From this result, it appears that the average cost of the actual transport of an half-ounce letter to any of the above cities or towns, would be about oneeighth of a cent, which is equal to the sixteenth of a penny British. This is double the expense of transmission in England, but it is still so minute, and bears so insignificant a proportion to the whole amount of postage which, under any system, would be exacted, that it may be safely inferred that the rates of postage here, as in Great Britain, ought to be independent of the distance.

The British system of postage, which has been established in conformity with the project of Mr. Rowland Hill, and which, with certain modifications suggested by local circumstances, we think is destined to spread throughout the world, and, before all other countries, in our own, is characterized by the following general features:

:

1. A fixed rate of postage is charged by weight, independently of the distances to which the letters are transmitted.

2. This postage is pre-paid, by means of a stamp or other convenient symbol, issued by the Government to the public, and affixed to the letter, such stamp having the virtue of a frank.

3. The rate of postage is fixed so low as to destroy the abuses of evasion, &c.

4. The franking privilege is totally abolished, and with it are removed the endless abuses incidental to it.

In these conditions are comprised those general features of the plan, which are

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$3.75

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1-8

indispensable to ensure such a successful result, in any country, as its advocates promise. In England, the more particular details observed in carrying it out may be stated as follows:

ounce

The rate fixed upon by the Legislature, for all distances within the precincts of the United Kingdom, is a penny per half-ounce, all fractions of an being counted as a full letter weighing above an ounce. Thus, all letters under half an ounce weight pay one penny; all letters above half an ounce, and not exceeding an ounce, pay twopence; all letters above an ounce, and not exceeding two ounces, fourpence; three ounces, sixpence, and so on.

Penny stamps are issued by the Stamp Office, coated with adhesive matter at the back, by which they are readily and permanently attached to the letter. These are sold at thirteen-and-a-half pence the dozen. The writer, however, has the option of paying the postage, according to the above rates, when the letter is delivered at the Post Office. The use of the stamp, according to these conditions, adds about thirteen per cent. to the postage, the consequence of which is, that it is not used for more than half the number of letters posted, and its omission entails on the Post Office the salaries of the necessary number of receiving clerks.

Letters may be posted without prepayment, but they are, in that case, subjected to double the above rates of postage, which are exacted on their delivery. By surrendering to this extent

the principle of pre-payment, the Administration have retained in the Post Office a part of that complexity and expensive management which it was the object of Mr. Hill's project to remove; and, if proof were wanting how little this contributes to the public convenience, it is found in the fact that not above five or six per cent. of all the letters posted are unpaid. Still, however small the proportion may be, machinery must be provided for its management within the Post Office.

The abolition of the parliamentary franking privilege was readily acquiesced in, the low rates of the new postage rendering it valueless. The correspondence and dispatches of the various government offices pass through the Post Office, subject to postage, which is charged to the respective accounts of these offices.

The law requires all newspapers to bear a penny stamp, and this stamp carries them free through the Post Office, and may be regarded as representing their postage. All other printed papers are subject to the same rate of postage as letters.

The reformed system thus organized, came into operation on the 10th of January, 1840, and has, therefore, now been four years in operation. The gross annual revenue of the Post Office, during that period, has not only defrayed all the expenses of its management, but has yielded a gradually augmenting revenue to the State. The nett amount of this revenue for the year ending 5th of January, 1841, was, $2,322,370; and the nett amount for the year ending 5th January, 1842, was $2,675,380. The average annual number of letters passing through the Post Office before the reform, was eighty-three millions. The annual number since the reform, estimated in 1841, is one hundred and ninety-three millions, being an increase on the former amount of 150 per cent. which increase has taken place before any full development of the new system. Considering the gradual annual increase of nett revenue, and the corresponding increase of the number of letters posted, it is computed by the best British authorities that the Post Office revenue, under the penny system, will ultimately reach and even exceed its amount under the system of exorbitant rates obsolete in England, but still continued in this country.

