And, looking to its present position,--namely, the possession of an ample capital and means--of extensive practical experience in the management of steam navigation--a well-organised establishment of agencies at its numerous stations abroad--exclusive docking accommodation for its large ships at the principal ports of India--extensive main or trunk lines of communication, established in the principal tracks of Oriental intercourse, and to which any further extension of postal communication must of necessity subserve, as auxiliaries or feeders,--there is scarcely room for entertaining a reasonable doubt that the Peninsular and Oriental Company will be able to maintain its ground, both in respect to the Services in which it is already engaged, as well as in the undertaking of any further Services which may be required in the East, against any _boná fide_ competition, and on the same legitimate, and, therefore, invulnerable basis on which its present connexion with the Contract Packet Service has been established,--namely, its capability of maintaining the present, and undertaking such future Services, with the greatest advantage to the public interests, both as to efficiency and economy. _Benefits of the Contract Packet Service, and of Steam Communications with our Dependencies and Foreign Countries._ The advantage, as regards economy of the public expenditure, of maintaining these communications by means of private enterprise under Contract, instead of by Government vessels, managed by Government establishments, has now been fully recognised. It has, however, been the practice in some quarters[13] to estimate the value of these communications, and the expediency of maintaining them, by the amount of postage of letters which they produce. A more narrow and unstatesmanlike view of the question can scarcely be entertained; and a slight consideration of the following facts will suffice to show that such a mode of estimating their value to the public is extremely fallacious. Who, that has had any experience of the operations of commerce, or of the practical business of Government, would estimate the value of an accelerated and certain transit of a merchant’s letter or a Government despatch by the amount of postage which the one brings in, or the other would bring in, to the revenue? The rapid transit of the merchant’s letter is often the means of originating a commercial operation which gives employment to hundreds of artizans and labourers, thus increasing production and expenditure, and thereby returning into the exchequer, in taxes on consumption, thousands of times the comparatively trifling cost of its conveyance.