The immediate effect of the Act of 1711 was, as might have been foreseen, enormously to stimulate clandestine traffic. The Post Office could do little to check it. In London officers were appointed whose duty it was to frequent the roads leading into the capital and keep a watch on all higglers and drivers of coaches who were notoriously carrying letters in defiance of the law. In the country the postmasters-general could get nothing done. In vain they urged upon the Treasury the paramount importance of appointing officers who should travel about the country and be authorised to open the mail bags at odd times and unexpectedly. By no other means, they declared, was it possible to keep any check upon either the London or the country letters. The London letters might not be charged correctly by the clerks of the roads; and of the country letters, it was perfectly well known, only a very small proportion was charged at all. But all to no purpose. The officers whom the postmasters-general proposed to appoint were to receive for remuneration and travelling expenses together £1 a day, and the Treasury declined to sanction the expense. This, even for the Treasury, has always appeared to us a masterpiece of perversity. That large sums were being diverted into the pockets of the postmasters had been admitted in the Act itself;[40] nor could it be denied that the tendency of the Act was to make these sums larger. And yet the abuse was to be allowed to go on unchecked because its correction would involve a small outlay. For four years this penny-wise and pound-foolish policy continued, and it was not until 1715, as the consequence of a strong representation from Frankland and Evelyn's successors, that the officers whose appointment these two postmasters-general had consistently advocated were added to the establishment under the title of surveyors. To surprise the mail bags in course of transit and to check their contents--such was the humble function originally assigned to officers who have since become as indispensable to the Post Office as the mainspring is to a watch or the driving wheel to a steam engine. [40] "And whereas divers deputy postmasters do collect great quantities of post letters called by or way letters and, by clandestine and private agreements amongst themselves, do convey the same post in their respective mails, or by bags, according to their several directions, without accounting for the same or endorsing the same on their bills, to the great detriment of Her Majesty's revenues."--9 Anne, cap. x. sec. 18.