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.