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ARE OCEAN STEAM MAILS DESIRABLE AND NECESSARY FOR A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE? THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE DEMANDS THEM: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF NATIONS: FAST MAILS NECESSARY TO CONTROL SLOW FREIGHTS: THE FOREIGN POST OF EVERY NATION IS MORE OR LESS SELFISH: IF WE NEGLECT APPROVED METHODS, WE ARE THEREBY SUBORDINATED TO THE SKILL OF OTHERS: THE WANT OF A FOREIGN POST IS A NATIONAL CALAMITY: OTHER NATIONS CAN NOT AFFORD US DUE FACILITIES: WARS AND ACCIDENTS FORBID: THE CRIMEA AND THE INDIES AN EXAMPLE: MANY OF OUR FIELDS OF COMMERCE NEED A POST: BRAZIL, THE WEST-INDIES, AND PACIFIC SOUTH-AMERICA: MAILS TO THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE BY THE NUMEROUS CUNARD VESSELS: CORRESPONDENCE WITH AFRICA, CHINA, THE EAST-INDIES, THE MAURITIUS, AND AUSTRALIA: SLAVISH DEPENDENCE ON GREAT BRITAIN: DESIRABLE FOR OUR DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE: FOR THE CONTROL OF OUR SQUADRONS: CASES OF SUFFERING: NECESSARY FOR DEFENSE: FOR CULTIVATING FRIENDLY RELATIONS AND OPENING TRADE: THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH WILL REQUIRE FASTER AND HEAVIER MAILS: OUR COMMERCE REQUIRES FAST STEAMERS FOR THE RAPID AND EASY TRANSIT OF PASSENGERS: MODES OF BENEFITING COMMERCE.

Having seen that the ocean steam mail service is largely developed in some countries, especially in Great Britain, and that the second and third commercial powers of the world, the United States and France, have not largely employed this important agent in their commerce, the inquiry naturally arises, whether fast ocean steam mails are desirable and necessary to the commercial prosperity of a people. Whether this question be considered in its relative or its natural bearings, the reply is the same. Relatively considered, a large ocean steam mail service is indispensable to a people who are largely commercial, because the most noted commercial rivals of the world employ it, and thus either force them to its use, or the loss of their commerce, and the gradual transference of their shipping and trade into the hands of their rivals. Considered in its natural bearings, in its direct influences and effects per se, it becomes even more evidently necessary, as the means of a ready and reliable knowledge of the condition, wants, and movements of all those with whom a commercial nation necessarily has business, or could or should create it.

The spirit of the age demands a more intimate acquaintance and communication than we have hitherto had with the outer world. Our knowledge of foreign lands has pointed out innumerable wants hitherto unknown, and suggested innumerable channels of their supply. Nations have learned to depend on each other as formerly neighbor depended on his neighbor for any little necessary or luxury of life. The luxurious spirit of the times requires the importation and exportation of an immense list of articles with which foreign countries were formerly unacquainted, but which have now become as indispensable as air, and light, and water. And if it is not necessary that these many articles shall be transported from land to land with the speed of the telegraph or the fleetness of the ocean steamer, it is at any rate necessary that the facts concerning them, their ample or scarce supply, their high or low price, their sale or purchase, their shipment or arrival, their loss, or seizure, or detention, should be made known with all of the combined speed of the telegraph, the lightning train, and the rapid ocean mail steamer. If we possess ourselves these facilities of rapid, regular, and reliable information to an extent that no other nation does, we will be the first to reach the foreign market with our supplies, the first to bring the foreign article into the markets of the world, and the proper recipients of the first and largest profits of the cream of the trade of every land.

If we neglect these precautions, and refuse to establish these facilities, because their cost is apparent in one small sum of expenditure, while their large returns in profits diffused among the whole people are not so palpably apparent to the common eye; if we leave to the genius and enterprise of the people that which private enterprise and human skill unaided can never accomplish; in a word, if we fail to keep up with the world around us, and to progress pari passu with our wise, acute, and experienced commercial rivals, then, as a matter of course, the information which we receive from the foreign world must come through others, and those our rivals, and must be deprived of its value by the advantage which they have already taken of it. It is idle to suppose that any commercial nation on earth will not so arrange her foreign post as to exclude others than her own citizens as much as possible from its benefits. This is a paramount duty of the government to the citizen. It is therefore apparent that our commerce must of necessity greatly suffer when its conduct is at all dependent on foreigners and competitors, and that it is exceedingly desirable, for the avoidance of such a calamity, that we should have independent and ample foreign mail facilities of our own, wherever it is possible for our people to trade and obtain wealth.

