Seven packets would perform this work, giving two mails each month; first cost, 66,500_l._; yearly charges, 29,200_l._; which is one packet more than the Owhyhee plan requires; but that station would require one spare packet, making _fifteen_ for the whole, which thus makes both stations equal, but without the combination which the Owhyhee station gives. This arrangement for the Pacific would, in whichever way it may be taken, save the whole proposed steam communication from Ceylon eastward to Canton and New South Wales; which saving, either on the Mediterranean or Cape of Good Hope lines, would be, eight steamers and one sailing vessel--capital, 199,500_l._, and yearly charges about 130,000_l._; thus reducing very greatly indeed the cost of the subsequent plan projected for the Eastern world. Even at the outset, the mails, parcels, and passengers on the Pacific station, would, it is believed, pay the expenses as here stated:-- Fixed Capital. Yearly Charges. Pacific Departments L142,500 L63,000 THE MEDITERRANEAN, EAST INDIES, &c. &c. (p. 064) I. _Falmouth and the Mediterranean._ To extend the mail communications between Great Britain and all places in the Mediterranean, and more especially with the more distant parts of that sea, which will go to connect more closely British communications with the East Indies and countries situated still more to the eastward, is now, more than ever, become a national object, and, it may be added, a national duty. France seems to be actively extending mail communications, in that sea, to all places, as well to those under her immediate sway as to others; and if allowed to do so without any rival, it becomes obvious that, with the command of all the channels of communication, she will obtain such a monopoly of political influence as will give her the monopoly of political power also in that quarter of the world. Such a result cannot fail to prove highly injurious to all the great commercial and political interests of Great Britain; and this result ought to be guarded against and prevented even at a considerable sacrifice, if a sacrifice were necessary, but which it is not.