Chapter X: Ralph Allen (2)

And yet Allen's activity, untiring as it was, went only a short way to regain for the Post Office the popularity it had lost. Various causes had contributed to this result. The chief of them, however, as it was the earliest in point of time, was of itself enough and more than enough to account for the distrust and hostility with which the Post Office appears to have been regarded towards the middle of the last century. As early as 1735 members of Parliament had begun to complain that their letters bore evident signs of having been opened at the Post Office, alleging that such opening had been frequent and was become matter of common notoriety; but it was not until six years later, in the course of inquiries which were being made into the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole during the last ten years of his administration, that the state of the case became fully known. It then transpired that in the Post Office there was a private office, an office independent of the postmasters-general and under the immediate direction of the Secretary of State, which was expressly maintained for the purpose of opening and inspecting letters. It was pretended, indeed, that these operations were confined to foreign letters, but, as a matter of fact, there was no such restriction. The office appears to have been established in 1718, and its cost, which was defrayed out of the secret service money, had since increased more than tenfold, and now reached the prodigious sum of L4700 a year. The establishment, exclusive of a door-keeper, consisted of nine persons, with salaries ranging from L200 to L1000; the head of the office or "Chief Decypherer," as he was called, being Dr. Willes, Dean of Lincoln. It was in June 1742 that these shameful facts became known, through the report of a committee of the House of Commons; and, in the August following, Willes was gazetted Bishop of St. Davids.

To ourselves it may seem strange that the State monopoly of letters should have survived so terrible a revelation. It must be remembered, however, that in the middle of the last century the Post Office, owing mainly to the heavy charges it levied, had hardly become matter of general concern; that public opinion, as we now understand it, was only beginning to exist; and, above all, that the very conditions under which Post Office work was done precluded the idea of privacy. These conditions were absolutely inconsistent with the sanctity which now surrounds a letter. Letters were divided into two classes,--single and double; and to determine whether a letter was the one or the other demanded a close scrutiny, a scrutiny such as could not be exercised except by the strongest light that candles could give. In 1719 it had been laid down that a letter, however small, was to be charged as a double one if two or more persons joined in writing it. How could it be ascertained that the whole of a letter was in one and the same handwriting except by prying? Even the law itself, by the meagre protection it vouchsafed to letters, discouraged the idea of sanctity. For an offence of the pettiest kind, as for instance for stealing a pocket-handkerchief in a dwelling-house, the penalty was death. For opening or embezzling a letter the highest penalty which the law allowed was a fine of L20. It is significant of the change which has since taken place in the public sentiment that while in the case of almost every other description of offence the penalty has been enormously reduced, in the case of opening and embezzling letters it has been enormously increased.

Horace Walpole, writing more than twenty-five years later, never tired of mentioning the elaborate precautions he had taken to secure his correspondence against inspection. "I shall send this letter by the coach," he says, "as it is rather free-spoken and Sandwich[47] may be prying." "I always say less than I could, because I consider how many post-house ordeals a letter must pass"; and similar observations occur in a hundred different places. All this was sheer nonsense. It tickled the exquisite vanity of the man to affect to believe that his correspondence was of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the State. And yet truth compels us to admit that the infamous practice which the committee exposed did not cease with the exposure. The Treasury, while grudging every 6d. expended on the posts, continued regularly to remit more than L4000 a year for the maintenance of their inquisitors in Lombard Street; and it was not until George the Third had sat some years on the throne, probably under the Rockingham administration, that the corps was finally disbanded.

[47] Lord Sandwich was postmaster-general in 1768.

Apart from the grave cause of offence we have mentioned, it is a curious fact that during the last eighteen or twenty years of George the Second's reign hardly anything occurred in which the Post Office was concerned that did not in one way or another cause dissatisfaction to some section of the community. The Post Office, no doubt, was often to blame, sometimes deeply so; but even where this was not the case, where no blame attached either to itself or to any other office or person, it in no single instance, so far as we are aware, escaped a certain amount of obloquy.

