unning steamers, individual enterprise can not supply adequately
rapid ocean postal facilities, and if such facilities are yet wholly
indispensable to the commerce, the people, and the Government, the
only alternative presented is for the Government to pay for them, and
to require, as it has of all the American lines, such a speed as to
prevent injurious competition to sailing vessels and private
enterprise. Much capital is made by certain ship owners out of what
they call the undue discrimination of subsidies against their vessels;
but they can never lay this charge at the door of the fast and very
expensive mail packets, or elsewhere than upon the slow auxiliary
propellers which any of them have a right to attempt to run, and which
the Government never did and never will subsidize. This is the source
and the only source of all the vaunted injurious effects of steam on
the sailing stock of the country. It is a question with which the
Government has nothing to do, and which must be settled between
propeller owners and sail owners themselves, and with reference,
perhaps, to the wishes of their customers. Mail steamers have enough
to do to get money to pay their coal, provision, repair, and
innumerable extras bills, without wrangling over the freighting
business. And, from all this we conclude that the only means of the
Government securing an adequate mail speed is by paying for it. (_See
remarks of Committee on this subject, Paper E._)

SECTION VII.

WHAT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT TO THE PEOPLE?

RESUME OF THE PREVIOUS SECTIONS AND ARGUMENTS: IT IS THE DUTY OF
THE GOVERNMENT TO FURNISH RAPID STEAM MAILS: OUR PEOPLE APPRECIATE
THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMERCE, AND OF LIBERAL POSTAL FACILITIES: THE
GOVERNMENT IS ESTABLISHED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE: IT MUST
FOSTER THEIR INTERESTS AND DEVELOP THEIR INDUSTRY: THE WANT OF
SUCH MAILS HAS CAUSED THE NEGLECT OF MANY PROFITABLE BRANCHES OF
INDUSTRY: AS A CONSEQUENCE WE HAVE LOST IMMENSE TRAFFIC: THE
EUROPEAN MANUFACTURING SYSTEM AND OURS: FIELDS OF TRADE NATURALLY
PERTAINING TO US: OUR ALMOST SYSTEMATIC NEGLECT OF THEM: WHY IS
GREAT BRITAIN'S COMMERCE SO LARGE: CAUSES AND THEIR EFFECTS: HER
WEST-INDIA LINE RECEIVES A LARGER SUBSIDY THAN ALL THE FOREIGN
LINES OF THE UNITED STATES COMBINED: INDIFFERENCE SHOWN BY
CONGRESS TO MANY IMPORTANT FIELDS OF COMMERCE: INSTANCES OF MAIL
FACILITIES CREATING LARGE TRADE: THE PE