rve all purposes except travel quite as
well. And certainly there is no class of freight for Australia or any
other portion of the world, which will pay such an enormous coal-bill,
and so many other expenses, and the interest and insurance on three
and a half to four millions of dollars, just to save a few days in so
long a voyage. And if the steamer is to do a freighting as well as
passenger business, then a long voyage is essential to her.

Running is the legitimate business of a steamer. Her costly engines
are put in her for locomotion. Her large corps of engineers, firemen,
and coal-passers, are employed for running her, and are of no use when
she is lying still, although necessarily on full pay. Her condition is
abnormal and unnatural every day that she is lying at the docks, and
taking or discharging freight; and hence, every day that she is thus
employed she is not performing her proper functions. A sailing ship
can better afford to lie still for weeks and await a freight, or
slowly receive or discharge cargo; as she must pay only the interest
on her investment, her dockage, the captain, and watchmen, and perhaps
her depreciation. The prime investment is much less. She has no costly
engines and boilers. So are her current expenses. She has none of the
costly _employees_ that I have named, and who can never leave a
steamer for a day. But eternal motion, flush freights, flush business,
good prices, and constant employment, are everywhere essential to the
steamer.

Suppose the "Leviathan" steamer running between Liverpool and
New-York. She would be occupied ten days at least in receiving her
freight, ten days in running and making port or docks, and ten days in
discharging. Then, she would be employed only one third of her time in
the business for which she was constructed, running; while during two
thirds of it she would be acting simply as a pier or dock, over which
freight would be handled. Now, with her costly engines, and costly and
necessarily idle _employees_, she can not afford to be a dock; neither
can she afford to lie still so long. Nor can she on such conditions
get the freight necessary to her support. The community on neither
side of the water would wish fifteen thousand tons of any class of
freights which she could transport dumped down upon the docks at one
time. They wish it to arrive a little and a little every day, as it is
wanted, just enough to supply the market; and will not lie out of the
mo