Whoever shall establish any private express for the conveyance of letters or packets, or in any manner cause or provide for the conveyance of the same by regular trips or at stated periods over any post route which is or may be established by law, or from any city, town or place between which the mail is regularly carried, or whoever shall aid or assist therein, shall be fined not more than $500, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both. The foregoing makes it quite evident that, as early as 1845 at least, this government of ours did not intend or design the service on mail routes then existing, nor on routes to be established, was to confine itself to the carriage and handling of government matter only. The establishment of rail post routes and the greater facility and speed with which such routes would handle the people’s mails--“the letters, packages and parcels of people residing along such mail routes”--was one of the stock arguments of the Illinois Central Railroad promoters in 1849-50--an argument designed to justify before the people a grant of land to the chartered company so large as to make the grant a _colossal steal_. The same or similar argument was turned loose and persuasively paraded in the oratorical procession which preceded the vast federal land grants, or land steals, in connection with the building of transcontinental or Pacific rail lines. Enough has been said to show quite conclusively that whatever may or may not have been the “intention” of the government at the first establishment of a mail service--a service then wholly by water transportation, by runners and by a “Pony Post” and mail coach--a decision was very soon reached to make the postal service a public one--a service for all our people--and to give the government _a monopoly of that service_. No one reading the section of the Revised Statutes of the United States above quoted will attempt to controvert the statement last made. Then, it may be asked again, and justly, too, why does the government continue to permit its various departments to over-load and to _loot_ the postal service, the revenues for maintaining which the people--the mail-using portion of the people--alone contribute? It also may be justly asked, why does the government permit its postoffice and other officials to _scream_ at the people about “deficits,” when they have already paid far more than the service--_their_ service--costs the government? Other equally pertinent questions might be asked, but I shall forbear. I have shown, I believe, that the raids upon the postoffice revenues by free-in-county matter and by government itself would _more than meet_ any “deficit” yodled about in recent years.