Whether any, and if so, what action was taken upon the postmaster-general's representation we do not know. There is some reason to think that between England and America sea-rates of postage were settled, as had been done a few years before in the case of Jamaica; but we possess no certain information on the point. All we know is that, upon Neale being informed of the postmaster-general's opinion that the inland posts should be transferred to the Crown, he immediately offered to surrender his patent, and that the offer was not accepted. The payment he demanded was either a capital sum of £5000 or else £1000 a year for life or for the unexpired term of his grant. Hamilton returned to America. The next we hear of him is in 1700. Neale was then dead, having shortly before his death assigned his interest in the posts as security for his debts. To Hamilton he owed £1100, and to an Englishman of the name of West he owed for money advanced £200; and into the hands of these two persons, in default of any one willing to act as Neale's executor or administrator, the posts now came. In April 1703 Hamilton also died; and for three or four years his widow carried on the posts at her own charge. In 1706 Mrs. Hamilton and West urged that their patent, which had seven and a half years yet to run, might be enlarged for a further term of twenty-one years, and that they might have permission to set up packet boats between England and America. To this Cotton and Frankland were opposed, being still of opinion that the posts should not remain in private hands; and they recommended, as a more politic measure, that the patent should be purchased for £1664, a sum which the patentees had expressed themselves willing to accept. Whether this was the sum actually given we know not; but in the following year the patent was surrendered and the posts of America became vested in the Crown. In connection with the transfer John Hamilton, Andrew's son, was appointed to his father's place of deputy postmaster-general, and this appointment he retained until 1722, when he resigned. It was then and not until then that the posts became self-supporting. "We have now," write the postmasters-general on the 10th of August in that year, "put the Post Office in North America and the West Indies upon such a foot that for the future, if it produce no profit to the revenue, it will no longer be a charge to it, but we have good reason to hope there will be some return rather from thence." Such, hardly 200 years ago, were the humble beginnings of a Post Office with which, in the magnitude and diversity of its operations, no other in the world can now compare. CHAPTER IX THE POST OFFICE ACT OF 1711