permitted to
operate, unchecked by the American line of mail steamers, between
New-York and Chagres? Would it not have been entirely at the mercy
of the commissioned agents of the British crown, who so well know
how to avail themselves of opportunities to promote their own
interests by advancing those of their government? To carry the
inquiry further, what would have been the condition of our
possessions on the Pacific coast, visited as they would have been
by British steamers--for where is the spot on the inhabited or
inhabitable globe to which they do not bear the union jack of old
England--had not the Aspinwall line been established? Such is the
universal pervasion of the money power in British hands, that at
present, as is well known, the Cunard line has extended a branch
to Havre, to transport goods to England almost free of cost, with
a view to appropriate to itself the freights from that quarter,
and thus not only crush the American line of steamers to Havre,
but be enabled to underbid the Collins line, and, if possible,
again monopolize the trade with the United States over that route.
Would all this have raised the prices of freights in American
sailing vessels, and given an advantage to the memorialists in
question, who had at one time monopolized to themselves the
freights, postage, and passage money in sailing ships? or would
not, on the contrary, such a state of things have operated so to
give a British tendency to trade everywhere, and to furnish
freights to British ships, at prices at which the American ship
owners could not afford to navigate their vessels?

"What, the Committee would ask, has the Government of the United
States done in the premises? Having under its charge the control
and direction of the United States mails upon land and sea, it has
thought proper to say that it would pay for the transportation of
the mails in _American steamers_, which can, if necessary, be
converted, at a small expense, into war steamers, and adopted, if
need be, into the navy proper, at an appraised value, and thereby
become efficient protectors of American commerce in the event of a
war. This is the head and front of the Government's offending, and
has, forsooth, aroused the ire of the commercial monopolists of
New-York, Boston, and elsewhere, because they can not any longe