صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

possible, and that it support itself. The vast increase of our population, and of its trade and consequent need of means of communication, since the present scale of postage was enacted, is another guarantee that a great reduction may be safely undertaken. We believe, however, that there would be not only no risk, but, on the contrary, a great increase of revenue, which might be used for further extension.

The principle of making the postage of single or double letters depend upon weight, and not upon the number of sheets, seems, without contradiction, to be the only correct and fair one, especially in a country like ours, where, as was observed before, the object is not to obtain, by the mail establishment, a surplus revenue, to be applied to other purposes, but simply to carry letters and papers as cheaply and to as many different places as possible. It is for weight, we believe, not for volume, that the mail contracts are made; nor does the increase of weight, with reference to paper, allow of any very disproportionate increase of volume. Still, we think Mr. Plitt is right, in proposing to adopt at once the rule that every thing sent by mail must be "of convenient size," great inconvenience having arisen in Great Britain from a want of this regulation, since the introduction of the penny-postage; but we cannot agree with the author of the report, that no package above a pound in weight should be mailed. It is, at times, of the most urgent importance to send heavy law papers by mail. We remember a case when a log-book was sent by mail to Washington, where it was requisite in a heavy insurance case, and for which the enormous postage was willingly paid by the interested party. On the other hand, we are acquainted with several cases, when gentlemen, being members of some committee of state legislatures on highly important subjects, wrote to distant friends for certain standard books, willing to incur the heavy postage rather than lose the advice or authority which they thought they would derive from such books, in which the case under their consideration had been thoroughly and dispassionately treated. If, with a postage such as has been proposed, there should still remain any danger that the mail might be overburdened, at times, with too bulky packages,

Freight is necessarily charged, all over the world, according to weight or bulk; because very small articles may weigh very heavy, and bulky goods may be very light. But this does not apply to paper, the almost exclusive substance sent by

mail.

which we hardly think, the inconvenience might possibly be obviated by laying an additional postage on parcels weighing more than a pound, or being of a larger size than a certain standard volume.

The compound principle which we adopt at present, of charging light letters according to the number of sheets, but the heavier ones according to weight, seems to be awkward and inconsistent. An individual, in one of our largest commercial cities, has for years made a regular and lucrative business by establishing a sub post-office, as it were, at which he receives letters, charging for them by weight, and then making up a single large parcel of the whole of them. He pays his postage according to the established scale, founded upon weight for heavier letters, while the letter-writer gains, because the self-established sub post-master charges for a very light letter considerably less than the single postage fixed by law, yet a trifle more than the mere proportion of the postage established by weight would amount to. The sum of these differences makes up his profit.

Mr. Plitt proposes pre-payment for all letters, without exception, but this plan must of course be confined chiefly to those not sent beyond the limits of our own country, for it would be found very difficult by our post establishment to place itself in account with many foreign governments, owing to our great distance from them. Besides, what should be done with the many letters written from places where there is no post-office that can have an account with ours? What should our merchants in Canton, Muscat, California, and the Sandwich Islands do? or how can our post-office regulate its annual account with Porto-Rico, Buenos Ayres, Manilla, or Smyrna?

Great convenience, in many respects, would result from a universal pre-payment of domestic letters. If we adopt the judicious plan of adhesive stamps, now followed in England, and if they were sold at Washington by the thousand, at a certain liberal discount, very little money need be remitted by the post-masters to Washington, in order to settle their accounts. Many merchants and other persons would avail themselves of this advantage for their personal use. Stationers would buy sheets of adhesive stamps, or stamped covers, and carry them, in the course of trade, all over the land, as they do now letter paper. We should then have the simplest possible business of selling the stamps for ready money at Washington, instead of the complex business of remitting

In

money from many thousand places in the Union, and settling all these many accounts and counter-accounts, and at the same time greatly diminish the chances of defalcation. Post-masters, should they find it convenient, would likewise buy the stamps by the thousand, and make their lawful profit on the discount. Still, it seems to us that it ought to be left at the option of the correspondents whether they will pre-pay letters or not. order, however, to offer all possible inducement to pre-pay letters, the postage might be raised on unpaid letters, as is done in England. The postage for an unpaid letter might be raised to one and a half, or double the postage paid for a prepaid letter. There would be no injustice in this arrangement, since the post establishment would actually gain much by the ready money paid beforehand at Washington for the stamps bought by the thousand. It seems to us, at least, that fairness would require that such option should be left. There are many letters of inquiry written to persons who have no interest in either the question or the answer, further than that of serving a fellow citizen. Should, however, this consideration be deemed, upon the whole, as insufficient, we own that the plan of a universal and unconditional pre-payment for domestic letters would offer many very great advantages. Whether we adopt the latter or a conditional pre-payment, the inconvenience arising out of the dead letters would be greatly diminished. The proportion of dead letters is probably far greater in the United States than in any other country. They have, for the last few years, annually amounted to about a million, when the number of all letters averaged between twenty and twenty-five millions. There are several causes of this apparently surprising fact. Our population is more movable than that of any other country; we have an enormous influx of emigrants, who, for a time after their arrival, are unsettled, and whose friends abroad or here are frequently not correctly informed of their abode; our distances are greater, and the precise names of the residences of people not known at a great distance; and, lastly, new places and settlements spring up with great rapidity, while people take very little care to give new and peculiar names to the new places, nay, very frequently abolish old and good ones, and substitute others in imitation of existing We need only look at our gazetteers to see how many counties and towns of the same name there are in the Union. We find whole lists of Washington counties, and places called

ones.

