One of the strongest recommendations of this measure, and a weighty reason also in favor of the immediate adoption of the whole system of cheap postage, is found in the present derangement of postal intercourse between Great Britain and the United States. These two great nations, the Anglo-Saxon Brotherhood, are at this moment “trying to see which can do the other most harm,” by a course of mutual retaliation, which may be known in future history as the war of posts. It is the opinion of some philosophers, that in wars in general, the party most to blame is the one which gives the heaviest blows; but in this case there arises a new problem, whether each particular blow does the most damage to the party which receives or to the one that gives it. The principal points in the contest I suppose to be these. The American government charges Great Britain five cents postage on all letters in the British packet mails, borne across our country at the expense of Great Britain, to and from the province of Canada. Great Britain in return, charges the United States the full rate of ship postage on all letters in the American packet mails, which touch at a British port on their way to and from the continent of Europe. Then the Postmaster-General of the United States suspends the agreement by which a mutual postage account is kept between his department and the post-office in Canada. And now a bill is before Congress, having actually passed the House of Representatives in one day, by which our own citizens are to pay 24 cents postage on every letter, and 4 cents on every newspaper, brought by the British mail steamers, as a tax to our own post-office, although the same postage has already been prepaid by the sender in England. The tax thus imposed on our own people, in the prosecution of this postal war, will amount to $178,586 a year, no small burden upon a subject of taxation so sensitive as postage, and no trifling obstruction to the intercourse between the two countries, and between the emigrants who find a refuge on our shores and the friends they have left behind. Such a stoppage is peculiarly to be regretted at this juncture, when the number of emigrants is so rapidly increasing, and all the interests of humanity seem to require the utmost freedom and facility of intercourse between the United States and the European world.
The proposed bill is intended as a retaliatory measure, and perhaps nothing can be devised more severe in the way of retaliation. It is worthy of inquiry, however, whether there may not be found “a more excellent way,” by means of cheap postage on the ocean as well as on the land. It does not appear but that Great Britain can stand the [pg 052] impost of double postage as easily and as long as we can. But let our government open its mails to carry letters by steam packet between Europe and America for TWO CENTS, and I do not see how Great Britain can stand that. She must succumb. A man who thought he had been injured and was meditating plans of revenge, happened to open his Bible and read the counsel of the wisest of human rulers,—“If thine enemy hunger, feed him, and if he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” The man mused a few minutes, and then rose and clapped his hands, and said, “I'll burn him.” Without touching the merits of the controversy as to which did the first wrong, I must say that the course of the British government, in exacting 1s. per letter on the mails of the American steamers bound to Germany, for barely touching at the port of Southampton, is the most gouging affair of any governmental proceeding within my knowledge. It seems to me that our own government would do itself honor by adopting almost any expedient, rather than imitate so bad an example, in this age of the world, as to lay a tax amounting to a prohibition, upon the interchange of knowledge and the flow of the social affections among mankind. It is submitted that the establishment of Ocean Penny Postage by our mail steamers, with an offer of perfect reciprocity to all other countries adopting the same policy, will be quite consistent with our national honor. With the interest which this subject has already acquired in the British nation, and the apparent disposition of that government to yield to the well-expressed wishes of the people, there can be no doubt that this would lead to an immediate adjustment of the pending controversy.
The only remaining question respecting Ocean Penny Postage is the statesmanlike and proper one, How is the expense to be paid? In the first place, the government would not be required to pay any more money for the transportation of its mails than they pay now. This great boon can be given to the people without a dollar's additional cost. Our own experience under the postage act of 1845, proves this. While the number of letters is doubled, the whole expense of the post-office is diminished—especially that part which might most naturally be expected to increase, that is, the transportation of the mails. The freight of a barrel of flour, weighing 200 pounds, is about fifty cents. Of course, the equitable price of ten thousand letters added to any given mail, which would not weigh so much as a barrel of flour, would make no assignable difference in the cost upon a single letter. As both sailing ships and steam packets are becoming multiplied, individual competition may now be relied on to keep the price of transportation of mails from ever rising above its present standard. The increase of the number of letters makes but very little addition to the aggregate expense of the post-office. In the first year of the penny postage in England, there were ninety-three millions of letters added to the mails, and only £70,231 to the whole expenditure of the department, including the cost of introducing the new system, with all its apparatus. This amounts to 0.181d.; less than two-tenths of a penny each for the added letters. In 1844, there were 21,000,000 letters added to the circulation, and not a farthing added to the cost. These letters yielded about £90,000 in postage, every penny of which went [pg 053] as net gain into the treasury. I have no means of stating how much of the £450,000 added to the yearly expenditure of the British Post-office, is chargeable to the great increase of facilities and accommodations, both of the public and of the department; but have understood that by far the greater part of it arises from this, and not properly from the mere increase of letters. It may be safely assumed that, for any number of letters now added to the mails in Great Britain, the additional expense will not exceed half a farthing each letter, and the rest will be clear profit to the post-office. As the plan of Ocean Penny Postage includes also the inland postage prepaid in each country, it follows that each country would realize from three-quarters to seven-eighths of a penny advantage on every letter added to the present ocean mails.
