Particular attention is solicited to that portion of the report of the Postmaster-General which relates to the carriage of the mails of the United States upon railroads constructed by private corporations under the authority of the several States.  The reliance which the General Government can place on those roads as a means of carrying on its operations and the principles on which the use of them is to be obtained can not too soon be considered and settled.  Already does the spirit of monopoly begin to exhibit its natural propensities in attempts to exact from the public, for services which it supposes can not be obtained on other terms, the most extravagant compensation.  If these claims be persisted in, the question may arise whether a combination of citizens, acting under charters of incorporation from the States, can, by a direct refusal or the demand of an exorbitant price, exclude the United States from the use of the established channels of communication between the different sections of the country, and whether the United States can not, without transcending their constitutional powers, secure to the Post-Office Department the use of those roads by an act of Congress which shall provide within itself some equitable mode of adjusting the amount of compensation.  To obviate, if possible, the necessity of considering this question, it is suggested whether it be not expedient to fix by law the amounts which shall be offered to railroad companies for the conveyance of the mails, graduated according to their average weight, to be ascertained and declared by the Postmaster-General.  It is probable that a liberal proposition of that sort would be accepted.

In connection with these provisions in relation to the Post-Office Department, I must also invite your attention to the painful excitement produced in the South by attempts to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints and in various sorts of publications, calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and to produce all the horrors of a servile war.  There is doubtless no respectable portion of our countrymen who can be so far misled as to feel any other sentiment than that of indignant regret at conduct so destructive of the harmony and peace of the country, and so repugnant to the principles of our national compact and to the dictates of humanity and religion.  Our happiness and prosperity essentially depend upon peace within our borders, and peace depends upon the maintenance in good faith of those compromises of the Constitution upon which the Union is founded.  It is fortunate for the country that the good sense, the generous feeling, and the deep-rooted attachment of the people of the nonslaveholding States to the Union and to their fellow-citizens of the same blood in the South have given so strong and impressive a tone to the sentiments entertained against the proceedings of the misguided persons who have engaged in these unconstitutional