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pondence passing through the postoffices, and paying postage. The present system of high postages has the effect, first, of causing a large portion of the correspondence of the country to be carried on independent of the mails. Who goes from Hartford to New York, or even to New Haven, without carrying letters, unless he takes his start so suddenly that no body knows of his going? The probability is that on the route between New York and Boston, or on that between New York and Philadelphia, or on that between Philadelphia and Baltimore, the number of letters conveyed by travelers is, at least, as great as the number conveyed by the public mails. Take away the high price of postage, and all these letters rush into the post-offices as naturally as water runs down hill.

The present system, again, has the effect of causing a very great suppression of correspondence. There are few men, women, or children, capable of writing letters, who are not conscious that under a different system, their letters would be twice or thrice as many as they now are. Especially is this true of those in humbler circumstances-of the widow separated from her sons-of those sons separated from each other. To such persons, a letter of friendship is often a far greater luxury than it can be to any others. And to how great an extent is correspondence between such persons actually suppressed by the present system. These too, are the very persons who have the fewest opportunities of forwarding letters by private conveyance. How great an increase of correspondence by the mails must there be from these two sources-the throwing of letters into the mails, that now pass through other channels-and the writing of letters that are now suppressed for the want of a cheap and regular conveyance.

But there are other sources from which there would be a still greater increase. Many business men, under a system founded on the principles which we have enumerated, would find that the best mode of advertising is by a printed circular to the very individuals with whom they wish to communicate. A wholesale merchant in New York knows his regular customers, and he knows or can know the address of thousands of other retail dealers in his line. Let the mails be made cheap, and what mode of advertising would be so effectual as to communicate directly with his customers, by sending them just that information which he wishes to lay before their eyes?

Reduce the price of postage, and how many other things beside letters would be carried by the mails. Not only letters and bank notes, and printed paper, but light packages of any description, from half an ounce to a pound or more, would seek such a mode of conveyance. This has been found to be the case in England, to so great an extent, that it is becoming necessary to restrict the right of traveling by mail to packages of a convenient bulk and shape.

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2. Another benefit of the reform is, that under the new system, all postmasters and other persons employed in the post-offices, are more easily held to a strict accountability in regard to the monies passing through their hands. method of keeping accounts with deputy postmasters in England, was, we believe, much the same with that which exists here, which is necessarily complicated and extended. But in that country, they had reason to apprehend that under the old system, collusion between different postmasters, or between clerks in different offices, to assist each other in defrauding the department, was not very unfrequent. It may be more unfrequent in this

country; but if a new system will be more effectual in preventing temptations to this kind of fraud, that, certainly, will be a great advantage.

3. Another advantage of the new system, far more important in our opinion, is that the temptations to petty frauds upon the post-office would cease. Little vices, generally practiced in the communityeven when they are practiced with out reflection, and therefore without conscious self-reproach-have an effect, unnoticed perhaps, yet disastrous, on public morals. No lit tle meanness is more common with the American people, than the meanness of trying to evade the pay ment of legal postage. How often is intelligence communicated through the mail by some cabalistic mark on the margin or the wrapper of a newspaper. How often is a double letter folded so as to pass for a single one. How often is the postmaster regarded as a sort of natural enemy, whom it is meritorious to circumvent, and the defrauding of whom is a mere spoiling of the Egyptians. A new system, that would cut up these temptations by the roots, would be an invaluable blessing in respect to the morals of the community.

4. The demoralizing influences of the franking privilege, would be entirely removed by the introduc. tion of the new system. On this point we will not enlarge. Suffice it to say that all political parties charge each other with the most unscrupulous and corrupt abuse of this privilege-abuse that violates the letter as well as the spirit of the law by which the privilege is created.

What champion has come forth in any quarter to vindicate the members of Congress and public functionaries, of his own party, against so dishonorable an imputa tion ? We know there are individ uals invested with the franking privilege, with whom it is a matter

of conscience to exercise the privilege only within the letter of the law. But how would the profession of such scrupulousness be received by the public press? With what ill-suppressed smiles would it be received on the floor of the House of Representatives, or along the more dignified concentric semicircles of the Senate? And ought such things as this to be endured as a part of the public morals of a free and high-minded people?

