For the word and the idea here set down, the world is indebted to Elihu
Burritt, the “LEARNED BLACKSMITH,” and will be indebted to him for the
inexpressible benefits of the thing itself, whenever so great a boon shall
be obtained. Having visited our mother country, on an errand of peace, he
soon saw the value of the blessing of cheap postage, as it is enjoyed
there; and by contrast, through the object of his mission he say how great
is the influence of dear postage, in keeping cousins estranged from each
other, and in perpetuating their blind hatred, and thus hindering the
advent of the days of “Universal Brotherhood.” By putting all these things
together, he wrought out the plan of “Ocean Penny Postage,” by which all
ship letters are to pay 1_d._ sterling, instead of paying, as they now do
in England, 8_d._ when sent by a sailing vessel, and 1_s._ when sent by a
steam packet.
He proposes that each letter shall pay its postage penny in advance for
the service it may receive inland, and a like sum, also in advance, for
its transmission by sea, until it shall arrive at its port of destination.
To this should be added, as fast as penny postage shall be propagated in
other countries, an international arrangement for prepaying the inland
postage of the country to which the letter is sent. Nothing can be more
simple in theory than such an arrangement, nothing easier or more
unerringly just in execution. It would make the postage stamps of the
cheap postage nations an international currency, better than gold and
silver, because convertible into that which gold and silver cannot buy,
the interchange of thought and affection among friends.
In pressing his project first on the British nation, both because he
happened to be then commorant in England, and because that government and
not ours had already adopted cheap postage as the rule for its home
correspondence, he is not chargeable with any lack of a becoming respect
for his own country. I confess, however, that I feel strongly, what he has
not expressed, the desire that my own country should have both the honor
and the advantage of being the first to carry out this glorious idea.
Mr. Burritt states the number of letters to and from places beyond sea in
1846, through six of the principal seaports of England, at
8,640,458
Number of newspapers 2,698,376
Gross revenue from letters and £301,640
papers,
Letters sent to and from the 744,108
United States,
Newspapers 317,468
Postage on letters and papers, £46,548
Whole expense of packet £761,900
service,
In addition, he has been so fortunate as to enlist the cöoperation of a
distinguished member of parliament, of whom he says:
“At my solicitation he readily moved for a return of all the
letters, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, &c., transmitted from
the United States in 1846, and which have been refused on account
of the rates of postage, and are consequently lying dead in the
English post-office; also for a return of the amount of postage
charged upon this dead mail matter. I am pretty confident that
this return will startle the people and government with some
remarkable disclosures with regard to the amount of mail matter
conveyed across the ocean, for which John Bull does not get a
farthing, because he asks too much for the job.”
By the arrangement of the British Post-office, the postage on letters by
the mail steamers to the United States is now 1_s._ per half ounce; and on
newspapers 2_d._ each paper. On all letters and papers sent from Great
Britain the postage must be prepaid. If not prepaid, they are not sent;
but in the case of letters, it is the practice of the post-office to
notify persons in this country to whom letters are addressed, that cannot
be forwarded for the want of prepayment, that they can have their letters
on procuring the prepayment of the required shilling. I have more than
once received a printed notice of this kind, designating the number by
which my letter could be called for. No additional charge is made for this
piece of attention. This fact is significant of the spirit of the cheap
postage system. No provision is made by which postage can be prepaid in
this country, and consequently, the whole expense of correspondence falls
upon the parties in England.
Mr. Burritt enumerates some of the inconveniences of the present system,
in addition to the positive evil of a burdensome tax upon the letter
correspondence between the two countries—a tax which amounts to a
suppression of intercourse by letter, to a sad extent.
1. The present shilling rate of postage, being exacted on the
English side, too, in all cases, and thus throwing the whole cost
of correspondence upon the English or European correspondents,
greatly diminishes the number of letters which would otherwise be
transmitted to and from America, through the English mail.
2. In consequence of the present high rate of postage on letters,
newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, &c., a large amount of mail
matter conveyed across the ocean, lies _dead_ in the English
post-office—a dead loss to the department—the persons to whom it
is addressed, refusing to take it out on account of the postal
charges upon it.
3. Under the present shilling rate, it is both legal and common
for passengers to carry a large number of _unsealed_ letters,
which are allowed as letters of introduction, and which, at the
end of the voyage, are sealed and mailed in England or America, to
persons who thus evade the ocean postage entirely.
4. In consequence of the present shilling rate, it is common, as
it is legal, for persons to enclose several communications,
addressed to different parties, under one envelope, which, on
reaching America or England, are remailed to the persons
addressed, thus saving to them the whole charge of Ocean Postage.
Paper is manufactured purposely to _save postage_, and, for this
quality, is called “Foreign Post.”
He also tells the people of England very plainly what will be the effect
if _they_ first adopt the Ocean Penny Postage. _Some_ of the same
considerations ought to have weight with American citizens and American
philanthropists, and especially with American statesmen, in producing the
conviction, that it is better for the United States to lose no time in
adopting this system.
1. It would put it into the power of every person in America or
England to write to his or her relatives, friends, or other
correspondents, across the Atlantic, as often as business or
friendship would dictate, or leisure permit.
2. It would probably secure to England the whole carrying-trade of
the Mail matter, not only between America and Great Britain, but
also between the New World and the Old, forever.
3. It would break up entirely all clandestine or private
conveyance of Mail matter across the ocean, and virtually empty
into the English mail bags all the mailable communications, even
to invoices, bills of lading, &c.; which, under the old system,
have been carried in the pockets of passengers, the packs of
emigrants, and in the bales of merchants.
4. It would prevent any letters, newspapers, magazines, or
pamphlets, from lying dead in the English post-office, on account
of the rates of postage charged upon them, and thus relieve the
department of the heavy loss which it must sustain, from that
cause, under the present system.
5. It would enable American correspondents to prepay the postage
on their own letters, not only across the ocean, but also from
Liverpool or Southampton to any post town or village in the United
Kingdom; to prepay it also, to _England_, by putting two English
penny stamps upon every letter weighing under half an ounce.
6. It would bring into the English mail all letters from America
directed to France, Germany, and the rest of the continent, and
_vice versa_.
7. It would not only open the cheapest possible medium of
correspondence between the Old World and the New, but also one for
the transmission of specimens of cotton, woollen, and other
manufactures; of seeds, plants, flowers, grasses, woods; of
specimens illustrating even geology, entomology, and other
departments of useful science; thus creating a new branch of
commerce as well as correspondence, which might bring into the
English mail bags tons of matter, paying at the rate of 2_s._
8_d._ per lb. for carriage.
8. It would make English penny postage stamps a kind of
international currency, at par on both sides of the Atlantic, and
which might be procured without the loss of a farthing by way of
exchange, and be transmitted from one country to the other, at
less cost for conveyance than the charge upon money orders in
England from one post-office to another, for equal sums.
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 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 1_s._ 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 0.181_d._; 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 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 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_.”