MR. H. G. LANGTONasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether it was intended, previously to their entering upon the service, to test the speed of the steam-vessels proposed to be employed under a recent contract in the conveyance of the Australian mails, seeing that, by the copies of the tenders now before the House, the time occupied by the voyage from Suez to Melbourne would require a speed of eleven or eleven and a-half knots an hour, whereas the vessels tendered for the performance of the duty were set down at a speed of nine and three-quarter knots per hour only?
§ MR. WILSONsaid, that the vessels 1426 would be surveyed on behalf of the Government by an officer of the Admiralty, but it was not intended to make any preliminary test of their speed, the principle on which the contracts were framed being, that the parties who took them bound themselves under heavy penalties, which were invariably enforced, to perform the service within a stated period. The whole responsibility, therefore, rested on the contractors. The vessels had been already in the service of the Government, and were favourably reported on by the departments which had employed them.
MR. H. G. LANGTONinquired whether, in order to insure the regular performance of the contract for conveying the mails between Suez and Australia, any clause would be introduced by which the contract would be forfeited in the event of the service not being performed within the maximum number of days tendered for—namely, thirty-nine days outwards, and thirty-five days homeward?
§ MR. WILSONreplied that, in the event of the service not being performed within the stipulated period, the parties would be liable to the heavy penalties to which he had already alluded. Moreover, there was in this contract a clause enabling Government to put an end to the engagement at any time if they should be dissatisfied with the manner in which the service was carried on.