for a moment believe, the people would not be
willing to have a fruitful field of industry in shipping occupied by
some great overgrown company, with a great coffee monopoly, which
would surely follow. Too much has been expected of large ships. The
clipper "Great Republic" is not freighted half of her time. The
"Leviathan" can not pay in freighting unless she runs to Australia and
the East-Indies, and runs slowly, on very little coal. She may do very
well with a voluntary cargo, which will load and unload itself in a
hurry, such as a cargo of emigrants, and not steaming at too a high a
speed. But it would require a dozen steamers as tenders to bring these
emigrants from Ireland, Bremen, Havre, Hamburgh, Amsterdam, and other
European cities, to her central depot in England. She would, however,
become a most useful if not indispensable transport vessel for the
British Government.

If the large class of steamers can not live on their own receipts,
much less can the small. An adequate speed for the mails leaves no
available space for cargo. The ship may carry two or three hundred
tons of freight; but it pays perhaps but little more than the handling
and the extra coal necessary to transport its extra weight. As a
general thing, it may be safely said that when a vessel is well
adapted to the mails and passengers she is filled with her own power,
that is, with heavy engines, large boilers, and a large quantity of
fuel, as also with her provisions and baggage. We have already seen
how the size and weight of engines and boilers must increase, as well
as the bulk and cost of the fuel, to gain a little speed. But it is
not generally known how large a quantity of consumable stores and
baggage go in a well-supported mail packet. The greater the postal
efficiency of a steamer the less is it able to carry freight; and the
time will doubtless soon come when the fast mail packets will take
nothing except a few express packages. The Persia now takes scarcely
any freight, and the Vanderbilt can not think of doing it when she
makes fast trips. It is very probable that the whole system of the
ocean will be materially changed; and that while clippers and slow
propellers carry the fine freights, fast vessels filled with their own
power will carry the mails and passengers. And in doing this, they can
not, of course, support themselves; neither will they conflict with
private enterprise in freight transport. It is now the case to a large
ext