active
employment, by the ability their workmen have since acquired to supply
their home market with steamers of their own construction.

The advocates of subsidies have committed a grievous error in arguing
that postal contracts, given to one or more steamship companies, will
tend to a revival of shipbuilding for public benefit. It is evident,
on the contrary, that those ships, a part of whose cost is defrayed by
National bounty, would be run as monopolies against individuals who
have no such charitable aid. A subsidy given for the protection or
the assistance of shipbuilders is a downright robbery of the people's
purse. There can be no question about the propriety of giving a proper
compensation to steamship companies who carry the mails. They ought to
be paid as liberally as railroad or stage-coach companies, according
to the miles they traverse and the difficulties they surmount. Their
true policy is first to advocate a measure whereby they can be
supplied with the best ships for their purposes in the cheapest
markets of the world, not only because in ordinary traffic they can
thus better compete with rivals under foreign flags, but because
they can better afford to accept a moderate compensation from our
government for carrying its mails.

Mr. Charles S. Hill of New York, has recently published a pamphlet of
elaborate statistics, his object being to prove that Great Britain has
protected not only her commerce, but her shipbuilding, by subsidies.
In one respect he is right. By liberal payment for the carriage of her
mails she has indirectly fostered commerce in maintaining regular
postal intercourse. But there is not the slightest evidence to show
that she paid out her public money to encourage either private
shipbuilding or ship owning. In England each of these industries
stands by itself, and is able to maintain itself. All that either
of them asks, and all that they both receive, is liberty. It is this,
and this alone, that has given them their overshadowing success.

_It is the want of it, and only the want of this great element of
prosperity, that has brought upon them in the United States the
oft-lamented "decadence."_ In this one sentence the whole story may
be read.

In giving her postal contracts, England never enquires where the ships
that carry the mails are built. It is sufficient that under her flag
they perform their work.

It was only the other day that a British subsidized line on the coast
o