allowances for the liberal distribution of copper stock at the East, is it
rational to believe that all the people who write letters here, are so
directly interested as to make a tax upon letters the most equitable mode
of assessing the expense.

During the debates in Congress on the act of 1844, an incident was related
by Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky, to this effect. He said he was
travelling in the mail stage somewhere in the State of Tennessee. At a
time of day when he was tired and hungry, the stage turned off from the
road a number of miles, to carry the mail to a certain post-office; it was
night when they reached the office, the postmaster was roused with
difficulty, who went through the formality of taking the mail pouch into
his hand, and returned it to the driver, saying there was not a letter in
it, and had not been for a month. I will not inquire whose letters ought
to be taxed to sustain that mail route, but only remark, that whatever
consideration caused its establishment, ought to carry the cost to the
public treasury, and not throw it as a burden upon our letters.

The Postmaster-General, in his late report, says that "the weight and bulk
of the mails, which add so greatly to the cost of transportation, and
impede the progress of the mail, are attributable to the mass of printed
matter daily forwarded from the principal cities in the Union to every
part of the country;" and "justice requires that the expense of their
transportation should be paid by the postage." I would add to this the
qualifying phrase, "or by the government, out of the public treasury," and
then ask why the same principle of justice is not as applicable to long
mail routes as to heavy mail bags. There is and can be no ground of
apprehension, that mails will ever be overloaded or retarded by the weight
of paid letters they contain. It was found by the parliamentary committee,
that the number of letters, which was then nearly fifty per cent. greater
than in all our mails, might be increased twenty-four fold, without
overloading the mails, and without any material addition to the contracts
for carrying the mails. They also found that the whole cost of receiving,
transporting and delivering a letter was 76-100ths of a penny, of which
the transit cost but 19-100ths, and the receipt and delivery 57-100ths.
The cost of transit, per letter, is of course reduced by the increase of
correspondence.

I have dwelt so long on this part of the