since ceased to import locomotives, and have, within the past two
years, almost ceased to import railroad iron. Our iron-workers obtain
coal at nearly or quite as low prices as do those of Birkenhead or the
Clyde. They have recently sent to sea some large screw-steamers that
perform well. No insurmountable difficulty appears to prevent the
launching of more until we have enough to serve at least our direct
trade with Europe and China. That determined, it may be possible
to ascertain whether we cannot assist Norway, Belgium and Sicily in
carrying our cotton, wheat and tobacco to the purchasers of it.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A POSTAL CAR.]

This decline in American tonnage is, it must be added, only relative,
whether the comparison be made with other countries or with our own
past. The returns show a carrying capacity in our ships more than
twentyfold that of 1789, and three times that of 1807; when, on the
other hand, it exceeded in the ratio of fourteen to twelve that of
1829, twenty-two years later. This interest is peculiarly subject to
fluctuations; some of which in the past have been less explicable than
the one it is now undergoing. Another decade may turn the tables, and
restore the flag of the old Liverpool liners to their fleeter but less
shapely supplanters. The steamer and the clipper are both American
inventions. Why not their combination ours as well? The centenary of
Rumsey's boat, not due till December 11, 1887, should not find its
descendants lording the ocean under another flag.

The monthly Falmouth packet of a century ago, sufficient till within
the past two generations for the mail communication of the two
continents, has grown into six or eight steamships weekly, each
capable of carrying a pair of the old sloops in her hold, and making
the passage westwardly in a fifth and eastwardly in a third of the
time. Can it be but ninety years ago that the latest dates at New
York (February 14, 1786) from London (December 7, 1785) brought as a
leading item from Paris (November 20) the news that Philippe Egalite
had by his father's death just come into four millions of livres a
year, that six hundred thousand livres paid by the Crown to his father
thereupon devolved to Monsieur (afterward Louis XVIII.), and that the
latter had kept up the game of shuttlecock with the treasure of the
French by "a donation of all his estates to the duke of Normandy, the
younger son of their Majesties, preserving for himself