By this plausible but transparent mode of reasoning Congress attempted to disguise the real features of an undertaking which eventually became a great failure. From the spirit, however, which then prevailed, cost was not considered either by the projectors or by the majority of the members of Congress in their determination to surpass in speed and in splendour of equipment, any steamers which Great Britain could send afloat. “We must have speed,” exclaimed Mr. Bayard, “extraordinary speed, a speed with which they (Collins steamers) can overtake any vessel which they pursue, and escape from any vessel they wish to avoid; they must be fit for the purpose of a cruiser with armaments to attack your enemy (if that enemy were Great Britain) in her most vital part, her commerce.” Happily, the Collins steamers were never required for any such purposes, and, in 1850, just ten years after the Cunard vessels commenced to run, they started against them in their great contest for the commercial maritime supremacy of the Atlantic Ocean, a much more sensible struggle than that which Mr. Bayard so glowingly pictured when he spoke about their “sweeping the seas.” [Sidenote: Further details of competing lines.] Before the Collins line was established, the Cunard steamers were receiving 7_l._ 10_s._ sterling per ton, freight, which was so much of a monopoly rate, that in two years after the Collins line had commenced, the rate of freight fell to 4_l._ sterling per ton. Arguing from this fact the Americans held that the excessive freights charged for transport by the Cunard Company were paid by the United States’ consumer, in most instances, on articles of British manufacture carried to America by British vessels. But now the American consumer paid only 4_l._ per ton, and this sum for the most part was paid to their own people, thus increasing their national wealth. Their acute political economists discovered “that formerly the American consumer paid _very nearly twice as much for the service_, and enriched the British capitalists: whereas, subsequently to 1850, he not only saved one-half of the former cost of freight to himself, but in paying the remaining half, benefited his fellow-citizens who, in return, aided in consuming perhaps the very merchandise which he had imported.”[201] [Sidenote: Speed obtained and cost.] Arguments such as these, too frequently honoured with the title of political economy, are often employed to hide direct taxation; so, instead of attempting to refute them, I prefer inviting my readers to inquire with me into the practical results.