882 Transactions of the Amebic an Institute. 



its mauagers are too dull to use. It would, when we consider the 

 aggregate amount of dead freight carried by all the ships of this line, 

 at a high rate of speed, be profitable for their owners to make of their 

 entire fleet a grand bonfire, and replace it by English or French built 

 iron steamers, if the law would permit of their register. But there is 

 no occasion to go to Europe for iron steamers. If Congress would 

 reduce the duty on iron imported for the express purpose of building 

 ships, we can build as cheaply as Europeans. 



Such is a brief and, as I conceive, not overdrawn contrast between 

 the condition of naval construction in Europe and America. The 

 representations, that have from time to time been made to CongTCSS, 

 have been received with a deaf ear, and this most important branch of 

 national industry, on which our maritime greatness wholly depends, 

 has been allowed to fall into decay. Foreign lines of steamers, it is 

 said, are annually paid by the post oflice de})artnient for carrying our 

 mails across the Atlantic ; money enough, if husbanded and funded, 

 to establish a semi-weekly line of iron steamers, faster and superior 

 to those now enjoying the fruits of our folly and short-sightedness. 



A cr^' has been raised against postal subsidies, and the agents of 

 foreign steam lines help to intensify it by a skillful use of money 

 paid to news-wi'iters ; their object, of course, being to defeat Ameri- 

 can enterprise, and fight oft' competition. Many members of Con- 

 gress, whose ideas of national requirements do not rise abore county 

 •or State policy, use the clap-trap argument that the United States 

 government was not formed to develop public enterprise by national 

 grants. If such were true, in fact, the sooner we can reform it the 

 better. But nothing is more unfounded than such assertions. The 

 federal government was expressly formed to meet the national 

 demands in this and numerous kindred subjects. What is the difter- 

 ence between contracting with a railway company, or the owners of 

 lake, river and sound boats, or of stage coaches, or wagons to carry 

 the mails, over all the country, and with the ownere of ocean steam 

 ships ? The Constitution of the United States expressly provides 

 for this kind of service, and nothing but the most narrow, bigoted 

 and local or sectional view of national duties, stands in the way of 

 turning this provision to a very important account, in re-establishing 

 our ocean commerce. In the estimation of these village statesmen 

 the term " postal subsidy" seems to have acquired an odious mean- 

 ing. Such men have taught the public to regard a postal subsidy as 

 a gift from the public treasury to a company of " bloated capital- 



