ILLEGITIMATE BURDENS ON CORRESPONDENCE.
To understand the justice of the proposed reduction in our country, we must analyze and consider existing obligations of the postal service. I mention two, through which we may see the unjust operation of the present tax on correspondence: first, the well-known franking system, and, secondly, the millions of newspapers, by which an inconceivable amount of mail matter is made a burden on the Post-Office, tasking its transportation and its means of delivery. Although printed matter, unfranked, is charged with postage, it is not in proportion to its burden on the postal service; so that the letter not only pays for itself, but contributes to the other. The letter, so small in dimension and weight, but with its own unseen freight of business or friendship, is made to carry an additional load. Every letter is a dwarf shouldering a giant; or stating the case with absolute literalness, it is a sheet of paper compelled to bear free matter and printed matter measured by the ton. This little messenger, whose single function necessarily requires dispatch, is charged with this intolerable mass. No wonder that it staggers under the load heaped upon it. No wonder that the people are obliged to pay high postage; for, on receiving a letter, they not only pay the price of its transportation and delivery, but they contribute to the transportation and delivery of everything else carried by the mails.
But even this burden could be borne, if the whole service were not charged with the cost of transportation and postal facilities in distant parts of the country, where there is necessarily a disproportionate expense,—so that a letter in certain States, after paying for its own transportation and delivery, and contributing to the transportation and delivery of free matter and printed matter, contributes still further to those long lines of service by which the most remote places are supplied and the post-office follows close in the footsteps of the pioneer. This is beautiful, but it is not just; in other words, it is beautiful that these opportunities should be afforded, but it is not just that the correspondence of others should pay for them. Nor should these extraordinary expenses be charged on these remote places, or on the pioneer. They belong properly to the necessary outlay in opening the country, by which the nation, the great untaxed proprietor, finds a market for its land and new scope for its growing empire. Obviously this outlay should be charged to the Treasury, rather than saddled upon the postal service, as it is now.