planned the campaign before others had even contemplated any disturbance of the peace. As a matter of course he controlled the battle, and brought up the victory in his own way. The only effectual means of accomplishing the foreign mail service in this country is by liberally subsidizing private companies for a long term of years, such as will induce them to provide first-class ships, run them rapidly, and fit them for the most comfortable conveyance of passengers. Lord Canning in his Report to both houses of Parliament on the contract packet system in 1853, says, after showing that the naval vessels have been abandoned for the mail service: "There is no peculiarity in this branch of business which renders it an exception to the general rule, that work is done more cheaply by contract than by Government agency." But when the idea of performing the mail service by naval vessels was wholly abandoned in 1837, another question of equal importance arose, as to how far the mail steam packets might be made efficient as vessels of war in times of emergency. As a consequence of the discussion nearly all of the mail contracts made from that day until this by Great Britain contained stipulations requiring the vessels to be capable of carrying an armament, in addition to the requirements of speed and punctuality. The same thing was done in this country in 1846-7; and one of the principal means of carrying the Collins bill through Congress was the self-deception of making the steamers equivalent to vessels of war. It was a plea to which statesmen and enterprising business men resorted, and was used as a means of securing those commercial facilities which constitutional quibblers would not vote for directly, but which they would afford if allowed the subterfuge of "defenses" as a means of protecting them against a certain set of constituencies who foolishly opposed the extension of commerce. Many of these would not grant one dollar for the aid of that commerce on which the revenues of the country and their own real prosperity and wealth depended; but they were willing to suffer long and bleed freely at the old and just, though unrenewable war-cry: "The British and the Hessians." Our case was rather different from that of Great Britain which had a large steam navy while we had neither naval nor commercial steamers. There was, consequently, and there yet is, more propriety in demanding a capacity for the naval service in our vessels than in the case of Great Britain.