Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/166

164 337,328 tons, and in the years 1713, 1714, and 1715, its average amount was 448,004 tons; but the portion of it that was foreign at the former period was 43,625 tons, whereas now that was only 26,573 tons—so that the native shipping employed in our foreign trade had increased in this interval from 293,703 to 421,431 tons, or by considerably more than a third. The progress of the post-office revenue does not indeed afford an equally favourable indication; but this we believe to be attributable to the great extent to which franking was now carried—an evidence of which we have in the fact that in the year 1722, when the net revenue of the post-office was only about 98,000l., it was calculated that there was withdrawn from the gross revenue by franked letters no less a sum than 33,397l. The practice of franking is traced back to the Restoration; but it was probably not extensively practised till after the Revolution; from about which time, however, notwithstanding several attempts to regulate it and protect it from abuse, it appears to have been, in part by fraud and forgery, in part by merely the more liberal or unscrupulous use of the legal privilege, carried to a greater excess every year down to the close of the present period. In the first four years of the war, that is, from 1702 to 1705 inclusive, the nettnet [sic] average annual revenue of the post-office declined to 61,568l.—a falling off which it seems impossible to suppose could have been owing simply to the war. On the average of the four years from 1707 to 1710 inclusive it was still less, having fallen to 58,052l.; nor did the augmentation of the rates one-third in 1711, and the restoration of peace together, raise it on the average of the four years ending with 1714 to a higher sum than 90,223l., although the Scottish post-office, contributing about 2000l. a-year, was now incorporated with the English. It may be taken as an evidence of the growth of capital that the legal rate of interest was in 1714 reduced from six to five per cent., at which it still continues.