But Great Britain did not wait for competition to urge her to her duty to her people. She could easily have continued the trade already possessed; but she could enlarge and invigorate it by steam, and she did it; not from outside pressure, but for the advantages which it always presents _per se_. For the same reason we should have established steam to the West-Indies, Brazil, the Spanish Main, and La Plata long since; to foster a trade naturally ours, but practically another's. It is preeminently necessary now when steam, under the system of Great Britain, is ruining our trade; whereas, by a similar process, we could reestablish ours, if not paralyze theirs. Neutrality is impossible. Indifference to the present posture of affairs only leads to the ruin of our interests. We must advance and contend with Great Britain and Europe step by step, and employ the means of which we are generally so boastful, or we will be forced to retreat from the field, and be harassed into ignominious submission." As in the case of Brazil and La Plata so is it in that of the Pacific South-American States, and the great fields of Australia, China, and the East-Indies generally, as before noticed. The trade of Great Britain with those regions has gone on at a rate of progression truly astonishing. Ours has continued just as much behind it as the slow and uncertain sailing vessel is behind the rapid and reliable mail steamer. Our Pacific possessions have been shorn of half their glory and power by the refusal of those steam aids which would by the present time have converted half the commerce of the fields mentioned into the new channels of American enterprise and transport. The injustice has operated equally against the people of California and Oregon, and against ourselves of the East; while there is no good and valid reason for thus making the Pacific coast the _ultima thule_ of civilized, steam enterprise. The people of the United States, of whatever class, are far from being misers. They do not desire an economy of two or three millions of dollars per year, which would give them great opportunities of obtaining wealth and power, merely that the sum so economized may be squandered, with twenty or thirty millions more, on schemes of doubtful expediency, and of no real or pressing necessity. They do not, indeed, ask that these mail accommodations may be paid for simply because much money is uselessly otherwise spent; but because these accommodations are necessary to themselves, to the development of their enterprise and labor, and to the general good of all the active and industrial, and, consequently, all of the worthy classes. It is a question of little importance to the great people of this country, whether the Government expends forty millions per year or eighty millions. But it would be a delightful consolation to them to know that while they might be paying ten, twenty, or thirty millions per year more than strictly necessary,