“The act of 1825 authorized ‘every printer of newspapers to send one paper to each and every other printer of newspapers within the United States free of postage,’ and such is the existing law. However slight the support which this statute may seem to give to publishers, it imposes in the aggregate a heavy and unjust burden on the department. The advantage thus conferred inures to the benefit alike of the publisher who sends and of him who receives the paper in exchange. I have in vain sought for any satisfactory explanation of the policy indicated by this provision. It seems far more exceptionable than the franking privilege, since the latter professes to be exercised on behalf of the public, whereas the exemption secured by the former is enjoyed wholly in advancement of a private and personal interest. The newspapers received in exchange by the journalist are, in the parlance of commerce, his stock in trade. From their columns he gathers materials for his own, and thus makes the same business use of them that the merchant does of his goods, or the mechanic of the raw material which he proposes to manufacture into fabrics. But as the government transports nothing free of charge to the farmer, the merchant, or the mechanic, to enable them to prosecute successfully and economically their respective pursuits, why shall it do so for the journalist? If the latter can rightfully claim that his newspapers shall be thus delivered to him at the public expense, why may he not also claim that his stationery and his type, and indeed every thing which enters into the preparation of the sheets he issues as his means of living, be delivered to him on the same terms? It has been urged, I am aware, that postage on newspaper exchanges would be a tax on the dissemination of knowledge; but so is the postage which the farmer, merchant, and mechanic pay on the newspapers for which they subscribe, a tax on the dissemination of knowledge, and yet it is paid by them uncomplainingly. If it be insisted that the publishers of newspapers, as a class, are in such a condition as to entitle them to demand the aid of the public funds, it may be safely answered that such an assumption is wholly unwarranted. Journalism in the United States rests upon the broadest and deepest foundations, and is running a career far more brilliant and prosperous than in any other nation of the world. The exceedingly reduced rates at which its issues pass through the mails secure to it advantages enjoyed under no other government. Under the fostering care of the free spirit of the age, it has now become an institution in itself in this country, and controls the tides of the restless ocean of public opinion with almost resistless sway. It is the _avant-courier_ of the genius of our institutions, and is everywhere the advocate of progress and of the highest and noblest forms of human freedom. Is it not, therefore, to the last degree unseemly, if not