Cheap Postage

by Joshua Leavitt

Mr. W. Brown, merchant of Liverpool, was sure a reduction to half the present rates would give satisfaction to the public, but would not meet the question, and would not prevent smuggling.

I. J. Brewin, of Cirencester, one of the Society of Friends, considered the effect of a two penny rate would be, that the post-office would get the long jobs, but not the short ones.

Lieutenant F. W. Ellis, auditor of district unions in Suffolk, under the poor law commissioners, said that 2d. would not have the effect of 1d. in bringing correspondence to the post-office, because by carriers, and in other ways, letters are now conveyed for 1d.

The evidence seems to have produced a universal and settled conviction, that as far as the contraband conveyance of letters was an evil, either financial or social, there was no remedy for it but an absolute reduction of the postage to 1d. There were large portions of the country in which the government could control the postage at a higher rate, 2d. or even 3d.; but in the densely populated districts, where the greatest amount of correspondence arises, and where are also the greatest facilities for evading postage, no rate higher than 1d. would secure the whole correspondence to the mails. They therefore [pg 014] left the penal enactments just as they were, because they might be of some convenience in some cases. Mr. Hill declared his opinion that it would be perfectly safe to throw the business open to competition, for that the command of capital, and other advantages enjoyed by the post-office, would enable it to carry letters more cheaply and punctually than can be done by private individuals. And the result shows that he was right; for the contraband carriage of letters is put down. The Companion to the British Almanac, for 1842, says, “The illicit transmission of letters, and the evasions practised under the old system to avoid postage, have entirely ceased.”

All this experience, and all these sound conclusions, are doubtless applicable in the United States, with the additional considerations, of the great extent of country, the limited powers of the government, the entire absence of an organized police, and the fact that the federal government is to so great a degree regarded as a stranger in the States. Shall a surveillance, which the British government has abandoned as impracticable, be seriously undertaken at this day by the congress of the United States?

III. The Postage Law of 1845.

The Postage Act, passed March 3, 1845, which went into operation on the 1st of July of that year, was called forth by a determination to destroy the private mails; and this object gave character to the act as a whole. The reports of the postmaster-general, and of the post-office committees in both houses of congress, show that the end which was specially aimed at was to overthrow these mails. The Report of the House Committee, presented May 15, 1844, says:

“Events are in progress of fatal tendency to the post-office department, and its decay has commenced. Unless arrested by vigorous legislation, it must soon cease to exist as a self-sustaining institution, and either be cast on the treasury for support, or suffered to decline from year to year, till the system has become impotent and useless. The last annual report of the postmaster-general shows that, notwithstanding the heavy retrenchments he had made, the expenditures of the department for the year ending June 30, 1843, exceeded its income by the sum of $78,788. The decline of its revenue during that year was $250,321; and the investigations made into the operations of the current year, indicate a further and an increasing decline, at the rate of about $300,000 a year.”

“This illicit business has been some time struggling through its incipient stages; for it was not until the year commencing the 1st July, 1840, that it appears to have made a serious impression upon the revenues of the department. It has now assumed a bold and determined front, and dropped its disguises; opened offices for the reception of letters, and advertised the terms on which they will be despatched out of the mail.”

“The revenue for the year ending June 30, 1840, was $4,539,265; for the last year it was $4,295,925; and indications show that for the present year it will not be more than $3,995,925.”