5. By the adoption of a system like that which has been described, all parts of the country would be brought into a closer communication with each other. Ties of affinity and blood, as well as of business, connect thousands and thousands of individuals in the remotest districts of the country. In this respect, our country differs from almost every other. Elsewhere, the people of each distinct province have a distinct lineage of their own, and a provincial dialect; and all their ancestors for uncounted generations have lived and died on the same soil on which they live, and on which their children will live after them. How different is it here! Elsewhere the members of the same family, for the most part, live and die at their native homestead, or within a few miles of the spot where they were born. The American, on the other hand, is born for migration, and those who were nurtured under one roof are found, after a few years, scattered east, west, south and north, hundreds of miles apart. Travel from New England westward, through New York, through Pennsylvania, through Ohio, through Indiana and Illinois, far into the woods of Iowa or Wiskonsan, and every where you find New England names, and hearts that warm towards their kindred here. There are men and women of every employment and condition, whose most intimate associations and dearest alliances are,

many of them, hundreds and hundreds of miles away. There is the teacher whose trials would be light ened, and his heart cheered, if he could freely communicate by letter with those who were once his instructors or his companions in study. There is the minister of the Gospel, the home missionary, to whose selfdenying work free communication with friends, brethren and helpers far away, is of the greatest moment. There is the young man, exposed to strong temptations, whom a free and frequent correspondence with his mother, or his sisters, or with another friend still dearer to his hopes, might keep from falling. There is the anxious wife or mother, who sees the health of some dear one in the family beginning to fail, and who would like to get one word from the old family physician. There are the planters of new towns and villages, laying the foun. dations civil, ecclesiastical and lit erary, who would love sometimes to get a short answer to one short question from the judge, the 'squire, the minister, the schoolmaster, or the deacon, whom they knew in old Connecticut or in the old Bay State. But how, in that new country, can they raise the half dollar to pay the post-office tax upon a single ques tion? It is of no small importance politically and morally, as well as in respect to commercial interests, to make the means of communica tion between these scattered friends and kindred, as perfect and as cheap as possible. How much would the ties of kindred and friendship between the remotest portions of the country be strengthened; how would the chain of love be kept bright; how would sentiment, thought, knowledge, feeling, flash along that chain like the electric stream-if the means of communication, or rather of communion, should be thus cheapened and perfected. Our postoffice system as it now is, is one of the most powerful of the influences

which hold our Union together, and keep these States from falling apart in the agitations of faction. The system, spread through the whole land, and connecting every human habitation with every other, is every where the channel of a vital energy. The more we perfect the system-the more numerously letters of business, of friendship, of scientific enquiry, or of benevolent and patriotic enterprise, pass between the east and the west, between the north and the south-just so much. the more do we strengthen the ties that make us one people.

Another inquiry remains, on which we will offer some considerations. Is the establishment of such a system practicable in our country? There are two great difficulties at the outset, which must greatly em. barrass the attempt to move the public mind in behalf of this reform.

First, the newspaper press, especially in our large cities, and most of all at the seat of government, has an immediate interest against any effectual change. Many of the evils of the present system, arise out of the monstrous inequality be tween the postage of letters and the postage of newspapers-an inequality which is, in effect, a tax upon correspondence, for the benefit of newspaper publishers. The postage on a letter of half an ounce weight or less, from New York to Buffalo, is twenty-five cents, while over the same route the postage of a newspaper, weighing from two to four ounces, is one cent. Besides this, the newspaper editors receive all their exchange papers, to any amount, free of postage. Thus it comes to pass, that while the bulk and weight of the mails consist chiefly of newspapers, so that the post-office system seems to exist for the benefit of the publishers, the expense of transportation is paid by a tax on letters. Or, to state particulars, the letters carried by mail are in weight, compared with the

newspapers, as one to twenty-two; compared with other printed matter, they are as one to four. Of the whole weight of the mails, the letters are about 5 per cent. But of the revenue accruing from postage, 863 per cent. is assessed upon the letters, and only 133 per cent. upon all the printed matter. In other words, of a mail weighing 100 lbs., 5 lbs. are letters, 95 lbs. are news papers and pamphlets. If the postage on this mail is $10, of that amount $8.66 will be paid for the 5 lbs. of letters, and $1.33 for the 95 lbs. of printed matter. On the same principle, then, on which a great English landholder naturally contends for a heavy duty on imported grain, or the proprietor of a Pennsylvania coal-mine for a heavy duty on imported coal-on the same principle on which an English bishop, with his princely revenues and his seat in the House of Lords, contends against ecclesiastical reform, it will not be strange if the proprietors of newspapers in the large cities, and especially at the seat of government, are found in opposition to any thorough reformation of our present system of postage.

