59.  It is not alone in the greater operations of the engineer or the manufacturer, that those vast powers which man has called into action, in availing himself of the agency of steam, are fully developed.  Wherever the individual operation demanding little force for its own performance is to be multiplied in almost endless repetition, commensurate power is required.  It is the same ‘giant arm’ which twists ‘the largest cable’, that spins from the cotton plant an ‘almost gossamer thread’.  Obedient to the hand which called into action its resistless powers, it contends with the ocean and the storm, and rides triumphant through dangers and difficulties unattempted by the older modes of navigation.  It is the same engine that, in its more regulated action, weaves the canvas it may one day supersede, or, with almost fairy fingers, entwines the meshes of the most delicate fabric that adorns the female form.(1*)

60.  The Fifth Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Holyhead Roads furnishes ample proof of the great superiority of steam vessels.  The following extracts are taken from the evidence of Captain Rogers, the commander of one of the packets: 

Question.  Are you not perfectly satisfied, from the experience you have had, that the steam vessel you command is capable of performing what no sailing vessel can do?  Answer.  Yes.

Question.  During your passage from Gravesend to the Downs, could any square-rigged vessel, from a first-rate down to a sloop of war, have performed the voyage you did in the time you did it in the steamboat?  Answer.  No:  it was impossible.  In the Downs we passed several Indiamen, and 150 sail there that could not move down the channel:  and at the back of Dungeness we passed 120 more.

Question.  At the time you performed that voyage, with the weather you have described, from the Downs to Milford, if that weather had continued twelve months, would any square-rigged vessel have performed it?  Answer.  They would have been a long time about it:  probably, would have been weeks instead of days.  A sailing vessel would not have beat up to Milford, as we did, in twelve months.

61.  The process of printing on the silver paper, which is necessary for bank-notes, is attended with some inconvenience, from the necessity of damping the paper previously to taking the impression.  It was difficult to do this uniformly and in the old process of dipping a parcel of several sheets together into a vessel of water, the outside sheets becoming much more wet than the others, were very apt to be torn.  A method has been adopted at the Bank of Ireland which obviates this inconvenience.  The whole quantity of paper to be damped is placed in a close vessel from which the air is exhausted; water is then admitted, and every leaf is completely wetted; the paper is then removed to a press, and all the superfluous moisture is squeezed out.