A. D. 28, by Victorius and Bianchini can not stand together. "Therefore," says Dr. Dr. Jarvis, "Victorius, or rather the early church, told an untruth as to a plain matter of fact." But if the new. moon was on the 14th of March, A. D. 28, according to the computations of Bianchini, it could not have been new-moon three days before, as it was according to the Canon of Victorius. If we admit the Canon of Victorius to be right, we must give up the computation of Bianchini; that is, it could not have been new-moon on the 11th of that month, and again on the 14th, three days after. These two things, we said, 66 can not stand together," and we say so still. Will Dr. Jarvis say that they can stand together? He speaks of civil time as distinguished from astronomical time. But did Victorius, or the Council of Nice, make any such distinction? And has not Dr. Jarvis, as we have shown in this number, endeavored to prove, that Victorius and Bianchini substantially agree? Whether “ Victorius, or rather the early church, told an untruth as to a plain matter of fact," all we have to say is this: That undoubtedly they spoke, as Dr. Jarvis himself has done in his own mistakes, honestly, and according to the best of their knowledge. If by "a plain matter of fact," the time of the new-moon so often mentioned, is intended, all that Victorius or the church in his time knew of the matter, was, as we believe, through a retrospective cal. culation by the Canon; and this as we have proved, gave a wrong astronomical result. Dr. Jarvis has not shown, nor can he show, nor make it probable, that any nation or individual in A. D. 28, believed that it was new-moon in March on the 11th day; and certainly he can not show this of the Jews. If he can not do this, then he has no means of show. ing, that the Jews celebrated the Paschal full-moon fourteen days af

ter; and his whole theory fails to the ground.

Dr. Jarvis, as may be seen in the above extract, finds it impossible to forget the Puritans. In another part of his Vindication,* he corrects a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, who has ascribed to the "American mind," what Dr. Jarvis supposes to belong only to the "Puritan mind." He would, therefore, correct the writer in Blackwood, and say, the Puri. tan is "an endless seeker of truth with no past at his back." We are not about to deny this to be just, nor to admit it to be so ;-since we are not greatly solicitous about our own Puritanism-nor are we able to see that any inquiry about this frightful heresy, as contemplated by Dr. Jarvis, is at all connected with the points of chronology, which we have undertaken to investigate. We would ask only, and with no feeling of displeasure-being in fact much more disposed to laugh at his attacks on his and our ancestors, than to be angry-if this account of a Puritan be correct, where does he place himself? Does he imagine, that in his astronomical reveries, he will be regarded as the " • exponent of the time and portion of the church in which he lives?" If so, we fear that he is destined to serious disappointment. In these speculations, especially in his mode of calculating a full-moon, he certainly has “ no past at his back;" and, though little given to prophesying, we venture to predict that he will have no followers. It may be left then, as a question for the curious, whether his plight in this respect is not that, which he himself denominates" wretched individualism ;"-and we would give him a friendly caution to be on his guard, lest he become a Puritan, according to his own definition of one, before he is aware of it.

In the preceding remarks, it has

* Page 92.

been our object to meet directly and fully, without any evasion or subterfuge, the arguments of Dr. Jarvis in defense of his chronological positions; so that he may not again be under the necessity of saying, that we have taken no notice of his "strong points," that we have hid "from the view of our readers the real state of the controversy,"--and that we are plunging "deeper and deeper into the quagmire of error." To remove in respect to this matter all chance of mistake, we will state particularly the several "points," as we understand them, about which we differ from the author-so far as his work has passed under review.

We have maintained, then, in this and in preceding numbers of the New Englander, that Cicero's consulship was in the six hundred ninety-first year of Rome, that Cæsar's expedition into Spain was in the forty-fifth year before our era, -that the death of Augustus was in the fourteenth year after our era, -that the supposition of a lost consulship rests upon no proper foundation, and that neither the year, month, nor day of the month of the Nativity, nor the year of the Crucifixion, has been ascertained by Dr. Jarvis with any near approach to certainty. If he should again honor any part of our observations with a notice, it would be received and acknowledged as a special favor, if he should point out distinctly where our reasoning is deficient. In our comments on his own reasoning we have been careful to adhere to a

