supervised respectively by an assistant or the chief clerk. The Bureau of Appointment, under charge of the First Assistant, Horatio King, Esq., aide by sixteen clerks, investigates all cases having reference to the establishment and discontinuance of post offices, and the appointment or removal of postmasters and route agents. The Contract Bureau, superintended by W. II. Dundas, Esq., the second assistant, who has 24 clerks, attends to the arranging, advertising, and placing under contract the mailroutes, as well as altering the service on them, from time to time, as the public wants may require. It has also in charge the mail-messenger arrangements. The Bureau of Finance, under the supervision of the Third Assistant, John Marron, Esq., assisted by 21 clerks, manages so much of the fiscal operations of the establishment as the law does not devolve upon the Auditor. It prescribes the mode in which the postmasters shall pay over their balances, makes drafts for the collection and transfer of its funds, and issues warrants on the treasury to pay balances reported by the Auditor to be owing. This office also receives the quarterly returns of postmasters, and has charge of all business relating to dead letters and the issue of postage stamps. The Inspection Bureau, under the care of the chief clerk, John Oakford, Esq., aided by sixteen clerks, examines all reports from postmasters and others touching the performance of mail contractors, with a view to holding them to a faithful compliance with their obligations. It also makes periodical reports to the Auditor of all deductions from their pay for delinquent performance, and takes cognizance of all matters connected with mail depredations and the issuing of mail-bags. The office of the Auditor, which is not a bureau of the Post-Office Department, as above stated, but of the Treasury Department, collects debts due to the establishment, adjusts and settles the accounts of its mail contractors, postmasters, and other agents, and generally all claims originating under orders of the Postmaster-General. No other executive office at Washington can compare with it in amount of labor. It numbers 103 clerks, appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury, classed as follows:-pay clerks 12, examiners of postmaster's returns 44, book-keepers 11, registers 8, collection clerks 18, miscellaneous 10.

The following individuals have presided over this great bureau since its organization, viz. :—

Charles K. Gardner, appointed July 2, 1836; Elisha Whittlesey, appointed March 19, 1841; M. St. C. Clarke, appointed December 20, 1843; Peter G. Washington, appointed March 29, 1845; J. W. Farelly, appointed November 5, 1849; W. F. Phillips, appointed April 7, 1853.

Messrs. Whittlesey and Washington proved very efficient officers. The latter made valuable improvements in the mode of arranging and preserving its books and papers.

The department's agents, independent of an army of post-riders and clerks in post-offices, number nearly thirty thousand, embracing 22,320 local postmasters, 209 traveling ones, (route agents on railroad lines,) 5,500 mail contractors, 9 10 mail messengers, (employed at railroad depots and steamboat landings,) 18 special and 26 local agents. Its inlaud mail routes are divided into four geographical sections, and let to service for periods of four years. One of the sections being placed under contract each spring, the entire circle is kept in constant notion. Of the Postmasters, those whose offices produce a revenue of $1,000 a year, of which there are 258, are appointed by the President and Senate, the others by the Postmaster-General. For the convenience of the contract and account

ing business, the offices are further classified under the following denominations, viz. distribution, special, collection, draft, and deposit. The peculiar duty of the distributing portion, which are usually located at the gateways of States, or other large mail districts, is to consolidate, assort, and dispatch by the most direct lines the packages coming to them from different quarters. The special offices, exceeding 3,000, are generally situated in retired locations, off any public route, and have to pay for their mail supplies out of what they make. Those styled collection-over 17,000-are under instructions to hand their revenues quarterly to the contractors furnishing them with the mail. The draft offices-about 1,000 -are directed to retain their postages to meet special drafts made on them, by the authorities at Washington. Those denominated deposit, nearly as many--place their balances periodically in designated depositories.

The present energetic postal chief and his able assistants manifest a commendable solicitude to infuse the utmost practical vitality into every branch of the business intrusted to their supervision. The office of Postmaster-General, although connected with much power and patronage, has peculiar trials, owing to the fact that no man, however well-meaning and sagacious, can dispense this patronage to the satisfaction of all, or, however watchful and energetic, prevent, amid the multitude of agents attached to the postal service, numerous daily deficiencies and malpractices in duty, which give rise to much public annoyance, and bring down on the head of the department loud complaints, both on the part of the press and of individuals. The fact that Judge Campbell took charge of the establishment at a period when its expenditures considerably exceeded its revenues, whereby he is precluded from giving effect to many meritorious applications from different sections of the Union for increase of mail facilities, must have augmented the ordinary difficulties of the position.

Several reports from the department to Congress within a few years past have alluded to serious detects in our postal system--particularly its arrangements for mail billing, mail distribution, and securing the accountability of postmasters. In a small, compactly settled country, like Great Britain, from which we derived our theory on these subjects, it is easy to apply a proper corrective, which was accordingly done there a few years ago. But owing to the widely-scattered condition of the population of the United States, and the constant changes going on in the locations of its post-offices and the direction of its routes, insurmountable obstacles have opposed themselves to all plans suggested for reforming the matter on this side of the Atlantic. A serious additional impediment to the cfficiency of the American office grows out of the fact that it has not, in all cases, as the British and French postal departments have, entire control over the times of arrival and departure of the railroad mails.

