This history of the postal clause in the Federal Convention offers little of interpretative importance. The intent of the framers is sufficiently clear, although, as pointed out by one commentator, the delegation is clothed in words which “poorly express its object” and “feebly indicate the particular measures which may be adopted to carry out its design. To establish post offices and post roads is the form of the grant; to create and regulate the entire postal system of the Government is the evident intent.”[45]
It is possible partially to explain the specific negativing of the power to cut canals on the ground that there was no limitation to those cases in which the construction would have been an aid to interstate commerce or the transportation of the mails. Under the amendment as proposed Congress would have had the authority to cut a waterway wholly within a state for purely intrastate purposes.[46] As a matter of fact, however, this power, which later was to give rise to considerable controversy, has been exercised by the federal government under its authority to regulate interstate commerce and establish postroads, just as the postal grant itself has been extended to cover fields, neither existing nor within the range of possibility when the Constitution was adopted.
In the state conventions there was practically no discussion of the postal power. Its innocuousness was granted. Mr. Jones of New York was alone in finding a latent aggression, and it was resolved, as the opinion of the state committee, “that the power of Congress to establish post-offices and postroads is not to be construed to extend to the laying out, making, altering, or repairing highways, in any state, without the consent of the legislature of such state.”[47] Such a stipulation was destined very soon to become a mere brutum fulmen.[48]
CHAPTER II
The Power of Congress to Establish Postoffices
Expansion of Facilities.—“Our whole economic, social and political system,” says President Hadley, “has become so dependent upon free and secure postal communication, that the attempt to measure its specific effects can be little less than a waste of words.”[49] This is hardly an overstatement of the case, yet, as we have seen, the importance of the postal function was recognized before the Constitution was adopted and when it comprehended only the transmission of intelligence. The increased importance, however, has been absolute as well as relative, since through the postoffice the government now does much more than merely facilitate communication between its citizens.
An act for the temporary establishment of the postoffice was passed by Congress on September 22, 1789.[50] It provided for the appointment of a postmaster general, all the details and regulations to be as they “were under the resolutions and ordinances of the late Congress. The postmaster general to be subject to the direction of the president of the United States, in performing the duties of his office, and in forming contracts for the transportation of the mail.”[51]
For a considerable period congressional and administrative efforts were devoted almost exclusively to the extension of facilities; postoffices were established as rapidly as possible; every effort was made to secure speedy transportation of the mail, to insure its security, to prevent private competition, and by means of an increasingly efficient system to weld together distant parts of the country. The communications of the postmasters general are devoted to recommendations for the improvement of the service;[52] presidential messages take pride in reporting the growth of the establishment, which was rapid. In 1790 there were about 100 postoffices in the country; the receipts from October, 1790 to October, 1791 were $31,706.27 and the disbursements left a balance of $5,498.51.[53]
But in 1823 Monroe was able to report to Congress that 88,600 miles of postroads had been established by law and that the mail was transported over 85,700 miles of this total.[54] During the two years from July 1, 1823 the increase of the transportation of the mail exceeded 1,500,000 miles annually and 1,040 new postoffices were established.[55] In 1828 the total mileage was 114,536 as compared with 5,642 in 1792 and in 1837 was 142,877 miles.[56] The receipts from postage for the year ending March 31, 1828 were $1,058,204.34. These figures serve, in some measure at least, to indicate the rapid expansion of the postal system.[57]