This unfortunate result first shews itself in the case of the Falmouth and Lisbon packets. During the war with Spain it had only been necessary, as a defence against some Spanish privateers which infested the Channel, to provide the Dover and Harwich packets with arms and to make a small addition to their complement of men; but in 1744, when Spain was joined by France, a good deal more had to be done. The Dover and Calais packets, after the six months' grace allowed by the treaty of Utrecht, were taken off; the packets to the West Indies which had been discontinued since 1711 were revived; and the Falmouth and Lisbon packets were put on the same footing as during the last war. This the merchants trading with Portugal, an important body representing forty-eight firms, protested was not enough. The packets, they argued, afforded the only available means for remitting gold to Lisbon in exchange for commodities, and should, therefore, be of at least 300 tons and carry 100 men. It was true that this would be in excess by about seventy tons and forty men of what was provided during the last war; but the fact that during the last war some of the packets fell into the hands of privateers was of itself a proof that they were not of force and burthen sufficient. Besides, we had then an army in Spain, and the number of soldiers and passengers passing to and fro made fewer sailors necessary. Moved by these arguments, the Duke of Newcastle decided to comply with the merchants' request; but Pelham, on learning that the building and equipment alone would cost L34,800, revoked the Duke's decision. His Majesty's opinion he declared to be that the main object of a packet was to carry letters, and that for the carriage of letters light and swift vessels were the fittest. This, it will be remembered, was the opinion which had been expressed by William the Third more than fifty years before, and events had proved its soundness. Nevertheless, the merchants were highly displeased; and, of course, at that time they were no more able than they are now to distinguish between a refusal which originated with the Post Office and one that was imposed upon it by superior authority.

But the merchants--and here we speak not of those alone who traded with Portugal--had other and more serious cause of complaint. Their foreign letters were not delivered until twelve o'clock in the day, and, if a mail arrived by as much as a few minutes after twelve, it was not at the earliest delivered until the same hour on the following day. And if on this day a second mail chanced to arrive shortly before noon, the letters by the first mail were kept back so as to be delivered with those of the second in the evening. Thus, foreign letters received at the Post Office in Lombard Street a few minutes after mid-day on Saturday might not be delivered even in Lombard Street itself until the evening of Monday. To make matters worse, the foreign ministers residing in London had their letters delivered soon after the mail arrived, so that any persons whom these ministers might please to favour enjoyed an undue advantage.

The merchants now urged that this might be altered. Did not Sir Harry Furness, they asked, during the last war obtain permission to have his letters delivered immediately after the arrival of a mail? And was not this permission afterwards revoked on the ground that it had led to abuse? Matters were better managed abroad. At Amsterdam, for instance, if a mail arrived as late as nine o'clock in the evening, the letters were delivered to those who might call for them at any time before midnight, or else sent out for delivery early the next morning. At Rotterdam--this also was urged as an instance of better management--the English letters were never delivered till twelve hours after the mail had arrived, about which time those which had come by the same mail would be in course of delivery at Amsterdam. Equality of treatment was thus secured, and neither city had priority of intelligence. At Hamburg, again, as soon as a mail arrived--if in the day, a notice to that effect was fixed up at the Post Office and at the Exchange, the letters being delivered about three hours later; and if at night, the clerks were called out of bed, so that the letters might be sorted and ready for delivery the first thing in the morning. Sundays, moreover, were not excepted. As regards foreign gazettes, too, these all over Europe were delivered within a quarter of an hour after their arrival; yet in London the merchants had to wait for them many hours. And this was all the more hard to bear because the clerks in the Post Office, to whom gazettes were addressed, received them at once and communicated the contents to their friends. What could be more calculated to promote fraudulent insurance, one-sided bargains, and a system of overreaching generally? Such was the representation made by the merchants; and they concluded by asking that henceforth, except on Sundays, no longer interval should be allowed to elapse between the arrival and delivery of a foreign mail than was absolutely necessary for the purpose of sorting. The postmasters-general had no choice but to refuse the request. To have granted it would have defeated the object with which the Treasury were maintaining an office of their own within the Post Office building.

