James Rees

“ Not so; they are mail-bags. See how furiously one is thrown down: it is seized upon as if a victim to be sacrificed. “Brass lock,” yells one. “Iron,” screams another. Brass or iron, they are quickly unlocked, and in an instant their contents are scattered like chaff, and away they go to the four quarters of the globe as fast as busy hands, wind, tide, and steam can take them.
No fort—not even Sumter, Darling, or the defences of Vicksburg—ever presented a more busy scene of life and death than does the post-office on the opening of mail-bags: it may indeed be compared to “life and death;” ”

“ Much of all this can be traced to the estimate men place upon the modern mode of education. If genius invents something that places vice in a brilliant light, in and through which all that is startling in picture-view or description presents new features to the novice in licentiousness, it becomes at once an institution from whence flows a stream that poisons a city. In an instant these productions take miniature shapes: art combines with the genius of the originators, and, lo! they go forth through the post, spreading ruin and desolation everywhere. ”

“ Society becomes more dignified, man more ennobled. It is to this power that kings, emperors, and lords owe their positions; for one word from that class will bring the loftiest head to the block, if by word or action the attempt should be made to lessen or destroy that power which elevated him or them to eminence.
The commercial power of England is its rule, and to it that nation owes all its present greatness. The politics of England is its disgrace; its commerce, its honor. The king and Parliament are at the head of the one,—the hewers of wood and drawers of water at that of the other. ”

“ There is scarcely an art or a science of which we boast now but owes its existence to the past ages. We have the proofs on their paintings, their mechanics, their arts, and sciences: these are the evidences to prove how far they had advanced in knowledge before the world’s revolutions cast them back again to ignorance and gloom. With the downfall of cities—crumbling away under the fiat of the Almighty, or swallowed up by earthquakes—went the genius of ages; and from their ruins and the debris of classic temples came those traces of high art of which no other living evidences bore witness. ”

“ There are few persons on record to whose individual genius and exertions a community has owed so much as to Dr. Franklin. If William Penn was the political founder of the province, Franklin may perhaps be denominated the architect of its literature, the gifted author of many of its best institutions, and the father of some of the finest features of our character. It is seldom, however, that Providence has vouchsafed such a length of years to such an intellect, and still more seldom that such events occur as those which developed the powers and capacities of Franklin’s mind. ”

“ The victory, however, is always on the side of the post-office: the effect of the fire from their port-holes is felt when all within its lines are quiet. The wheels of the department uninjured move on. Let us take a glance through yonder opening. We are on the outside, looking into the interior of this postal fortress. Hundreds of active business-men are moving about in their shirt-sleeves, looking fierce and desperate: they are engaged in a great struggle,—a struggle with time. ”

“ Not that the secrets of a post-office become known to its officers by improper means, but by that process of secret modes of detection whose mysterious workings are unknown to those unconnected with the institution. Very little behind the great city we have named stands that of Philadelphia; and its post-office, like the tomb, has buried secrets which an “Old Mortality” alone has the power to bring forth. The task be ours to paint the mysteries of the postal tomb. ”

“ A man might, out of mere malice or revenge, accuse another of the most infamous crimes, might excite against him the indignation of all his fellow-citizens by the most atrocious calumnies, might disturb, nay, overturn all his domestic peace, and embitter his parental affections, might inflict the most distressing punishments upon the weak, the timid, and the innocent, might prejudice all a man’s civil and political and private rights, and might stir up sedition, rebellion, and treason, even against the government itself, in the wantonness of his passions or the corruption of his heart. ”

“ To keep that peculiar institution—a relic of barbarism—intact, with their ideas of labor, men South advocated the idea that a sovereignty of States and their separate independency of the Union were guaranteed to them by the Constitution. This fatal error misled the ignorant: men of intellect, men educated in the Union, living under its Constitution and heretofore abiding by its laws, preached up a Utopian scheme to these misguided men. The South was to become the Eden of the world, and slavery its Magna Charta. ”

“ What are such men, when subject to a system like this, but political paupers? We do not say that men in the post-office should not be the friends and supporters of the party in power: on the contrary, they are expected to be. But cannot a man be the friend and supporter of the government under any administration apart from his political bias, more particularly if he is placed in a position of honor and trust not easily supplied by another, without being subject to instant dismissal? ”

“ She turned to depart, but faltered, and at length overcome, she sat down upon the steps of the post-office and wept aloud.
There is something unnatural in the weeping of the aged. Youth is the seed-time of the harvest, and hath its sunshine and clouds. But age is the garnered fruit, the sere and the yellow leaf of all that was beautiful. When age weeps, ’tis for youth, not for itself. ”

“ If, however, they were limited to the heads of the department, and not extending down to the humblest workers in the office, the evil effects ever attending on such changes would not so materially operate against its interests, and, of course, that of the community. A general sweep of the employees of any one State or government department makes the whole system a gigantic political, rather than what it should be, a social, institution.
In whatever light, however, we view the post-office, it presents to us a subject of the highest interest. ”

