The Gross Postal Revenue Of The
States Which Have Seceded Was, For The Year Prior To Secession,
1,200,500
Dollars, and for that one month of June it would therefore
have been a little over 100,000 dollars, or
20,000l. That sum may
therefore be presumed to have been abstracted by secession from the
gross annual revenue of the post-office. Trade, also, was no doubt
injured by the disturbance in the country, and the circulation of
letters was, as a matter of course, to some degree affected by this
injury; but it seems that the gross revenue of 1861 was less than
that of 1860 by only one thirty-sixth. 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.
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