Frauds On The Postoffices

The franking abuse dies hard. Congrega tried all last winter and spring to screw its courage up to the point of reviving the abuse in all ita ancient magnitude, and very likely would have suoceeded had it not been that congressional elections take place next fall. And now it appears that the postoffice department has been sending Mr. Logan's currency gabble through the mails free. When complaints were made, the department was prepared with an explanation, which is ingenious if not tiuthful. The officials say that a clerk in the department had been directed to send a copy of Mr. Hippie -Mitchell's report on the railway mail service, embodying the viewB of the department, to postmasters and members of cougress. The officious clerk, having reached the bottom of his pile of reports, walked over to a neighboring desk where lay a stack of Logan's speeches, transferred them to his own desk, and sent them off too, supposing them to be reports. By way of explaining how the speeches carne to be in the department, it is stated that they were sent to an Illinois clerk in the department, who was supposed to stand in need of enlightennient on a subject to which Mr. Logan had devoted his spare moment for two whole weekf. The story is thin. A oorrospondent positively asserts that the clerk sent off Mr. Logan's speech in obedience to positive orders. Also that he, or some other clerk, franked copies of one of Morton's currency speeches in obedience to positive orders. This looks rather bad for the postoffice department. It is a serious offense to send electioneering documents through the mails free of charge, and the offense is aggravated in this case by the circumstance that the documents sent out advocate the most pestilent errors, against which the administration is thoroughly committed. It would be bad enough to frank the Jones memorandum all over the country. It is worse to frank speeches against the sound doctrines enunciated in that