It is clearly impossible that other nations should afford these facilities, or that our people should have confidence in them if attempted, or that they could be in any sense reliable in those many cases of exigency, national disputes, war, and accident, which usually afford us our best chances of speculation and profit. A dependence on foreigners for this supply of information, which never reaches us until it is emasculated of its virtues, is extremely hazardous. It fails just at the point where it is most desirable. Foreign nations, especially the commercial European nations, are constantly at war, and are constantly interrupting their packet service. The late Crimean and the present Indian wars are a good illustration. Our country, isolated from the contending nations, and fortified against continual ruptures by a policy of non-intervention, is peculiarly blessed with the privilege and ability to regularly and unintermittingly conduct her commerce and reap her profits, even more securely, while her rivals are temporarily devoting their attention to war. Such being the fact, it is wholly desirable and necessary to the end proposed that our steam post should on all such occasions regularly come and go, even amid the din of battle, and the conflict of our rivals, who for the time are powerless to oppose our peaceful and legitimate commerce, and are generally but too glad to avail its offerings.

There are many instances of the desirableness and the necessity of the transmarine steam post on important lines of foreign communication where we have a large trade, and yet no postal means of conducting it. Our immense trade with Brazil and other portions of South-America, which if properly fostered would increase with magic rapidity, sends its news and its freight by the same vessel, or is compelled to use the necessarily selfishly arranged, and circuitous, and non-connecting lines of Great Britain. A letter destined for Brazil, four thousand miles distant, must needs go by England, Portugal, the Coast of Africa, Madeira, and the Cape de Verdes, a distance of eight thousand miles, in a British packet. One destined for the Pacific Coast of South-America must go to Panama and await the arrival of the English packet, with London letters more recently dated, before it can proceed on to Callao, Lima, or Valparaiso. Letters destined to the West-Indies can go to Havana only, by American steamers; but they must there await the British line which takes them to St. Thomas, and there be distributed and forwarded to the various islands, the Spanish Main, the Guianas, Venezuela, and New-Granada by some one of the ten different British steam packet lines running semi-monthly from that station.

So with half of our letters which go to the Continent of Europe: they must go by the Cunard line to England, and thence by English steamers to the British Channel, the Baltic, the White Sea, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Constantinople, or the Black Sea. Those to places along the coast of Africa and to the Cape of Good Hope are dependent on the same English packet transit. For our communication with China, India, Australia, the East-Indies generally, and the Islands of the Pacific, we are entirely and slavishly dependent, as usual, on Great Britain. Instead of sending our letters and passengers direct from Panamá or San Francisco to Honolulu, Hong Kong, Shanghae, Macáo, Calcutta, Ceylón, Bombáy, Madrás, Sydney, Melbourne, Batavia, the Mauritius, and the Gulf of Mozambique, by a short trunk line of our own steamers, and from its terminus only, by the British lines, they now go first to England, as a slavish matter of course, then across the Continent or through the Mediterranean to Egypt, thence by land to the Red Sea, and thence to China and the East-Indies; or from England by her steam lines around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia and the East-Indies; or by slow and uncertain sailing packets direct from our own country, either around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. It is evident to every reflecting man who has given the subject any attention, that all of these lines of communication would be very desirable, and very highly profitable to our people at large; and that the latter and that along the West Coast of South-America could be easily established by two new contracts for that purpose, or in some other way, to the great and lasting advantage of our countrymen.

The transmarine post is very desirable for the better conduct of our foreign diplomacy and the consular service. It is now almost impossible for our ministers and agents abroad to hold any thing like a regular correspondence with the State Department, unless it be those in Southern and Western Europe. I was told last year by our Minister in Rio de Janeiro that his dispatches from the Government at home seldom reached him under four months; and Mr. Gilmer, the Consul of the United States at Bahia, reports, in the "Consular Returns" now about to be published, that his dispatches never come to hand under four months, that they are frequently out six months, and that many are lost altogether. This is the experience and the reïterated complaint of nearly every foreign employée of the Government, who has any zeal in prosecuting his country's business, and may find it necessary to get instructions or advice from home. Many knowing the delays, uncertainty, and irregularity of correspondence, make no attempt whatever to communicate regularly with the Department. We frequently express great surprise that we have no intelligence from our ministers, special ambassadors, and agents; but do not reflect that in the majority of cases dispatches have to be sent by irresponsible and slow-sailing vessels, or by the steamers of Great Britain, which it may be safely asserted are in no particular hurry to deliver them to us. Three several letters sent by me at separate times through the British mail from Rio de Janeiro for New-York never reached their destination.

