Post Office.
The greatest opposition to cheap postage is from the South. The reason is obvious. As multitudes of their Post-routes do not pay for themselves, they must be paid for, through a system of high postage, by the North, or be given up. Thus in 1842, the deficit in the Post Office department from the slave States was $571,000, while the excess over the expenditures in the free States was $600,000. This went of course to make up the deficiency of the South. So that in 1842 alone the North paid all its own postage, and $571,000 of postage for the South. Nor was this all. The whole number of miles of mail transportation for 1842, was 34,835,991, at an expense of $3,087,796. Of these miles, the mail was carried 20,331,461, at a cost of $1,508,413, in the free States; and 14,504,530 miles, at a cost of $1,579,383 in the slave States; that is, it cost $70,970 more to carry the mail in the slave States than in the free, while it ran 5,826,931 miles less. Under the new system, from official returns, presenting a comparative view of the postage received at forty-two offices, North and South, during the third quarter of 1844 and 1845, it appears that while the falling off at the offices in the free States has not been one third, that at the offices in the slave States has been more than one half.