There were one or two points on which Cotton and Frankland did not agree with Hamilton. Experience had taught them, as they stated on another occasion, that the way to improve the Post Office revenue was to "make the intercourse of letters easy to people." So now, in their representation to the Treasury, they condemned the inland rates which Hamilton proposed as altogether too high. They had been long enough at the Post Office, they said, to know that "the easy and cheap corresponding doth encourage people to write letters, and that this revenue was but little in proportion to what it is now till the postage of letters was reduced from 6d.[33] to 3d." [33] This is an allusion to the period antecedent to 1657. Hamilton had contemplated the passing of a fresh Act of Parliament in order to impose sea-rates and to oblige shipmasters to give up their letters as soon as they reached port. Cotton and Frankland were not satisfied that a fresh Act of Parliament was necessary; nor did they express any opinion as to the particular rates which should be imposed. They recommended, however, the appointment of an officer whose duty it should be "to take care of" all letters for America, and to put them into a special bag to be sealed with the office seal. Public notice should at the same time be given prohibiting the collection of such letters by other persons. To the shipmaster to whom the bag might be delivered the inducement to take it without delay to the Post Office of the port at which he should first arrive would be that he would there receive one penny for each letter the bag might contain. Hitherto, under the coffee-house arrangement, the penny had been paid in England; for the future, it would be paid in America. In other words, the shipmaster, instead of receiving his recompense in advance, would receive it after his work was done and only provided it was done properly. On one point the postmasters-general held a decided opinion. Towards the support of the posts the Government of New York had made an annual contribution of £50, in consideration of which the Government letters appear to have been carried free; but otherwise Neale's undertaking had not received from the authorities that countenance and support which, in Cotton and Frankland's opinion, were essential to its success. They expressed themselves convinced that, for want of due encouragement, the posts would never prosper in private hands, and recommended that they should be transferred to the Crown.