Please return this to the Reflector Office, Hamilton, by the first of December.
To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives in Congress Assembled:
The undersigned, your Petitioners, citizens of the County of Madison and State of New York, deeply sensible of the injurious effects of the late Post Office Law, passed at the last session of Congress, imposing upon transient newspapers prepayment of three cents postage, allowing to Members of Congress the Fran[k]ing privilege, and taking from newspapers issuing from the office of publication the right of transmission in the maiis free of postage for the distance of 30 miles; and believing that the law as it now is, operates almost as a total prohibition upon the circulation of transient newspapers, at the same time resulting in an actual and serious loss to the department, and that it inflicts upon the Country Press, a most unjust and ruinous competition with the Mammoth City Papers; would most respectfully and earnestly ask of your Honorable bodies for a restoration of the law as it existed previous to the passage of the act complained of, or for some relief from a law oppressive and unequal in its operations, the enactment of which was most unexpected to your Petitioners, and in their belief wholly uncalled for by the People at large. And your petitioners will ever pray, &c.
Curtis Hoppin William F Bonney
Otis Hunt
John H Brown Erastus Herring
David H Phipps Isaac Hopkins
Richard Griffin A B Walden
H R Sherrill
H. A. Haughton Cyranus White
H H Bagg E P Morse
R. M. Davis Daniel Henshaw
Wm Taggart Anson. W. Smith
Gardner Morse
[J hale?] Truden
J. C. Bellows
[Ashbel?] Storrs
John Landou
Jesse Brown
E L Payson
Oliver S. Welbrucken
David F. Payson
Levi Shepard
A. W. Wood
Geo Spencer
Dan Parmelee

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[ docketing ]
New York
Petition from Madison Co N.Y. to change the post office Law
[ docketing ]
Refer to Com Post Office & Post Roads
[ docketing ]
January 27, 1848 Referred to the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads
[ docketing ]
By
T. Jenkins
N.Y.

Printed Document Signed, 2 page(s), RG 233, Entry 367: Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Thirtieth Congress, 1847-1849, Records of Legislative Proceedings, Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to Committees, 1847-1849, NAB,