LOMBARD STREET 



no delivery. Yet for the most part they positively f 



seemed to like it — at any rate, not to object. Not 

 every receiver of mipaid letters, however, appre- 

 ciated the pleasure, witness Sydney Smith, Combe 

 Florey, September 23, 1829. 'I cannot,' said he, 

 ' from the bottom of Somersetshire, attend in person, 

 as a letter (two and sixpence postage) yesterday 

 invited me to do.' 



More than fifty years before Sydney Smith re- 

 ceived his letter, Johnson had had an unpleasant 

 experience of the kind. The Doctor, in April, 1776, 

 was called on by the Post-Office to pay seven pomids 

 ten shillings. A friend had sent him from the East 

 Indies a packet by private hand. The ship put into 

 Lisbon, and the Customs authorities there probably 

 did what used to be and perhaps is still done by 

 the British Customs — they seized all post-letters and 

 handed them to the Post-Office. 



Ten years later than the pungent rejoinder of the 

 famous divine and wit, Sir John Burgoyne is said to 

 have had a similar experience of high postal charges 

 when in Dublin in 1839. A packet of papers, in- 

 tended to have been sent as a parcel by mail-coach, 

 was put into the post, and cost him as a letter eleven 

 pounds, instead of perhaps a shilling as a coach 

 parcel. 



I do not think that the system of postal account- 

 keeping was imperfect; on the contrary, I believe 

 it to have been accurate and thorough. But had 

 the plan now in vogue, of daily instead of quarterly 



