e deficiency for the current
year will exceed a million and a quarter of dollars; and there is
no reasonable ground to believe that, without some amendment of
that law, it will fall short of a million of dollars for the next
year."

The actual deficiency for the year ending June 30, 1846, was only
$589,837; and for the second year above alluded to, ending June 30, 1847,
it was but $33,677. And the Postmaster-General's report for December,
1847, estimates the resources of the department for the year ending June
30, 1848, at $4,313,157, and the expenditures at $4,099,206, giving an
actual surplus of $213,951. If this expectation should be realized, (and
there is hardly a possibility but that it should be exceeded), the income
will exceed the annual average receipts for the nine years before the
reduction of postage, $51,467. The Postmaster-General ascribes the
increase solely to "the reduction in the rates of postage," while nearly a
million of dollars are saved in the expenditures by the provision of the
law of 1845, directing the contracts to be let to the lowest bidder,
without reference to the transportation in coaches. So far, therefore, the
triumph of the law of 1845 has been complete. It has proved that the same
economic law exists here as in England, by which reduction of price leads
to increase of consumption.

On the other point, however, of meeting the wants of the people, so as to
bring all the correspondence of the country into the mails, its success is
very far from being equally satisfactory. The five and ten cents' postage
does not have the effect of suppressing the private mails and illicit
transportation of letters.

The report of the House Committee in 1844, showed beforehand that such a
reduction could not have the effect here, just as the parliamentary report
had shown in 1838, that nothing but an absolute reduction to 1_d._ could
suppress the private mails in England. "Individuals can prosecute on all
the large railroad and steamboat routes between the great towns, as now, a
profitable business in conveying letters at three and five cents, where
the government would ask the five and ten cents postages." Hill's New
Hampshire Patriot said, shortly after the act went into operation:

"Private expresses _have not_ been discontinued in this quarter.
Far from it. They are now doing as large a business as ever,
carrying letters at half the government rates. And, strange as