The real secret of his welcome, however, was that he supplied an urgent demand; and how urgent this demand was may best be judged by the conditions on which he was glad to accept his farm. These conditions were a lease of no more than three years, and a rent equivalent to the highest amount which the post offices included in his farm had in any one year produced. For his profits he had nothing to look to but the increase of revenue resulting from his own management; and even of this he received the whole only in the first year, when he would, presumably, be establishing his plant. In subsequent years he received two-thirds, the remaining third going to the Post Office. If under such conditions as these it were possible to toil and grow rich, great indeed must have been the field of operation. Among those who were commissioned to supply the accommodation which the postmasters-general were precluded from supplying themselves was one who deserves to be specially mentioned. This was Stephen Bigg of Winslow, in Buckinghamshire. Bigg farmed the Buckingham branch. He appears to have possessed and to have deserved the confidence of the postmasters-general. Of ample means, and endowed with no ordinary powers of organisation, he had probably embarked on his undertaking less with a view to profit than from a desire to improve the posts. Be that as itmay, the same means which conduced to the one end conduced also to the other; and when the time arrived for him to render an account of his proceedings, he not only made over to the Post Office a handsome sum as one-third share of the profits, but had earned for himself the gratitude of the large district over which his farm extended. His success in his own county encouraged him to enlarge the sphere of his operations. Passing through Lancashire in the last year of the century, he was struck with the wretched accommodation which the posts afforded. As compared with those under his own control, they were slow, irregular, and, owing to the system of gratuities, costly. On his return to London he offered to take in farm the post offices of the whole county. The offer was accepted, and a lease was signed fixing the rent, as ascertained in the usual manner, at £2826. The history of this farm is curious. Bigg had not long been engaged in his new undertaking before the cross-post which had some few years before been set up between Exeter and Bristol was extended to Chester. It is not very clear how this interfered with Bigg's proceedings; but, as a matter of fact, it appears to have tapped an important source of supply. On this being pointed out to the postmasters-general, they at once, with that high sense of justice which distinguished all their proceedings, released him from his engagement and cancelled the lease.