There was some little trouble, and perhaps a slight risk attending the safe delivery of letters by the existing arrangement. Virginians were, however, used to it, and had no great fault to find. It might be that if they could have received their letters at the post office for the same charge as they paid for receiving them direct from the ship captains, they would have preferred going to the post office. But the difference in convenience between the two places of receipt was not worth the difference between one penny and one shilling; and indeed it looked uncommonly as if the government were using this means to tax them elevenpence on every letter they received. The people, on realizing the condition of things, made a great clamour.[41] Parliament, they declared, could levy no tax on them but with the consent of the assembly; and besides that, their letters were all exempted from the monopoly of the postmaster general because they nearly all, in some way or other, related to trade. The Virginians were putting an unwarrantably broad interpretation on an exemption, which appears in all post office acts, in favour of letters relating to goods which the letters accompany on the vessel. It has always been the practice to allow shipmasters, carrying a consignment of goods, to deliver the invoice to the consignee with the goods, in order that the transaction might be completed with convenience. It would not be practicable, however, to confine this exemption to invoices accompanying goods, as this would require a knowledge of the contents of letters, which could not be obtained without an intolerable inquisition. Consequently, it has been customary to allow all letters accompanying consignments of goods to be delivered with the goods, without asking whether they relate to the goods or not. But the scope of the exemption is clearly defined, and has never been allowed to include ordinary business letters, not accompanied by goods. The Virginians, however, were not content to leave their case to the precarious chances of a legal or constitutional argument. They set about neutralizing the post office act by an effective counter measure. A bill was submitted to the legislature which, while it acknowledged the authority of the post office act, imposed on postmasters giving effect to it certain conditions which it was impossible to fulfil, and attached extravagant penalties for the infraction of those conditions. The postmasters were to be fined L5 for every letter which they demanded from aboard a ship--letters of a character which the British statute exempted from the postmaster general's exclusive privilege.