It was, however, not the letters that fell into the post, but those that were kept out of it, the illicit traffic in fact, that caused the greatest concern. This traffic was assuming larger proportions every day. Under Charles and James searchers had been appointed, men who searched for letters as baggage is searched at the Custom House. No suspected person, no suspected vehicle, was safe from inspection. But there was no legal sanction for the practice, and it had ceased on William's accession. Early in the present reign it had been mooted whether a prosecution should not be undertaken, at all events against the principal offenders; but the King refused to consent to a step which he regarded as impolitic and calculated to excite discontent. License waxed bolder with impunity. Along the road from Bristol to Worcester and from Worcester to Shrewsbury men might be seen openly collecting and delivering letters in defiance of the law. Openly or clandestinely the same thing was being done in other parts. "Wherever," wrote the postmasters-general, "there are any townes which have commerce one with another so as to occasion a constant intercourse by carryer or tradesman, there we do find it a general practice to convey at the same time a considerable number of letters." But the illicit traffic between one part of the country and another, large as were the dimensions it had assumed, was insignificant as compared with that which was taking place between the country and London. This was the natural result of the establishment of the penny post. At the first introduction of postage care had been taken so to fix the rates that for single letters the post should be cheaper than the common carrier. But the common carrier, in competition with the State, had one enormous advantage. He could reduce his terms at will. So long, therefore, as there was a profit to be made, the relative cheapness of the post had proved only an imperfect check. A far more efficient check, in the case of the metropolis at least, had been the difficulty of dispersion. It was one thing to bring letters to London and another to deliver them. In a maze of streets consisting of houses which bore no numbers, a comparative stranger to the town attempting anything in the shape of a general delivery would have been simply bewildered. But all this was now altered. The penny post supplied the very machinery, the want of which had hitherto kept the illicit traffic within bounds. Once within the orbit of that post, a letter consigned to any one of Dockwra's four or five hundred receiving offices would be delivered in any part of what was then known as London for 1d., and in the suburbs for 2d. And these charges would carry up to one pound in weight; whereas a quarter of one pound by the general post, even from places no further distant from London than Croydon or Kingston, would be charged 2s. 8d.