The principles of Mr. Hill's system,

and its operation in the modified form brought into operation in England, with the practical results ensuing, being thus before us, it remains to be considered to what extent, or with what modifications, if any, the same system can be advantageously adopted in this country. The United States Post Office is, in fact, an inheritance from the Government of the mother country. It has retained all its characteristic marks, and has, with a tenacity almost anomalous in the administration of this country, adhered even to the most absurd of its oldest regulations, and continued to adhere to them, after the English public, enslaved as they are to the spirit of prescription and the prestige of antiquity, has abandoned them as being out of all keeping with the spirit of the age, and inconsistent with all the principles of political economy and statistics. It is, we presume, a point so universally conceded, that a reform of a sweeping char acter in the organization of a National Post Office in this country, is imperiously needed, that it is not worth while here to discuss it.

When we contemplate the transactions of the past year, in reference to the business of the Post Office, and compare them with the epoch which preceded the great reform of 1840 in the United Kingdom, we cannot fail, even without further or more elaborate inquiry, to be struck with the similarity of the prognostics of disease and symptoms of unsoundness in the two institutions, and to be impressed with the persuasion that the application of the same remedies will be attended with the same beneficial results. We find here the same complaints of the enormous abuses of the franking privilege, both congressional and official-the same audacious and unblushing defiance of the laws of the land in the establishment of private enterprises for the despatch and delivery of letters-the same extensive evasions of the law by private individuals, adopting every conceivable device to obtain a cheaper transmission of their correspondence than the Government mail affords-the same absence of that rebuke from public opinion, with which the evasion, and much more the open violation of the laws is always visited when these laws are of a healthy character, and in harmony with the spirit of the times. A reform is then inevitable, and the evil has been allowed to attain such a head, that half measures will be

of no avail. The public voice demands a thorough and radical cure of the grievance of the present system of postage. Other and older nations have gone before us in the path of improvement, and if the Legislature falter, it requires no extraordinary spirit of vaticination to declare, that the people will make themselves heard within the walls of the Capitol in a tone and spirit which will teach its occupants that delay or hesitation is no longer admissible.

The necessity of a radical reform being then conceded, it is for the General Government and the Legislature to consider whether it be more consistent with policy and wisdom, to adopt, with suitable modifications, the system which has produced results so satisfactory to the public in Great Britain, or to adopt a new system. We can have little doubt, that the experience already purchased by the struggles of the British people against official prejudice and legislative inertia, will be accepted and acted upon; and, that a system, better than the British, inasmuch as it will embrace the consistent design which, to allay the fears of some, and mitigate the opposition of others, was garbled and compromised in England, will be finally adopted in this country, and will be productive of results in the highest degree advantageous to the public. The first indispensable condition, which must on no account be yielded or compromised, is the adoption of one uniform rate within the precincts of the Union. For what reason should this great principle be surrendered? On what rational grounds will a varying rate be established? Not surely after what has been demonstrated by varying distance. It is proved incontestably, that the cost of dispatch and delivery, has not in practice, any variation dependent on the distance. With what justice then, should a letter from New York to New Orleans, be charged with ten cents, while a similar letter from New York to Trenton, is charged only five cents? If the variation of charge be, as it ought to be if admitted at all, in proportion to the cost of the service, then certainly the charges should be exactly reversed, and the letter to Trenton should be charged ten cents, and the letter to New Orleans five cents; the number of letters to New Orleans being greatly more than twice the number to Trenton, and the cost of dispatch and delivery, being more nearly in the inverse ratio, of the number of letters dis

patched and delivered, than any other proportion. The most just variation of the postage, would be that which would press more heavily per letter on the smaller mail; but as no one we presume, will advocate the practical application of this principle, and as no other condition of a varying rate would bear even the remotest relation to the varying cost, the principle of one uniform rate throughout the States, is recommended at once, for its simplicity, its convenience, its economy, and its equity.

