The authority given by the constitution to Congress to establish post offices and post roads, so far as it operates to confer on the government any power which would not equally belong to it without that provision, amounts simply to making the government, a public or a common carrier of the written correspondence of individuals, and of the lighter form of printed intelligence and news. In other words, by virtue of this clause, the government is authorized and required to pursue, on a scale commensurate with the wants and extent of the country, the business of receiving, transporting, and delivering letters, newspapers, and pamphlets, for all persons, private, as well as public, and to and from any and all places in the Union. And for the service thus rendered, the government exacts from the individuals served, a specific fee or compensation, under the name of postage, for every letter or paper transported and delivered. Now, it is quite obvious that both the pursuit of this business, and the exaction of a remuneration for it, would be altogether beyond the range of federal authority, but for the specially granted power to establish post offices and post roads. Mere silence in the constitution on this subject would have effectually withheld the power from the general government, and would have caused the business of carrying letters, newspapers, &c., to remain where all other branches of the carrying trade are actually left—namely, in the hands of individual enterprise, subject to State legislation, and to such (and no other) federal control as is involved in the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the States. The functions thus devolved on the government, of performing for the people the office of universal letter carrier and news carrier, is a matter of the very highest consequence in every light in which it can be viewed. The bare fact that our ancestors refused to leave it dependent on individual enterprise or State control, and vested it expressly in Congress, abundantly attested their anxious sense of its importance, and their conviction of the impracticability of realizing the requisite public advantages from it, otherwise than by giving it a federal lodgment and administration.