Nor is it better with our squadrons on foreign stations. They receive their orders in the same slow and irregular way, and find it almost as easy to send a vessel when they wish to communicate with the Navy Department, or await the movements of their dull old storeships, as to attempt any other means of intercourse. It may be safely said that they are not actually under the control of the Department, in many important cases, one time in ten. Whatever the dispute, it is left entirely at the will of the Commodore, or it remains unsettled altogether. Our recent accumulated Paraguayan difficulties is a case in point. American citizens were driven from the country, and their valuable property confiscated. They applied to the Commodore for relief, but could not obtain it. Our surveying vessel, engaged in a permitted scientific exploration, was fired into and had some of her men killed; and redress being demanded by the Captain from the Commodore, it was refused. The Commodore feared transcending his instructions: he could not communicate with the home authorities much under a year; and so the case rested, and yet rests. These wants, papable as they are in times of peace, become doubly pressing in time of war. Let a conflict commence with England, or France, on whom we depend for mails, or with their allies, and they could easily surprise and destroy every squadron which we have upon the high seas months before they would necessarily hear of a declaration of war, or know why they were captured. The very contemplation of such possibilities is intolerable, and should be sufficient of itself, setting aside all considerations of commerce and diplomacy, to arouse our nation to the adoption of the proper means for its safety and defense.

An effective steam postal marine is unquestionably most desirable and necessary for the defense of our country, and for the prosecution of any foreign war. Lord Canning, the British Post-Master General, recently said in a report to the House of Lords, that although all of the steam mail packets might not be able to carry an armament, or be required in the transport service in time of war, yet the mail facilities which they would then afford would be more important and necessary than at any other time. He had no idea that because engaged in a foreign war the postal service would be useless, but to the contrary, more than ever indispensable. Such proved to be the fact in the late contest in the Crimea, and such is to-day the case with regard to the troubles in India and China. Their postal vessels have proven a first necessity in both of these wars, not only for transport of the troops, but for speedy intelligence also. Without them, England could not have entered the Crimean contest, and the French forces would have been compelled to remain at home. Turkey would have been overawed, and Constantinople would have fallen before the Russian fleet. We are to-day, and always must be, liable to a foreign war. We have a great boiling cauldron running over with excitement all along our southern and south-western borders. Central America, Cuba, the West-Indies, and South-America are far more foreign countries to us than Europe or the Mediterranean to England. Cuba will no doubt be at some day our most important naval station and possession. Even the defense of our own coast would require an immense transport service; for Texas is nearly four thousand miles from Maine, and California is seven thousand from the Atlantic seaboard. No better proof can be given of the necessity of a large and extra naval transport service than the late Mexican war. But for our steamers it would have taken us years to concentrate an army on the shores of Mexico. It was a tedious process at the time; for our ocean mail packets were not then in use. We could now land a larger number of men there in one month than we then did in a whole year. But our transport facilities are not yet by any means adequate.

A large postal steam marine is desirable as a means of cultivating the sympathies and respect of foreign nations, by bringing them into closer friendly and commercial connection with us; and for creating among them that respect and consideration which the British statesmen so well know to be an easy means of conducting diplomacy, and an unfailing source of commercial advantages. It is not necessary that we shall impose upon foreign countries in these respects by false pretenses; but it is truly desirable, and it would be profitable to an extent little imagined, to let them know our real importance as a nation, and understand our pacific policy and bona fide intentions. These are important considerations when we wish to carry any point, establish any line of policy, remove any prejudice; and nothing will more readily produce them, and arouse attention to our articles of export, and induce a people to establish a regular business with us, than these ever-present, convenient, and imposing mail steamers. Nations as well as individuals estimate us by our appearances; and while it is not desirable that we shall appear more than we are, it is yet very important that foreign nations with which we have business shall know our real merits, and respect us for what we are intrinsically worth. There is evidently no means of our commercial triumph over other nations without a liberal and widely extended steam mail service; and as this triumph is of paramount importance to us, who have so many resources, so is the ocean steam mail as the only means of securing it. (See views of Gen. Rusk, in papers appended.)

