give a British tendency to trade everywhere, and to furnish freights to British ships, at prices at which the American ship owners could not afford to navigate their vessels? "What, the Committee would ask, has the Government of the United States done in the premises? Having under its charge the control and direction of the United States mails upon land and sea, it has thought proper to say that it would pay for the transportation of the mails in _American steamers_, which can, if necessary, be converted, at a small expense, into war steamers, and adopted, if need be, into the navy proper, at an appraised value, and thereby become efficient protectors of American commerce in the event of a war. This is the head and front of the Government's offending, and has, forsooth, aroused the ire of the commercial monopolists of New-York, Boston, and elsewhere, because they can not any longer enjoy the gains which, for more than a quarter of a century, they had wrested from the mass of consumers throughout the land, north, south, east, and west. Your Committee must say that, in their opinion, such complaints come with a bad grace from such quarters, and it is to be feared that victorious steam will ere long, without the aid of the Federal Government, supersede the sailing ships of the memorialists, through the instrumentality of the discoveries daily in progress, whereby the navigation of vessels propelled by that power will be made a matter of comparatively small cost." Speaking of steam communication with Para and Rio de Janeiro, the Report further says: