g two and a half cents on all pamphlets
weighing less than one ounce, and one cent for each additional ounce.

I have a letter from the proprietor of a quarterly review, stating the
effect which this change in the mode of rating pamphlet postage had upon
its own circulation. Before the act of 1845, the post-office charged 14
cents per number, or 56 cents a year. Now it is 10 cents per number, or 36
cents a year. The consequence is, that where he formerly sent 100 copies
by mail, yielding $56 postage, he now sends 500 copies, paying $180,
increasing the income of the department $124. As there has been a material
reduction in the expenditure of the department, notwithstanding a great
extension of the mail routes, it is plain that the expense to the
department is not at all enhanced by this additional service. As the labor
of management is much diminished in the case of such large pamphlets, it
is possible that future experience may show the practicability of a still
greater reduction in the case of such periodicals--perhaps allowing
publishers' to _prepay_ at four cents for each half-pound.

In Great Britain, there has hitherto been no separate rate of postage for
pamphlets, but they have been charged at the rate of letter postage, 1_d._
per half-ounce. This is about double the present rate of pamphlet postage
in the United States. The delivery of parcels by stage-coaches, railroads,
and common carriers, is much more thoroughly systematized in that old
country, with its dense population and limited extent, than it can be with
us, on our vast territory, so new and so unfinished. Consequently, there
is less necessity there for sending pamphlets by mail, and the thing is
rarely done except in the case of small pamphlets, of an ounce or two
weight, or in cases where despatch in transmission is important. Within
the present year, however, a new rule has been introduced into the British
post-office, by which "any book or pamphlet, exceeding one sheet, and not
exceeding two feet in its longest dimensions, may be transmitted by post
between any two places in the United Kingdom, at the uniform rate of
sixpence, prepaid in stamps affixed, for each pound weight and fraction of
a pound. Except in the extreme length of two feet, and that, of course, no
envelope shall contain more than one copy, there is no restriction
whatsoever. Families residing in the remote parts of Scotland, Wales, and
Ireland, where perhaps there is no good books