rule, which we wish him to observe, and which is so obviously just. General declarations of the weakness of an opponent's course of ar gument, however they may impose on the understandings of some, go but a little way towards determin ing a controversy. We will add, that in our remarks we have aimed not at all at novelty. Indeed, after the labors of so many illustrious scholars in this department of learning, an attempt to bring forward anything new, might be thought to border on presumption. What we have said might be supported by a list of names of the highest consid. eration in historical research. But we are not disposed to rest on mere authority; and would rather appeal to the reasons, which can be urged in support of the opinions we have adopted, than to the names of those, who, as we think, have successfully led the way in chronological investigations.

We are looking rather impatiently for Dr. Jarvis's second volume. The reviewer will be among the first to procure and to read it; but he can think of no probable inducement sufficiently strong to lead him to a public notice of the work, however much he may dissent from the opinions it may contain. He would have abstained from any comments on the first volume, if he had anticipated, that in consequence of what he should write, the author's equanimity would be so greatly dis turbed.

FORTY years ago, a distinguished scholar of our countryt predicted the speedy failure of our federal system from the want of contact of the national government with the people. He said the post-office was the only tie that connected the government with the people, and the only branch of the government of which the people had any personal experience. At that day, the post-office system was in its infancy, comparatively, and its value and importance, as a part of the governmental machinery, and as a source of benefits to the people, were but imperfectly realized. We then had not above 2,000 post-offices, with 35,000 miles of post-roads, and gross receipts of about half a million of dollars. About fifteen years ago, there was a belief prevailing extensively among certain portions of the people, that a distinguished officer of the government had formed a scheme for making the post-office the instrument of an extended political system, designed for the perpetuation of a party and the aggrandizement of its leaders. And the more shrewd observers were convinced that, whether the charge was true or false, the postoffice had become so influential a branch of the government, as to be well fitted for such uses, in the hands of an ambitious and intriguing man. Such is the light which experience has thrown upon the predictions of the wise and the forebodings of the prudent, in regard to the working of our system of government. Instead of the govern

ment perishing for the want of contact with the people, this one branch is found to have mingled itself so intimately with the interests and enjoyments of the people, as to be a source of danger and a cause of alarm for the security of our liberties. Whether Amos Kendall ever had any base designs or not, the fact that he was charged with it, and that the party of which he was a leader was so soon overthrown by the people on this and similar charges, shows the extent to which the conviction has prevailed, that the post-office is capable of being converted into a tremendous machinery of political power of a party over the liberties of the nation.

Politicians, who have been sensible of the danger which might arise from a corrupt administration of the post-office, have hitherto relied for security solely upon one expedient alone that of limiting the expenditures of the department to its own income. The old saw, that "the post-office must support itself," has been repeated by men of all parties, until the greater part of them appear seriously to believe that it is found, totidem verbis, in the constitution of the United States—just as the same class of learned men quote the New England Primer, Shakspeare, and Tristram Shandy, as veritable Scripture. There is not a word in the constitution that gives the slightest foundation for this axi

gument in its favor which has ever been vouchsafed to us is in substance, that unless the post-office is limited by its income, it will be impossible to impose any limit upon its expenditures; that every man will demand a post-office at his own door, and then will demand a daily mail to be brought to him in a stage-coach drawn by four horses, and every public officer will insist upon having the franking privilege, and each party in its alternate periods of power, will not only grant all that every body demands, but will publish more documents than ever were published before, to be franked for the purposes of electioneering, and carried at the public expense. All these things have been done, in certain sections, to a shame ful extent; but to say there is no help for it, is to say that there is no power in the government to keep the keys of the public treasury, and is virtually a denial of our national capacity for self-government. We deny this whole theory, and the maxim that has been built upon it, that there is no security against wastefulness except by requiring the post-office to support itself. The government is bound to establish and maintain a post-office, whether the department can sustain itself or

not.

