back to the students from their homes, letters and remittances of money. The exigences of so large a body of men, residing for a longer or shorter period at such distances from their various homes, could not be answered by the lines of communication which connected the great commercial cities. A mail was needed which should carry letters to and from each student's native town or village. The fact that such a system of university lettercarriers was needed, that a collection of a thousand men or more in one of the first cities of Europe, could be accommodated with even so slow a transmission of their letters, only by uniting and employing men to do this particular work for them, shows how imperfect at that time were those arrangements for the division of labor, by which every man is now made to feel at every point his dependence not only upon his immediate neighbors, but upon society as a whole. The academical couriers of the university of Paris were continued till the year 1709, when the system was abolished by the French government, and a yearly revenue of 300,000. francs was allowed to the university as an indemnity for the loss of the privilege. establish lines of communication ters from the students, and brought from one emporium to another, both by mounted messengers for the transmission of letters, and by car riages for the conveyance of travel ers. This is the very idea of the mail as we have it a regular pub lic conveyance of letters for the public accommodation. But it was only a rudiment, not a system; it was confined. to the routes that connected the principal centers of commerce. On other routes less frequented, and where the demand for such a convenience was less urgent, other arrangements of a more primitive character were still in use. Commerce had then its multitude of itinerant agents, as American commerce now has in some of our thinly settled States, where Yankee vend. ers of clocks, dry goods, and tin ware, get more renown for acute ness than for integrity. And where one of those itinerants of the middle ages was honest enough, and had character enough, to travel from year to year over the same circuit, visiting at known periods the same castles, the same villages and the same convents, and returning to the same city, he became a sort of "post-rider" to the people of his circuit, a vender of news and of notions as well as of more material commodities; and letters from one place to another on his route were naturally entrusted to him. Intercourse of this kind being once begun would be likely to increase, and to secure its own means of conveyance, as the living stream when it once begins to run, wears for itself a channel. At the period now referred to, the first and greatest university of Europe was that of Paris. In that city, students were collected from all parts of Europe, to the number, it is said, of several thousands. Early in the thirteenth century, it appears that the university main tained pedestrian messengers who at certain times took charge of let Something analogous to the system adopted by the university of Paris, would of course be adopted by other universities. A body of scholars, wherever collected, would create for themselves, if not otherwise supplied, some means of regular communication with their distant friends. An arrangement of this kind existed in the English univer sities as late as two centuries ago; and peradventure some traces of it may be still found there, for those venerable bodies are very slow to change. In the writings of Milton, whose residence at Cambridge was from 1624 to 1632, there are a couple of trifling pieces, much in the "His letters are delivered all, and gone, Only remains this superscription." In the fifteenth century, only a few years before the discovery of America, Louis XI of France, established for his own use in his kingdom a system of posts. That is to say, he made an arrangement for the transmission of despatches between the court and the provinces, of the same nature with that which has already been spoken of as existing in ancient Persia, and under the Roman emperors. Not far from the same time, a similar establishment was commenced in some parts of the German empire. And gradually every government in Europe established its system of posts, more or less perfect-that is, a system of royal couriers, not for the accommodation of the public, but only for the purposes of the government and the convenience of the court. In England, such. government posts seem to have been established simultaneously, or nearly so, with those in France and Germany, a little less than four hundred years ago. But at what period the public at large began to enjoy the benefits of the establishment, is quite uncertain. Less than two hundred and fifty years ago, merchants, manufacturers and professional men throughout England, were compelled either to employ special messen. gers for the transmission of their correspondence, or to depend on irregular and insecure means of conveyance. The universities and principal cities had their own couriers or letter carriers. There was a pri vate post by which letters were conveyed between England and the continent. But in 1630, Charles I, then looking around him for every means the Parliament, established, in conof raising a revenue independent of nection with the king of France, a public post from London to Paris; and the private establishment for the conveyance of letters between the two kingdoms was abolished. In 1632, he published a proclamation forbidding letters to be sent out of the kingdom, except through the roy a post-office. In 1635, he estab lished a new system of posts for England and Scotland, and