steam mail navigation is intended to secure adequate
protection for our commerce from foreign aggression in the event
of war; and in the second, that it was instituted at a moment when
the fine packet ships, to which the memorialists refer with such
becoming pride, had in fact been driven from the ocean to a
certain extent by the overwhelming power of a British mail steam
line, sustained by the British Government, which had monopolized
ocean mail and passenger steam transportation, as well as the
freights of lighter and more perishable descriptions of
merchandise. If, as these gentlemen have stated, the sailing ships
have been made to succumb, it has been under the force of an
agency more certain and not less powerful than the one named by
them--wielded by foreign capitalists and directed by a foreign
government claiming for itself the supremacy of the ocean. The
Cunard line of ocean steamers had been in possession of a monopoly
of freights, letter postage, and passage money for years, in
despite of the attempts of the memorialists to resist,
successfully, before the Government of the United States, seeing
that American interests were made tributary to foreign capital,
aided by a foreign government, adopted the wise course of
correcting the evil by kindred means, and placing, at least, to a
certain extent, American interests under the auspices of American
intelligence and enterprise. What would have been the condition of
the New-York lines and other ships had not the Government of the
United States thought proper to extend its aid to the
establishment of the Collins line? Would it have been any better
than at present? or rather would it not have been infinitely
worse? Had the Cunard line continued to prosper, as it must have
done in the natural course of things, would it not in all
probability have increased its number of ships until it would have
monopolized every description of ocean transportation? Would not
the trade with the United States have been entirely carried on in
British steamers, navigated at small expense, and therefore able
to do the carrying trade at low prices? Again, what would have
been the condition of the Southern coasting business, so far as
mails, passengers, and light freights, at least, are concerned,
had the fourteen British steamers then employed been