+-------------------------------+---------+-----+--------+-----+ | | |Mills|Express |Mills| | From Boston-- |Passenger| per |freight.| per | | |fare. |half |230 lbs.|half | | | | oz. | | oz. | +-------------------------------+---------+-----+--------+-----+ |To New York | $4 | .5 | $1.50 | .2 | |” Philadelphia | 7 | .9 | 3.50 | .5 | |” Baltimore | 10 | 1.3 | 5.50 | .7 | |” Cincinnati | 25 | 3.4 | 10.50 | 1.4 | |” St. Louis | 35 | 4.7 | 12.00 | 1.6 | |” New Orleans | 45 | 6.1 | 14.00 | 1.9 | |” Liverpool per Cunard steamers| 120 |16.3 | 7.20 | .9 | +-------------------------------+---------+-----+--------+-----+ In other transportation there is a slight increase in proportion to the distance; but it is difficult to see on what principle a mail-bag between Washington and New York should pay more than a passenger; and the same difficulty occurs when we consider ocean postage, where the disproportion between postage and other transportation is, perhaps, more conspicuous. Elihu Burritt, who has enforced the importance of cheap rates on the ocean with admirable comprehension of their importance, has reminded us that the freight of a barrel of flour, weighing two hundred pounds, is about fifty cents, while the charge for the same weight in half-ounce letters, being sixty-four hundred in number, at the rate of twenty-four cents a letter, would be no less than $1,536, and at the rate of one cent would be sixty-four dollars. These instances show that letters have been always overcharged, or charged out of proportion to their weight. To my mind it is unjust that the letter everywhere should contribute so largely to the transportation and delivery of other mail matter, while in some parts of the country it contributes besides to postal facilities elsewhere. I think I do not err, when I aver, that, even with the latter burden, the Post-Office, if it carried nothing but letters, _and every letter paid one cent_, would be self-supporting. I put the case in this way so as to exhibit the essential equity of the proposed reduction, and, I would add, its entire practicability. Although the Post-Office cannot be relieved of the other mail-matter, yet the letters can be relieved of the burdensome contribution to which they are now subjected. One cent postage would give new operation to the law according to which reduction of price tends to produce consumption, and there would be a new impulsion to correspondence, by which in a short time it would be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, quintupled, and sextupled,--nay, in our growing country it would be multiplied beyond calculation.