“An incident recently occurred which will forcibly illustrate the injurious effects of such a practice upon the revenues of the department. A large bundle of letters was enveloped and sealed, marked ‘postage paid, $1.60.’ By some accident in the transportation, the envelope was so much injured as to enable the postmaster to see that it contained one hundred letters to different individuals, evidently designed for distribution by the person to whom directed, and should have been charged ten dollars. The continuance of this practice would, in a short time, deprive the department of a large proportion of its legitimate income. The department has no power to suppress it, further than to direct the postages to be properly charged, whenever such practices are detected. This has also introduced a species of thin, light paper, by which five or six letters may be placed under one cover, and still be under the half-ounce.” He adds: “The practice of sending packages of letters through the mails to agents, for distribution, has not entirely superseded the transmission of letters, over post roads, out of the mails, by the expresses. The character of this offence is such as to render detection very uncertain, full proof almost impossible, conviction rare. The penalties are seldom recovered after conviction, and the department rarely secures enough to meet the expenses of prosecution. If the officers of the department were authorized in proper cases to have the persons engaged in these violations of the law arrested, their packages, trunks, or boxes, seized and examined before a proper judicial officer, and, when detected in violating the law, retained for the examination of the court and jury, it is believed that the practice could be at once suppressed.” In his last report, December, 1847, he also says that, “Private expresses still continue to be run between the principal cities, and seriously affect the revenues of the department, from the want of adequate powers for their suppression.” The complaint is continually, of a want of adequate powers to suppress the practice. The law of 1845 has gone as far as could be desired in the severity of penalties and the extent of their application, involving in heavy fines every person who shall send or receive letters; and every stage-coach, railroad car, steamboat, or other vehicle or vessel—its owners, conductors and agents, which may knowingly be employed in the conveyance of letters, or in the conveyance of any person employed in such conveyance, under penalty of $50 for each letter transported. What the post-office department would deem “adequate powers” for the suppression of illicit letter-carrying, may be seen in the following extract of a bill, which was actually reported by the post-office committee of the House of Representatives, and “printed by order of the House:”