Granting, then, the principle of an uniform rate, the important question remains to be settled, what should be the amount of that rate. In England, as we have stated, a rate of two cents per half ounce has been found to cover all the expenses of the Post Office administration, and to yield an increasing annual revenue of above three millions of dollars; but it is to be considered that the inland correspondence of the United Kingdom is much greater than that of the United States, and the magnitude of the correspondence is, to a certain extent, the inverse exponent of the amount of a prudent and equitable rate; it seems, therefore, just and expedient, that a higher standard of charge be adopted in this country. It will probably be generally admitted, that an addition of one hundred per cent. to the English rate, that is, four cents per letter, would afford us a safe standard; but in order to allay the fears of the timid, and inspire confidence in the distrustful, we should propose an uniform five cent rate, which would adapt itself conveniently to our silver currency, and be sufficiently large to enable the Government to include the expense of stamps, under the postage, without adding thirteen per cent. for them, as is injuriously and inconveniently practiced in England. In fine, we should then propose, that all letters to all distances throughout the States, should be charged with postage by weight, at the rate of five cents per half ounce-fractions of a half ounce being charged as a complete half ounce.

There appears to be no object in restricting the weight of letters or packets sent through the Post Office. Under this system, the charge of a dollar and sixty cents per pound, for heavy parcels, abundantly paying for their transmission; and, indeed, the heavier the parcels, the more profitable they will be to the Post Office. A pound weight of single half

ounce letters will involve thirty-two times more official labor, both in the reception and in the delivery, than a single packet would weighing one pound, while the expenses of transmission of both would be the same.

The absurdity of the old established custom of charging postage, not by weight or bulk, but by the number of separate pieces of paper into which it may suit the convenience of the writer to divide his letter, is so very apparent, that we should not have thought it worth while to appropriate a single line to notice it were it not that we know that

some persons, and among them the Post Office officials, are wedded to it. Under this system, a letter written on a single sheet of paper, provided it be not torn in two, is chargeable only with single postage; but if the sheet happen to be cut into two half sheets, the same letter consisting of the same paper, with the same writing upon it, is chargeable with double postage. When the reform of the English Post Office was in agitation, the absurdity of this method of rating was practically illustrated in the following manner. A double letter of the exact magnitude, when folded, of this diagram,

weighing less than seven grains, was written on thin paper and sent by post to the principal members of the legislature. It consisted of a piece of paper of less than three-and-a-half grains weight, enclosed in an envelope of a similar weight and size, the contents of the letter were as follows: Postage charges in 1838. This paper, four inches by two-and-a-half, and its cover of similar size, weighs seven grains, or under the sixtieth part of an ounce weight, and is charged double postage, whilst the accompanying sheet, thirty five inches long and twenty three inches wide, weighing just one ounce, is charged as a single letter." The lilliputian letter of seven grains, was charged one shilling, while the large sheet of double demy having a surface of writing equal to thirty-two of the pages which the reader now holds in his hand, was charged only sixpence. This is surely the climax of absurdity, and it is scarcely necessary to add that the only nation in the world which ever practiced it besides ourselves, was the mother from whom we inherited it. She, however, even in her senility has abandoned the folly. We, without the excuse of age, without the apology of any particular respect for prescription or reverence for established usages, still obstinately cling to it.

The intrinsic absurdity of this regulation is far from being the only or the strongest objection to it. It has led to

practices as bad as those which disgrace the Post Offices of the Austrian and Italian States. Espionage in them is conducted under at least the semblance of secrecy. Here it is an imperious duty. Is it not the duty of every post master and his subordnates throughout the States to see that the letters are properly taxed? To do this he must see what they contain. He must spy into them— poke them open-present them to a strong light, and endeavor to see through them. If, by ingenious folding, he cannot detect the suspected enclosure, he must then exercise his ingenuity to read and interpret some portion of the contents. If, after all, he is in doubt, he lays on without hesitation the double tax, and if that tax be paid before the letter leaves the office, or if the letter be opened out of the presence of the postmaster, the double rate must be paid whether the letter be double or single. The process is still more insulting and outrageous if any citizen take a letter to the Office to pre-pay the postage. He presents the letter which is single, with a single postage. His word, however, is in this case, worthless. A clerk takes up the letter, feels it and eyes it. He presses it edgewise between his fingers, closing one eye and directing the axis of the other between its folds. If he feel zealous in his vocation, it is not beyond the limits of his discretion to insert a pencil or penholder to open the

