While the contingency of a loss to the Civil List had not been either foreseen or provided against, elaborate precautions had been taken for the disposal of a surplus. If the gross Post Office revenue should exceed the sum of £147,861, the excess was to be divided between the Sovereign and the public in the proportion of one-third to the public and two-thirds to the Sovereign. As a matter of fact, the gross Post Office revenue in 1721 had exceeded, and exceeded by a considerable amount, the sum of £147,861; and yet there was no excess to divide. The plain truth is that, in preparing the Act of 1711, Lowndes had forgotten the cost of management. It must have sounded strange in the ears of an assistant Chancellor of the Exchequer to be told, as Cornwallis and Craggs did not scruple to tell him, that he had confounded gross and net revenue, and that by this blunder Parliament had been misled.
The Act of 1711, disastrous as it proved in its effects on the wellbeing and morality of the nation, is only one more instance of the mischief which may be done with the best intentions; and it was perhaps meet that its author should have remained long enough at his post to witness the results of his own handiwork.
There was one who realised not less fully than the postmasters-general themselves the difficulties by which they were beset. He knew well, even better than they, how letters were being kept out of the post and transmitted clandestinely, and how even on letters which fell into the post the postage was being intercepted. But while the postmasters-general regarded the evil as incurable, he thought that it might at all events be mitigated. This was Ralph Allen, the postmaster of Bath. Allen's experience in postal matters was probably unrivalled. He had, it might almost be said, been cradled and nursed in the Post Office. The son of an innkeeper at St. Blaise, he had, at eleven years of age, been placed under the care of his grandmother, who, on the post road being diverted from South to Mid-Cornwall, was appointed postmistress of St. Columb. Here the regularity and neatness with which the lad kept the accounts gained for him the approval of the district surveyor when on a tour of inspection; and shortly afterwards, probably through the surveyor's influence, he obtained a situation in the Post Office at Bath. It is said that while in this situation, intelligence having reached him that a waggon-load of arms was on its way from the West for the use of the disaffected, he placed himself in communication with General Wade, who was then quartered at Bath with his troops, and that it was by this service that he first brought himself into notice; but be that as it may, it is certain that when Quash the old postmaster died, Allen was appointed in Quash's room.