It is tolerably certain that had Franklin's work lay in England instead of America, he would have anticipated Palmer's suggestion that the stage coaches be used for the conveyance of the mails, instead of the wretched mail carts which came to be regarded as the natural prey of the highwayman. At the beginning of 1764 the post riders between New York and Philadelphia made three trips a week each way; and at such a rate of speed that a letter could be sent from one place to the other and the answer received the day following.[49] In reporting this achievement to the general post office, Franklin states that the mails travel by night as well as by day, which had never been done before in America. Franklin planned to have trips of equal speed made between New York and Boston in the spring of 1764, and the time for letter and reply between the two places reduced from a fortnight to four days. When his arrangements were completed a letter and its reply might pass between Boston and Philadelphia in six days, instead of three weeks. As a result of these arrangements Franklin anticipated that there would be a large increase in the number of letters passing between Boston and Philadelphia and Great Britain by the packets from New York. That the fruits of his outlay answered his expectations is clear from the fact that the revenues, which up to the year 1756 had scarcely exceeded L300 a year, mounted up to L1100[50] in 1757, and that became the normal revenue for some time after. It was during this period that the British government began to employ packet boats for the conveyance of the mails to the American colonies. Until this time there had been no regular arrangements for the conveyance of the mails between Great Britain and the colonies. There were no vessels under specific engagement to leave either Great Britain or America at any fixed time. This is not, of course, to say that there were no means of exchanging correspondence between England and America, or even that the post office had no control over the vessels by which letters were carried. Vessels were continually passing between Falmouth or Bristol and New York or Boston in the course of trade; and these were employed for the conveyance of mails. Sometimes the letters were made up in sealed bags by the post office before being handed to the shipmasters; and sometimes they were handed loose to the captains, or picked up from the coffee houses.