While human
nature remains the same, it is to be expected that corporations will take
this advantage unless some counteracting interest can be brought to bear
upon them as a restraint against extortion.

Now, let the post-office present itself to the people as a system of pure
and unmingled beneficence, studying not how it can get a little more money
for a little less service, but how it can render the greatest amount of
accommodation with the least expense to the public treasury, and it will
at once become the object of the public gratitude and warm affection; men
will study how to facilitate all its transactions, will be conscientiously
careful not to impose any needless trouble upon its servants, and will
generally watch for its interests as their own. Such is the benign effect
upon all the considerate portions of society in England. Then the
government will be fully sustained in insisting that all railroads shall
carry the mail for a compensation which will be just a fair equivalent for
the service performed, in reasonable proportion to other services. And if
the corporations are perverse in throwing obstacles in the way, the people
will expect that such coercive measures should be employed, as wisdom may
prescribe, to make these creatures of their power subservient to the
public good, and not to mere private aggrandisement.

In January, 1845, a document was communicated to congress by the
Postmaster-General, containing replies by the British post-office to
certain queries which he had proposed to them. This document gives the
distance travelled daily by mail trains on railways at 1601 miles, at a
cost per mile of 1_s_. 1-18/32_d_. per mile. But this "distance" is the
number of miles between place and place. The total number of miles that
the mail travels by railroad daily is 5808, which would make the real cost
per mile of travel about 5-1/4_d_. The number of miles travelled by railroad
in this country is 4,170,403, at the cost of $597,475, which is about 12
cents per mile. But the English trains are driven at much greater speed
than ours, the expense of running is much greater in all respects, the
cost of the roads is vastly higher, the weight of mails is much greater,
and therefore the price of transportation might be higher than with us.
But it is lower. The average weight of mails sent daily from London alone
is 27,384 pounds, which is 5569 pounds more than the whole daily mails of
the United States. By act of