ars, which the Government deems
a sufficient period for the establishment and test of a system. (_See
_projet_ of Franco-American Navigation, page 198._)

Among the many expedients adopted for the transmission of the foreign
post are those of employing ordinary sailing vessels on the one hand,
or the vessels of the war marine on the other. Both systems have been
effectually and forever exploded and abandoned. The objections to
sailing vessels are very numerous. They are, in the first place, too
slow. They are too uncertain in their days of sailing and arrival.
They can never be placed under the direction of the Department because
they are private property, devoted to private uses, and generally
accomplish their ends by private means; one of the most prominent of
which is, to keep back all letters except those going to their own
consignees. If a merchant runs his ship for personal gain it is not to
be supposed that he will carry the letters of his commercial
competitors, and thus forestall his own speculations. Sailing vessels
have no proper accommodations for the mails, and can not fairly be
forced either to transport or to deliver them. The uncertainties of
cargo are such that they can not sail on fixed days with punctuality.
But the great difficulty is their want of speed and the uncertainty of
their progress or arrival. Whenever they have been employed by the
British Government for postal service they have always proven
themselves inefficient and unreliable. Whenever they have been
superceded by steamers, the postal income, before small, has gone up
rapidly to five, ten, or twenty times the former income. This was well
illustrated in the British and Brazilian lines. The Parliamentary
returns for 1842, when postal service with Brazil and La Plata was
performed by a line of fine sailing packets, give the total income
from postages at L5,034, 13_d_, 6_s_ Lord Canning, the British Post
Master General, stated that, in 1852, two years after the Royal Mail
Steam Packets commenced running to Brazil and La Plata, the income
from postages was L44,091, 17_s_, or nearly nine times as much as when
the mails went by sailing vessels.[D] Ship owners have a strong
aversion to receiving letters for the places to which their ships are
bound. As a barque was about sailing from New-York for Demerara in
1855, I called on the owner, who was on the dock, just before the
vessel got under way, and asked that some letters which I held in my
h