r
enjoy the gains which, for more than a quarter of a century, they
had wrested from the mass of consumers throughout the land, north,
south, east, and west. Your Committee must say that, in their
opinion, such complaints come with a bad grace from such quarters,
and it is to be feared that victorious steam will ere long,
without the aid of the Federal Government, supersede the sailing
ships of the memorialists, through the instrumentality of the
discoveries daily in progress, whereby the navigation of vessels
propelled by that power will be made a matter of comparatively
small cost."

Speaking of steam communication with Para and Rio de Janeiro, the
Report further says:

"When the almost unbounded capacity for trade of the basins of the
La Plata and Amazon is taken into view, embracing as it does a
great variety of useful products which may be advantageously
exchanged for the manufactures and agricultural productions of our
own country, the mind is at a loss what limit to assign to the
trade to which civilization and the extension of commercial
facilities must eventually give rise. Nor are the advantages of
this great prospective commerce to be confined to the immediate
intercourse between this country and the regions to which we
refer. While the prevalence of certain winds, and the form of the
coast of South-America, are favorable to a direct trade with the
continent of North-America, they are such as to compel the
commerce with Europe to pass along our shores, and thus constitute
our Atlantic seaports so many stopping places at which the ships
of the old world may touch in their voyages to and fro. Heretofore
the policy of the governments which occupy the regions watered by
the La Plata and the Amazon, and their respective tributaries, has
been so exclusive in its character as to trammel, if not entirely
prevent, their intercourse with distant nations. The different
sovereignties which have sprung into existence since South-America
became independent of European control, have been so jealous of
each other that they have appeared to try which should be most
succesful in expelling foreign commerce, lest it might bring to
some one of them benefits which others did not and could not
possess. A wiser policy, however, appears to be about to prevail
since the fall of Rosas, and t