About this time, three or four years short of the middle of the century, the Post Office got into disgrace with travellers. Under the provisions of the numerous Turnpike Acts which had recently passed, the trustees of the roads were to measure distances and to erect milestones; and on these provisions being carried into effect the statute mile proved to be shorter, much shorter, than the reputed or Post Office mile.[48] So great indeed was the difference that the Post Office may be said to have been almost ridiculously out of its reckoning. Thus, from London to Berwick-upon-Tweed the distance, according to Post Office computation, was 262 miles; according to measurement, it proved to be 339 miles. To Holyhead the actual distance proved to be 269 miles; the Post Office had computed it at 208 miles. To Manchester the distance, according to the Post Office, was 137 miles; the actual distance was 165. Bristol, which proved to be 115 miles from London, had been reckoned as 94; Birmingham as 89 instead of 116; Warwick as 67 instead of 84; and so it had been throughout the kingdom. In every case the Post Office mile proved to be an unduly long one; and of course, as soon as milestones were erected authoritatively recording the statute miles, the postmasters charged accordingly. This change excited many murmurs. The traveller to Warwick who, at the rate of 3d. a mile, exclusive of a guide, had hitherto paid for the use of a horse 16s. 9d., had now to pay 21s. To Birmingham he had now to pay 29s. instead of 22s. 3d.; to Bristol, 28s. 9d. instead of 23s. 6d.; and so on.

[48] This, although unknown probably to the postmasters until now, was
no new discovery. As far back as 1674 John Ogilby had called attention
to the erroneous reckonings in vogue. Ogilby had been commissioned by
Charles the Second to survey and measure the principal roads of England,
and having performed his task he published the result of his labours in
a large folio volume. In the preface to an abridgment of this work,
published in 1711, he thus wrote: "The distances are all along reckoned
in measur'd miles and furlongs, beginning from the Standard in Cornhil,
so that the reader must not be surprized when he finds the number of
miles set down here exceed the common computation. For example, from
London to York are computed but 150 miles, whereas by measure the
distance is 192 miles. And computation being very uncertain, it must be
granted that no exactness could be observed but [by] adhering constantly
to the standard-mile of 1760 yards, which contains eight furlongs."

The King's messengers fought hardest against the innovation, but without success. Finding the expense of their journeys to Berwick and Holyhead appreciably increased, they appealed to the Treasury for redress, and the Treasury invited the postmasters-general to explain under what authority they had raised their charges. The postmasters-general replied, as they had replied scores of times before on occasions of complaint from the public, that they had really nothing to do with the matter; that it was the postmasters who made the charges; and that in the opinion of the Attorney-General these officers were clearly entitled to be paid according to the new measurements. It had been expressly provided by Act of Parliament that all persons riding post should pay after the rate of 3d. for every British mile, and the British mile was a known statute measure common to all His Majesty's dominions. The Treasury were not satisfied, and insisted that the King's messengers should be charged according to the old scale. But this, as the postmasters-general pointed out, was not feasible, the Act of Parliament by which they were governed making no exception in favour of particular persons, but on the contrary enacting that all persons without distinction should pay at the rate of 3d. a mile.

At the headquarters in Lombard Street it was long feared that, on finding that the reputed mile exceeded the statute mile, those postmasters whose remuneration had been fixed according to the distance over which they carried the mails would claim an increased mileage allowance; but this, to their credit be it said, they never did. Such forbearance, however, had one ill effect. It tended to perpetuate error. For many years afterwards two sets of distances remained in vogue, the one right and the other wrong; the new set applicable to travellers, and the old set to mails and to expresses sent on the service of the State.[49]

[49] This explains why in the Road Books of the time the distance
between two places is stated differently in two parallel columns under
the initials C and M, the one being the computed and the other the
measured distance.

