EXISTING RATE NOT OPPRESSIVE A FALLACY.
Here I encounter an old-fashioned objection common in England as well as in the United States, and which has shown itself at every proposed change in the postal service. It is said that the existing rate is not oppressive, and that there is no need of its reduction. Obviously it is not oppressive to Senators and Representatives, who send and receive unnumbered letters free; nor is it oppressive to their correspondents; nor again is it oppressive to the rich and thriving, for they contribute out of their abundance; but plainly and indubitably it is oppressive to the poor, and it is absurd to say that it is not. Plainly and indubitably it is oppressive to the widowed mother, whose best comfort is correspondence with her absent child; it is oppressive to the child corresponding with mother, sister, or brother; it is oppressive to all whose scanty means supply only the necessaries of life. All these are restrained in the gratification of those affections which contribute so much to human solace and strength.
Do not say that practically there is little difference between three cents and one cent,—that the difference is hardly appreciable. A great mistake. Is it not appreciable in the cost of tea, coffee, and sugar? The reduction of one cent a pound in the tariff on sugar, of two cents on coffee, or of a few cents on tea, is not treated as trivial.
There is the poor pensioner with eight dollars a month. She, too, has family and friends; but the postal tax interferes to arrest the congenial intercourse. Every letter adds to the burden she is obliged to bear. Her fingers forget the pen, and she finds herself alone. Nor is this hardship peculiar to the poor pensioner. An eminent citizen and valued friend, who has given much attention to this subject, states the case thus: “When one of my children is absent, I write a line every day. Suppose I were a poor widow, earning barely enough to make the two ends meet, and had children in the West, to each of whom I should want to write at least once a week, making in all several dollars a year; then the cost would be oppressive.” This simple illustration brings home the operation of the postal tax now imposed by law, and shows how it troubles those who most need the care and tenderness of the world. The tax on letters is like the tax on salt. If it must exist, it must be small, very small.
There are some who think that no existing institution is oppressive. According to them, Slavery was not oppressive. In the same mood, the law of 1845, with its two rates of five cents and ten cents, and then again the law of 1855, by which the rate of five cents was reduced to three cents, were pronounced unnecessary. The multifarious rates anterior to 1845 were not oppressive, and in 1855 there was no call for the reduction of the rate from five cents to three cents. Such was the argument then, precisely as now. So in the days of Slavery it was argued that the slaves did not desire freedom, and that their condition was not oppressive. The great reform of Rowland Hill encountered the same objection. Even Lord Ashburton, while favoring a change, was content with twopence or threepence, and, in his testimony, settled down upon threepence as satisfactory. He shrank from the penny rate.[102] This question was treated with excellent sense by Mr. Jones Loyd, whom I have already quoted, whose testimony bears strongly on this very objection. After saying “that the present rate of postage does in point of fact produce a prohibition of the use of the Post-Office to all classes that may be considered as below the higher classes,”[103] the attention of the witness was called by the Committee to the allegation “that the laboring classes do not feel the oppressive rate of postage.” He replied in words of wisdom worthy of memory now, and completely applicable to the very question now before the Senate:—
“The habits of a people are in a great degree the result of the laws under which they live; the high charges of our Post-Office have induced, amongst all but the richer classes, a habit of abstaining from epistolary communication, and it might take some time to correct that habit. But it appears to me very desirable that the impediment should be removed; and I have no doubt, that, in the course of a short time, as the poorer classes have the common affections of the human breast, they would form a taste for the pleasures to be derived from intercourse with absent friends and relations. It would be very desirable, for the moral interests of the community, that every facility should be afforded for that purpose.”[104]
On the “oppression of a tax,” where persons do not use the article taxed, the intelligent witness testified as follows:—
“They may not know the loss they sustain; but that does not alter the fact that they do sustain a very great loss; and it would be highly criminal and cruel voluntarily to inflict such a loss upon a person merely upon the ground that he does not know it. A child that is born blind does not know the advantages of sight; but still it would be a very extraordinary thing to inflict blindness upon a child, merely upon the ground, that, if you do it, in time he will not know the loss he has sustained.”[105]
All this is plain and unanswerable. The oppressiveness of a tax is not to be measured by the insensibility of the people on whose shoulders it is laid. It is a curiosity of despotism that the people are too often unconscious of their slavery, as they are unconscious also of bad laws. A wise and just Government measures its duties not by what the people bear without a murmur, but by what is most for their welfare; and it is to this criterion that I bring the question of cheap postage. Say not that the people are indifferent and do not ask for this reduction. Is it not for their good? Is not the advantage so eminent and unequivocal that the Government can no longer hesitate, especially at this transitional moment, when our country is passing from the Old to the New, and the people more than ever are assured in their rights?