“How can the ignorant masses of the Southern population be educated in a knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and insured hereafter the benefits of a well-established common free-school system for their children? “How can we relieve the national mails of that infamous espionage which, down to the present time, has been rigidly enforced in every hole and corner of the South, sometimes by the post-office itself, but generally by outside parties, though always in the interest of the plantation aristocracy and their political agents and domination? “How can we prevent the renewal of the old evil of supernumerary post-offices and superfluous mails all over the South, and so gauge the service that each office shall pay expenses and each mail be well filled with paying matter? “These are the problems to be solved, and it behooves us all to reflect upon their exceeding difficulty when we complain that our postal department is not better managed. Although the franking system is bad enough in all conscience, it is not responsible for the bulk of the postal loss. From what we have said above, it must be plain that the despotic social system, established for the benefit of the plantation aristocracy, has been annually paid for largely out of our pockets. We have paid five millions of dollars annually as a premium upon Southern ignorance. We have helped the planter to keep his slaves and his poor white neighbors in ignorance and degradation, and, in order the better to enable him to enforce his cruel and abominable despotism, we have given him the surveillance of our mails, and allowed him to terrorize over them as he saw fit. Mr. Dennison, we can readily believe, is not the man to put up with this hereafter; but it requires vigilance to prevent it altogether, and the exercise of other powers than his to remedy the great evil,—Southern ignorance.” _SALARIES OF POSTMASTERS._