capacity. No period ever witnessed so many, so rapid,
and so well-filled mails. It is evident that no telegraphic system can
properly do detailed business. First, it is and must ever remain too
costly. Second, it would require about as many lines as business men,
to give them all equal chances, and no one the profitable precedence.
Next, there is nothing positively accurate and fully reliable. No
signatures can pass over the line. No transaction can be made final by
it. No bank will pay, or ought to pay, money on public telegraphic
drafts. And, as in the land service, so in the ocean. The telegraph
across the ocean will simply create far more business for the mails,
and make it desirable and indispensable that they shall be sent and
received by the most rapid conveyance known to the times. Thus, it is
evident that this new and as yet not fully established agent of
international communication, so far from obviating our rapid
transmarine service, will but the more effectually necessitate it.

Nor must it be forgotten that our commercial prosperity largely
depends on the ready and comfortable transit of passengers. The
passenger traffic has increased with astonishing rapidity during the
last eighteen years. Our smaller merchants can go abroad when mail
steamers are plenty, and make their own purchases and sales, without
paying heavy commissions and high prices to middlemen; do their
business on less capital; and thus benefit themselves and reduce the
prices to our consumers. Compared with sailing vessels, these few mail
steamers become the forerunners of trade and commerce, and create an
immense service for the sail. They enable us to save large sums of
interest or advances on merchandise consigned, and give to us quick
returns from the products which we ship abroad. This has long been
evident to Great Britain, and she has acted liberally on the
suggestion. So desirable is the service for the general prosperity of
her people, that she expends annually for her foreign steam mails
nearly six millions of dollars, while they do not return to the
treasury much above three. She regards the expenditure as she does
that for the navy and the army, a necessity for the public
preservation and prosperity.

As regards the lines that we now have, they are among the noblest in
the world. For aggregate comfort, convenience, safety, speed, and
cheapness, they are not equalled by the most famous British lines.
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