usern."--Ibid., p.
61.

[230] In 1662 the posts yielded 7,000 thalers surplus (revenue 17,000
thalers, expenditure 10,000 thalers); in 1672, 10,433 thalers (revenue
24,539 thalers, expenditure 14,106 thalers); in 1682, 29,058 thalers
(revenue 51,959 thalers, expenditure 22,901 thalers); and in 1688,
39,213 thalers (revenue 79,971 thalers, expenditure 40,758 thalers). The
net revenue of the posts was generally devoted to the payment of State
officials, to the improvement of means of communication (building of
canals, etc.), and to beneficence. For example, the Elector, during the
severe illness of his first wife, made a vow to found an almshouse and
ordered 6,000 thalers yearly to be assigned for its support. Of this sum
2,000 thalers were laid on the post revenues.--Ibid., p. 60.

[231] A groschen was roughly the equivalent of a penny. The value of
money was then about four times its present value.

[232] The price of a bushel of rye in Berlin, which from 1740 to 1756
had varied from 23 groschen to a thaler, rose to 4 thalers.

[233] The edict of the 27th January proclaiming the higher rates
remarked that the raising of the letter rate would be detrimental to the
public and prejudicial to the credit of the service, and that "in spite
of the high price of corn and the depreciation of money, raising of the
letter rate could not be thought of, and that in the neighbouring States
this measure, however soon it might be set aside, had worked to their
disadvantage."--H. von Stephan, op. cit., p. 292.

[234] "The encouragement of a particular business or manufacture in a
particular place; the better opposing of the competition of a
neighbouring route; tenderness for existing difference in newly acquired
districts; the difference in the price of corn in a province, and at an
earlier date even of money, weight, length of the miles, as also, in the
case of travelling post charges, the season of the year; all these
circumstances were often brought into consideration in the fixing of
postage rates."--Ibid., p. 296.

[235] The ascertainment of the direct distances was commenced in 1823.
It was completed in a year and a half (including two revisions), and a
map of distances prepared. There were 1,386,506 distances to measure,
and the measuring was done by land surveyors. The distances so measured
were tabulated for practical use by postal officials.--H. von Stephan,
op. cit., p. 746, n. 3; Moch, _Archiv f[:u]r Post und Telegraph