16. James Campbell, the present Post Master General of the United States, was born September 1, 1813, in the city of Philadelphia, Pa. Admitted to the Bar in 1834, at the age of twenty-one years. In 1841, at the age of twenty-eight, he was appointed Judge of the Common Pleas Court for the City and County of Philadelphia, which position he occupied for the term of nine years. In 1851, when the Constitution of the State was changed, making the Judiciary elective, he was nominated by a State Convention of his party as a candidate for the Bench of the Supreme Court of the State, but was defeated after a warmly contested and somewhat peculiar contest, receiving however 176,000 votes. In January, 1852, he was appointed Attorney General of Pennsylvania, which he resigned to assume the duties of Post Master General. He was appointed to that office on the 8th of March, 1853.
INTRODUCTION.
A mail bag is an epitome of human life. All the elements which go to form the happiness or misery of individuals—the raw material, so to speak, of human hopes and fears—here exist in a chaotic state. These elements are imprisoned, like the winds in the fabled cave of Æolus, "biding their time" to go forth and fulfil their office, whether it be to refresh and invigorate the drooping flower, or to bring destruction upon the proud and stately forest-king.
Well is it for the peace of mind of those who have in temporary charge these discordant forces, that they cannot trace the course of each missive as it passes from their hands. For although many hearts are made glad by these silent messengers, yet in every day's mail there is enough of sadness and misery, lying torpid like serpents, until warmed into venomous life by a glance of the eye, to cast a gloom over the spirits of any one who should know it all; and to add new emphasis to the words of the wise man, "He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow." But until they are released from their temporary captivity, the letters guard in grim silence their varied contents. Joy and sorrow as yet have no voice; vice and crime are yet concealed, running, like subterranean streams, from the mind which originated, to the mind which is to receive their influence. The mail bag is as great a leveller as the grave, and it is only by the superscription in either case, that one occupant can be distinguished from the other.
But leaving these general speculations, let us give more particular attention to the motley crowd "in durance vile." If each one possessed the power of uttering audibly the ideas which it contains, a confusion of tongues would ensue, worthy of the last stages of the tower of Babel, or of a Woman's Rights convention. Indeed matters would proceed within these leathern walls, very much as they do in the world at large. The portly, important "money letter," would look with contempt upon the modest little billet-doux, and the aristocratic, delicately-scented, heraldically-sealed epistle, would recoil from the touch of its roughly coated, wafer-secured neighbor, filled to the brim, perhaps, with affections as pure, or friendship as devoted as ever can be found under coverings more polished. Would that the good in one missive, might counteract the evil in another, for here is one filled with the overflowings of a mother's heart, conveying language of entreaty and remonstrance,—perhaps the traces of anxious tears,—to the unwary youth who is beginning to turn aside from the path of rectitude, and to look with wishful eyes upon forbidden ground. Need enough is there of this message to strengthen staggering resolution, to overpower the whispers of evil; for close by are the suggestions of a vicious companion, lying in wait to lure him on to vice, and to darken the light of love which hitherto has guided his steps.
In one all-embracing receptacle, the strife of politics is for a time unknown. Epistles of Whigs, Democrats, Pro and Anti-Slavery men lie calmly down together, like the lion and the lamb, (if indeed we can imagine anything lamb-like in political documents,) ready, however, to start up in their proper characters like Satan at the touch of Ithuriel's spear, and to frown defiance upon their late companions. Theological animosity, too, lies spell-bound. Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. Old and New School, Protestant and Catholic, Free Thinkers and No Thinkers, are held in paper chains, and cease to lacerate one another with controverted points. Nor in this view of dormant pugnacity, should that important constituent, the Law, be left out of sight. An opinion clearly establishing the case of A. B. unsuspectingly reposes by the side of another utterly subverting it, thus placing, or about to place, the unfortunate A. B. in the condition of a wall mined by its assailants, and counter-mined by its defenders, quite sure (to use a familiar phrase,) of "bursting up" in either case. And the unconscious official who "distributes" these missiles, might well exclaim, if he knew the contents, "cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war."