CHAPTER VII

State of the Packet Service--Ship Letters--Special Boats built for the Harwich Station--M. Pajot, Director of the French Posts--Establishment of West India Packets--Edmund Dummer, Surveyor of the Navy--Regulations for the Management of the Packet Stations--Conditions of Employment-- Smart and Bounty Money--Passes required for Passengers--and for Goods-- Regulations habitually infringed--Smuggling--Packets forbidden to give Chase--Practice on Capture of a Prize--Packet Stations at Falmouth and at Harwich conducted on different Principles--Packets employed to carry Recruits--Letters not to be carried in Foreign Bottoms--Court-Post-- Restoration of Packet Service with Flanders--John Macky, Packet Agent at Dover--The Postmasters-General act as Purveyors of News to the Court-- Their Interview with Godolphin--Posts set up for the Army in Flanders-- Packet Establishment placed on a Peace Footing--Dummer's Bankruptcy and Death 72