1829. TROUBLESOME POSTMASTERS. 535 ters, and, when asked for a rebate, refusing to make it unless the packets were opened in their presence or before their clerks. This, it was said, might do in country towns and faraway places, at cross-roads, and frontier hamlets, but was impossible in great cities without a waste of time, a squeeze in the crowd, and a delay in the whole business of the office out of all proportion to the amount involved. Imagine a great merchant at New York standing before the window in the post-office opening letter after letter to see that none were overrated, while a clerk looks idly on, and a long line of busy men to whom time is money chafe at the delay! Thousands of persons have their letters delivered to them, but under the new order of things they must in future be present when the carrier arrives, detain him until their packets are examined, and send back such as are overcharged, or tamely submit to imposition.* A New York merchant was said to have paid fifteen dollars excessive postage in two months. Another, who complained to the Postmaster-General, was told that the law was simply being enforced, and that the evil was as broad as it was long. When a double letter was rated single the recipient did not send to the post-office to pay the deficiency, and the Government lost; but if a single letter was rated double he promptly demanded repayment of the excess. This he could have, provided the letter was opened in the presence of the postmaster or a clerk, and not otherwise. The new postmaster at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, having applied for "positive instructions" as to the return of excess postage, received an answer to the same effect.* Complaints proving unavailing, those who used the mails sought relief in such wise as best pleased them. One editor, and he was but a type of many, gave up his box at the postoffice, closed his account, and declared he would call for his mail in person, hold his place at the window, and open every letter in the presence of a clerk, no matter how incon * Niles's Weekly Register, July 11, 1829, vol. xxxvi, pp. 313-315. + Ibid., p. 315. + Ibid., p. 315. #Ibid., August 15, 1829, p. 393. venient it might be to himself or the public. Others sought private conveyances, and for a time it was proposed to establish a line of carriers between Baltimore and Boston, who should travel faster than the mails and deliver letters in their charge at less cost than did the post-office. 1829. GEORGIA INDIANS. 537 CHAPTER LIII. ISSUES OF THE DAY. THE policy of proscription having thus been adopted and the work of reform well begun, the new President and his secretaries began to define the position to be taken by the party on the question and issues of the day. None called for more prompt consideration than the long-standing quarrel between Georgia and the Indian within her bounds. The extension of her laws over the Cherokee lands in 1827 had been followed in the last days of Adams's term by the arrival at Washington of a delegation from the Cherokee nation, and an appeal to the outgoing President, through the Secretary of War. But it came too late for him to act, and was not answered till Eaton had been a month in office. The Indians complained that Georgia, in defiance of the laws of the United States and of solemn treaties duly made with them, had spread her jurisdiction over their lands; had decreed that all laws and usages made and in force in the Indian country should be null and void after June first, 1830; and that no Indian or descendant of an Indian should be a competent witness or concerned in any suit to which a white man was a party unless he lived with the Indian tribes; and asserted that, as their nation had no voice in the formation of the Union and had never been subject to the laws of any State, the recent act of Georgia was a wanton usurpation of power granted to no State either by the common law of the land or by the law of nations. To this, said the Secretary, there is but one answer. During the War for Independence your nation was the friend and ally of Great Britain, who claimed absolute sov |