90 POST-OFFICE ABUSES. [CHAP. VI 



since dead, with whom I afterward spoke on the same subject, 

 informed me that much stronger measures had been taken in 

 Massachusetts, where the Legislature first passed a law, that no 

 rum or ardent spirits should be sold without a license, and then 

 the magistrates in many townships resolved that within their 

 limits no licenses should be granted. &quot; A most arbitrary pro 

 ceeding,&quot; he said, &quot; and perhaps unconstitutional ; for the Fed 

 eral Government levies a duty on the importation of spirits, arid 

 this is a blow struck at their revenue. But you can have no 

 idea,&quot; he added, &quot; how excess in drinking ruins the health in this 

 climate. I have just been reading the life of Lord Eldon, and 

 find that he was able, when in full work, to take with impunity 

 a bottle of port a day, which would kill any sedentary New 

 Englander in three years.&quot; 



We left the stage when we reached the present terminus of 

 the Boston railway at Concord, and, anxious for letters from 

 England, went immediately to the post-office, where they told us 

 that the post-bag had been sent by mistake to Concord in Mas 

 sachusetts, the letters of that township having been forwarded to 

 this place. Such blunders are attributable to two causes, for 

 both of which the practical good sense of the American people 

 will, it is hoped, soon find a cure. Synonymous appellations 

 might be modified by additions of north and south, east and west, 

 &c. ; and the General Post-office might publish a directory, and 

 prohibit the future multiplication of the same names in a coun 

 try where not only new towns, but new states are every day start 

 ing into existence. The other evil is a political one ; the prac 

 tice first, I am told, carried out unscrupulously during the pres 

 identship of General Jackson, of regarding all placemen, down to 

 subordinate officials, such as the village post-master, as a body 

 of electioneering agents, who must support the Federal Govern 

 ment. They who happen, therefore, to be of opposite opinions, 

 must turn out as often as there is a change of ministry. On 

 more than one occasion I have known the stage make a circuit 

 of several miles in Massachusetts, to convey the mail to the 

 postmaster s residence, because, forsooth, in the said village, all 

 the houses which lay in the direct road belonging to trustworthy 



