But the merchants--and here we speak not of those alone who traded with Portugal--had other and more serious cause of complaint. Their foreign letters were not delivered until twelve o'clock in the day, and, if a mail arrived by as much as a few minutes after twelve, it was not at the earliest delivered until the same hour on the following day. And if on this day a second mail chanced to arrive shortly before noon, the letters by the first mail were kept back so as to be delivered with those of the second in the evening. Thus, foreign letters received at the Post Office in Lombard Street a few minutes after mid-day on Saturday might not be delivered even in Lombard Street itself until the evening of Monday. To make matters worse, the foreign ministers residing in London had their letters delivered soon after the mail arrived, so that any persons whom these ministers might please to favour enjoyed an undue advantage. The merchants now urged that this might be altered. Did not Sir Harry Furness, they asked, during the last war obtain permission to have his letters delivered immediately after the arrival of a mail? And was not this permission afterwards revoked on the ground that it had led to abuse? Matters were better managed abroad. At Amsterdam, for instance, if a mail arrived as late as nine o'clock in the evening, the letters were delivered to those who might call for them at any time before midnight, or else sent out for delivery early the next morning. At Rotterdam--this also was urged as an instance of better management--the English letters were never delivered till twelve hours after the mail had arrived, about which time those which had come by the same mail would be in course of delivery at Amsterdam. Equality of treatment was thus secured, and neither city had priority of intelligence. At Hamburg, again, as soon as a mail arrived--if in the day, a notice to that effect was fixed up at the Post Office and at the Exchange, the letters being delivered about three hours later; and if at night, the clerks were called out of bed, so that the letters might be sorted and ready for delivery the first thing in the morning. Sundays, moreover, were not excepted. As regards foreign gazettes, too, these all over Europe were delivered within a quarter of an hour after their arrival; yet in London the merchants had to wait for them many hours. And this was all the more hard to bear because the clerks in the Post Office, to whom gazettes were addressed, received them at once and communicated the contents to their friends. What could be more calculated to promote fraudulent insurance, one-sided bargains, and a system of overreaching generally? Such was the representation made by the merchants; and they concluded by asking that henceforth, except on Sundays, no longer interval should be allowed to elapse between the arrival and delivery of a foreign mail than was absolutely necessary for the purpose of sorting.