“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?
JUSTICE AND PRACTICABILITY OF ONE CENT POSTAGE.
After this exhibition of existing burdens, so prejudicial to the correspondence of the country, I return again to the main postulate of this argument, that a uniform rate of one cent for a letter of half an ounce is entirely reasonable, and in a short time, with proper relief in other directions, would render the Post-Office self-supporting. Here I introduce the testimony of a gentleman practically conversant with the operations of our Post-Office, who writes to me as follows:—
“Taking the weight of the letter mail-matter and the printed mail-matter, and charging the expense of transportation upon each proportioned to the weight, and one cent is all that would be relatively chargeable upon each half-ounce of letter mail. I speak from close daily observation in a large office, in a region that is a large revenue-paying one to the Department on all mail-matter.”
This testimony of an expert is only in harmony with my own conclusion.