THE TRANSMARINE COMPARED WITH THE INLAND POST: OUR PAST SPASMODIC EFFORTS: NEED SOME SYSTEM: FRANCE AROUSED TO STEAM: THE SAILING-SHIP MAIL: THE NAVAL STEAM MAIL: THE PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MAIL: ALL INADEQUATE AND ABANDONED: GREAT BRITAIN'S EXPERIENCE IN ALL THESE METHODS: NAVAL VESSELS CAN NOT BE ADAPTED TO THE MAIL SERVICE: WILL PROPELLERS MEET THE WANTS OF MAIL TRANSPORT, WITH OR WITHOUT SUBSIDY: POPULAR ERRORS REGARDING THE PROPELLER: ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES: BOURNE'S OPINION: ROBERT MURRAY: PROPELLERS TOO OFTEN ON THE DOCKS: THEY ARE VERY DISAGREEABLE PASSENGER VESSELS: IF PROPELLERS RUN MORE CHEAPLY IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE SLOWER: COMPARED WITH SAIL: UNPROFITABLE STOCK: CROSKEY'S LINE: PROPELLERS LIVE ON CHANCES AND CHARTERS: IRON AS A MATERIAL: SENDING THE MAILS BY SLOW PROPELLERS WOULD BE AN UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SAILING VESSELS: INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE CAN NOT SUPPLY MAIL FACILITIES: THEREFORE IT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT. I have endeavored to prove in the foregoing Section that ocean mail steamers can not live on their own receipts. The question now arises, how can we secure speed for the mails and passengers upon the ocean? With so many expenses and so small an income the fast ocean steamer can not become profitable to even the most thoroughly organized and best administered companies. Much less can it be successfully run by individuals and individual enterprise, which has never so many reliable resources at command as a strong, chartered company. It is true that there are a few prominent transatlantic routes where steamers can run as auxiliary propellers; but the number of them is small, and the speed attained will by no means prove sufficient for postal purposes. The transmarine postal service has been a source of constant annoyance to almost every commercial nation. The overland mails have generally been self-supporting, and it has been a favorite idea that those on the sea should be so also; although there is no just reason why either should be necessarily so any more than in the cases of the Navy and the Army; branches of the service which entail large expenses on the Government, and yet without a moiety of the benefits which directly flow from the postal service to all classes of community. No nation except Great Britain has come up to the issue and faced this question boldly. Almost every other country, not excepting our own, has been hanging back on the subject of the transmarine post, "waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up," in the improvements of ocean steam navigation, which might obviate the necessity of paying for the ocean transit. But every hope has been disappointed; and instead of realizing these wishes the case has been growing worse year by year, until we are at last compelled to move in the matter, or lose our commerce, our ocean _prestige_, and sink down contented with a second or third-rate position among commercial