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the other details which will be necessary, be adopted, when letters are received, there will be one simple stamp put upon them indicating the payment. The stamp may not say paid. It may be any label or sign which shall be authorized and sanctioned by the General Post-office. That stamp impressed on a letter, will convey all the information that is necessary, either for the post-office to which it is to be sent, or for the post-master in making up his accounts. He has nothing to do, but to add up the number of such stamps, and so the whole proceeding is reduced to a simple arithmetical calculation.

I have a word more to say on the subject of cheap postage, which is, that we shall find ourselves obliged to reduce the postage again, if we adopt either system now submitted to us by the com mittees of Congress. The people are entitled to cheap postage. They will have it, because it is their right. And it will turn out ultimately, that cheap postage will be the most profitable postage to the government. Every man can see that if, instead of making the postage, as it now stands, at five and ten cents at the time of the last reform, we had adopted the postage which is now proposed by either of these committees, the Post-office Department would have been richer, and the country would have been satisfied, and that there would have been no necessity now for the reformation which is proposed by the bill before us.

As to the argument that we may reduce the postage too low, I have nothing further to say in addition to what I have said, except that the argument which has been adduced against reducing postage to two cents, was adduced against reducing it to five and ten cents, but has been overruled by experience. The Government of the United States is intrusted with the carriage of letters for the accommodation of the community. Throughout nine-tenths of the United States, letters can be carried by individuals cheaper than the rates which are now proposed, if we would leave the business to private capital and private enterprise. I think it is the duty of the government to maintain this system, which is constitutionally enjoined upon us. But it is both right and necessary that the government should not exercise a monopoly at a higher rate than that at which the same service can be performed by individuals.

There is another view of the matter to which I will advert, and that is, that the Post-office Department is daily coming into com

petition with another public carrier, which carries information and correspondence with ten thousand times greater dispatch and rapidity than the Post-office Department, even with the aid of steam. That is the electric telegraph. The telegraph is already becoming a profitable system of commercial business. As a system of conducting correspondence, its prices are becoming daily less and less, and the day is not distant when the telegraph will encroach upon the business of the mails, if we keep the postage at a higher rate than that which will be compensated for by the reduction of cost and time.

Having looked at this subject in these various phases, I have come to the conclusion that a uniform rate of postage of two cents throughout the whole of the United States, upon all letters, would be the most judicious, economical, and efficient system. I should also propose that this rate should be for letters weighing not more than one-quarter of an ounce, instead of adopting the half-ounce standard proposed by the committee. I think such a system would be found more satisfactory to the country, and more useful in all the departments of life. Therefore it is that I have submitted the amendment. To save time, I would say that if any gentleman wishes it, I am willing to put the postage on single letters at two and a half cents prepaid, and I am willing to provide a coin of that value, which would be a fractional part of the federal currency, and would enable us to supply the wants of the community in that respect, while it would make our postage charges correspond to the federal currency which we have in use.

I inadvertently omitted to remark on the objection of the Senator from New Jersey. He seems to think that we ought to have a credit system at the post-office; that there must be a distinction between prepayment and non-payment, because there are a class of letters for which it is necessary to make such a distinction. Now, I am unable to understand, and, of course, unable to appreciate the force of that objection. Every man who sends a letter through the post-office writes because he wants to write, because he has something to say; he writes upon his own business, or he writes upon the business of somebody else. If he writes on his own business, he ought to pay the postage. If he does not desire to serve his neighbor or his friend so much as to incur the expense of two cents, he does not want to write to him very much, and he will not write to him, and probably it would be as well that he

should not write to him. But I am told there would be this inconvenience: a person who should send a letter to another on his own business, and call for a reply, would subject his correspondent to the necessity of paying the postage. This objection will be obviated by the use of post-office stamps, when they shall have been brought into general use in this country as they are in England. A person writing a letter in such a case would have nothing. to do but to take two stamps, and put one inside the letter, and another on the outside. The answer which would be returned to him would have impressed upon it the stamp which he enclosed. I am satisfied that we shall come to this system sooner or later, and whenever we do come to it, we shall find it to be the most perfect system.

