The same Act contained another provision, which it is impossible to regard otherwise than as a wanton interference with trade. The Legislature, from the earliest days of the Post Office, had shewn indulgence to merchants' accounts not exceeding one sheet of paper, to bills of exchange, invoices, and bills of lading. All these, in the language of the Act establishing the Post Office--the Act of 1660--were to be "without rate in the price of the letters"; and a similar provision was contained in the Act of Anne. Owing, however, to a faulty construction of the clause it was doubtful whether the exemption was confined to foreign letters or whether it applied to inland letters as well. The merchants contended that inland letters were included; otherwise, as they pointed out, a letter might "go cheaper to Constantinople than to Bristol." The postmasters-general, on the other hand, insisted that the exemption applied only to foreign letters, and, in order to set doubts at rest, they early in the reign of George the Second procured an Act to be passed declaring their interpretation to be the right one. As regards foreign letters, therefore, there had never been the slightest doubt as to either the intention or the practice. When enclosed in letters going or coming from abroad, merchants' accounts not exceeding one sheet of paper, bills of exchange, invoices, and bills of lading had from the first establishment of the Post Office been exempt from postage; and now after an interval of more than 140 years this exemption, like the penny post, was swept away. Henceforth these documents were to be charged as so many several letters. Yet one more provision in the Act of 1801 it is necessary to notice as introducing a novel principle. This Act gave power to the postmasters-general to grant postal facilities to towns and villages where no Post Offices existed, provided the inhabitants were prepared to pay such sums as might be mutually agreed upon. As the postmasters-general were already authorised to establish Penny Post Offices wherever they might see fit out of London, the object of this fresh power may not be very clear. It was not that the Post Office might be able to charge for the local service more than 1d. a letter, for in no single instance, so far as we are aware, was more than 1d. charged, but that in arranging the local service the Post Office might have a freedom of action which it did not possess under the statute empowering it to establish penny posts. In short, the object of the power was to enable the Post Office, in concert with the inhabitants of the towns and villages concerned, to try experiments.