Let it be adopted, and free postage will become the companion of free school, free lecture, and free library, constituting the mighty group of republican civilization.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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That it will pay in beneficent influence tenfold, ay, Sir, a hundred-fold,--that it will make the Post-Office more than ever the powerful agent of human improvement, I cannot doubt.
What is a little revenue, compared with such a result?
Nothing is plainer, as a general rule, than that the reduction of price tends to increase of consumption.
A reduction of the fee in the ratio of four to one was followed by an increase of visitors in the ratio of more than eight to one.
Every reduction of rate has been followed by a corresponding increase in the number of letters.
Every reduction of postage in our country exhibits similar results.
In either alternative surrender is impossible; but even if possible, it would be most perilous and degrading.
I mention two, through which we may see the unjust operation of the present tax on correspondence: first, the well-known franking system, and, secondly, the millions of newspapers, by which an inconceivable amount of mail matter is made a…
Although printed matter, unfranked, is charged with postage, it is not in proportion to its burden on the postal service; so that the letter not only pays for itself, but contributes to the other.
The letter, so small in dimension and weight, but with its own unseen freight of business or friendship, is made to carry an additional load.
Every letter is a dwarf shouldering a giant; or stating the case with absolute literalness, it is a sheet of paper compelled to bear free matter and printed matter measured by the ton.
This little messenger, whose single function necessarily requires dispatch, is charged with this intolerable mass.
No wonder that the people are obliged to pay high postage; for, on receiving a letter, they not only pay the price of its transportation and delivery, but they contribute to the transportation and delivery of everything else carried by the…
I desired to present the issue of principle, so that the patriot could choose without embarrassment from party association.
This is beautiful, but it is not just; in other words, it is beautiful that these opportunities should be afforded, but it is not just that the correspondence of others should pay for them.
Rejecting again all idea of casting this expenditure upon the distant places and the pioneer, I insist that it should be borne by the Treasury rather than by remote letter-writers.
It is easy to exhibit the extent of this charge, and its palpable injustice.
It would not be just for him to levy on all his customers along the main line for the expense of this deviation,--making them not only pay for their parcels, but contribute to the development of the outlying settlement.
Other instances might be adduced, but these are enough to show how seriously the postal service is burdened by obligations which plainly belong to the Treasury.
Sometimes it is supposed that the great distances of our country cause the large expense; but this is a mistake, founded on superficial observation.
I have already mentioned that the actual cost of transportation from London to Edinburgh was only one thirty-sixth of a penny, and this was the average for all letters throughout the United Kingdom.
Thus on the assumption of a continuous self-supporting line the question of distance does not enter into the cost, and thus again we see the injustice of compelling the correspondence on such a line to the contributions it is now obliged…
The platform surrenders to Slavery out of the Union, and, in proposing a “cessation of hostilities,” prepares the way for recognition of the Rebel States.
Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.
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