24 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



to the turnpike-keeper at the first gate, and the 

 vigilance of these officials was made a matter of 

 self-interest hy the allowance to them of three- 

 pence in the j^o^^nd on all tickets thus collected. 

 At certain periods the tickets were delivered to 

 the Stamp Office, and the innkeepers and post- 

 masters themselves were visited by revenue 

 officers, who required to see the books and the 

 counterfoils from which these tickets had come. 



But the Government did not for any length 

 of time directly collect these duties. They were 

 farmed out by the Inland Revenue Department, 

 just as the turnpike tolls were farmed by the 

 Turnpike Trustees, and men grew rich by buying 

 these tolls and duties at annual auctions, relying 

 for their profit on the increased vigilance they 

 would cause to be exercised. The Jews were 

 early in this field. In the golden era of coaching 

 a man named Levy farmed tolls and duties to the 

 annual value of half a million sterling. 



But to return to our horsemen. In the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the country 

 gentlemen, the members of Parliament, the judges 

 on circuit, every hale and able-bodied man of means 

 sufficient, rode his horse, or hired one on his 

 journeys, for the reason that carriages could only 

 slowly and Avith great difficulty and expense be 

 made to move along the distant roads. The 

 passage from Pennant's recollections, quoted at 

 the head of this chapter, shows the miseries made 

 light of by the single gentlemen, and endured by 

 those married ones whose wives rode behind them 



