Under the costly postal system, the revenue of the post office did not, as it had hitherto done, and should have continued to do, keep pace with the progress of the country. The appetite for communication between distant friends or men of business was evidently either decaying, or finding vent in an unlawful way. The latter was chiefly the case. There were vast numbers of people separated from each other by long weary miles, too many to permit of visits, who could not resist writing to each other,--the doating parent to the child, the lover to his mistress, the merchant to his agents, the lawyer to his clients. Those who could not afford postage, were the very class who could not get franks; for the principle was, that those who could best afford postage money should have plenty of franks, which were, of course, quite out of the way of poor, humble folks,--the fat sow had his ear well greased, the lean, starving one had to consume his own fat, like the bear, or go without. The consequence was, that those who were eager to write and could not get letters through the post, found other means of forwarding them to the evasion of the law. There was no limit to the exercise of ingenuity in this direction. Three or four letters were written on one piece of paper, to be cut up and distributed separately by one of the recipients; newspapers were turned into letters by underscoring or pricking with a pin the letters required to form the various words of the communication; some peculiarity in the style of address on the outside was arranged between correspondents, the sight of which was enough to indicate a message, and the letter was then rejected, having served its purpose; and so on, in a hundred other ways, fraudulent means were found of evading the law. Some carriers had a large and profitable business in smuggling letters. In many populous districts the number of letters conveyed by carriers at a penny each in an illegal way far exceeded those sent through the post. In Manchester, for every letter that went by the postman, six went by the carrier; and in Glasgow the proportion was as one to ten. All this was notorious. The most honourable people saw no great harm in cheating the post to send a word of comfort or encouragement to an absent friend,--it was a vice that leaned to virtue's side. But it was a bad thing for the country that people should be driven to such devices, in obeying a natural and proper impulse. The man who began by smuggling letters, might end by smuggling tobacco or brandy; and the system was morally pernicious. All felt the evil, but remedy seemed impossible. As the urgency for a change grew to a head, the man came to effect it,--a man "of open heart, who could enter into family impulses; a man of philosophical ingenuity, who could devise a remedial scheme; a man of business, who could fortify such a scheme with impregnable accuracy"--that man was Rowland Hill.