[ocr errors]

Washington, or Jefferson, Columbus, Columbia, and others. This calling places by names no longer distinguishing has become a real evil, and although it is at times difficult to invent names we find in the ancient Greek colonies a similar repetition of geographical names, though not, indeed, to the same extent still some judicious rules might be adopted, which would make it easier to compound several distinguishing and even euphonious names-such rules as were proposed some years ago in an American work. Legislatures of new territories ought to pay attention to this subject. It is not a mere matter of taste, wanting in taste as such names of places as Cato, Ulysses, Lysander, Memphis, or Rome, may be; it has become a matter of serious interest. A place nowa-days is as little distinguished from others by being named Washington, as a person is by the name of John Smith.

We knew, from the best source from which this information could proceed, that in the year 1837 there were about a million of dead letters. Mr. Plitt states nearly the same amount for the last year. Considering the increasing influx of emigrants, and rapid extent of population in the west, the number of dead letters will, we should think, much increase for a long time to come. The loss sustained by government on these is very great. Mr. Plitt says:

66

By the pre-payment of all letters, the number of dead letters would be greatly diminished, and thus the department would save a vast amount, in weight of unnecessary mail-transportation. At present, the average number of dead letters returned to the department quarterly amounts to about 275,000, which, at an average postage of fifteen cents for each letter, exhibits a loss to the department, quarterly, of $41,250. These letters are collected from every section of the Union, and all of them carried twice in the mails, without the department being in the slightest degree benefited by their transmission."

We are aware that pre-payment would not wholly remove this evil, for there must be many foreign letters among the dead ones; but, allowing a large proportion for them, the evil would at any rate be removed in a very great measure.

The adoption of adhesive stamps would afford another great convenience. Our members of Congress have the franking privilege, which, as every one knows, has been carried to a great abuse. Mr. Plitt says on this subject:

* In "The Stranger in America." Philadelphia: 1834. Page 243, et seq.

"There is no desire to charge any particular class of individuals with an abuse of this privilege under the existing law; yet it is well known by every one having connexion with the department, that abuses do exist, and are of daily occurrence. It is a fact, within my own knowledge, that gentlemen high in office, not being able to frank as often as they desired, for want of time or some other cause, have actually procured substitutes to write their names; and yet these gentlemen did not suppose they were violating any law upon the subject. This I know to have been the case in a particular instance. The actual number of franked packages sent from the post-office of Washington city during the week ending on the 7th of July last, was 201,534; and the whole number sent during the last session of Congress, amounted to the enormous quantity of 4,314,948! All these packages are not only carried by the department into every section of the country free of charge, but it is actually obliged to pay to every post-master, whose commissions do not amount to $2,000 per annum, two cents for the delivery of each one! Supposing all the above to have been delivered, the department would lose from its revenue, for this one item, upwards of $80,000, besides paying for the mail transportation. In addition to this, suppose many of these free packages are not called for, but remain in the offices until they are advertised, (for which two cents is paid on each,) then, if afterwards taken out, the delivery of such package actually costs the department four cents! Each one of the 13,500 post-masters in the Union, has the franking privilege to an unlimited extent as regards numbers, being only confined in weight. Suppose the average number to be one letter a day for each post-master which is sent free in the mail, the amount in one year would be nearly five millions; so that, taking this data to be correct, the department annually pays for the delivery of matter which it carries gratis about $150,000!

"Besides this, many of these packages, even when taken out, are rarely read; for the reason, that the newspapers containing the same document or speech have anticipated their arrival. For instance it is well known to every member of Congress, and to every one connected with a post-office, that, long after the President's message has been published in every newspaper throughout the whole country, and when there is reason to suppose there is scarcely a man in the Union who reads at all that has not seen it, thousands upon thousands are still sent daily under frank from Washington. It is thus, also, with the annual reports of the respective heads of departments, and with numerous reports and speeches made in both Houses of Congress. Were the franking privilege abolished, the postage upon letters would be greatly reduced, without any diminution of the revenue of the department. I am much mistaken in the patriotism of the gentlemen composing the present Congress, if they would not readily sacrifice a small personal privilege to effect a great public good."

« السابقةمتابعة »