“ Now it is that small boys of eleven and twelve years of age, panting, Sinbad-like, under the weight of huge bundles of newspapers, manage somehow to dart about and make rapid sorties into other ranks of boys, utterly disregarding the cries of the official policemen, who vainly endeavor to reduce the tumult into something like post-office order. If the lads cannot quietly and easily disembogue, they will whiz their missiles of intelligence over other people’s heads, now and then sweeping off hats and caps with the force of shot. ”

“ Presently the dark panorama begins to move: there is an uprising of a long stream of light in the240 eastern sky; a vast and mysterious movement, as impulsive and as sudden as that of light, agitates the city; sounds quick and incessant come upon the ear,—rattling of wheels, ringing of bells: the world and its inhabitants are awake. The night dream is over; reality assumes its power once again. Moving on, men, women, and children take their respective ways to business or pleasure, for this world is made up of both. ”

“ The inside of the office is now wide awake, the world outside is in arms and “eager for the fray.” Millions of letters go and come, millions of hearts are made glad by a mere stroke of the pen, which passes lightning-like through this postal medium, millions of hearts are alike made sad, and mourn and sob over the one line that brings news of sickness and of death.
The post-office in many points of view presents the appearance of a besieged fort. The chief clerk is at his post: he stands on a platform somewhat elevated above the line of the main floor ”

“ Every thing that sprung up from the earth in its order and beauty received the spirit of a new life from this holy and divine light. And when man in the image of his Maker stood in the Garden of Eden, there shone around him another light,—an emanation from God himself. Mind—intellect—power!
Man was the pioneer of the science of government. ”

“ Under the fostering care of the free spirit of the age, it has now become an institution in itself in this country, and controls the tides of the restless ocean of public opinion with almost resistless sway. It is the avant-courier of the genius of our institutions, and is everywhere the advocate of progress and of the highest and noblest forms of human freedom. ”

“ The fate of the bread-snatcher is an evidence that the precincts of justice and the foot-pace to its throne must be paved with gold, or his chance, or that of any other poor man, from escape is totally impossible. The man who steals a loaf of bread commits a crime: he should be punished: so should the man who swindles the government, robs the widow, commits forgery, nay, even murder, but whose wealth paves the way for his acquittal. ”

“ As we have stated, the immense amount of business transacted in the post-offices of large cities is not unfrequently lost sight of,—business transactions of a nature that few understand or comprehend, and which exercise an influence on men and nations equally as powerful as that of the press.
Few persons are acquainted with the inner arrangements of a post-office. Let any one glance into it as he passes, and he will be struck with the vast pile of mail-matter constantly arriving and departing, as well as the number of hands engaged in their arranging and distributing. ”

“ When the rebellion broke out, of course a line was drawn between the two sections of our country, leaving the South in possession of slavery and its fruits, and the North, with its vast amount of wealth, intellect, and artistic power, to contend against the world. Of course the South, heretofore dependent on the North for every thing genius, art, and skill produced, found they could not have a stamp cut that would even do credit to their bogus government. ”

“ The history of the English post-office affords but little interest to the general reader beyond that which its statistics and geographical calculations afford. It is, however, a history that goes hand in hand with its trade and commerce; and whatever improvements have been made upon its past history are owing altogether to the enterprise of those who are identified with those branches of the world’s great business.
It is not the statesman or the politician who originates, but the mechanic, the farmer, and the merchant. The former are the aristocrats of society ”

“ Nothing in the world tends more to change a man’s politics than the abuses arising out of the system pursued by men in power towards those in their employ. Thus comparisons are drawn between the two parties, and the course of each is canvassed; and not unfrequently, we regret to say, the Democracy has the advantage. It has always been a principle of the Democratic party to take care of “their men.” ”

“ We do not imply that from the political ranks there cannot be found men in every respect calculated to fulfil any office in the postal department, but we do mean to say that in numerous cases men are selected not for their ability to perform the duties intrusted to them, but for a blustering, roystering reputation they had gained in their respective wards. Every failure in our state department, the want of energy, the lack of intelligence, the confusion attendant on improper amusements, can invariably be traced to these improper political appointments. ”

“ The second Congress, held May 10, 1775, was remarkable for its action at a moment when liberty was as a “waif” in the political world, liable at every breeze to be lost in the vortex of its revolutions. It set the seal on British rule in the colonies forever! ”

“ The mere existence of a postal department of the government is not an establishment of monopoly. No government has ever organized a system of posts without securing to itself a monopoly of the carriage of letters and mailable matter ”

“ Will not the historian deign to notice the prior origin of every art and science in Egypt a thousand years before 27 the Pelasgians studded the isles and capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples,—long before Etruscan civilization had smiled on Italian skies? And shall not the ethnographer, versed in Egyptian lore, proclaim the fact that the physiological, craniological, capillary, and cuticular distinctions of the human race existed on the distribution of mankind throughout the earth? ”