps, from the following words would peep out, in spite of himself, a gleam of merriment at the clumsiness of the contrivance.
To a man of less easy temperament even the conditions under which he worked would have been intolerable. Under the terms of his contract Allen's surveyors were to be the officers of the postmasters-general, and to do as the postmasters-general bid them. This was no mere nominal condition. When Allen wanted something done, it may be in the extreme north or the extreme west of England, he might find that the surveyor whose business it would have been to do it had been summoned to London to wait upon the postmasters-general in Lombard Street. Hardly less provoking must have been the condition that the surveyors, though Allen's servants, were not to receive from him any instructions which the postmasters-general had not first approved. Ordinarily Allen was at Bath, and it was there that the instructions were prepared; yet they had to be sent to London for approval, and were seldom despatched thence to their destination until seven or eight days after the dates they bore.