Although Parliament passed laws that gave the Royal post a monopoly of postal circulation within the British Empire, how was that monopoly to be enforced? Since the price of a letter posted from Virginia to Massachusetts was by custom collected from the addressee after a successful delivery, how could all those who helped deliver that letter on its many stages, between the Virginia postal deputy to the Massachusetts delivery boy, be paid? What would stop post riders and/or local postal deputies from delivering letters ‘off the books’ and pocketing a (presumably reduced) delivery fee? In short, how could the general post office in America keep track of the flows within this system?

In the 1750s Benjamin Franklin designed and implemented a complex accounting system that would allow him to minimize the system’s leaks of letters, packages and revenue.  (A full explanation of this system can be found at Protocols of Liberty, 134-140) The four schedules would allow quarterly reports from each local post office to the General Post Office in New York, which would then allow Franklin to do forensic analysis of any error or fraud within the system. Although the schema pictured on the right was normative and prescriptive rather than descriptive, Franklin’s reforms did help move the American post from deficit (of £943 in 1753-57) to profit (of £3,000 in 1774).