"The Government has paid to the line, (the Collins,) for mail service, in the two years, $770,000, and has received from the line $513,546.80. If the receipts be deducted from the outlay, the balance against the Government is $256,453.20 for the whole time, or $128,226.60 per annum. "Thus it appears, that from a fair statement of the account current between the line and the Government, the latter is out of pocket, at the end of the two first years of the undertaking and under circumstances the most disadvantageous to the line, $256,453.20, or in other words, has paid $128,226.60 per annum, for carrying the ocean mail by steam over about six thousand miles of the greatest commercial thoroughfare in the world, for which, as yet, it has received nothing in return. But your Committee would ask, what has _the country_ received in return for this $256,453.20? They will furnish the answer. The country has received through the proprietors of this line, in the form of freights and passage money, a no less amount than $1,979,760.85, in cash; and, if the reduction in the prices of freight formerly paid to the British line be taken into account, nearly as much more, by saving the difference in freights and passage money, to say nothing of the general advantages derived by all of our producing interests from the existence of this American line, which, as your Committee believe, are incalculable. The money account will then stand as follows: Government debtor to $256,453.80; Country creditor to $1,979,760.85 _in cash_; and if the former be deducted from the latter, the balance in favor of the country will stand $1,723,307.05, _in cash alone_, leaving out of view the duties on increased importations caused by the establishment of the American line." Speaking of the Pacific Mail Steam Company, the Report says: "It will be seen from the above, that the total cost of the six vessels which have been accepted by the officers whose duty it was to supervise them and decide whether they had been built in accordance with the requisitions of the law and terms of the contract, and whose decision is presumed, by your Committee, to be conclusive in the premises, has been $1,555,069, and that their aggregate tonnage is 7,365 tons, instead of 5,200 tons, the amount agreed for. In addition to these ships, as your Committee are informed, the company has in the Pacific seven steamers, with an aggregate tonnage of five thousand tons, not yet accepted by the Government. The additional steamers are, and have been, always kept ready to replace the mail steamers in the event of detention. The cost of these additional steamers has been, it is stated, about two thirds of that of the accepted steamers of the same class, say about $1,036,712, making in all an outlay for steamships alone, of $2,518,337.