The feeling against the Post Office, which had long been gathering force, now displayed itself in a remarkable manner. It had been the constant and uniform practice ever since the Post Office was established to charge letters containing patterns or samples with double postage. To this the merchants now demurred. They did not deny that such letters if weighing as much as an ounce should be charged as for an ounce weight; but they contended that if weighing less than an ounce they should be charged as single and not double letters. This contention was founded on the wording of the Act of Anne, which, after prescribing the postage which "every single letter or piece of paper" not being of the weight of one ounce was to pay, enacted that "a double letter" should pay twice that amount. Was a letter to be charged double because it had in it any enclosure--a sample of grain, for instance, or a pattern of cloth or of silk? or to constitute a double letter must not the enclosure be of paper?

This question the merchants now resolved to try; and accordingly at Bristol, at Manchester, and at Cirencester proceedings were commenced against the local postmasters for demanding and receiving more than the legal postage. It affords striking evidence of the widespread dissatisfaction then existing that in 1753 a practice as old as the Post Office itself should have been challenged for the first time, still more that it should have been challenged at three separate places, distant from one another, simultaneously. The action against the postmaster of Cirencester came on first. It was tried at the Gloucester Assizes before a special jury, when a special verdict was found upon the words of the statute, whether a letter containing a pattern or sample and not being of the weight of one ounce ought to pay double or single postage. The postmasters-general, anxious to avoid a multiplicity of suits, now opened communications with the merchants of Bristol and Manchester. Would it not be well that their suits should be abandoned? One special verdict would serve as well as a hundred such verdicts would do to settle the point of law between the Crown and the subject. Having succeeded in one county, what more could they expect in another? Or what advantage would follow that had not been already secured? These overtures came too late. The merchants were determined to fight to the bitter end. The suits came on both at Bristol and at Manchester; and at each of those places a special verdict was given in almost identical terms with that which had been returned at Gloucester.

Meanwhile the attorneys both in London and the country had passed resolutions to the effect that, if the point of law were decided in the merchants' favour, they would refuse to pay double postage on letters containing writs. The postmasters-general became alarmed. Single instead of double postage on letters containing writs as well as patterns and samples meant, according to the most moderate computation, a reduction of the Post Office revenue by L10,000 or L12,000 a year. This was a serious reduction, and how to prevent it was the question to which the postmasters-general now addressed themselves. It is characteristic of the time that the first expedient they devised with this object was simply to refuse to carry any more letters containing patterns and samples unless the senders of them should agree beforehand to pay double postage. They argued that, in view of the importance to the merchant to have his letters carried, any unwillingness on his part to enter into such an agreement would be easily overcome. A notice to give effect to their intention was already prepared; but before issuing it they took the precaution to consult the Attorney-General. His advice to them was that, admirable as the expedient might be, it was distinctly illegal. Should they, then, bring one of the special verdicts on to be argued in Westminster Hall and abide by the judicial decision? To this the Attorney-General could raise no objection, but he warned them that the decision was pretty sure to be against the Crown. Driven thus into a corner, the postmasters-general adopted a most questionable course. They advocated the passing of an Act which should declare a letter containing any enclosure, even though not of paper and not weighing as much as an ounce, to be a double letter; and this advice was followed. In a bill then before Parliament, having for its object to prevent the fraudulent removal of tobacco, a clause was inserted which effectually prevented the merchants from sending their patterns or samples and the lawyers their writs for single postage.[50]

[50] 26 Geo. II. cap. xiii. sec. 7.

