FOREIGN EXAMPLES.
If we go to foreign countries for example, we shall be obliged to stop in England. There is nothing in any nation of the European continent which is not a warning. Everywhere on that continent, from time immemorial, postage has been exorbitant. The great Revolution which popularized the institutions of France did not popularize the Post-Office. Kings and nobles disappeared, while equal rights prevailed; but France, fruitful in ideas, did not conceive the idea of the Post-Office as a beneficent agent of civilization and the handmaid of social life. Nor at that time was England in advance of France. Everywhere postage was high and the mails were slow. In England the service had a burden in the circumstance that every peer of the Upper House and member of Parliament had a defined power of franking,—being the power to send ten letters daily and to receive fifteen.[24] As the letters sent and received by each privileged person were limited in number, the Post-Office was obliged each day to verify every frank and to count the letters thus sent and received. Here was what may be justly called “the franking privilege,” while the whole postal service was costly and cumbersome. Like that of the United States, it was the growth of accident, and it was administered with a particular eye to profits, as if this were the first object of a post-office. Economy there should be always, but profits never. In Great Britain the surplus of receipts above the cost of administration was carried to the general treasury. In the United States the surplus received on certain lines has been employed down to this day in extending mail facilities to the sparse settlers in other parts of the country, besides defraying the expense of the franking system; and the letters of the people have been subjected to this tax.