It has recently been suggested by parties who certainly have not thought very deeply on the subject, that the completion of the Atlantic Telegraph, which every body reasonably expects soon to be completed, will so inaugurate a new era in the transmission of intelligence, that one of its effects will be the supersession of fast ocean mails, and consequently of subsidized steamers. It is a first and palpable view of this question that much of the important intelligence between the two countries requiring speedy transmission will be sent through the telegraph, notwithstanding the necessarily high prices which will be charged for dispatches. These communications will be sententious, summary, and of great variety. The markets, prices, important political and other events, private personal and unelaborated intelligence will come over the wires just as they now come over existing land lines. The line will create extra facilities for operations on both sides, and cause more mutual business to be done. It will thus create the necessity for more correspondence than before, for particulars, elaboration, items, bills of lading, exchanges, duplicates, minute instructions, etc., to which there will be no end. The main transaction of any business being made more quickly, it will be essential for the papers to pass with greater dispatch. If there were twenty telegraphic wires working day and night, which never can be the case from their expensiveness, they could not do in a month the correspondence and business done by one steamer's mail. Beside this, those who got their dispatches first would have a decided advantage over those who would be compelled from the mass of business to wait several days. It is an advantage of the steam mails that all get their letters and papers at the same time; and that no one has thus the advantage of the other. It is hardly possible for one unacquainted with the postal business to conceive how large a mass of mail matter is deposited by each steamer; and it is only necessary to see this to realize that the Atlantic Telegraph will never materially interfere with the steamers except to require of them greater speed and heavier mails.

It is the experience on all of our land routes that the thousands of miles of telegraph, so far from superseding the mails, have made more mails necessary, have caused and required them to be much faster, have necessitated more correspondence, and induced people to live in more mutual dependence, to have more communication with one another, and to make the home or the business of a man less than formerly his closed castle, which none entered, and which no one had any occasion to enter. The American telegraph has now arrived at great perfection, and sends its electric throb to every corner of the Union, save California only. At the same time, the railroads of the country are taxed to their highest capacity. No period ever witnessed so many, so rapid, and so well-filled mails. It is evident that no telegraphic system can properly do detailed business. First, it is and must ever remain too costly. Second, it would require about as many lines as business men, to give them all equal chances, and no one the profitable precedence. Next, there is nothing positively accurate and fully reliable. No signatures can pass over the line. No transaction can be made final by it. No bank will pay, or ought to pay, money on public telegraphic drafts. And, as in the land service, so in the ocean. The telegraph across the ocean will simply create far more business for the mails, and make it desirable and indispensable that they shall be sent and received by the most rapid conveyance known to the times. Thus, it is evident that this new and as yet not fully established agent of international communication, so far from obviating our rapid transmarine service, will but the more effectually necessitate it.

Nor must it be forgotten that our commercial prosperity largely depends on the ready and comfortable transit of passengers. The passenger traffic has increased with astonishing rapidity during the last eighteen years. Our smaller merchants can go abroad when mail steamers are plenty, and make their own purchases and sales, without paying heavy commissions and high prices to middlemen; do their business on less capital; and thus benefit themselves and reduce the prices to our consumers. Compared with sailing vessels, these few mail steamers become the forerunners of trade and commerce, and create an immense service for the sail. They enable us to save large sums of interest or advances on merchandise consigned, and give to us quick returns from the products which we ship abroad. This has long been evident to Great Britain, and she has acted liberally on the suggestion. So desirable is the service for the general prosperity of her people, that she expends annually for her foreign steam mails nearly six millions of dollars, while they do not return to the treasury much above three. She regards the expenditure as she does that for the navy and the army, a necessity for the public preservation and prosperity.

As regards the lines that we now have, they are among the noblest in the world. For aggregate comfort, convenience, safety, speed, and cheapness, they are not equalled by the most famous British lines. More luxurious tables, more neatness, cleanliness, and roominess, more general comforts than have always been characteristic of our Havre, Liverpool, and California lines, can not be found in the world. The only objection to them is, that the service is not sufficient; that the trips are not frequent enough; and that the companies are not enabled to sustain a larger steam marine which would proportionally cheapen the service, and accommodate more persons and a much larger class of interests. Our experiences of the benefits of existing lines, limited as those lines are, present an unanswerable argument for the desirableness and necessity of a liberal steam postal system, and a large and judicious extension of the present service. (See views of Senate Committee, 1852, Paper E.)