trade in Richmond. We suggest that parties having anything for sale
in Richmond, especially the necessaries of life, will make the fact
known through the advertising columns of The Whig.
POSTAL REGULATIONS
Changes in the postal laws affecting newspapers were so slight after 1825 that they have not been noticed under the various periods. Always, however, there was some discussion by Post- master-Generals, in their reports to Congress, about the advis- ability of charging for newspapers by weight rather than by piece. Attention was repeatedly called to the fact that small, struggling sheets paid the same postage as the mammoth blanket sheets of New York and elsewhere, which were, on the average, six feet square. On March 3, 1845, a new act, while changing letter postage, allowed the old newspaper rates to stand, except that all papers were granted free postage for not exceeding thirty miles from place of publication, provided that they were "of no greater size or superficies than 1900 square inches." In 1847 newspaper postage to California and Oregon was fixed at four and one half cents. In 1851 the free limit of thirty miles was abolished, but free circulation within the county of publication was granted. Under the same Act of 1851 quarterly rates were established. Weeklies, for example, paid five cents a quarter for all distances, under fifty miles and out of the county; ten cents for over fifty and under three hundred miles; fifteen cents for over three hundred and under one thousand miles; twenty cents for over one thousand and under two thousand miles; thirty cents for over two thousand and under four thousand. For semi- weeklies it was double, for tri-weeklies treble, and for dailies five times these rates. A distinction was made for newspapers under three hundred square inches: they were charged only one quarter of the rates just given.
These changes affected in no way the Act of 1825 which granted to every printer of a newspaper permission to send one paper free of charge to each and every other printer of a news- paper in the United States. This special privilege, undoubtedly abused by the printers, imposed heavy burdens upon the Postal Department, for Postmaster-Generals were continually discus-
