e time on the waters between the two countries
twelve million dollars in specie and twenty in credits, tossing about
the ocean, unproductive and unsafe, and entailing all of the evils
incident to the uncertainty as to the time when it will arrive. But if
this is not sufficient, extend the inquiry to South-America, and
China, and India, and see how enormous and useless a waste of money
and interest is incurred in the many millions which by sailing vessels
and slow steamers is fruitlessly gilding the ocean for months. Money
is too valuable and interest too high to keep so many millions of it
locked up from the world. At two and three per cent a month, the
nation, or, what is the same thing, its commercial and mercantile
classes, as representing the producing, would soon become bankrupt.

The only avoidance of these evident evils is in a rapid transmission
of the mails, specie, and passengers. And herein consists the chief
value of the rapid ocean steamer. It is an important case which the
Telegraph, with all of its benefits, can never reach. It can never
transmit specie; neither the evidences of debt nor of property. The
voluminous mails, with all of their tedious details, upon which such
transactions depend, must go and come on steamers, and on steamers
only. They have the certainty, which will satisfy men and prevent
speculation, gambling, and imposition; they have the speed, which
shortens credit, keeps specie alway in active use, and enables
commercial men to know, meet, and supply the wants of the world before
they become costly or crushing; and they give a rapid and comfortable
transit to passengers, who can thus look after their business, and
save much to themselves and to the producer and consumer. Compared
with sailing vessels their efficiency is really wondrous. Foreign
correspondence was formerly very limited, and the interchange of
interests, feelings, and opinions was slow and tedious. Each nation
depended solely on itself; and instead of the brotherhood now
prevailing, communicated through the costly channels of war, by
messages of the cannon, and in powerful, hostile fleets. But the
foreign correspondence of the world is really enormous, and rapidly
increasing, since the introduction of ocean steamers; and no one will
say that they have had a small share in producing that fraternal
international spirit which is now so widely manifested in Peace
Congresses, Congresses of the Five Powers, explanations, conces