space between its leaves, and all these polite evolutions are executed in the presence and under the eye of a gentleman who has just passed him his word that the letter contains no enclosure. We leave it to our fellow-citizens to digest this process.

Next in importance to an uniform rate in proportion to weight, is the principle of pre-payment by stamp or other convenient symbol attached to the envelope of the letter. By this expedient every letterwriter franks his own letter. It is much more convenient than pre-paying at the post office. If you take the letter yourself, it saves the time and trouble of payment, of obtaining change, etc. If you send the letter by a servant, it protects you from their possible dishonesty in retaining the postage instead of pre-paying it. But these advantages are insignificant, compared with those which it produces in the internal arrangements of the Post Office. That establishment is at once stripped altogether of its financial character, its functions being limited to the mere mechanical transmission and delivery of letters.

Better evidence cannot be afforded of the practical advantages to be expected in the organization and operations of the Post Office itself, than by referring to the testimony of Sir Edward Lees, the secretary of the general post office at Edinburgh, who, being himself, throughout his life, a Post Office functionary under the old system, would certainly not be likely to be subject to any extraordinary bias in favor of change, unless the change presented a certainty of great amelioration. He admitted that the system of pre-payment by stamp would necessarily be attended with "considerable saving of time in the delivery of letters; the expenses in almost every branch of the department, but principally in the inland and letter-carrier offices, would be much reduced; the complex accounts of the bye and dead-letter offices greatly simplified, and the expenses greatly diminished; and the system of accounts between the postmasters and deputy postmasters throughout the country, which presented so many opportunities, facilities, and temptations for combination and fraud, would altogether disappear; the labor and responsibility of surveyors would be curtailed by the principle of an uniform rate; a system of complex and intricate duty, inseparable from the nature of the local and provincial post office, under

the old syatem, would give way to one of simplicity and uniformity, and the entire principle and machinery of the Post Office would be changed in its character, greatly contributing to the security, comfort, and advantage of the community, in its connection with the public correspondence." Such were the sentiments of an old and experienced Post Office functionary on the advantages of Hill's system of postage, and the results of the experience of the last three years have abundantly proved the soundness of his judgment.

A variety of devices have been suggested for facilitating the pre-payment of postage, among which may be mentioned the manufacture of a particular species of paper-a monoply of which is proposed to be given to the Government, under proper restrictions of price; it is proposed, that letters written on, or enclosed in this paper go free-the postage being included in the price paid for the paper. These are matters of detail, however, which need not be dwelt upon here, being such as may be best adjusted in the practical organization of the system.

The only branch of the Post Office business, to which the principle of prepayment is inapplicable, is the reception and delivery of letters arriving from foreign countries. These must, of course, be forwarded to their destinations, subject to the collection of postage from those to whom they are addressed, and for the reasons already explained, and on account of the labor and expense consequent on them, we should suggest, that, a double rate of inland postage be levied on them that is to say, that they should be rated at ten cents per half ounce, independently of distance.

In the management of the delivery department of the English Post Office, the postage charged upon the letter, whether pre-paid or not, has always included, both under the old and new system-the delivery of the letter, by the letter-carrier, at the address of the party for whom it is destined; in this country it has been generally the practice for residents to keep boxes at the post office; or, to apply at the delivery office for their letters. În cases where the letters are delivered at the abode of the party to whom they are addressed, an additional charge of two cents has been made upon them; a part of which is understood to constitute the salary of the letter-carrier. It may, however, be reasonably expected if in