The fifty years following the Act of the 9th of Anne were uneventful.[49] The chief development was in connection with the cross posts; a development which, although not having direct reference to the question of the rates of postage, was yet of importance. At the commencement of the eighteenth century the main system of the Post Office still centred on London. All the main post routes radiated from London, and the great bulk of the letters passing by post were either for or from London, or passed through London. But there were, of course, numbers of letters which were not sent to London at all: letters between two towns on a post road, or letters between towns on different post roads, which could be sent direct and not by way of London. These letters were known as bye letters and cross post letters.[50] Since they were not handled in London, the authorities had not the same means of checking their numbers, and the postmasters' accounts of postage in respect of them, as could be applied in London, and grave irregularities arose. The revenue was continually defrauded by the failure of the postmasters to bring to account the postage on such letters. No record was made in respect of many of them, and their transmission became so notoriously unsafe that illicit means of conveyance were constantly resorted to. The matter was already so serious that a special clause was included in the Act of the 9th of Anne, providing that for the suppression of the abuse any postmaster found guilty of embezzling the postage of bye or way letters should forfeit £5 for every letter and £100 for every week during which he continued the practice.[51] Even this penal clause was insufficient to check the abuse, as owing to the unsatisfactory method of dealing with bye and way letters there was small risk of detection in fraud. In 1719 Ralph Allen, then postmaster of Bath, proposed to the Postmasters-General that the management of the bye and cross post letters should be leased to him for a term of years, and offered a rent one and a half times as great as the revenue from the letters at that time. The offer was accepted, and the lease, which in the first instance was for seven years, was renewed from time to time. Allen, whose discovery was merely that of a method of check on the receipts of the postmasters from the bye and cross letters, was able to pay the rent agreed upon, largely to suppress the illicit transmission of the letters, and to make a handsome profit.[52] The chief importance of Allen's work lies, however, not so much in the fact of his rendering the bye and cross post letters subject to effective check, as in the fact that in order to retain his lease he, on each occasion of renewal, undertook the provision of additional facilities. By this means a daily post was gradually extended to almost all the post routes.[53]