1st Session of 32d Congress, in Special Rep.
Secretary of the Navy, 1852, is forcible and worthy of remembrance. He
says:

[G] See Second Report, Steam Communication with India, 1851. Appendix,
page 419.

"The importance of the steam mail service, when considered with
reference to the convenience which it affords to the social
intercourse of the country, is as nothing when compared with its
vast bearing upon the commerce of the world. Wherever facilities
of rapid travel exist, trade will be found with its attendant
wealth. Of the truth of this proposition, no country, perhaps,
affords a more forcible illustration than Great Britain, as none
has ever availed itself, to so great an extent, of the benefits of
easy and rapid intercommunication between the various portions of
her almost boundless empire. The commercial history of England has
shown that mail facilities have uniformly gone hand in hand with
the extension of trade; and wherever British subjects are found
forming communities, there do we find the hand of the government
busy in supplying the means of easy and safe communication with
the mother country. With a view to this, we have beheld England
increasing her steam marine at an enormous expense, and sustaining
packet lines connecting with every quarter of the globe, even in
cases where any _immediate_ and _direct_ remuneration was out of
the question. The great object in view was, to draw together the
portions of an empire upon which the sun never sets, and the
martial airs of which encircle the globe, and to make British
subjects who dwell in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and even
Oceanica, all feel alike that they are Britons."

The Hon. Thomas Butler King, formerly Chairman of the Naval Committee,
in a speech in the House, 19th July, 1848, said on this subject:

"In the year 1840 a contract was made by the Admiralty with the
Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, at two hundred and forty thousand
pounds sterling, or one million two hundred thousand dollars per
annum, for fourteen steamers to carry the mails from Southampton
to the West-Indies, the ports of Mexico in the Gulf, and to
New-Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston. These ships are of
the largest class, and are to conform in all respects, concerning
size and adaptation to the purposes of war, to the conditions
prescribe