sions,
and amicable adjustments of difficulties. The peaceful influences and
the civilization of the times are but another comment on the
capabilities of steam.

There are also certain classes of freights which steam is better
calculated than sailing vessels to transport; certain rich and costly
goods which would either damage or depreciate if not brought speedily
into the market. There are many articles also, as gold and silver
ware, jewelry, diamonds, bullion, etc., and some articles of _vertu_
as well as use, which are costly, and have to be insured at high
values unless sent on steamers; and which consequently can pay a
rather better price. As in the case of specie, they are too valuable
to be kept long on the ocean; but in the general traffic of the world
there is so little of this class of freight that steamers can place no
reliance on it as a source of income. These freights have abounded
most between France and England and the United States. This is the
principal reason why the New-York and Havre line of mail steamers has
run on so unprecedentedly small a subsidy; a sum not more than half
adequate to the support of a mail line but for that class of freights.
The Cunard line has also derived a large sum of its support from the
same source. All such articles passing by that line come from England,
Ireland, and Scotland, where they are manufactured; and being shipped
by British merchants, are given, as a matter of duty, to their own
steamers. Another reason for the Cunard line getting most of those
more profitable freights is that a steamer leaves every week; every
Saturday; and shippers sending packages weekly are not compelled every
other week to hunt up a new line, and open a new set of accounts, as
would be the case if they attempted to ship by the Collins
semi-monthly line.

These freights have hitherto proven a profitable source of income to
that line. As there is no manufacturing done in this country for
Europe, the Cunarders and the Havre as well as the Collins and
Vanderbilt lines, have no freights that pay the handling from the
United States to Europe. And not only has the Cunard line, by starting
from home, taken all of these profitable freights from the Collins,
but it has run a weekly line of propellers from Havre and taken the
freight over to Liverpool free of charge for its New-York and Boston
steamers, and thereby shared the freights and greatly reduced the
income of the Havre line. There being a