Between Carteret and Tankerville differences now arose which, in view of subsequent events, it is impossible to pass unnoticed. On the break-up of the Shelburne administration in 1783, when Tankerville left the Post Office and Carteret remained, the two postmasters-general had parted with mutual expressions of regard and goodwill. A questionable transaction in which Carteret had been concerned, a transaction partaking of the nature of a corrupt bargain, had indeed come under Tankerville's notice; but he willingly attributed it to the malign influence exercised by his predecessor, Lord le Despencer. This favourable construction his later experience had induced him to modify. One case in particular which occurred soon after his return to the Post Office had aroused the most painful suspicions. On Monday the 2nd of August 1784, the same day as that on which the first mail-coach started, the Post Office of Ireland was separated from the Post Office of England. Into the reasons of this separation, being as they were political, we do not propose to enter. Suffice it to say that the Government of Ireland took advantage of the occasion to displace Armit, the secretary to the Irish Post Office, and to reappoint John Lees, who had been secretary from 1774 to 1781, when he was promoted to the War Office. On his reappointment Lees wrote to the postmasters-general in London recapitulating the conditions on which he had been appointed ten years before, and stating that to those conditions, onerous as they were, he proposed in the main to adhere. He was indeed under no obligation in the matter, for he owed his reappointment to the Irish Government; but of this circumstance he had no desire to avail himself. Armit had taken over the conditions from Lees; and Lees would now resume them from Armit. Let us see what the conditions were. In 1774 Barham, the packet agent at Dover, being compelled by ill-health to retire, was succeeded by Walcot, the secretary to the Post Office in Ireland, and Walcot was succeeded by Lees, who was new to the service. Barham, though superannuated, was during his life to receive from Walcot the full salary and emoluments of the packet agency, and Walcot was during the same period to receive from Lees the full salary and emoluments of the secretaryship. Lees was meanwhile to receive from Walcot a small allowance for acting as secretary. Thus far there was nothing unusual in the arrangement. On the contrary, it was an arrangement which in those days was very commonly made. That which was unusual, and which nowhere appeared in the official records, was an undertaking into which Lees had entered to the effect that, after Barham's death, he would make to a fourth person during that person's life an annual payment of £350. This engagement Lees, when reappointed in 1784, expressed himself unwilling to renew. He was quite prepared to resume the payment to Walcot, reduced only to the same extent as by recent legislation the secretary's