Notwithstanding, however, this opening for improvement, the operations of the General Post-Office constitute, as hinted in the outset of this article, on account of their vigor and magnitude, a subject for general congratulation. The New York evening papers are perused the next afternoon in Cleveland, Ohio, and in Weldon, North Carolina-the former 671 and the latter 451 miles distant; and the following day in Chicago and Charleston. Similar instances of celerity in the dispatch of the mail-bags in other quarters of the country are numerous. Almost the entire distance from Maine to Texas, and from Massachusetts to Iowa, immense quantities of letters and printed matter are daily forwarded by its agencies with all the velocity attainable by the iron horse and steamboat paddle. A regular mail con

veyance, by coach and horseback, is made once a month from the banks of the Rio Grande to those of the Missouri, about 2,000 miles, through districts till recently settled only by half-breed Indians and imbecile Mexicans. From the latter point the post-riders again periodically take up the line of march another 2,000 miles over boundless uncultivated prairies and gigantic mountain ranges, rarely trodden except by the foot of the red man, to our remote possessions on the Pacific, fructifying the soil in their passage with the seeds of intellectual, social, and moral culture, as well as potently aiding to dispel the gloom of savage barbarity. The railroad and steamboat lines conveying the department's mails, if formed into a single route, would girdle the globe; and its ocean routes, if united in like manner, would nearly encompass it again. The tide of enlightened political sentiment wafted to the Old World by the latter promises a mightier influence in emancipating its masses from the thraldom of despotic civil institutions than revolutionary bayonets or imperial armies ever effected.

The following table shows the amounts actually credited for the transportation of the mails, by States and Territories, and the amount of postages collected in the same:

2,843,752 06 611,420 06 1,629,292 45 5,084,464 57 4,199,951 68

The following table exhibits the number of miles the mails were transported in the several States, together with the cost in each year from 1848 to 1853, inclusive :—

RAILROAD SERvice and cost fFOR THE YEARS 1848, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852, AND 1853.

Art. IV. FOREIGN EXCHANGES.*

EXCHANGE means, generally, the giving and receiving of one thing for another. When any article is said to possess exchangeable value, we mean that it can be given and received for something else. The general principle of exchange was well known and practiced in the earliest times. It is synonymous with barter-a system peculiar to the early condition of every country before the introduction of a particular medium of exchange.

That system of giving and receiving one article for another which is practiced by the inhabitants of any country among themselves, may be called their domestic exchange; and every banker may readily obtain a competent idea of this system of exchange, by attending to the daily operations carried on at his own counter. As the world grew older and society advanced in knowledge, and the inhabitants of one country became desirous of exchanging their products or manufactures for those of the inhabitants of another country, the system of dealing between these different countries acquired the name of foreign exchanges. Thus we had first the domestic exchanges, by which one thing was exchanged for another between the inhabitants of the same country, and then the foreign exchanges, by which the productions and manufactures of one country were exchanged for those of another or of other countries.

In addition to these two systems we have for many years had in active operation a third, and that is the exchanging of the productions and manufactures of one country for those of other countries dependent upon it, such dealings for instance as are in operation between the mother country, Great Britain, and her colonies in all parts of the world.

Foreign exchange is the system under which the inhabitants of one country exchange their productions and manufactures with the inhabitants of other countries. This has been often and clearly explained by different writers upon commercial, banking, and financial subjects, and those who wish to acquire a more extensive and thorough acquaintance with its various bearings than can be given in a paper of this kind, may consult with advantage the writings of Adam Smith, McCulloch, Gilbart, Tait, Waterston, and others, and the article "Exchange" in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

You will readily understand that if the commodities supplied by one

* We are indebted to the author, G. M. BELL Esq, Secretary of the London Chartered Bank of Australia, and the author of several valuable treatises on banking and kindred topics, for the following paper on Foreign Exchanges. It is part of an essay on Foreign and Colonial Exchanges,” which was read before, and discussed by the Banking Institute in London, Mr. MCGREGOR, late one of the secretaries of the British Board of Trade, and now member of Parliament, in the chair. Among the distinguished financiers and bankers who took part in the discussion were JAMES W. GILBART, F. R S., an able writer on Practical Banking, and the General Manager of the London and Westminster Bank, SAMUEL Rogers, the banker and poet, Mr. ATWOOD, of the British North American Bank, and the chairman, Mr. McGREGOR, all of whom paid a high compliment to the ability displayed by the writer of this article. Mr. BELL, who has kindly revised and made some verbal corrections in his essay for the pages of the Merch ints' Magazine, will excuse us for omitting the part relating to Colonial Exchanges. The only apology we have to offer is, that it does not possess the same general interest to the American, that it necessarily must to the British merchant and banker. We need mike no apology to our readers, as we are quite sure they will find Mr. Bett's definition of the nature and character of Foreign Exchanges at once clear and comprehensive.-Ed. Merch. Magazine.