All dues will be collected at the minimum of cost, so that there will be no loss from frauds or supernumerary hands.

There will be both security and economy, besides simplicity; but simplicity is economy as well as convenience, in the Post-Office as in mechanics.

The English franking privilege was the natural parasite of such a system, where the true idea of a post-office was entirely forgotten.

The same genius which ruled in philosophy and in politics was not wanting in this sphere of duty.

No institution in history ever underwent at once a transformation so beneficent as that of the British Post-Office.

More than all Franklin did for the Colonies Hill did for Great Britain.

Call him inventor or author, there are few on either list more worthy of honor; and since what is done for one country becomes the common property of the world, he belongs to the world’s benefactors.

We have, unfortunately, many taxes which have an injurious tendency; but I think few, if any, have so injurious a tendency as the tax upon the communication by letters.

You might as well tax words spoken upon the Royal Exchange as the communications of various persons living in Manchester, Liverpool, and London.

You cannot do it without checking the disposition to communicate very essentially.

I consider the only way to produce the greatest possible amount of revenue is to charge the lowest possible trading profit; and it is in the Post-Office as in steamboats, or Paddington coaches, or calicoes, or sugars, or teas, or anything…

I do not think that either of those, useful and valuable as they are to the community, and fit as they are for Government to sanction, is more conducive to the moral and social advancement of the community than the facility of intercourse…

All this is easy to believe; for penny postage lends itself to all knowledge and to every reform.

Such was the great reform by which the Post-Office became an evangel of civilization; but all this may be ours.

The Republic is the most advanced type of government, as the human form is the most advanced type of the animal world; but the Republic is nothing else than an organization to promote the welfare of men.

Whatever makes for human welfare is essentially republican.

Show me how to promote the welfare of men, and I show you an economy beyond any revenue; more still, I show you a duty not to be postponed.

We are summoned to give up a long-tried system, educational in its influence, merely for the sake of the Treasury.

True, much has been done; but much remains to be done before the service will have that simplicity without which it is vain to expect the desired combination of utility and economy.

It is with the postal service as with all else in Nature and Art: it is efficient and economical in proportion as it is simple.

Borrowing a phrase from our political victories, all letters should be equal before the law.

Each rate is like an additional language to be learned, while the unknown rates on foreign letters are like the confusion of Babel.

Beyond the sufficiency of this rate as a protection of the Post-Office against abuse, and also its obvious convenience, is its cheapness, reducing the tax on correspondence to its practical minimum.

There is better reason for the cent as a proper rate in our country than there was for the penny as a proper rate in England.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.