The penny post office, since it had passed into the hands of the Government, had undergone but little change. Its headquarters had been removed from Dockwra's house to seven rooms prepared for the purpose, not, indeed, at the Post Office in Lombard Street, where want of space was already beginning to be felt, but probably in the immediate neighbourhood. It had also, in the language of the time, been eased from a multitude of desperate debts. But the conditions on which it was conducted remained as they had been,--the same limit of weight, the same frequency of delivery, and the same rule as to compensation in case of loss. Dockwra, with the view, no doubt, of propitiating the authorities, had provided for the conveyance to Lombard Street of all general post letters left at his receiving offices; and this duty, when he was dispossessed, passed to the persons by whom those offices were kept. The result was not satisfactory. The receivers, in their desire to get the work done as cheaply as possible, employed to do it the most needy and most worthless persons, persons who could not get employment elsewhere. At length the miscarriages and losses became so frequent that the Post Office appointed its own messengers to go round and collect the letters. Nor is it by any means certain that the character of the receivers themselves was above suspicion. The plain truth is that they were, with few exceptions, keepers of public-houses. The collector who called there periodically to adjust accounts complained that often four and even five visits were necessary before he could obtain payment, and that the opportunity was taken to pass upon him bad money. Times have changed indeed. With public-houses for receiving offices, with inn-keepers for postmasters, and with a considerable sum expended annually on drink and feast money, it can hardly be denied that the Post Office at the end of the seventeenth century was a good friend to the licensed victualler. At the present time no postmaster may keep an inn; no receiving office may be at a public-house; and not many years ago, when a hotel with its stock-in-trade was purchased with a view to the extension of the Post Office buildings in St. Martin's-le-Grand, some excellent persons were shocked because, under the sanction of the postmaster-general, were exposed for sale by auction some few dozen bottles of port.