Heretofore we have spoken only of the difficulties with which Allen had to contend in dealing with persons more or less under his own control. But he had troubles from without as well as within. "Everywhere," he writes, "endeavour to inform yourself of and suppress all illegal conveyance of letters." "At Birmingham," he writes again, "endeavour to detect the carriers who, I am told, in the most open manner convey letters from that place to all the trading towns in that country." "Use your utmost vigilance to suppress the illegal collection of letters which, I am informed, is now carried on by one Twopotts and other persons, to the injury of the revenue, between Derby and Nottingham." Between Cowes and Southampton the illegal conveyance of letters "is now such a custom that we have seldom any go in the bag." "At every stage which you pass through cause to be fixed to the most public places some of the printed advertizements against the carriers and wherrymen, and take every other reasonable methode to surprize all private, illegal, conveyances of letters, and always have a particular regard of the followers employed in the dispersing of news from the country presses." This last injunction is best explained by another given a year or two later. A printer at Northampton was employing a large number of persons ostensibly to disperse newspapers, but really, as Allen affirmed, to collect letters. These persons, he wrote, no longer confine their operations to short distances, but "by meeting at the extremity of their divisions the servants of other printers exchange their letters." "Pray, therefore," he adds, "wherever country presses are erected, do your best to suppress this evil."