all who shall not direct them to be put into the mail. Will you hint this to Freneau?" Federal postal acts of 1793 permitted every printer of a newspaper to send one copy without charge to every printer of a newspaper in the United States. Other provisions permitted newspapers to be carried in separate bags from letters at a fixed rate of one cent for a distance not over one hundred miles. Papers going farther were charged a cent and one half, but a restriction was made that postage on a single newspaper in a state where it was published should not exceed one cent. An additional act, the same year, insisted that news- papers should be dried by the publisher before being turned over to the postmaster for transmission: the Pdstal Department ob- jected to carrying too much water in its mail-bags. No distinction was made in the matter of weight of the different newspapers; whether they were large or small they paid the same price per copy.
READEKS BUT NOT BUYERS OF PAPERS
During this period, newspapers when sent regularly through the mail seemed to be more or less common property like um- brellas left in the hallways. The complaints about non-delivery of papers were frequent. Even George Washington had to com- plain on this matter, and in a letter to a Philadelphia printer who was about to establish a paper he made the following request: "It has so happened, that my Gazettes from Philadelphia, whether from inattention at the Printing or Post offices, or other causes, come very irregularly to my hands. Let me pray you therefore to address those you send me, in the appearance of a letter The common paper, usually applied, will do equally well for the cover. It has sometimes occurred to me, that there are persons who, wishing to read News Papers without being at the expense of paying for them, make free with those which are sent to others; under the garb of a letter it is not presumeable this liberty would be taken."
AN ADDITIONAL DUTY OF POST-RIDER
The post-rider was not only a carrier of the Gazettes in the early days of the Republic, but he was also a collector
