Nor is it the mere privilege we complain of, but its abuse. Reduce it to an honest and equitable use, and we venture to say the public will endure the act. Mr. George Plitt, in his report while a special agent of the post-office department, made February 3, 1841, speaking of the franking privilege, says, “The actual number of franked packages sent from the post-office of Washington City during the week ending on the 7th of July last was 201,534; and the whole number sent during the last session of Congress amounted to the enormous quantity of 4,314,948. All these packages are not only carried by the department into every section of the country _free of charge_, but it is actually obliged to pay to every postmaster whose commissions do not amount to $2000 per annum, _two cents for the delivery of each one_! Supposing all the above to have been delivered, the department would lose from its revenue for this one item upwards of $80,000, besides paying for the mail-transportation.” In 1834 the “Washington Globe,” speaking upon this subject, used the following language:— “Particular cases of gross abuse upon the post-office are within our knowledge, and the postmaster-general will be informed of hundreds of others. The opinion of those acquainted with the subject, which we have no doubt is correct, is that the department has lost within the last year, by the extension of the franking privileges of the members of Congress, and by abuses of law, more than _one hundred thousand dollars_. This revenue would in a short time pay off the debts of the department, and leave the people all the mails they now have. Who loses this sum? Not the department only, but the people,—the honest correspondents by the post, who prefer paying postage on their letters to obtaining franks. In fact, the abuses are growing so rapidly as to justify a fear of their endangering the establishment. The restrictions of the law seem to have been by some men wholly borne down and prostrated, and the franking privilege is rapidly extending itself over, and covering a great part of, the ordinary private correspondence of the country.” The post-office is an establishment of the greatest utility. The law throws it upon its receipts for postage as its sole support. When these fail, the mails must stop; and every dollar that is taken from them is so much drawn from the service of the public. The duty, therefore, of protecting the department from the loss of its revenue is imposed upon the postmaster-general not only by the general principle of the law, but by the necessity of saving the establishment from annihilation, total or partial. The sentiment of the people, ever against abuse and the improper use of privilege, will sustain the postmaster-general in his course. The “Globe,” after alluding to the further abuse of the franking privilege, says,—