It would be difficult to conceive a more irritating course. No doubt there was precedent for it. Early in the reign of George the First an Act had been passed enacting that bills of exchange written on the same piece of paper as a letter, and also letters written on the same piece of paper and addressed to different persons, should be charged as distinct letters: and, possibly enough, it might have been difficult to explain why a bill of exchange should pay double postage and not a pattern or a writ. It is also true that the fact of three several judges and three several juries in distant parts of the kingdom having been unable to agree as to the intent and meaning of a statute implied a real doubt. And yet it can hardly be denied that to solve that doubt by the brute force of an Act of Parliament, instead of bringing one of the special verdicts before the Courts to be argued, was a most provoking step. Nor would it have been calculated to appease the merchants if they had known, as the postmasters-general knew, that the entire rates of postage, as they then existed, rested on no legal sanction. The existing rates were imposed by the Act of Anne; and that Act imposed them for a period of thirty-two years, a period which had now expired, and after which it was expressly provided that the former and lower rates were to revive. It is true that early in the reign of George the First a further Act had passed, making perpetual the Post Office contribution of L700 a week to the Exchequer; but by a clumsiness of legislation, which is not unknown even in our own day, the latter Act, while making perpetual both the contribution and the power to levy it, had omitted to re-enact the rates out of which the contribution was to be paid. Virtually, therefore, these rates had lapsed through effluxion of time.

And what during the last forty or fifty years had the Post Office done--done, that is, independently of Allen--to promote the public convenience or to make amends for so much that had given offence? It had done four things, and, so far as we are aware, four things only. It had introduced the contrivance, with which we are all familiar, of external apertures in Post Offices, so that letters could be posted from the outside. It had brought the system of expresses up to a standard which, compared with what it was at the beginning of the century, might perhaps be considered high. It had, indirectly, been the means of eliciting from the Courts of Law an important decision. And it had accelerated the course of post between London and Edinburgh. In 1758 the time which the mail took to accomplish the distance was, at the instance of the royal boroughs, reduced between London and Edinburgh from 87 hours to 82, and between Edinburgh and London from 131 hours to 85.

The date at which apertures on the outside of Post Offices were first introduced is unknown to us even approximately. All we can do is to fix two distant dates at one of which the contrivance existed, and at the other it existed not. On the 3rd of November 1712 Oxford, the Lord Treasurer, received an anonymous letter, and, being anxious to discover the writer, he invoked the assistance of the postmasters-general with a view to ascertain where and by whom it had been posted. Any such inquiry at the present time would be absolutely futile. One hundred and eighty years ago the postmasters-general, after an interval of twenty-four hours, were able to reply not only that the letter had been posted "at the receiving office of Mrs. Sandys, a threadshop two doors within Blackfryars Gateway," but that it had been posted "by a youth of about seventeen years old, in a whitish suit of cloathes, who was without a hat." It is difficult to believe that apertures can have existed then, and that the letter was not posted inside the office. That in 1757 the contrivance had come into existence, though possibly in a rude form, is beyond question. In that year an unfortunate woman was put on her trial for stealing a letter, and the sender was called upon to prove the posting. "On Tuesday the 7th of December 1756," he said, "I put this letter into the Post Office at the house of Mrs. Jeffreys at Bloomsbury, at about nine o'clock at night.... There is a window and a slip to put it into a little box from out of the street. I was not in the house. It is a very narrow box, and I was afraid my letter was gone down to the ground.[51] I asked Mrs. Jeffreys if my letter was safe after I had dropped it into the slip. She said your letter is safe and gone into the box." If the value of a contrivance depended upon the amount of ingenuity displayed in devising it, these apertures would be hardly deserving of mention; but in view of the convenience they afford, this short notice of them may not perhaps be considered out of place.

[51] The box into which the letters fell was at this time an open one,
_i.e._ without a cover and movable. It was not until 1792 that the
letter-box was closed, fixed, and locked.

The Rebellion of 1745, while disarranging the posts, brought into vogue the system of expresses; and this system once established was not long in extending itself. An express cost 3d. a mile, and, no doubt, travelled faster than at the beginning of the century. The roads had since been improved; and it may well be believed that the postmasters, as their custom increased, kept better horses. It was probably the speed of the express as compared with the tardiness of the post which induced the wealthy, about the middle of the last century, largely to employ this mode of conveyance for their letters. It had indeed one drawback, a drawback such as in our own time has attended the use of telegrams. It was apt to excite alarm. "Let me," writes the good-natured Charles Townshend to his sister-in-law, Lady Ferrers, under date September 1759--"Let me now desire you to conclude whenever you receive an express that it brings you good news, for otherwise I shall be obliged to defer one day sending you any such account if it should not come to me on a post day, least the express should alarm you. I should not chuse to detain you one minute from the news I know your heart beats for, and yet I should not chuse to frighten you by the sudden manner of its arrival, for which reason I desire you will remember to receive whatsoever express I send with confidence and as a friend."

