Whitley was at all times alive to the interests of the office and himself, by giving additional facilities for the sending of letters. Writing to the postmaster of Oxford, he says:--"In my opinion, the College butlers may be useful to you in receiving and dispersing letters, etc., and I wish you would be in a good correspondence with them; and let your letter-carriers call there for letters, to be sent to London, immediately before the post goes away, as well as to bring letters to them when the post comes in." It was seen that a field for extended business presented itself at Tunbridge Wells. Accordingly Whitley seizes the opportunity and makes the necessary arrangements, giving the postmaster advice and instructions as follows:--"I have ordered the mails to go from hence sooner than ordinary, that the letters may be at Tunbridge early in the morning; wherefore fail not to be there ready to receive them, and then make all possible haste with them to the Wells, that the gentry may have them before they go to their lodgings." This arrangement would doubtless appeal to the love of gossip in the frequenters of the Wells, who would naturally have some rivalry to receive the most recent _items_, and to discuss them while they lingered over the morning cup. The post-master was further ordered to call every post-day "on Mr. Miles, confectioner on the Walk, who will deliver you what letters he receives for London or elsewhere." During the season the posts ran daily between London and Tunbridge.
The by-letters occasioned uneasiness to Whitley, because he was entirely in the hands of the postmasters for the accounting of them. He thus defines them:--"By by-letters I mean all letters of your stage and branch sent by your agents or boys, to any place but London or beyond it." The revenue from this class of letters was a matter of arrangement between the Deputy Postmaster-General and the country postmasters, the former finding it a convenient plan to farm this correspondence to the postmasters. Whitley distrusted the returns of by-letters made by his agents, as the following letters to Postmasters show:--"I wonder at your great mistake in your by-letters; the account you give me amounts to much more by the year, and yet I have good reason to believe (I speak it without any disrespect or reflection on you) that I have not account of the fourth part of your stage. Your servants may be negligent, and boys abuse you; however, I am at the loss; but resolve, where I find any injustice of that kind hereafter, to sue the bond, and doubt not but some postmasters will be so kind and honest as to give me true information." Again, "I find a great decay in our by-letters of late. I hope you are a person of more integrity than to design (by this means) to beat down the price. Do not do it; I have other measures to go by; you will but wrong yourself as well as me. You do not offer the third part of the value. However, to avoid suspicion, the trouble of accounts, and possibly suits at law, I will let you have it for thirty pounds the year (Hull gives fifty), and take the benefit of by-letters into the bargain. You know I could have other chapmen." Colonel Whitley may have had painful experience of law suits, for he expresses himself to one of his postmasters in the following strain:--"Being forced by Mr. Vaughan's ill-payment to have recourse to the law to get my money, I cannot meet with a sincere attorney, but they juggle and will not serve the writ, pretending they cannot; wherefore, relying much on your kindness and ingenuity, and having no other way to get my right, I send the enclosed writs to you." He gives directions as to the serving of them, and adds, that "it will be an extraordinary kindness to me."