ween 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."--H.
Joyce, ibid., p. 184.

[50] "A letter between Bath and London would be a London letter, and a
letter from one part of the country to another which in course of
transit passed through London would be a country letter. A bye or way
letter would be a letter passing between any two towns on the Bath Road
and stopping short of London--as, for instance, between Bath and
Hungerford, between Hungerford and Newbury, between Newbury and Reading,
and so on; while a cross post letter would be a letter crossing from the
Bath road to some other--as, for instance, a letter between Bath and
Oxford."--Ibid., p. 147.

[51] 9 Anne, cap. 10, [S] 18.

[52] "To give a slight idea of the nature of this conveyance: _The Bye
and Way Letters_ were thrown promiscuously together into one large Bag,
which was to be opened at every Stage by the Deputy, or any inferior
Servant of the House, to pick out of the whole heap what might belong to
his own delivery, and the rest put back again into this large Bag, with
such Bye Letters as he should have to send to distant places from his
own Stage. But what was still worse than all this, it was then the
constant practice to demand and receive the postage on all such Letters
before they were put into any of the Country Post Offices. Hence (from
the general temptation of destroying these Letters for the sake of the
Postage) the joynt mischief of embezling the Revenue and interrupting
and obstructing the commerce, fell naturally in, to support and inflame
one another. Indeed, they were then risen to such a height, and
consequently the discredit and disrepute of this conveyance grown so
notorious, that many Traders and others in divers parts of the Kingdom
had recourse to various contrivances of private and clandestine
conveyance for their speedier and safer correspondence; whereby it
became unavoidable but that other branches of the Post Office revenue
should be greatly impair'd, as well as this ...

"Now whilst the _Bye and Way Letters_ continued to be conveyed in so
precarious and unsafe a way, as is shewn above, it was thought hard to
punish such as undertook to convey them in a speedier and safer manner.
But from a Time that this Branch of the Revenue was put under a just
regulation, in consequence of the contract with Mr. Allen, all such
Persons who