o evident
to need recital. The growth of our trade with Germany, France,
Switzerland, and Great Britain since the establishment of the Bremen,
Havre, and Liverpool lines of steamers has been unprecedented in the
history of our commerce. That with California has sprung up as by
magic at the touch of steam, and has assumed a magnitude and
permanence in eight years which but for the steam mail and passenger
accommodations created, could not have been developed under thirty
years. The mail accommodations have wholly transformed our commerce
with Havana and Cuba, until they are wrested from foreign commercial
dominion, as reason suggests that they must ere long be from foreign
political thraldom. As well might Europe attempt to attach the little
island of Nantucket to some of her own dynasties as to deprive the
United States of the control of the trade of Cuba so long as her steam
lines are continued to that island.

Mr. Anderson, the Managing Director of the Peninsular and Oriental
Company, recently testified before a Committee of the House of
Commons, that, "the advantages of the communication (between England
and Australia) should not be estimated merely by the postage. After
steam communication to Constantinople and the Levant was opened, our
exports to those quarters increased by L1,200,000 a year. The actual
value of goods exported from Southampton alone, last year, (1848-9,)
by those steamers is nearly L1,000,000 sterling. Greek merchants
state that the certainty and rapidity of communication enable them to
turn their capital over so much quicker. Forty new Greek
establishments have been formed in this country since steam
communication was established. The imports in that trade, fine raw
materials, silk, goats' hair, etc., came here to be manufactured.
Supposing the trade to increase one million, and wages amount to
L600,000, calculating taxes at 20 per cent., an income of revenue of
L120,000 would result from steam communication."

I am prepared to speak from my own observation, and from the reliable
statistics of the Brazilian Government, from the pen of the late Prime
Minister, the _Marquis of Parana_, a few facts of the same nature
relative to the trade between Great Britain and the Brazilian Empire.
In a paper which I prepared for the New-York Historical Society, and
published in "_Brazil and the Brazilians_," Philadelphia, Childs &
Peterson, I said, at page 618, in speaking of the trade of Great
Britain:

"