But the purpose for which an express might be employed was jealously restricted. A man might employ an express to carry a letter; but woe betide him if he employed the same agency for the purpose of disseminating news. The licensed carriers at Cambridge had recently been prosecuted and the postmasters on the Great West Road taken severely to task for doing this very thing. What are we to think of the intolerable state of bondage in which men were content to live when even the gentle Allen could give the following instruction? "At every stage," he writes to one of his surveyors, "you must forbid the deputies to send any express except to the General Post Office in London, unless it be for His Majesty's immediate service; and all other intelligence must be conveyed either by the common post or particular messenger."

In the middle of the last century, and for about thirty years before and after, the mails were being continually stopped and robbed by highwaymen. The reward which the Post Office offered on these occasions for the apprehension of the robber was invariably L200, this being in addition to the reward of L40 prescribed by Act of Parliament; and if the robbery took place within five miles of London, there was a third reward of L100 by proclamation. Numerous and diverse as the robberies[52] were, there is only one of which we propose to speak; and in this case an exception may well be made on account of the important decision which it was the means of evoking from the Courts. A highwayman had stopped the Worcester mail at Shepherd's Bush and rifled it of its contents. Finding himself in possession of a large number of Bank of England notes he adopted a novel expedient for disposing of them. He hired a chaise and four and proceeded along the Great North Road as far as Caxton, passing the notes as he went; and in order to give himself a wider field of operations he took the precaution of going one way and returning another. To Caxton he went through Barnet, Hatfield, Stevenage, and Bugden, and he returned by way of Royston, Ware, and Enfield. Except at Barnet, which was probably thought to be dangerously near to London, there was hardly a postmaster along the whole line of road who had not one or more of the notes passed upon him. The question now arose who was to bear the loss,--the person by whom the notes had been sent by post or the postmasters who had changed them into cash. At the present time the law on the subject is so well ascertained that no doubt could exist as to the answer; but such was not then the case. In order to try the point, it was arranged that the notes should be stopped, and that the sender of them should bring an action against the Bank of England to recover their value. The trial came on before the King's Bench in 1758, and, after learned pleadings on both sides, the Lord Chief Justice pronounced the decision of the Court. This was that any person paying a valuable consideration for a bank note to bearer in a fair course of business is unquestionably entitled to recover the money from the Bank.

[52] Among these robberies there was, so far as we are aware, only one
which possessed any feature of interest; and in this case the interest
was of a psychological nature. Gardner, a postman, was stopped by three
highwaymen on Winchmore Hill, and, on his refusing to give up his
letters, they murdered him. Atrocities of this kind had been frequent,
and executions had failed to check them. But the resources of
civilisation were not exhausted. Lord Lovell--or the Earl of Leicester,
as he had now become--waited upon the King and procured His Majesty's
assent that, after execution, the highwaymen's bodies should be hung in
chains. To be hanged was one thing; after hanging, to have one's body
suspended in chains was another. This was an indignity to which no
respectable criminal should be called upon to submit. Such would seem to
be the idea conveyed in the following letter which Leicester received:--

To the Right Hon. the EARL OF LEICESTER, at HOLKHAM, NORFOLK.

THURSDAY, _Oct. 1753_.

MY LORD--I find that it was by your orders that Mr. Stockdale was hung
in chains. Now, if you don't order him to be taken down, I will set fire
to your house and blow your brains out the first opportunity.

Stockdale was clerk to a proctor in Doctors Commons.

