That is what the court says--and what the court says goes. Here is what the present Attorney General of the United States says--and what the Attorney General says does not go. The Receivers’ and Shippers’ Association of Cincinnati asked the Attorney General to join in Mr. Williams’ suit, which the Attorney General declined to do for this reason: “The department has made a very complete study of the proposition and agrees with Mr. Williams upon the law, except as to the one point, namely, that there has been an _administrative construction against the proposition for over forty years_, and the chances are that a suit will be defeated on that ground.” In other words while the Attorney General believes the express companies have been and are violating the law, the postoffice department, for forty years, _has let them do it_, and it seems useless to try to enforce the law. Here, then, is the absurd situation with regard to packets into which the express companies have forced the United States government: If a packet contains tea, and a mail carrier steals some of it, it is a packet without doubt, and the mail carrier is sent to prison. If an express company carries a packet of tea, the packet is not a packet, because a packet is only a packet of letters. But a mail carrier will find out rather quickly, whether a packet of tea weighing less than four pounds, is a packet or not, if he carry the packet for his own profit instead of turning over to the government the amount of the postage. Let the fact become known to the government, and he will be arrested as quickly as an officer can reach him. Now: Is or is not this juggling with the law? If it is not juggling with the law, what, in your opinion, would be juggling with the law? If the foregoing decisions sound like good law to you, perhaps you ought to be upon the federal bench. You might shine as a judge. You don’t shine as a voter. You think, but you don’t act. You don’t put your thought behind your ballot. You let somebody else put his thought behind your ballot. That is pretty plain talk--talk which should do us readers some good. It should, at least, enlighten us as to these facts. First: The express companies have been _criminally_ trenching upon and into the service of the Postoffice Department for forty years or more--have been _raiding_ what were originally intended to be the legitimate and legally protected revenues of that department. Second: Such raidings have been winked at by our federal legislators and condoned, and the raiders exonerated by juridic opinions which were so bald, bare, brazen and _cheap_ that they would make a practiced confidence or get-rich-quick man blush.