abolish. ed all private and local posts, claiming the post-office business as a government monopoly. During the civil wars which followed, these arrangements were of course overturned; but such an improvement once adopted, could not be forgotten, and as soon as order was restored under Cromwell, the reëstablishment and maintenance of the post-office system, was immediately recognized as one of the functions of the government. At that time it was, that England was first blessed with a weekly conveyance of letters from the metropolis into all parts of the nation. This was when England was a commonwealth; and the system established by the wise and energetic government of Cromwell, was so far in advance of previous arrangements, and so great and obvious a public benefit, that on the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, it was continued by act of Parliament, without any material modification. These few historical notices,which most readers might perhaps collect for themselves, from the encyclopedias and such like repositories of knowledge, may be summed up in this general view. The post-office system that great element of modern civilization, so essential to commerce, to public intelligence, to the intercourse of friends, to all the interests of society-began in the necessity of a regular communication between the central government, and its subordinate agents. It was gradually expanded into a government monopoly, for the double purpose of raising a revenue, and of commanding the channels of communication. It is perfected by becoming a great public convenience, maintained by the government, for the equal accommodation of all the members of society. We hear much said, and justly, of the superiority of the modern over the ancient civilization. We hear much of the wonderful impulse given to society as a whole, and of the vast advantages afforded to each individual member of society, by the steam-engine in its various uses, by the innumerable applications of science to the productive and useful arts, by the printing press, by the mariner's compass and the entire art of modern navigation-all which, the ancients had not. But to us it seems, that if an intelligent Greek like Herodotus or Xenophon, or a philosophic Roman like Cicero or Tacitus, could be supposed, after a sleep of some two thousand years in an enchanted cavern, to 'revisit the glimpses of the moon' here, hardly any thing would be more wonderful to him, than the power which every individual in society has, of communicating by letter most expeditiously and unfailingly with every other individual to whom he is related in the way either of friendship or of business. The let ters of the humblest member of society go to their destination as swiftly and unfailingly as the despatches of Persian kings and Roman emperors. There is a man whom you have never seen, far off in the woods of Michigan, or on the prairies of Wiskonsan. Though you have never seen him, you have heard his name and his place of residence; and you wish to ask him a question, or to employ him to render you some service there. You make a few marks-not on a cumbrous tablet covered with wax-not on a parchment almost equally cumbrous-but on a piece of paper, thin, light and flexible,-a material as unknown to the ancients as was the art of printing. You drop that piece of paper into a box in a public office a few rods from your own dwelling, and give yourself no farther care about it. In a few days, without any more ado on your part, you get your answer. The whole operation has cost less than it would have cost you to send a special messenger five miles. We often talk of wonderful machinery, but what machinery is more wonderful than this. It is wonderful no doubt to see "the iron horse," puffing along with dizzy speed upon the railroad. It is wonderful to see the machine which takes a coil of wire and in a few moments gives it out again wrought into pins with firm smooth heads and polished points. But is it any less wonderful to see this vast machinery of the post-office, taking up the letter which you drop into one of its ten thousand hoppers, carrying it hundreds of miles, with a speed and safety otherwise impracticable, and delivering it into the hands of the individual to whom your will directed it. Why this is a machinery which, in a sense, extends your presence over the whole country, even to the edge of the wilderness, where the last traces of government and of civilized life disappear. And the enjoyment of this machinery has come to be, every where, so completely one of the necessaries of civilized life, that any government in Christendom which should refuse to afford the people this accommodation, would be overturned as intolerable. Such is the progress of society. An institution so essential to our idea of civilization, and so important in its bearings on all the interests of society, cannot but be expected to make farther progress hereafter. It would be quite contrary to our genius as Americans certainly, if we should take it for granted that the system as it now exists with us, is incapable of improvement. We may regard it, then, as a fair question for consideration, what improvements in our present system of arrangements for the conveyance of letters, are desirable and practicable? At the outset of this inquiry, let us recall distinctly, what is, with us at least in this country, the true conception of a post-office system as it should be. Such a system is not like the posts established in ancient Persia and in the Roman empire, or like the posts as they were established, four centuries ago, in France, Germany and England-a mere arrangement for the conveyance