In two years the number of chargeable letters passing through the post had increased from 72,000,000 _per annum_ to 208,000,000. Illicit conveyance had all but ceased, and the gross revenue amounted to two-thirds of the largest sum ever recorded. The nett revenue showed an increase the second year of £100,000, and the inland letters were found to be the most profitable part of the Post Office business.[134] It is a marvel that the new system should have fared as well as it did, when we take into consideration the bitter hostility of the postal authorities, the frequent hindrances thrown in the path of reform, to say nothing of the terrible poverty then existing among many classes of our fellow country people under the blighting influence of Protection and of the still unrepealed Corn Laws; poverty which is revealed in the many official reports issued during that sad time, in “S.G.O.'s” once famous letters, and in other trustworthy documents of those days, whose hideous picture has, later, been revived for us in that stirring book, “The Hungry Forties.” The hindrances to recovery of the postal revenue were in great measure caused by the delay in carrying out the details of Rowland Hill's plan of reform. Especially was this the case in the postponement of the extension of rural distribution—to which allusion has already been made—one of the most essential features of the plan, one long and wrongfully kept back; and, when granted, gratefully appreciated. Issue of the stamps was also delayed, these not being obtainable for some months after the introduction of the new system; and there was a still longer delay in providing the public with an adequate supply.[135] The increase of postal expenditure was another factor in the case. The total charge for carrying the inland mails in 1835—the year before “Post Office Reform” was written—was £225,920; and it remained approximately at that figure while the old system continued in force. Then it went up by leaps and bounds, till by the end of the first year of the new system (1840) it reached the sum of £333,418. It has gone on steadily growing, as was indeed inevitable, owing to the increase of postal business; but the growth of expenditure would seem to be out of all proportion to the service, great as that is, rendered. By 1868 the charge stood at £718,000,[136] and before the nineteenth century died out even this last sum had doubled. The following instance is typical of the changes made in this respect. In 1844 the Post Office _received_ from the coach contractors about £200 for the privilege of carrying the mail twice a day between Lancaster and Carlisle. Only ten years later, the same service performed by the railway cost the Post Office some £12,000 a year.[137]