Moreover, it was urged, in favour of the principle of subsidies, that the American sailing packets, though undoubtedly vessels of unrivalled beauty and swiftness, were fast losing the most valuable portion of their trade through the competition of steamers under a foreign flag; but, so far from this being an argument in favour of subsidizing vessels of their own of a similar description, the shipowners of New York and Boston and in all the leading American ports, who held the sailing-ships as a property, naturally complained that the United States’ Government should improperly interfere by a protective system, which would inflict a double injury upon them, and insisted that such matters should be left entirely to individual enterprise, which, in their opinion, becomes paralyzed under the effects of Government patronage bestowed upon some to the exclusion of others. To all these, and similar complaints from other quarters, the Government answered that the system was deemed to be not only calculated to awaken and reward the enterprise of American citizens, but avoid the expense of keeping on hand, in time of peace, a large and useless military marine, which could only be preserved in a condition of efficiency by a vast annual outlay of public money. The Government therefore came, perhaps reluctantly, to the opinion that these ocean facilities should exist through their intervention, more especially as they were beyond the capabilities of private means. But apart altogether from any of the reasons assigned in favour of subsidizing a line of mail steamers of their own, the national pride of the Americans had been touched by the success of the Cunard and other lines of steam-ships frequenting their ports, or trading, if not along their coasts, at least on seas they considered their own, and they attributed this success (not altogether without reason) to the annual grants for mail services from the British Crown. Nor is it surprising that their national pride should have been touched. American genius and skill had sent forth steamers to trade on their coasts, lakes, and rivers which were marvels of naval architecture, unsurpassed in speed and in the splendour of their equipment—their sailing packets, as we have seen, were the finest the world had then produced, while their perfection in the art of shipbuilding had even reached so high a point that they constructed steamers to ascend rivers where there was hardly depth of water for an Indian canoe; indeed it was proverbially said, in honour of their skill in the art, that their vessels would traverse valleys if only moistened by the morning dews. No wonder they should have felt annoyed at the progress of British shipping in those branches of maritime commerce they had long considered peculiarly their own. [Sidenote: Collins line established.]