In the days of heavy postage no one had the slightest scruple in cheating the revenue. Persons leaving home, whether for inland or foreign travel, were importuned by friends to carry letters for them to other friends. An idea prevailed that, if the letters were carried ‘open’--that is, unsealed--there was no infraction of the law, and that consequently no penalty could be exacted. This was a popular error. The law, moreover, was evaded in another way. A newspaper was sent by post in an envelope; inside the latter a long epistle was often written in invisible ink, generally milk. When this was dry the writing could not be seen. By holding the paper to the fire the writing came out in a sepia colour, and the law was broken. The Post Office authorities discovered this pretty trick, and parties were threatened with prosecution; but as the receivers invariably protested that they did not know who the senders were it was almost impossible to obtain a conviction. Senders indeed grew a little nervous, and many changed their method of conveying information in spite of the law. In place of writing in milk on the covers of the newspapers they made slight dots in ordinary ink under such printed letters as suited their purpose for conveying intelligence. This was troublesome for both sender and receiver, and it was therefore used only for brief messages. The postal tax pressed most heavily on the poor, but the ingenious poor discovered means to evade it. For instance, a son or daughter in town despatched a letter to parents in the country who were too poor to pay the postage. The parents declined to take such letter in, which they had legal right to do. Returned to the General Post Office, the letter on being opened was found to be a blank sheet of paper. The fact is that parents and children had agreed to send these blank sheets as indications that all was well with the sender; the receiver got that much of news and had nothing to pay for it. The letter was never taken in unless a particular mark was on the cover, which intimated that something of importance was to be read within. Although a high rate of postage fell most heavily upon the poor there was scarcely anyone who did not feel it. Everyone wished to be relieved from it. We can hardly realise how peers, who could frank a large number of letters daily, and how members of Parliament, who could frank, every day except Sunday, a few, were beset by friends for franks for themselves, or for _their_ friends, or for their friends’ friends. We have an illustration of this fact in the ‘Diary, Letters, and Journals of Sir George Jackson.’ Writing to his mother at Bath, in 1802, the then apprentice diplomatist says: ‘My sister tells me Bath was never so thin. I sympathise with her, knowing how voluminous her correspondence is, and that the thinness of Bath means “a dearth of _frank_ men,” there being, she says, only Lords Rosslyn and Harcourt to fly to.’