[On the provisions in the bill discriminating between newspapers according to distances carried :]

I think all these propositions go to show the defect, the radical defect, in principle, of the provision adopted by the committee of the Senate; to show how much inferior it is to the simple system of newspaper postage proposed by the House of Representatives. It is very desirable that the action of the government should not operate injuriously to the country press. But while we are endeavoring to secure that object, there is a very important one that ought also to be regarded with great care. The House of Representatives have proposed this simple system, viz: that there shall be a charge on every newspaper weighing more than three ounces, one cent, and for each additional ounce or fraction of an ounce, one cent, no matter what distance, anywhere within the United States. Then the country press is favored and protected by a provision that no postage shall be charged on any newspaper mailed and delivered in the county where printed, and within thirty miles of the place where printed. This is simple, and it will be satisfactory; much more satisfactory to the country press than any of the propositions which have been made here. Now, in lien of this system, which is cheap and simple, and it seems to me admirable in its design, the committee of the Senate have proposed to divide the distances, and to make a tariff upon newspapers proportional to the distance they are carried. In other words, it is to restore in the transportation of newspapers the very defect which we all agree should be struck out in the transportation of letters. Can any one tell me what is the reason why, if there is a

uniform charge for carrying letters all distances throughout the United States, there should be several charges for carrying newspapers different distances within the United States? The policy which dictates that course is incomprehensible to me. On the other hand, if there be any policy at all in it, it is in favor of discriminating between letters, and abolishing or abandoning any discrimination between newspapers in regard to distance. Letters are business transactions in which the public have but very little interest. They are commercial transactions, and those who send and receive them do so for gain. The public, as I have said, have very little interest in the transmission of them. But a newspaper is a vehicle of intelligence, and a vehicle of political interest which ought to travel as freely as possible. And, therefore, it is that, from the beginning of the government to the present day, newspapers have never been obliged to pay the government the expense of their transportation, but the postage they have paid has been very small, just compensating the post-masters for the trouble of delivering them, leaving upon the government itself or upon the letters carried by the mail, the great proportion of the burden of the expense of transportation.

Again, if the ingenuity of a statesman could be taxed to denationalize this Union, he could not provide a system tending to it more directly than to break up the distance within which newspapers shall be carried at the same rate; to say that it shall cost the citizens of California $1.25 a year to receive a daily paper from the seat of government, while it shall cost a citizen of Baltimore only ten or twenty cents a year; and so again, to say the reverse, that the Government of the United States shall be denied the information which would be given by newspapers from distant states, because these newspapers could not bear the cost of transportation. This bill very ingeniously adopts a tariff which will limit the circulation of the papers in the eastern states to the Atlantic coast, and the circulation of the papers published on the Pacific coast to the borders of the Pacific ocean, and which will confine the papers of Alabama and South Carolina to their borders, or nearly so, and the papers of New Hampshire and Maine to their borders. What is the object? These newspapers are the political lungs of the republic. They ought to have free play. They ought to play vigorously, and therefore they ought to be kept in health. But, sir, the effect of this whole system, in my

opinion, will be to make such discriminations between them, that we shall be divided and classified into states and communities destitute of the means of maintaining communication and sympathy with each other. I therefore hope none of these amendments will prevail, and that we may see the expediency of leaving this subject in the shape recommended to us by the bill of the House of Representatives.

REVENUES OF CALIFORNIA.*

FEBRUARY 25, 1851.

As to the consideration upon which this money is to be paid to California, I think there is no ground to apprehend a mistake, whatever may be the declarations of the representative of California as to that consideration. The bill appropriates three hundred thousand dollars from a certain fund, directing it to be applied to the payment of the expenses of the state of California prior to her admission into the Union. If California expects this money at all, it is upon that ground; and, in the act of receiving it, she acquits the government of the United States to that extent; and so you have the voucher which the honorable Senator from Ohio desires; you have the voucher furnished in the language of the bill-in the act of acceptance. The honorable senator wants evidence; he wants the claim submitted to a committee. Does it make any difference as to what committee it is submitted, provided that it passes the ordeal of some committee, and that the bill is reported to the Senate by them? And no matter what committee might have examined this subject, would the Senate vote an appropriation any the sooner because it had been reported upon favorably by a committee? It is the merit of the proposition itself which must control their decision. Then the only question is, whether California has incurred expenses equal to this amount in maintaining a government for herself previous to the recognition of the state as a member of the Union. Upon this subject I think the honorable Senator from Ohio can have no * Remarks on surrendering to California the customs collected there during the Mexi

can war.

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