“Let, then, any temporary diminution of income be regarded as an outlay. It would be but slight considered with reference to the objects in view, and yet all that is demanded for the mightiest social improvement ever attempted at a single effort. Suppose even an average yearly loss of a million for ten years. It is but half what the country has paid for the abolition of slavery, without the possibility of any _money_ return. Treat the deficit as an outlay of capital, and those who make a serious affair of it suppose that a great nation is to shrink from a financial operation which a joint-stock company would laugh at. But enough of revenue. Even if the hope of ultimate profit should altogether fail, let us recur to a substituted tax; and if we are asked, What tax? we shall answer, Any tax you please—certain that none can operate so fatally on all other sources of revenue as this. Letters are the _primordia rerum_ of the commercial world. To tax them at all, is condemned by those who are best acquainted with the operations of finances. Surely, then, cent. per cent. will hardly be deemed too slight a burden, and yet that—nay, more than that—the new plan will yield. “But the country will never consent to adjudge this great cause on points of revenue. That the Post Office ought to be open to all in practice, as well as in theory, is now felt to be as necessary to our progress in true civilisation as the liberty of the press, the representation of the people in Parliament, public education, sound law reform, the freedom of commerce, and whatever else we require to maintain our ‘high prerogative of teaching the nations how to live.’” CHAPTER VI. PENNY POSTAGE. (1839-40.)