In addition to all this, there is just as much reason to expect Ocean Postage to increase, as to expect land postage to increase. And as it is proved that, on land, the reduction of price will increase the consumption, so as to produce an equal income, there can be no doubt that, in a little while, if the sea postage is reduced to the cheap standard, the letters and papers sent will increase sufficiently to yield an equal income. And if so, the consequent increase of inland postage and the profits on the same will be clear gain.
Add to the immense number of Europe-born people now living in the United States, the children of such, who will retain for two or three generations, their relationship to kindred remaining in the Old World: Add to the half million of European emigrants, who by ordinary calculation would be expected every year, the numbers whom passing events will drive to seek an asylum from European revolutions under the peaceful and permanent government of the American Union: Add to the increase of transatlantic intercourse arising from the increase of commerce, the growth also of advancing civilization and intelligence: Add to the interest which emigration of neighbors and the growth of the country gives to European residents in a correspondence with America, the eager desire which the new times now begun must create to become more familiarly conversant with the new world, whose path of freedom and equality the old countries are all striving to follow: How long will any man say it would take, with a rate of postage across the Atlantic not exceeding two cents per half ounce, before there would be ten millions of letters yearly, instead of three-quarters of a million, the number now carried by the British packet mails? And these would yield more postage than can now be collected at a shilling a letter, besides the profit they would yield on the inland postage. With our own experience under the act, of 1844, and the experience of Great Britain under the act of 1839, it would be unphilosophical to set a longer time than five years as the period that would be required to bring up the product of Ocean Postage to its present amount. And the healthy spring which such a reform would give to commerce, and to every source of national prosperity, and its consequent indirect aid to the public revenues, would justify any government, on mere pecuniary considerations alone, in assuming a heavy expenditure, not only for five years, but permanently, to secure so great an object. I address to my own country, as the nation [pg 054] whom it more appropriately belongs to take so great a step towards universal brotherhood, the fervid appeal which my friend Burritt has made to England:
“The irresistible genius and propagation of the English race are fast Anglicizing the world, and thus centering it around the heart of civilization and commerce. Under the sceptre of England alone, there live, it is said, one hundred and forty million of human beings, embracing all races of men, dwelling between every two degrees of latitude and longitude around the globe. And there is the Anglo-American hemisphere of the English race, doubling its population every twenty-five years, and propelling its propagation through the Western World. And there is the English language, colonized, not only by Christian missions, but by commerce, in every port, on every shore, accessible to an English keel. The heathen of China or Eastern Inde, whilst buying sandal wood for incense to their deities from English or American merchantmen, or trafficing for poisonous drugs; the sable savages that come out of the depth of Africa, to barter on the seaboard their glittering sand, their ivory, ostrich feathers or apes, for articles of English manufacture; the Red Indians of North and South America, as they come from their hunting grounds in the deep wilderness, to sell their spoils to English or American fur companies; the swarthy inhabitants of the ocean islands, as they run to the beach to greet the American whale ship or the English East Indiaman, bringing yams and curious ware to sell to the pale-faced foreigners; all these carry back to their kind and kindred rude lessons in the English language—the meaning of home and household words of the strong, old Saxon tongue, each of which links its possessor to the magnetic chain of English civilization.
“What then, should England do, to bring all nations of men within the range of the vital functions of that heart-relation which she sustains to the world?
“Answer—let her establish an Ocean Penny Postage.”
X. The Free Delivery of Letters and Papers in Large Towns.
The simple adoption of Uniform Cheap Postage would hardly fail of securing, in the end, all other desirable postal reforms. An act of congress, in five lines, enacting that “hereafter the postage on all letters prepaid, not exceeding half an ounce in weight, shall be two cents; and for each additional half ounce, two cents; and if not prepaid the postage shall be doubled,” would at no distant period, bring in all the other desired improvements. The adoption of cheap postage in Great Britain, greatly improved the system of local delivery of letters and newspapers in the large towns. Formerly, an additional charge of 1d. was made for the delivery of letters by carriers, in the case of letters that had been mailed; and for “drop letters,” or letters delivered in the same town where they are posted, the price was 2d. Now all drop letters are charged at the uniform rate of 1d. the same as mail letters; and the mail letters are delivered by carriers without additional charge—the penny postage paying all. The Postmaster-General prescribes what places shall have the free delivery, and how far it shall extend around each post-office.