THE SAME VICTORY MAY BE OURS.
Such was the great reform by which the Post-Office became an evangel of civilization; but all this may be ours. The impediments overcome were greater than any we are called to encounter, while the object proposed is in undoubted accord with republican institutions, where simplicity, harmony, and adaptation to popular needs are acknowledged principles. This renovation prevailed in England: how can it fail in the United States? The Republic is the most advanced type of government, as the human form is the most advanced type of the animal world; but the Republic is nothing else than an organization to promote the welfare of men. Whatever makes for human welfare is essentially republican. Nor can any loss of revenue be set against this transcendent opportunity. Show me how to promote the welfare of men, and I show you an economy beyond any revenue; more still, I show you a duty not to be postponed.
The ruling principle in England, from the beginning down to the triumph of penny postage, was revenue; and this is still the ruling principle with us, to which all else is subordinated. England was accustomed to say, and the United States now say, with Shylock, “We would have moneys.” The abolition of the franking system is proposed on this ground,—not to lighten the existing burden of correspondence, not to cheapen postage, not to simplify the postal service, not to provide the American equivalent of the English penny postage, but simply to increase the revenue. We are summoned to give up a long-tried system, educational in its influence, merely for the sake of the Treasury. This is the object perpetually in view. Even the Postmaster-General, who is so liberal in all his ideas, says, in words which hardly do justice to the times, “As far as lay in my power, during my short administration, I have reduced the expenditures and increased the revenues of the Department.”[76] Something better than this remains to be done.