Every reduction of postage in our country exhibits similar results. According to the ratio of reduction has been the ratio of increase in the number of letters. It may surprise Senators to know, that, while the estimated number in 1852 was 95,790,524,[94] it reached in 1868 to 488,000,000, in the estimate of the Post-Office.[95] But this is only according to the prevailing impulsion from a reduction in price. In England, where the rate was smaller, the number of letters was much larger, being in 1867, as estimated, no less than 774,831,000.[96] This becomes more remarkable, when it is considered that the estimated population of the United States at the time was more than forty millions, while that of the United Kingdom was thirty millions,--making twelve letters annually for each person in the United States, and twenty-six letters annually for each person in the United Kingdom. ILLEGITIMATE BURDENS ON CORRESPONDENCE. To understand the justice of the proposed reduction in our country, we must analyze and consider existing obligations of the postal service. I mention two, through which we may see the unjust operation of the present tax on correspondence: first, the well-known franking system, and, secondly, the millions of newspapers, by which an inconceivable amount of mail matter is made a burden on the Post-Office, tasking its transportation and its means of delivery. Although printed matter, unfranked, is charged with postage, it is not in proportion to its burden on the postal service; so that the letter not only pays for itself, but contributes to the other. The letter, so small in dimension and weight, but with its own unseen freight of business or friendship, is made to carry an additional load. Every letter is a dwarf shouldering a giant; or stating the case with absolute literalness, it is a sheet of paper compelled to bear free matter and printed matter measured by the ton. This little messenger, whose single function necessarily requires dispatch, is charged with this intolerable mass. No wonder that it staggers under the load heaped upon it. No wonder that the people are obliged to pay high postage; for, on receiving a letter, they not only pay the price of its transportation and delivery, but they contribute to the transportation and delivery of everything else carried by the mails.