not send his messenger, or have his box, any more than Laz

arus.

Suppose our rich men were obliged to go and mingle in the crowd, and push and be pushed, and struggle up to the postoffice window, and pay out their specie for every letter; and suppose their wives and daughters should have to do as the poor milliners and sewing women must do,-go day after day to the most public place in the city, and work their way through a bustling crowd up to a pigeon-hole in a wall, and cling on to it with their hands, for fear of being pushed aside ere the pert clerk had looked at them long enough to see whether they were old or young, fair or ugly, before deciding with how much quickness and care he should look for their letters. Let rich and refined ladies have to do and suffer what poor and humble women have to do and suffer in order to mail and receive their letters; and we should have a post-office reform right speedily.

Far be it from us to propose or desire any restriction upon the conveniencies of one class, because they cannot be had by all; but we want Dives to bring down his nose (in imagination merely,) upon the grindstone of reality, in order to understand how it actually grinds the face of the poor.

We have thus very loosely and imperfectly jotted down some thoughts about the proposed post-office reform. We have not dwelt much upon statistics, because the financial side of the matter interests us much less than the moral. We have been willing to grant that the proposed reform would throw some burden upon the general treasury, though it would be easy to show that this would soon become very small, and perhaps be removed entirely.

The reduction of postage to one cent for all distances would act like a premium upon writing and reading. In 1839, the last year of the old high system of postage in Great Britain, the whole number of letters mailed was seventy-nine millions. In 1840, the first year of the reformed system, it rose to one hundred and sixty-nine millions; in 1842 it exceeded two hundred millions, and rose steadily till it reached three hundred and twenty-two millions in 1847, and is still rising.

The gross income, under the old system, had remained about stationary for nearly half a century, varying from ten to twelve millions of dollars. In 1839, it was little short of twelve millions. The sudden reduction of postage to one pen

ny caused a great falling off in the net revenue, in 1841. But soon a flood of letters began to pour in, and the numbers increased so rapidly, without thereby materially increasing the expense, that in 1847 the gross income was about ten millions of dollars; and during the current year, information obtained by Mr. Hume in official quarters assures us that it is expect ed the gross revenue will equal the gross amount of postage in the year before the postage was reduced.

Yes! in 1847 the post-office system of Great Britain afforded the immense facilities to which we have alluded, circulated over three hundred millions of letters to all parts of the kingdom, at a penny apiece, took up and delivered many millions at the very doors of the inhabitants, and not only cost the government nothing, but actually paid into the treasury four millions of dollars, its net earnings, over and above all expenses!

Here is a sop for Mammon!

In 1843, there were 24,267,552 letters circulated by mail in the United States, yielding the sum of $3,525,268. The number in 1847, under the partial reduction, was more than doubled, being 52,173,480, yielding $3,188,957; the reduction doubling the number without sensibly increasing the expense, and yielding almost the same revenue.

Take fifty million as the present number of letters circulated, and estimate the revenue at three millions of dollars, that is, an average of about six cents a letter. Now, if we reduce the postage to one cent, we must have six times as many letters, or three hundred millions yearly, to yield the same revenue. Let us see what is the probability of this being done. Look at Scotland: she has a population of two and a half millions; her foreign and her domestic commerce are very limited, compared with those of the States; one would suppose the intercourse between different parts of the country would be less than in ours; her people are not more intelligent, to say the least; and yet, under the reformed postage system, over twenty-eight millions of letters are circulated annually, or eleven letters for each inhabitant; while we circulate less than three letters per inhabitant. Now give us the cent postage, and suppose that we write only eleven letters, each, yearly, as many as they do in Scotland, and the revenue will be two millions two hundred thousand dollars. But suppose,

* The net revenue of the British post-office, in 1847, was £839,548, 9s. 6d.

as we well may, that we shall write one quarter more letters in proportion to our population, the revenue will then come up to what it now is, without materially increasing the expense.

But there will be other sources of economy, besides the increased number of letters circulated, if the proposed reform should be adopted. The odious franking privilege should be abolished at once. Suppose each member of Congress wants to send ten thousand letters per annum; let Congress provide him with ten thousand letter stamps, and charge it in the expenses of the session. Or, if he thinks this will not be enough to distribute his speeches to ubiquitous Buncombe, give him twenty-thirty thousand, but, in the name of conscience and reason, set him some limit, and do not make the people pay high postage on their letters, that his speeches may swarm over the land like winged incubi.

Serve presidents and secretaries in the same way; limit them somewhere. Let the rule be imperative and universal; let not even ex-presidentesses escape it. Give them stamps, as many as you choose, only let it be a specific charge upon the treasury. Give them even a hundred thousand, and let them sell them, if they will, it will not be worse than selling human flesh, as one of them does!