There have been fifteen years in which the post-office did not support itself. In 1833 it fell short of paying its own expenses, about $300,000, and in 1838 nearly $400,000. There was a deficiency to a considerable extent throughout the five succeeding years, occasioned by the multiplication of private mails, which the government was unable to suppress. This of course gave the lie to our famous maxim, and drove Congress, after much altercation and through many woful displays of ignorance, to the humiliating expedient of underbidding the private mails by putting postage at five cents for all distances under

300 miles. This experiment was tried by the very sticklers for the maxim, amidst their own confident affirmations, that it would be impossible to realize an increase sufficient to pay the expenses of the department. Thanks, however, to Mr. Niles's provision in regard to mail contracts, and to Cave Johnson's stern economy in administration, we not only find the number of letters doubled in two years by a half-way reduction of postage, but the department has been made to support itself, and to promise a surplus of revenue in the current year.

The reduction of postage to five and ten cents was a mere modifi cation of the old system, not the adoption of a new one. It left the franking privilege, the complicated accounts and returns, the consequent need of high compensation to postmasters, and above all, the prevalent superstition, that "the post-office must sustain itself," in its received meaning, to wit, that the letter postage of the north should be taxed to pay for the mail routes of the south, and for the franking of Congress. Its working is therefore by no means a sample of the new system, although its success in a pecuniary view is a conclusive proof that reduction of rate has the same tendency to increase correspondence in this country as in Great Britain. But it left the department, as before, to be still actuated by the principle of EIACTION, as its controlling spirit; and the present Postmaster General is not the man to shrink from carrying out this spirit of the law to its fullest extent. We can not discern or imagine one pretext for exaction, which has escaped his study, or failed of being applied to its utmost extent. Hence the rigor with which he has hunted down the transient newspapers, the complaints about the inclosure of letters for more than one person, often a convenience, and never a burden upon

the department; and hence the paltry altercations between the department and members of Congress about franking. Hence, too, the postal war with Great Britain, which almost cut us off from intercourse with Canada, and threatens to subvert our correspondence with Europe at this momentous crisis. All comes from the spirit of exaction; and this spirit of exaction in the department fosters and increases the spirit of evasion in the people; who become as sharp in devising expedients to shun payment, as the government is in multiplying charges. The system of cheap postage, invented by Mr. Rowland Hill, strikes at the root of the political danger of the post-office, because it brings the department more fully into contact with the whole people, and because it substitutes universal accommodation, instead of rigid exaction, as the pervading spirit of the post-office. The great simplification of the business also strips postage of its pretensions as a mystery, which people must consent to pay for, because they can not understand it. Every body can understand why a barrel of flour weighing two hundred pounds, should cost forty cents to bring it from Albany to Boston; but people can not see why a letter weighing a quarter of a pound should cost the same. They would even agree that it might be right to charge sixteen cents for the letter, at two cents per half-ounce, to pay for the accounts that have to be kept of letters, and for the sake of carrying out the principle of uniformity, and of preventing the mails from being overburdened with weight of parcels. It is stated, however, that the British government have just adopted a modification of the rates of postage on letters exceeding one half-ounce in weight-as the trouble of receiv-. ing and delivering is less in proportion on double than on single let The mathematical calculations would justify the principle

ters.

which was applied to pamphlet postage in our law of 1845, viz., to charge two cents for the first halfounce, and one cent for each additional ounce, up to the maximum weight allowed to be carried, which is three pounds.

The adoption of the penny rate would neutralize the danger of hav ing the post-office made a political machine for the corruption or the control of the people; just as some poisons are rendered quite harmless by being evenly diffused through the body or through the atmosphere.

The difference between Rowland Hill's system and the old postage is a fine illustration of the difference between truth and error. Truth is beautiful in its simplicity, while there is no end to the diversities of error. The absurdities and inconsistencies into which the system, founded on exaction, has run the post-office, are more than can be enumerated. But every one of them will be cured, as soon as we have adopted the new system, which depends for its success solely upon the extent to which it can accommodate the people. Two years ago, the following diversities existed in our post-office, in regard to the postage on newspapers. The statement was prepared by a New York paper from official documents: To Canada, prepaid,. To Europe by the Washington and New York line of steam

1 cent.

3 cents.

3 cents.

1 cent.

1 cent.

1 cent.

3 cents.

It was out of such complexities and absurdities and vexations, in part, that the difficulty arose between our Postmaster General and the British nation, which threatens