There are some who think that no existing institution is oppressive. According to them, Slavery was not oppressive. In the same mood, the law of 1845, with its two rates of five cents and ten cents, and then again the law of 1855, by which the rate of five cents was reduced to three cents, were pronounced unnecessary. The multifarious rates anterior to 1845 were not oppressive, and in 1855 there was no call for the reduction of the rate from five cents to three cents. Such was the argument then, precisely as now. So in the days of Slavery it was argued that the slaves did not desire freedom, and that their condition was not oppressive. The great reform of Rowland Hill encountered the same objection. Even Lord Ashburton, while favoring a change, was content with twopence or threepence, and, in his testimony, settled down upon threepence as satisfactory. He shrank from the penny rate.[102] This question was treated with excellent sense by Mr. Jones Loyd, whom I have already quoted, whose testimony bears strongly on this very objection. After saying “that the present rate of postage does in point of fact produce a prohibition of the use of the Post-Office to all classes that may be considered as below the higher classes,”[103] the attention of the witness was called by the Committee to the allegation “that the laboring classes do not feel the oppressive rate of postage.” He replied in words of wisdom worthy of memory now, and completely applicable to the very question now before the Senate:-- “The habits of a people are in a great degree the result of the laws under which they live; the high charges of our Post-Office have induced, amongst all but the richer classes, a habit of abstaining from epistolary communication, and it might take some time to correct that habit. But it appears to me very desirable that the impediment should be removed; and I have no doubt, that, in the course of a short time, as the poorer classes have the common affections of the human breast, they would form a taste for the pleasures to be derived from intercourse with absent friends and relations. It would be very desirable, for the moral interests of the community, that every facility should be afforded for that purpose.”[104] On the “oppression of a tax,” where persons do not use the article taxed, the intelligent witness testified as follows:-- “They may not know the loss they sustain; but that does not alter the fact that they do sustain a very great loss; and it would be highly criminal and cruel voluntarily to inflict such a loss upon a person merely upon the ground that he does not know it. A child that is born blind does not know the advantages of sight; but still it would be a very extraordinary thing to inflict blindness upon a child, merely upon the ground, that, if you do it, in time he will not know the loss he has sustained.”[105]