"I have had occasion formerly to observe to you that a very great evasion of the Post Revenue has taken place—particularly in the north of Scotland—from the privilege granted to soldiers, under cover of which not only a very general opportunity is taken by the common people there to have their letters carried by soldiers to be freed by their officers, and having them again in return under soldiers' addresses; but even in several instances which I observed and detected, persons in higher ranks have availed themselves of this circumstance."
Nor were people of quality above the habit of committing similar frauds upon the Post-office revenue, as will be observed from the following remarks penned by an official on the 9th April 1812. The statement runs thus:—"On the 31st ultimo, having gone into the mail-coach office at Glasgow, soon after the arrival of the coach from Ayr, and observing several parcels which had arrived by it, one in particular took our attention by its appearing to contain a loaf of bread of the supposed value of 6d. or 8d., addressed to the Honble. Mrs ——, of Glasgow; and as this parcel was charged 10d., it created the idea of some mistake having happened in sending it in that way, by which the carriage exceeded the value, besides the original cost of it.
"In a few minutes after this, however, two ladies called for the parcel, one of them believed to be Mrs —— herself, and the other her sister, and inquired for the parcel; and my curiosity leading me to notice the issue of this supposed hoax, I was not a little surprised to find, after the lady had cut up the cover, that two or three letters were enclosed with the loaf, one of which she gave to the other lady, and sent the loaf home by the porter."
The Post-office has also been exposed to frauds in other ways. Thus it was a common device to take a newspaper bearing the newspaper frank, prick out with a pin certain words in the print making up a message to be sent, and the newspaper so prepared served all the purposes of a letter as between the sender and receiver. Or a message would be written on the cover of a newspaper with the first of all fluids known to us—milk—which, when dry, was not observed, but developed a legible communication subsequently when held to the fire.
The following anecdotes of the evasions of postage are told by the late Sir Rowland Hill:—
"Some years ago, when it was the practice to write the name of a member of Parliament for the purpose of franking a newspaper, a friend of mine, previous to starting on a tour into Scotland, arranged with his family a plan of informing them of his progress and state of health, without putting them to the expense of postage. It was managed thus: He carried with him a number of old newspapers, one of which he put into the post daily. The postmark, with the date, showed his progress; and the state of his health was evinced by the selection of the names from a list previously agreed upon, with which the newspaper was franked. Sir Francis Burdett, I recollect, denoted vigorous health."
"Once on the poet's [Coleridge's] visit to the Lake district, he halted at the door of a wayside inn at the moment when the rural postman was delivering a letter to the barmaid of the place. Upon receiving it she turned it over and over in her hand, and then asked the postage of it. The postman demanded a shilling. Sighing deeply, however, the girl handed the letter back, saying she was too poor to pay the required sum. The poet at once offered to pay the postage; and in spite of some resistance on the part of the girl, which he deemed quite natural, did so. The messenger had scarcely left the place when the young barmaid confessed that she had learnt all she was likely to learn from the letter; that she had only been practising a preconceived trick—she and her brother having agreed that a few hieroglyphics on the back of the letter should tell her all she wanted to know, whilst the letter would contain no writing. 'We are so poor,' she added, 'that we have invented this manner of corresponding and franking our letters.'"
In asserting its monopoly in the carriage of letters in towns, or wherever the Post-office had established posts, there was always trouble; and so much attention did the matter require, that special officers for the duty were employed, called "Apprehenders of Private Letter-carriers." The penalties were somewhat severe when infringements were discovered, and the action taken straight and prompt, as will be seen by the following, which is a copy of a letter written in 1817 to a person charging him with breaking the law:—
"Sir,—His Majesty's Postmasters-General have received an information laid against you, that on the 18th ultimo your clerk, Mr ——, for whom you are answerable, illegally sent three letters in a parcel by a stage-coach to you at Broadstairs, Kent, contrary to the statute made to prevent the sending of letters otherwise than by the post.