freight; and
that steamers must be fast to do successful mail and profitable
passenger service:_

6. _Conceded_ (Section VI.) _that sailing vessels can not
successfully transport the mails; that the propeller can not transport
them as rapidly or more cheaply than side-wheel vessels; that with any
considerable economy of fuel and other running expenses, it is but
little faster than the sailing vessel; that to patronize these slow
vessels with the mails the Government would unjustly discriminate
against sailing vessels in the transport of freights; that we can not
in any sense depend on the vessels of the Navy for the transport of
the mails; that individual enterprise can not support fast steamers;
and that not even American private enterprise can under any conditions
furnish a sufficiently rapid steam mail and passenger marine: then,_

The inference is clear and unavoidable, and we come irresistibly to
the conclusion, that it is the duty of the Government to its people to
establish and maintain an extensive, well-organized, and rapid steam
mail marine, for the benefit of production, commerce, diplomacy,
defenses, the character of the nation, and the public at large; and as
there is positively no other source of adequate and effective support,
to pay liberally for the same out of any funds in the national
treasury, belonging to the enterprising, liberal, and enlightened
people of the Republic. There is no clearer duty of the Legislative
and Executive Government to the industrious people of the country than
the establishment of liberal, large, and ready postal facilities, for
the better and more successful conduct of that industry, whether those
facilities be upon land or upon the sea. It is sometimes difficult to
extend our vision to any other sphere than that in which we move and
have our experiences; and thus there are many persons who, while they
would revolt at the idea that the Government should refuse to run
four-horse coaches to some little unimportant country town, would be
wholly unable to grasp the great commercial world and the wide oceans
over which their own products are to float, and from whose trade the
Government derives the large duties which prevent these same persons
having to pay direct taxes. They do not understand the necessity of
commerce, to even their own prosperity, or of the innumerable steam
mail lines which must convey the correspondence essential to the safe
and proper conduct of that comme