We have already alluded to the saving of the present loss upon dead letters; that on dead newspapers would be equally great, nay! it would be far greater, if we take the cost of transportation into the account. Under the present system, millions of newspapers and pamphlets are carried by mail to all parts of the country and left uncalled for, because the consignees will not pay the postage. Once require prepayment, and men will cease to put valueless papers into the mail.

Another saving would be made by a reduction of the cost of rail-road transportation. At present the enormous sum charged by rail-road corporations for carrying the mails is clear profit, for it costs next to nothing more to take a mail along in the cars, than to send them without it. The stockholder in a rail-road company now "goes shares" with the government in the black mail levied upon letters. You may send a man from Boston to Philadelphia with five thousand letters in his trunk, and it will cost you but ten dollars, board and lodging included; that is, a mill a letter. But government steps up and says, "Stop, friend, you are smuggling. You must put those letters into my bag, and pay ten cents for each one, or five hundred dollars for the whole." The rail-road

director witnesses this doing, and straightway steps up to the government and says, "Stop, old gentleman, since you get five hundred dollars for carrying that bag, you don't suppose I am fool enough to take it on board my cars at the same rate that I take a bag of common merchandise; you must pay me many fold more, you must pay, not in proportion to what the freight is worth, but in proportion to what you get." The government blusters and threatens prosecution, but finally, thinking the less stir is made the better, it yields and shares part of its plunder with the company.

There can be no doubt that if proper reforms were made, and the post-office were regarded as a great social machinery for promoting the intellectual, moral, and material interests of the people, rail-road corporations, soulless as they are supposed to be, would cooperate with government to facilitate its working. So it would be in a hundred other ways, and unthoughtof savings would be made.

This, then, is the one thing wanting-a right understanding of the great capacities of the post-office system. A moral age will make it as efficient a moral agent as a commercial age makes it an efficient commercial agent. To indulge in speculations about what would be the effect of developing all the latent force of this powerful agency, and yoking it into the cause of true reform, would swell this article to a volume. We cannot close, however, without alluding to one benignant feature which we discover already in the misty future; and that is, AN OCEAN CENT POSTAGE!

Let us first consider ocean postage as it is now usually regarded-it will give us a fair view of the spirit of commerce. Then let us look upon it as it will be regarded by and by-it will give us a faint idea of the spirit of beneficence.

Millions of men have torn themselves from the land of their birth, and the homes of their youth, and planted themselves in America. The heartstrings, however, are not like the tree's roots; they will stretch around the globe without breaking; and thoughts and affections will fly from end to end quicker than the lightning flashes along the wire. But parted hearts must have more than thoughts and wishes to satisfy their yearnings; there must be words and signs of love. Then Mammon looks on, and says, "Lo! these millions here would send messages to those millions there, let us carry them and make great gain thereon." So his servant, Commerce, says to the people, "I will take your merchandise cheaply; I will carry a hundred

pounds of paper across the Atlantic for a dollar; but if the sheets of that paper are inscribed with any messages of love or business, you must pay me four hundred dollars, though the weight be not an ounce greater." And, moreover, when those sheets are landed, the government, that would have charged but one dollar duty for the whole, while they remained blank paper, now that they are made pregnant by the pen with thought and feeling, straightway lays upon them a tax of six hundred dollars.*

For a hundred pounds of blank paper two dollars, for a hundred pounds of letters one thousand dollars! such is the spirit of to-day.

Now how does hope whisper to us that it will be by and by, when our population reaches a hundred millions? Our country, lying as it were in the great pathway of the nations around the globe, with two hundred million Europeans on the right hand, and five hundred million Asiatics on the left, will be the centre of a mighty intercourse among men. Then will swift steamers arrive and depart daily from either shore, scouring the Atlantic and the Pacific. Then may the German mother, on the banks of the Rhine, receive, by help of telegraph and steam, tidings from her son, on the banks of the Missouri, in a week. Then there will be a Universal Post, established not in the spirit of rivalry or of gain, but in the spirit of enlightened wisdom, that will strive to multiply and to strengthen all the bonds of Christian union in the great human family; and that will no more put a tax upon letters than upon school-houses or upon churches.

Sapient conservatism will call all this very visionary, as sapient Dyonisius only ten years ago call the project of ocean steam navigation visionary; and sapient every body, only ten moons ago, called the project of sending a message to New York and getting an answer back in ten minutes, very visionary; but never mind; there is that in humanity which will carry it forward, and drag with it all who hold back. Doubters are damned in that they have not the happy visions of the believer.

This calculation is based upon the old rate of six cents for ship letters. If letters are sent by mail across the Atlantic, the minimun price is twenty-five cents, owing, however, to disgraceful squabbles between the governments of Great Britain and the United States. Even this privilege is now suspended, and we have inland postage added.