Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/523

to the extensive advantages to trade, navigation, and commerce, to agriculture and manufactures, in the ready distribution of news, of knowledge of markets, and of transfers of funds, independent of the inestimable blessings of communication between distant friends, to relieve the heart from its oppressive anxieties. In our colonial state it took almost as long a period of time to convey a letter (independent of the insecurity and uncertainty of its transmission) from Philadelphia to Boston, as it now takes to pass from the seat of government to the tardiest limits of any of the states. Even under the confederation, from the want of efficient funds and an efficient government, the post moved on with a tardy indifference and delay, which made it almost useless. We now communicate with England, and the continents of Europe, within periods not essentially different from those, which were then consumed in passing from the centre to the eastern and southern limits of the Union. Suppose the national government were now dissolved, how difficult would it be to get the twenty-four states to agree upon any uniform system of operations, or proper apportionment of the postage to be paid on the transmission of the mail. Each state must act continually by a separate legislation; and the least change by any one would disturb the harmony of the whole system. It is not at all improbable, that before a single letter could reach New-Orleans from Eastport, it would have to pay a distinct postage in sixteen independent states, subject to no common control or appointment of officers. The very statement of such a case amounts to a positive prohibition upon any extensive internal intercourse by the mail, as the burthens and the insecurity of the establishment would render it intolerable. With what admi-