an aggregate annual transportation of 71,837,914 miles, and an aggregate annual cost, including all expenditures, of $8,410,184.  The length of railroad routes is 32,092 miles and the annual transportation 30,609,467 miles.  The length of steamboat routes is 14,346 miles and the annual transportation 3,411,962 miles.  The mail service is rapidly increasing throughout the whole country, and its steady extension in the Southern States indicates their constantly improving condition.  The growing importance of the foreign service also merits attention.  The post-office department of Great Britain and our own have agreed upon a preliminary basis for a new postal convention, which it is believed will prove eminently beneficial to the commercial interests of the United States, inasmuch as it contemplates a reduction of the international letter postage to one-half the existing rates; a reduction of postage with all other countries to and from which correspondence is transmitted in the British mail, or in closed mails through the United Kingdom; the establishment of uniform and reasonable charges for the sea and territorial transit of correspondence in closed mails; and an allowance to each post-office department of the right to use all mail communications established under the authority of the other for the dispatch of correspondence, either in open or closed mails, on the same terms as those applicable to the inhabitants of the country providing the means of transmission.

The report of the Secretary of the Interior exhibits the condition of those branches of the public service which are committed to his supervision.  During the last fiscal year 4,629,312 acres of public land were disposed of, 1,892,516 acres of which were entered under the homestead act.  The policy originally adopted relative to the public lands has undergone essential modifications.  Immediate revenue, and not their rapid settlement, was the cardinal feature of our land system.  Long experience and earnest discussion have resulted in the conviction that the early development of our agricultural resources and the diffusion of an energetic population over our vast territory are objects of far greater importance to the national growth and prosperity than the proceeds of the sale of the land to the highest bidder in open market.  The preemption laws confer upon the pioneer who complies with the terms they impose the privilege of purchasing a limited portion of “unoffered lands” at the minimum price.  The homestead enactments relieve the settler from the payment of purchase money, and secure him a permanent home upon the condition of residence for a term of years.  This liberal policy invites emigration from the Old and from the more crowded portions of the New World.  Its propitious results are undoubted, and will be more signally manifested when time shall have given to it a wider development.