ns of its friends, be at once abandoned. Let Great
Britain be again the guardian of our commercial interests and the
beneficiary of American trade. Let the Liverpool, Bremen, Havre,
California, and other lines, which have furnished twenty-four as
noble sea steamers as ever floated, be abandoned to their fate,
and let the Cunard line and other British steam mail lines and
royal steamers supply their places on the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans, and our Southern seas.

"Your Committee would again repeat that the question to be
considered is not one of mere dollars and cents, or whether
certain individuals are to be sustained, or not, but one of
infinitely greater consequence--whether this proud republic shall
now and hereafter exist as a power competent to maintain her
rights upon the ocean. The present condition of political affairs
in Europe is such as, in the opinion of many, to threaten a
general war among the nations of that quarter of the globe, and
the United States should stand ready, and able too, to protect the
rights of her citizens upon the ocean, in such an event. Were such
a crisis to take place to-morrow, or the next year, or within the
next five years, is the country prepared for it? The steam navy
proper amounts to sixteen steamers of all classes, which, together
with the twenty-four ocean mail steamers in the employ of the Post
Office Department, would give us a steam naval force not exceeding
forty in all. Is this the position we should occupy, while Great
Britain has at command upwards of three hundred war and mail
steamers? France has, it is believed, upwards of a hundred, and
the secondary powers of Europe have naval steam armaments in
proportion, most of them exceeding our own. This question will be
decided by the continuation or rejection of the system under
consideration, which, with all the difficulties attendant upon new
enterprises and under the most embarrassing circumstances, has
gone very far to sustain itself, and promises, at no distant
period, to become a source of large revenue to the Government, and
incalculable commercial advantages, pecuniarily and otherwise, to
the country."

The following is copied from the Report made by Mr. Rusk in 1850, and
published in Special Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1852.
Speaking of the services of the mail steamer