e and
the United States, where there are large quantities of rich, costly
goods, in small and valuable packages, which pay an extra rate of
freight, as express goods; but, even here, the steam freighting
system without governmental aid has proved a failure. There have been
one or two cases where a steamer could make money in carrying freight
and passengers alone, as between this country and California during
the early part of the gold crisis, and owing to the great distance
around the Horn, as well as an unnaturally large passenger trade.
This, however, was a state of commerce wholly abnormal and of short
duration, and such as is not likely to occur once in a century, or
last very long; or prove more than an infinitesimal exception to the
great general laws of freighting and commercial transport.

Great Britain has learned this doctrine from experience, and is
profiting by it. Her wise merchants and statesmen know that commerce
can be accommodated only by rapid steam mails, which have regular and
reliable periods for arrival and departure; and that, although these
mails cost the Government and the people something more than those
slow and uncertain communications which depend on sailing vessels and
overland transit, yet they are enabled, by the facilities which they
afford, to monopolize and control the commerce of the world, and
divert it from even the most natural channels into the lap of British
wealth. It is in this view of the subject that our merchants so justly
complain that our Government, by refusing to give them the facilities
commensurate with the demands of the age, _deprives_ them of the
_power_ or _privilege_ of competing with foreign nations, and palsies
their hands, simply because they are not able, individually and by
their associated capital, to do that which the Government only can do.
The reason why our mail steamers require the aid of our Government is
that foreign Governments subsidize their lines; hence our individual
enterprise can not compete with their individual enterprise and that
of their Government combined. The reason why foreign Governments thus
subsidize their mail lines is, that _those lines can not depend upon
their own receipts for support, or run without Governmental aid_. This
is also the prime reason for Governmental aid in running our lines.
These facts are undisputed by steamshipmen and merchants, and are
verified by the practice of the whole world, and the great number of
failu