n, the
additional expense will not exceed half a farthing each letter, and the
rest will be clear profit to the post-office. As the plan of Ocean Penny
Postage includes also the inland postage prepaid in each country, it
follows that each country would realize from three-quarters to
seven-eighths of a penny advantage on every letter added to the present
ocean mails.

In addition to all this, there is just as much reason to expect Ocean
Postage to increase, as to expect land postage to increase. And as it is
proved that, on land, the reduction of price will increase the
consumption, so as to produce an equal income, there can be no doubt that,
in a little while, if the sea postage is reduced to the cheap standard,
the letters and papers sent will increase sufficiently to yield an equal
income. And if so, the consequent increase of inland postage and the
profits on the same will be clear gain.

Add to the immense number of Europe-born people now living in the United
States, the children of such, who will retain for two or three
generations, their relationship to kindred remaining in the Old World: Add
to the half million of European emigrants, who by ordinary calculation
would be expected every year, the numbers whom passing events will drive
to seek an asylum from European revolutions under the peaceful and
permanent government of the American Union: Add to the increase of
transatlantic intercourse arising from the increase of commerce, the
growth also of advancing civilization and intelligence: Add to the
interest which emigration of neighbors and the growth of the country gives
to European residents in a correspondence with America, the eager desire
which the new times now begun must create to become more familiarly
conversant with the new world, whose path of freedom and equality the old
countries are all striving to follow: How long will any man say it would
take, with a rate of postage across the Atlantic not exceeding two cents
per half ounce, before there would be ten millions of letters yearly,
instead of three-quarters of a million, the number now carried by the
British packet mails? And these would yield more postage than can now be
collected at a shilling a letter, besides the profit they would yield on
the inland postage. With our own experience under the act, of 1844, and
the experience of Great Britain under the act of 1839, it would be
unphilosophical to set a longer time than five years as the period tha