MR. H. BERKELEYsaid, he rose to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, what arrangements have been made to supply the interruption in the steam postal contract service with Australia in consequence of the accident to the mail steampacket Oneida, and whether the mail due in the next month may be expected in the proper course at Suez, or by the long sea route by Cape Horn; also whether it be true, as formally stated in the Sydney newspapers, that the same portion of the machinery of the steamer Oneida which broke down on her passage with the first mail between King George's Sound and Point de Galle had been previously damaged whilst she was employed as a Government transport, and patched up with iron plates at Glasgow before her departure upon the Australian mail service; further, whether such damage was reported to the Government by the Admiralty Surveyor?
§ SIR CHARLES WOODsaid, that the Emu had been sent out take the place of the Oneida. With respect to the arrival of 536 the next mail, he of course could give no reply to it at present. In answer to the other question of his hon. Friend relative to the machinery of the Oneida he had to state that it had been surveyed and reported upon unfavourably by the officers of the Government, and he could not understand how or why the vessel had been despatched.
§ On the Order of the Day being read for going into Committee of Supply,