res; of seeds, plants, flowers, grasses, woods; of
specimens illustrating even geology, entomology, and other
departments of useful science; thus creating a new branch of
commerce as well as correspondence, which might bring into the
English mail bags tons of matter, paying at the rate of 2_s._
8_d._ per lb. for carriage.

8. It would make English penny postage stamps a kind of
international currency, at par on both sides of the Atlantic, and
which might be procured without the loss of a farthing by way of
exchange, and be transmitted from one country to the other, at
less cost for conveyance than the charge upon money orders in
England from one post-office to another, for equal sums.

One of the strongest recommendations of this measure, and a weighty reason
also in favor of the immediate adoption of the whole system of cheap
postage, is found in the present derangement of postal intercourse between
Great Britain and the United States. These two great nations, the
Anglo-Saxon Brotherhood, are at this moment "trying to see which can do
the other most harm," by a course of mutual retaliation, which may be
known in future history as the _war of posts_. It is the opinion of some
philosophers, that in wars in general, the party most to blame is the one
which gives the heaviest blows; but in this case there arises a new
problem, whether each particular blow does the most damage to the party
which receives or to the one that gives it. The principal points in the
contest I suppose to be these. The American government charges Great
Britain five cents postage on all letters in the British packet mails,
borne across our country at the expense of Great Britain, to and from the
province of Canada. Great Britain in return, charges the United States the
full rate of ship postage on all letters in the American packet mails,
which touch at a British port on their way to and from the continent of
Europe. Then the Postmaster-General of the United States suspends the
agreement by which a mutual postage account is kept between his department
and the post-office in Canada. And now a bill is before Congress, having
actually passed the House of Representatives in one day, by which our own
citizens are to pay 24 cents postage on every letter, and 4 cents on every
newspaper, brought by the British mail steamers, as a tax to our own
post-office, although the same postage has already been prepaid by