nterested parties who would through all time mislead the public if
they could but continue a monopoly of trade, and finally succeeded in
getting a bill through Congress for the establishment of the
long-sought line.

This done, he supposes that he is of course to be rewarded for the
effort, the toil, and the expenditure of years, and that he will have
an opportunity of indemnifying himself for his losses and sacrifices.
He hears many beautiful apostrophes to the principles of equal justice
and right which are said to characterize the legislation of his
country, and control the action of the Government; but he is not
prepared to hear that some adventurer has carried off his prize simply
because by chance or by concert he has made his bid one thousand or
ten thousand dollars lower than the prime projector. He becomes
disheartened; finds that the country neither appreciates nor desires
honorable effort and enterprise; that it will not reward the citizen
in his self-sacrificing attempts to benefit the country and himself
together; and that it will look on with careless indifference while
his almost vested, his equitably vested rights, are neglected or
stricken down. This is certainly one of the practical and demoralizing
effects of the lowest bidder system, which respects no rights, however
sacred, simply because based upon a dogma which is technically true.
The system of the lowest bidder is technically correct, but
practically wrong. It can not be carried out in practice without
abandoning equity and honest rights under the plea of technicalities
and the action of chances. It is in reality but a species of gambling,
a miserable lottery, in which those who are most honest and truthful
are invariably sacrificed. It is proper, then that Congress should not
only establish the postal routes, but also determine either
specifically or proximately the compensation to be paid; or leave this
entirely to the discretion and the largest liberty of action of the
Post Master General. Responsibility must attach somewhere if justice
is obtained. With the lowest bidder system it rests and operates
nowhere; and the most important operations of the Government are taken
out of the hands of a wise public functionary and the intelligent
legislators of the country, and put into a great wheel of fortune,
where the proper person has, probably, but one chance in a hundred.
This although true in every case of contract, is eminently so in cases
of u