In Section 48 of the Act the duty of the Post Office to abide by the Customs regulations is insisted upon. Officers in charge of post offices were bound to detain articles suspected of containing anything contraband, and they could refuse to forward any parcel or packet addressed to a foreign post, unless it was accompanied by a Customs' House Pass. A long list of penalties, most of which exist at the present day, was drawn up for offences and misdemeanours committed by postal officials. Informers were encouraged by being allowed to receive half of every fine imposed, but no proceedings could be taken against any one under this Act without an order in writing from Government, the Director-General or a Postmaster-General.
In 1854 Mr. Riddell was appointed the first Director-General of the Post Office, and he compiled the first Manual of Rules to be observed by the whole Department. At this time there were 201 head-quarter offices and 451 minor offices in India, but every office kept its own accounts separately and submitted them direct to the Audit Office which was part of the Accountant General's Office. It was not until 1861 that postal accounts were removed from the Civil auditors and handed over to an officer known as the "Compiler of Post Office Accounts" and not until 1866-7 that the distinction between Head and Branch offices was made for account purposes.
The Manual of 1854 made no proper arrangement for sorting offices, it only provided for mails being received _en masse_ and for their distribution afterwards to peons and into the "thana" and forwarding boxes. Every post office upon a line had to make up a separate mail packet for every office in advance, and it received one from every office in rear, a most cumbersome proceeding, which was put a stop to in 1860, when long detentions were made at certain large stations upon the main routes for the purpose of sorting the mails. Paid letters were impressed with a red date-stamp to distinguish them from unpaid, which bore a black date-stamp. Letters for foreign countries were sent with steamer postage invoices (chalans) to the different Presidency towns. Prepayment of articles sent to England via Marseilles, for which Brindisi was substituted in 1870, was not possible, nor could letters for countries like the United States be prepaid.