An accident has occurred, during the present winter, in the administration of the post office, to which the committee beg leave to call the attention of the House, as illustrative of the principles and policy by which the Department avowedly feels itself bound, as the public organ for the transmission of correspondence and intelligence. It is well known that, from Boston to Covington, in Georgia, the great southern and New Orleans mail is transported wholly by steam-power, either on water or on rail roads. It is carried this whole distance in five days. From Covington to Mobile, it is carried in stages, with the exception of a short interval of rail road in approaching Montgomery, Alabama. At Mobile, the mail is again committed to steam-carriage, by sea, to New Orleans. Now, of so much importance was a single day’s anticipation of the mail deemed in all the great cities on the route, that a private express was established with that view, to be carried on horseback between Covington and Montgomery. All matter destined for the private express was addressed to the agents of the company at Covington and Montgomery, according as such matter should happen to come from the north or south. The express carrier at Covington, receiving his despatches from the northern mail on the arrival of the steam-cars, delivered them at Montgomery to the post office again in such time that they were sent from Montgomery to Mobile and New Orleans by mail one day in advance of the other letters, which reached Covington at the same time. The effect was, the anticipation of the northern mail by one day at Mobile and New Orleans; and the same operation, from Montgomery to Covington, resulted in one day’s anticipation of the Mobile and New Orleans mails at New York. What did the Post Office Department do, under this state of facts? The answer to this question is to be found on the records of the Department. The Postmaster General, after watching these anticipations for a short time, issued an order for their prevention by the establishment of a post office express between Covington and Montgomery, to run alongside the private express. In the same manner, if the government shall not soon establish the telegraph on public account on the great routes, it will find the mails anticipated in the hundred-fold greater degree by the establishment of private telegraphs, which it will have to meet, either by purchasing them out on exorbitant terms, or by erecting a rival public telegraph line by their side.