who thus evade the postage.

"G. H." had been a carrier, from a town in Scotland to other
towns. There were six carriers, and they all carried letters,
generally averaging fifty a day, and realizing from 6_s_. to 7_s_.
per day, although there were four mails a-day running from the
town. The business was kept in a manner secret. Reducing the
postage to 2_d_. would not stop the practice, because the carriers
would still take the letters for 1_d_.; but a penny postage would
bring all the letters into the post-office, and then the
post-office would beat the smuggler.

Mr. John Reid, of London, formerly an extensive bookseller in
Glasgow said his house used to send out twenty to twenty-five
letters a day, and scarcely ever through the post. Of 20,000 times
of infringing the post-office laws, he was never caught but once,
and then the government failed in proof, and he had the matter
exposed as a grievance in the house of commons. He had seen a
carrier in Glasgow have more than 300 letters at a time, which he
delivered for 1_d_. Nearly all the correspondence between Glasgow
and Paisley, was by carriers. There were 200 carriers came to
Glasgow daily. There was as regular a system of exchanging bags,
as in the post-office. There was not much attempt at concealment;
sometimes we got frightened, and sometimes we laughed at the
postmasters. Of his own letters, about one in twenty of those
sent, and one in twelve of those received, passed through the
post-office. The only way to put an end to the smuggling of
letters was to remove the inducement. He said he could send
letters to every town in Scotland. He could do it in more ways
than one. He declined to state in what ways he would do it,
because the disclosure would knock up some convenient modes he had
of ending his own letters, and those of others. He said he would
never use the post-office in an illegal manner, as by writing on
newspapers and the like, because that would be dishonestly
availing himself of the post-office, without paying for it. But he
considered _he had a right to send his letters as he pleased_. He
did not feel it his duty to acquiesce in a bad law, but thought
every good man should set himself against a bad law, in order to
get it repealed. Some of the methods of evading postage, practised
in Scotland, are a