I Think, Therefore, That We May Say, Making All Allowance That Can Be Fairly Made, That The Number Of Letters Circulating In The United Kingdom Is More Than Double That Which Circulates, Or Ever Has Circulated, In The United States.

That this is so, I attribute not to any difference in the people of the two countries, not to an aptitude for letter writing among us which is wanting with the Americans, but to the greater convenience and wider accommodation of our own post-office.

As I have before stated, and will presently endeavor to show, this wider accommodation is not altogether the result of better management on our part. Our circumstances as regards the post-office have had in them less of difficulties than theirs. But it has arisen in great part from better management; and in nothing is their deficiency so conspicuous as in the absence of a free delivery for their letters.

In order that the advantages of the post-office should reach all persons, the delivery of letters should extend not only to towns, but to the country also. In France all letters are delivered free. However remote may be the position of a house or cottage, it is not too remote for the postman. With us all letters are not delivered, but the exceptions refer to distant solitary houses and to localities which are almost without correspondence. But in the United States there is no free delivery, and there is no delivery at all except in the large cities. In small towns, in villages, even in the suburbs of the largest cities, no such accommodation is given. Whatever may be the distance, people expecting letters must send for them to the post-office; and they who do not expect them, leave their letters uncalled for. Brother Jonathan goes out to fish in these especial waters with a very large net. The little fish which are profitable slip through; but the big fish, which are by no means profitable, are caught - often at an expense greater than their value.

There are other smaller sins upon which I could put my finger - and would do so were I writing an official report upon the subject of the American post-office. In lieu of doing so, I will endeavor to explain how much the States office has done in this matter of affording post-office accommodation, and how great have been the difficulties in the way of post-office reformers in that country.

In the first place, when we compare ourselves to them we must remember that we live in a tea-cup, and they in a washing-tub. As compared with them we inhabit towns which are close to each other. Our distances, as compared with theirs, are nothing. From London to Liverpool the line of railway I believe traverses about two hundred miles, but the mail train which conveys the bags for Liverpool carries the correspondence of probably four or five millions of persons. The mail train from New York to Buffalo passes over about four hundred miles, and on its route leaves not one million.

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