the use and
profits thereof during his life"? That was a short winter-passage,
too--more speedy than the land-trip of a letter in the same journal
"from a gentleman in the Western country to his friend in Connecticut,
dated River Muskingum, November 5, 1785," describing a voyage down the
Ohio from Fort Pitt and the wonders of the country much as Livingstone
and Du Chaillu do those of Africa. The time is less now to Japan, and
about the same to New South Wales, with both which countries we have
postal conventions-i.e., a practically consolidated service--far
cheaper and more convenient than that maintained on the adoption of
the present Constitution between our own cities. Our foreign service
with leading countries is combined, moreover, with an institution
undreamed of in that day--the money-order system. Under this admirable
contrivance the post-offices of the world will ere long be so many
banks of deposit and exchange for the benefit of the masses, effecting
transfers mutually with much greater facility, rapidity and security
than the regular banks formerly attained.

Still in its infancy, the international money-order system has already
reached importance in the magnitude of its operations. The sums sent
by means of it were, in 1874, $1,499,320 to Great Britain, $701,634 to
Germany, and to the little inland republic of Switzerland $72.287.

The dimensions to which this new method of financial intercourse
between the different peoples of the globe is destined to reach may be
inferred from the growth of the domestic money--order service. In 1874
the number of orders issued was 4,620,633, representing $74,424,854.
The erroneous payments having been but one in 59,677, it is plain that
this mode of remittance must make further inroads on the old routine
of cheque and draft, and become, among its other advantages, a
currency regulator of no trifling value.

Our post-office may almost be said to head the development of the
century. The other lines of progress in some sense converge to it. The
advance of intelligence, of settlement, of transit by land and water
and of mechanical and philosophical discovery have all fostered
the post, while its return to them has been liberal. Thus aided
and spurred, its extension has approached the rate of geometrical
progression. Its development resembles that from the Annelids to the
Vertebrata, the simple canal which constitutes the internal anatomy of
the simplest animal forms findi