The ocean mail steamers of Great Britain run 2,532,231 miles per year, at a total cost to the Admiralty of L1,062,797, or $5,333,985. The ocean mail steamers of the United States run 735,732 miles per year, at a total charge on the Post Office Department of $1,329,733. The British steamers run three and a half times as many miles as ours do, and receive for it a sum more than four times as large. The average price paid to their principal companies, as the West-India Royal Mail, the Cunard, the Australian, and the Peninsular and Oriental, including its Mediterranean coasting service, is 9_s_ 7_d_, or $2.39 per mile; while the average price paid by us, or for the Collins, Havre, Bremen, Aspinwall, and Panama, San Francisco and Oregon, is $1.80-3/4 per mile. The highest sum paid per mile by the British Government is 11_s_ 4-1/4_d_, or $2.83-1/2, to the Cunard Company, $2.75 to the Australian, and $2.46 to the West-India; and the lowest, 6_s_ 1-3/4_d_, or $1.53-1/2 to the Peninsular and Oriental, much of whose service is coasting. This is saying nothing of the Pacific and the African coasting lines. The highest sum which we pay is to the Collins line, $3.10-1/2 per mile; and the lowest to the Havre, $1.00-1/2 per mile; while the sums paid to all of the other companies range but little above the last figures. The lowest rate per mile paid to any of the lines under the contract, was to the Pacific Mail, $1.70. It must not be forgotten that the low rates per mile of the Havre and Bremen result from those lines taking the postages, since their contracts expired; a sum by no means adjusted to the service done. They had ships that they could not let lie idle. Under their regular contracts the pay per mile of the Bremen line was $2.08, and of the Havre $1.76-1/2. While the British Government pays to four of her principal transmarine services an average of $2.39 per mile, we pay to five of ours an average of $1.80-3/4 only, or but about two thirds as much as she does. While our total annual expenditure for foreign mails is $1,329,733, a sum by $20,267 less than that paid to the single service of the West-India Royal Mail Company, that of Great Britain is $5,333,985. And, while our total income from transmarine postages is $1,035,740, a sum but little short of that paid in subsidy, taking the present Bremen and Havre services at the estimates of last year for sea and inland postages combined, the income from the whole transmarine service of Great Britain, including ocean and inland postage, was, when the last report was made in 1853, L591,573, or $2,957,865; but little above half the sum paid in subsidy, and including the French, Belgian, and Dutch routes, where the postal yield was much greater than from the ocean lines. The estimates which I present below have been made with great care from distances and subsidies furnished me by the reliable First Assistant Post Master General, Hon. Horatio King, from the last report of the late Post