n for or against any proposed change,
on the ground that the alternative may be the discontinuance of public
mails, the privation of this privilege to the people, and the winding up
of the post-office system, is clearly inadmissible. When the government
ceases to give the people the privileges of the mail, the government
itself will soon wind up, or rather, will be taken in hand and wound up by
the people, and set a-going again on better principles. The sole inquiry
for congress is, what is the best way to meet the reasonable wants of the
people, by means within the reasonable ability of the government?

The objects of the post-office system, which regulate its administration,
are well set forth in the Report of the House Committee in 1844: "To
content the man, dwelling more remote from town, with his homely lot, by
giving him regular and frequent means of intercommunication; to assure the
emigrant, who plants his new home on the skirts of the distant wilderness
or prairie, that he is not forever severed from the kindred and society
that still share his interest and love; to prevent those whom the swelling
tide of population is constantly, pressing to the outer verge of
civilization from being surrendered to surrounding influences, and sinking
into the hunter or savage state; to render the citizen, how far soever
from the seat of his government, worthy, by proper knowledge and
intelligence, of his important privileges as a sovereign constituent of
the government; to diffuse, throughout all parts of the land,
enlightenment, social improvement, and national affinities, elevating our
people in the scale of civilization, and binding them together in
patriotic affection."

These are the objects for which congress is bound to maintain the
post-office, and it is impossible that congress should ever seriously
consider whether they will not abandon them. The maintenance of convenient
mails for these objects is therefore to be regarded as a necessary
function of the government of the United States. In the infancy of that
government, while the government itself was an experiment, when the
country was deeply in debt for the cost of our independence, and when its
resources for public expenditure were untried and unknown, there was
doubtless a propriety in the adoption of the principle, that the
post-office department should support itself. But that state of things has
long gone by, and our government now has ample ability to execute