The newspapers published in the smaller towns, have not the same vested interest in the existing system. On the contrary, the unreasonable cheapness of newspaper postage, as compared with every other kind of postage, gives to their competitors in the great centers of commercial, political and religious intelligence, an unnatural advantage over them. If the government did not undertake to carry the great newspapers from Boston, New York, and Washington, to all parts of the Union, for much less than cost, (indemnifying itself, be it remembered, by a tax on letters,) the circulation and the influence, and consequently the character, of the country newspapers, would be greatly in advance of what can be

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expected, as things now are. great newspapers at the seat of government, are probably more interested than any others, in the present system. Their circulation by carriers, in the city where they are published, is of course much less than that of the leading newspapers in the great commercial cities. Far the greatest portion of every daily issue must be despatched by the mails into all parts of the Union. During the session of Congress, reams of papers from the offices of the Globe, the Madisonian and the National Intelligencer, are sent in the mails free of all postage, under the franks of the honorable members, whose speeches they contain. It is not improbable that with the franking privilege abolished, and with the postage on newspapers so adjusted that they shall no longer be conveyed for less than cost, those presses at Washington, which now control the politics of the country, would not soon be shorn of more than half their political power. Such a result we should by no means deplore. Yet it cannot be expected that the power now wielded by those presses, will be employed to advance such a consummation. If the reform of our postoffice system is ever to be effected, it must be demanded by another sort of public opinion than that which is manufactured by the agency of the great central newspapers with their "affiliated presses."

The other great difficulty which must embarrass at the outset, any attempt to promote a reform, is found in the factitious consequence which the franking privilege gives to every man who happens to be a member of Congress, and in the facilities for electioneering, which the present system affords to each of the great parties that divide the nation, and especially to whatever party happens to have the ascendency. Without the abolition of the franking privilege, there can be

no effectual reform. Members of Congress, however patiently and patriotically they may listen to any proposal for the reduction of postage, which promises to leave their franking privilege untouched, will for a long time to come, look most unfavorably on any scheme which threatens to curtail this precious perquisite. We may be sure that no Congress, of whatever party, will vote to divest themselves of the right of defraying the expenses of their correspondence, by a tax on the letters of the commonalty, till they are compelled to do so by some manifestation of the public will, too plain to be misunderstood, and too earnest to be trifled with. Nor will any party in the possession of power, willingly forego the use of those electioneering agencies, and those multiplied facilities for influencing the public mind, which the present system affords them. The party-by which we mean not the millions who vote with the party, but the few who shape its policy and direct its movements-will always feel that just now, while the great crisis of another election is not more than four years distant, the greatest good requires them to retain in their hands every agency that can help them in the struggle. The reform must be demanded by a movement independent of party influences, and by a movement too strong to be resisted, or nothing can be done.

But supposing these difficulties to be overcome, is any system of cheap postage, analogous to the penny postage system of Great Britain, practicable in the peculiar circumstances of our country-with our extent of territory; with our many bad roads; and with great districts only sparsely populated, where the majority of the people have little occasion for any vehicle of correspondence? It is not for us to answer this question in detail. If Congress would commission a suitaVol. I.

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ble number of judicious men to investigate the whole subject, the facts which might thus be ascertained, would show what is practicable. Some things, however, the present state of knowledge on this subject authorizes us to regard as certain, which indicate what would probably be the result of such an investigation.

We have already stated, on the authority of the report of the Postmaster General, for the year ending December, 1840, that 95 per cent. of the weight of the mails consists of printed matter. It may fairly be assumed, then, that 50 per cent. of the expenses of the department are chargeable to the account of newspapers, periodicals and pamphlets. Suppose, now, that this amount of matter should be either entirely excluded from the mails, or so taxed with postage as to pay its own expenses. The expenditures of the post-office department are at once reduced from $4,750,000, (the amount in round numbers for the year 1840,) to $2,375,000. But the revenue from letters, under the present system, is, in round numbers, $4,000,000,* raised by an average postage of 15 cents on each letter. Without calculating, then, on any increase in the number of letters, from the reduction of postage, without calculating on any saving by the principle of advance payment, without calculating on any gain by the charge of postage on all the letters which now go free, the average postage might be reduced at once to something less than 9 cents on each letter, without any decrease of the revenue, by the single expedient of making newspapers and pamphlets pay for themselves.

*These numbers are all taken from the

report (of Mr. Niles) for 1840. The report (of the present Postmaster General) for 1841, contains no such statement. The report for 1842 had not been made at the time when the present article was printed.

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