The receipts from the London Penny Post were never an important factor in postal finance but it had always paid for itself and given a reasonable surplus. Its importance was due more to its social value in affording a cheaper letter rate and a speedier postal service than the General Post. The average yearly gross product from 1785-94 was £10,508, expenses £5177, and net product £5331. After Johnson had improved it so much, it produced a yearly average gross product from 1795 to 1797 of £26,283. Expenses averaged £18,960 and net product £7323. In the seventeenth century the receipts from bye and cross post letters amounted to very little. So little was expected from them that no provision was made for checking the postage on them. It was taken for granted that all letters would pass to, from, or through London. In 1720 they brought in only £3700. Allen had done much to increase the revenue, but it was not until the last part of the eighteenth century that the increase was at all marked. From 1780 to 1784, the average annual gross product was £77,911, expenses £12,346 and net product £65,565. From 1785 to 1789, these had increased respectively to £104,817, £11,589, and £93,228, and from 1790 to 1794 to £140,974, £15,030, and £125,944. The small expense for these letters is explained by the fact that the separate department for bye and cross post letters was debited with only a portion of the total cost, the larger part being carried by the general establishment.[725] [725] _Parl. Papers_, 1812-13, _Rep. Com._, ii, 222, p. 91. The financial history of the Post Office from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 1838 is a rather depressing record.[726] From 1805 until 1820 both the gross and net receipts had increased steadily although not rapidly, but for the remainder of the period the revenue was practically stationary. During the five-year periods, 1820-24 and 1830-34, there had been a decrease in gross receipts, and during the latter of these periods the net receipts had been kept a little ahead of the five-year period 1815-19 only by a decrease in expenditure. [726] See Appendix, p. 246, Table III; p. 247, Table IV.