It should here be remarked that with the extinction of this monopoly passed away one of the original functions of the postmasters-general. Hitherto, lightly as the responsibility had rested upon them for the last hundred years or more, they had been masters of the travelling-post as well as the letter-post. For the future they were to be masters of the letter-post alone. Little remains to be told of the eighteen years of which this chapter treats. In 1782, in consequence of a hint dropped by the Lord Chief Justice in the course of a trial, the Post Office did an eminently useful thing. It issued an advertisement counselling the public when sending bank notes by post to cut them into two parts and to send one part by one post and another by another. The counsel was adopted, and in an incredibly short space of time the practice became general. In the same year the Post Office servants were disfranchised. By an Act passed in the reign of Queen Anne they were forbidden either to persuade or to dissuade others in the matter of voting; and now they were forbidden to vote themselves. The only point of interest connected with the two Acts is perhaps their termination. While the later Act was repealed in 1868, the earlier one was not repealed until 1874; and meanwhile the postmaster-general sat in the House of Commons and offered himself for election. Little, probably, did he think that for every vote he solicited he rendered himself not only liable to a penalty of £100 but "incapable of ever bearing or executing any office or place of trust whatsoever under Her Majesty, her heirs, or successors." The internal condition of the Post Office during the last few years of Lord North's administration was simply deplorable. The profits from the sale of newspapers kept growing less and less. The clerks of the roads, after paying the salaries and pensions which formed the first charge on their receipts, had left for themselves the merest pittance. These men, to whom an appeal for help had never been made in vain, were now in sore need of help themselves. The prospect was alarming, for if the clerks of the roads should fail to meet their engagements they would drag down with them a not inconsiderable part of the establishment. It was in 1778, when apprehension was highest, that the Commissioners of Land Tax for the city of London made a new assessment, and suddenly, without a note of warning, every Post Office servant in the metropolis found himself assessed to the land tax to the amount of 4s. in the pound. Not even the letter-carriers or maid-servants were excepted. At this time and during the two or three following years a general bankruptcy was imminent. Eventually the abatements were remitted and the salaries and pensions which had been charged to the clerks of the roads were in part transferred to the State; but not before many of the Post Office servants had compounded with their creditors and all had endured the severest privations.