STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685 .

381

great Doctor Oates, it -was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion chap.

that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the scheme, and that the-

bags, if examined, would be found full of treason.* Theutility of the enterprise was, however, so great and obviousthat all opposition proved fruitless. As soon as it becameclear that the speculation would be lucrative, the Duke ofYork complained of it as an infraction of his monopoly, andthe courts of law decided in his favour.**

The revenue of the Post Office was from the first con-stantly increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committeeof the House of Commons, after strict inquiry, had estimatedthe net receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At theclose of the reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt waslittle short of fifty thousand pounds; and this was thenthought a stupendous sum. The gross receipt was aboutseventy thousand pounds. The charge for conveying a singleletter was twopence for eighty miles, and threepence for alonger distance. The postage increased in proportion to theweight of the packet.*** At present a single letter is carriedto the extremity of Scotland or of Ireland for a penny; andthe monopoly of post horses has long ceased to exist. Yetthe gross annual receipts of the department amount to morethan eighteen hundred thousand pounds, and the net receiptsto more than seven hundred thousand pounds. It is, there-fore, scarcely possible to doubt that the number of lettersnow conveyed by mail is seventy times the number whichwas so conveyed at the time of the accession of James theSecond.

No part of the load which the old mails carried out was News-more important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like p,Iier “'the London daily paper of our time existed, or could exist.

* Smith’s Current Intelligence, March 30. and April 3. 1680.

** Anglite Metropolis, 1690.

*** Commons’ Journals, Sept. 4.1660, March 1.168J. Chamberlayne,

684. Davenant on the Public llevenue, Discourse IV.