| | |==========|============|=========|====================
| | |L1,062,797|L591,573.07s|2,532,231| 9s 7d $2.39
-----+------+----------+----------+------------+---------+--------------------

Total Average per Mile, $2.10-1/3. Average of four principal lines, $2.39.

[F] The Peninsular and Oriental Company run twice per month between
Southampton and Alexandria, and between Suez and Calcutta and Hong
Kong; twice per month between Marseilles and Malta; between Singapore
and Sydney every two months; and three times per month between
Southampton and Gibraltar, touching at Vigo, O Porto, Lisbon, and
Cadiz.

It would hardly be expected that the lines of this country should run
at cheaper rates than those of Great Britain, as the prime cost of
ships and their repairs, fuel, wages, insurance, etc., are much
cheaper there, and as they have more paying freights, in their
manufactured goods. It only explains to us, what has alway seemed a
mystery; that while the regular companies in England were making
money, nearly all of those in the United States not only had not made
money, but were embarrassed more or less, and were selling their
stocks at sixty to eighty cents on the dollar.

It is pleasing and instructive to examine the steam mail service of
Great Britain, and see the gradual, unfaltering progress that she has
made from year to year, since 1833; increasing the mail facilities and
the sums paid for them by constant accretion based on system, rather
than by any spasmodic legislation, or the ruling caprices of the
moment. These improvements have not come all in a mass, or in any one
year. Neither have they been abandoned at times of financial
embarrassment, or commercial depression. At such periods they have
been as regularly fostered as in the times of the most flush
prosperity; and have ever been properly considered one of the prime
agents and necessities for restoring commerce to its normal condition
and a safe equilibrium. The transmarine service, which cost but
L583,793, or $2,918,965, per annum until 1850,[G] now costs
L1,062,797, or $5,333,985; within a fraction of double the sum. While
the increase has not been slow, it has been steady and systematic,
just as it was necessary to meet the wants of British commerce
throughout the world. The language of the Hon. Senator Rusk on this
subject, in his Report made to the Senate, Sep. 18th, 1850, found in
Senate Ex. Doc. No. 50,