"Your Committee would remark, in concluding this Report, that, regarding as they do the existence and rapid extension of the system of ocean mail steam navigation, as absolutely essential to the dignity and permanent prosperity of the country, and as the only means, consistent with the genius and policy of our free institutions, of acquiring a maritime strength, which, by keeping pace with the improvements of the age, shall place us upon an equal footing with other civilized countries of the world, without the necessity of an overgrown and expensive naval establishment proper, in time of peace, they would feel themselves derelict in the performance of their duties, did they not recommend the measure, with the earnestness which its importance demands. "Circumstances indicate, with a clearness not to be misunderstood, that in any future struggle for superiority on the ocean, the contest will be decided by the power of steam. With a view to this result, England has applied herself with even more than her wonted energy to the construction of a regular steam navy which shall be superior to all others. The number of ships which Great Britain has of this kind, is at present two hundred and seventy-one, and there are no less than nine royal war steamers in progress of construction, to say nothing of the mail and other steamers which are being built. The course thus pursued by the great commercial rival of the United States, renders a corresponding energy and activity on our part absolutely necessary, in a national point of view; a steam navy must be provided for future emergencies in the way proposed by the Committee, or war steamers must be built at an enormous outlay of public money and kept ready in the navy yards, or in commission, at an expense which is appalling to every lover of judicious economy, or the stripes and stars of our country, which have heretofore floated so triumphantly on every sea, must grow dim, not only before the 'meteor flag of England,' but the standards of the secondary powers of Europe. If members of Congress are prepared to adopt either of these latter two alternatives, let them say so, and let a system which promises, under an honest and faithful discharge of duty on the part of the executive branch of the Government, to realize the most sanguine expectations of its friends, be at once abandoned. Let Great Britain be again the guardian of our commercial interests and the beneficiary of American trade. Let the Liverpool, Bremen, Havre, California, and other lines, which have furnished twenty-four as noble sea steamers as ever floated, be abandoned to their fate, and let the Cunard line and other British steam mail lines and royal steamers supply their places on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and our Southern seas.