of government despatches, supported at the expense of the government, and for the exclusive use of the gov ernment and its privileged favorites and hangers on. Nor is it with us, as it is in other countries even to this day, a government monopoly, to be maintained and managed exclusively, or chiefly, with a view to increase the revenue of the government. It does not enter into the plans of the American people, to tax the correspondence of the nation for the purpose of supporting the army or the navy, or for any other department of the public expenditure. It is not for the sake of making money, or saving money, for the government, that we maintain this post-office establishment. It may be assumed then as a first principle, that whatever may be the policy in other countries, our post-office system ought to be simply a great public convenience, for the equal accommodation of all the members of society. This idea is the standard by which the merits of the existing system in all its parts, and the merits of every proposed improvement, are to be measured. In proportion as the establishment answers more completely this one end of being a great public convenience for the equal ac commodation of all the members of society, in that proportion does it approach perfection. Let this idea, then, be expanded; and let us see what are the qualities necessarily belonging to that system which is to afford its benefits equally, and as completely as possible, to all the members of society. 1. Most obviously such a system must have, what, for the want of a better word, we may call ubiquity. It must not be confined to a few principal routes-the thoroughfares between the great cities-where the facilities of transportation, and the abundance of letters, may make the establishment profitable. On the contrary it must be extended as far as possible to all parts of the country, and the profits on those routes where conveyance is easy and correspondence abundant, should be ap plied to sustain those routes which, owing to the increased expense of transportation and the diminished amount of correspondence, are unable to sustain themselves. The only imperious reason why, in such a country as ours, the government should have any thing to do with the conveyance of letters, more than with the conveyance of passengers or of merchandise, lies in the necessity of giving to the system of mails this quality of ubiquity. Leave the whole business to private competition, and on all the principal routes letters would soon be conveyed cheaper and better than they will ever be by the government; but how would it be with other routes? There would be no difficulty about sending a letter at the cheapest rate and with the greatest expedition from Hartford to New York, or from Boston to New Orleans; but what would it cost to send a letter from Hartford to Babylon or Patchogue on Long Island? And what communication would there be between Hartford and a village on lake Mem, phremagog, or between Hartford and some new outpost of civilization in the west? The end for which a public establishment of this kind exists, is the equal accommodation of every member of the community, and therefore the system must spread its branches over the whole country, those parts of it which are unprofit able being sustained by the revenues of those parts which are prof. itable. 2. Public accommodation being the end, regularity and precision in all the action of the system are in dispensable; and, other things being equal, the system is the more complete in proportion as it is character. ized by this quality. Every man who has occasion to send a letter to any part of the country, must be able to rely on its going safely and unfailingly to the place to which he directs it. And not only so, but he should be able to know, as exactly as possible, the hour at which it must be mailed in order to commence its journey, and the time when it will arrive at its destination. The public would not be accommodated if letters from one place to another, were sent only at unknown and irregular intervals, according to the convenience of the postmaster, or when a sufficient number had accumulated in the office. All the arrangements and all the motions of the system should have, as far as possible, the regularity and precis ion of clock-work. 3. Another quality, of great importance to the end we have in view, is cheapness. The price of convey ing letters by the public mails, in other words the rate of postage, should be set as low as possible. This grand accommodation should be afforded to the public at the cheapest rate consistent with other essential qualities. In determining the rate of postage, the question is not what a merchant, or a lawyer, or the proprietor of a great newspaper, can afford to give for a business letter of great importance; it is not, what those who have the means of paying are willing to give for letters rather than not to receive them; nor is it what tariff of taxes on letters will afford to the government the greatest revenue; it is simply, what is the lowest rate of postage at which the establishment, taken as a whole with all its ramifications, will be able to pay its own expenses. Most certain it is that, other things being equal, the lower the price of postage, the greater and more equal will be the public accommodation. 4. The speed with which letters are transmitted, is an important consideration in estimating the completeness of the system. On this point it is not enough to offer the remark that the most rapid conveyence of the mails, consistent with security and cheapness, is the best. There is a certain degree of speed on each route, without which the |