An important legal decision, with which the Post Office had only the remotest concern, an improved system of expresses following as a natural consequence from circumstances over which the Post Office had no control, a simple contrivance to facilitate the posting of letters, and an acceleration of the mail between London and Edinburgh--this as the record of forty or fifty years' progress is assuredly meagre enough; and yet we are not aware of any omission. The plain truth is that during these years, except in the matter of bye and cross-post letters, the Post Office had retrograded rather than advanced. The rates of postage were higher now than at the beginning of the century. More, probably, than one-half of the public Acts of Parliament which passed during the reigns of the first two Georges were Acts for repairing and widening the roads. The roads had kept steadily improving; and the posts had failed to keep pace with them. While travellers travelled faster than in the reign of Queen Anne, letters were still being conveyed at a speed not exceeding five miles an hour. The friendly relations which had existed between the postmasters-general and the merchants existed no longer. These had been replaced by feelings of estrangement and animosity. Under Cotton and Frankland and under Frankland and Evelyn the Post Office enjoyed a reputation for personal integrity; but even this claim to distinction had now disappeared. Barbutt, the secretary, had recently retired under a cloud. Bell, the comptroller of the inland office, had been arrested on a charge of fraud.[53] Denzil Onslow, the receiver-general, had been declared a defaulter to the amount of L10,000; and Stone, Onslow's successor, after two or three years' tenure of the appointment, had died in debt to the Crown. The Post Office, when George the Third ascended the throne, was thoroughly discredited, and, despite Allen's exertions, men were beginning to ask themselves, Why cumbereth it the ground?

[53] Elsewhere we have expressed a desire to avoid, as far as possible,
the use of technical terms, and the propriety of this course will
probably not be disputed when we state that the charge against Bell was
that having "crowned the advanced letters" he failed to account for the
proceeds. An "advanced" letter was one on which the postage had been
advanced, a letter which, having been undercharged in the country, was
surcharged in London. To "crown" a letter was to impress it with the
stamp of the Crown, denoting that the surcharge had been made.
Virtually, therefore, the charge against Bell was that he had embezzled
the surcharges.

Allen died in 1764, leaving behind him a name which is still venerated, and justly venerated, in the city of Bath. For many years before his death he is reputed to have made out of his contract with the Post Office not less than L12,000 a year; and the greater part of this noble fortune he spent in acts of benevolence. As early as 1735 riches must have come pouring in upon him, for in that year he built for himself the stately house of Prior Park, not indeed for ostentation's sake, but in order to prove that the stone dug from his quarries on Combe Down was not the sorry stuff which interested persons in London had represented it to be. That house still stands; but, as was said at the time--and the statement holds good to this day--"his charity is seen further than his house, though it stands on a hill, aye, and brings him more honour too." In 1742 Allen served as Mayor of Bath; and in 1745, the year of the Rebellion, he raised a company of volunteers, which he clothed at his own cost. At Prior Park he dispensed a more than decent hospitality, numbering among his guests Pitt, Pope, and Fielding, Charles Yorke, and Warburton. Fielding has immortalised Allen's character but not his name in the person of Squire Allworthy; and Pope has immortalised both his name and his character in the lines--

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame.

Among Post Office reformers Allen stands absolutely alone in one particular. His connection with the Post Office, long as it endured, was not abruptly terminated. This we attribute partly to a natural sweetness of disposition, which provoked no enemies, and still more to that which on the part of reformers is the rarest of virtues, an entire abnegation of self. So long as a thing which he thought desirable was done, he cared not that others received the credit.[54]

[54] Of Allen's personal appearance the only account, so far as we are
aware, is to be found in the correspondence of Samuel Derrick, Master of
the Ceremonies at Bath. Derrick writes, under date May 10, 1763: "I have
had an opportunity of visiting Mr. Allen in the train of the French
Ambassador. He is a very grave, well-looking old man, plain in his
dress, resembling that of a Quaker, and courteous in his behaviour. I
suppose he cannot be much under seventy."--Vol. ii. p. 94.