§ SUPPLY—POST OFFICE PACKET SERVICE considered in Committee.
§ (In the Committee.)
§
(6.) Question again proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £841,867, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge of the Post Office Packet Service which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1866; no part of which sum is to be applicable or applied in or towards making any payment in respect of any period subsequent to the 20th day of June 1863, to Mr. Joseph George Churchward, or to any person claiming through or under him by virtue of a certain Contract, bearing date the 26th day of April 1859, made between the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Admiralty (for and on behalf of Her Majesty) of the first part, or in or towards the satisfaction of any claim whatsoever of the said Joseph George Churchward, by virtue of that Contract, so far as relates to any period subsequent to the 20th day of June 1863.
MR. WHITEsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Government had come to any decision on the question of a weekly mail to India, leaving on Friday. Such a mail would be of great importance to those engaged in the India and China trades.
§ MR. CRUM-EWINGsaid, he wished to express a hope that the Government would adopt the suggestion of having Falmouth or Plymouth as the port for the colonial and foreign mails instead of Southampton; as such an arrangement would be a gain of nearly three days in the postal communication with India to the whole of Scotland and the north of England.
§ COLONEL SYKESsaid, there was an increase in the Vote for the Post Office Packet Service, but he would suggest a mode of getting rid of it, and even occasioning a saving. There were 70,000 European troops in India. The whole were to be relieved in ten years, at the rate of 7,000 each year; making 14,000 in transitu between England and India every year. In addition, there were expired men and invalids, and men going out to fill up vacancies caused by death, which would give about 2,500 each way, or 5,000 in all, to be added to the 14,000; 472 so that they had the total brought up to 19,000. The annual conveyance of these men involved a very considerable item of expenditure; and the consequence was that his right hon. Friend the Secretary for India had before him a proposition for the building of transport vessels of a large class, like the Himalaya, to convey troops between this country and Alexandria and between Suez and Bombay and Calcutta. But as it was not advisable to land troops in India during the monsoon or the hot weather, these vessels could only be used as transports during six months of the year. It was worthy of the consideration of his right hon. Friend the Secretary for the Treasury whether they could not be turned to good account in carrying mails during the whole year as well as troops during the other six months. The number of vessels was such that they would allow of weekly communications in accordance with the views of his hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, and a saving in the present expenditure might be effected. He wished to know why an increase had taken place in the charge for the postal communication with the West Indies, and why there had been an increase of £7,000 for the Packet Service between this country and India.
§ MR. ALDERMAN ROSEsaid, that the question of substituting Plymouth or Falmouth for Southampton as the port for the India mails had been fully considered by the Postmaster General; but the noble Lord had been unable to see that such a change would be attended with advantage. Though there might by it at times be a saving of a few hours, as a rule there would be a loss of time. Southampton had great advantages. It had a double line of rail to London, and good dock accommodation for the steamers; while neither Plymouth nor Falmouth possessed either of those requisites. Special trains would not be run to and from there without danger. In addition, Southampton was within two hours of London by rail. Instead of there being a saving of time such as that spoken of by the hon. Member (Mr. Crum-Ewing), the probability was that a delay in the transmission of the mails would be, as a general rule, the result of such a change. Southampton had as good a through communication with the north both by broad and narrow gauge as any other port, and postal communication, therefore, to the north could be effected as rapidly from Southampton as from Plymouth or Falmouth.
MR. GILPINsaid, he hoped that the House would not be led into a discussion on this question in the absence of the representatives of the rival ports.
§ MR. CRUM-EWINGsaid, that it was sufficient to look into any map to see the advantage of Falmouth.
MR. PEELsaid, that as he had been prevented by a count out from answering some remarks made by the hon. Member for the City of Loudon on the memorial presented to the Treasury praying that the despatch of mails to India, instead of being on a fixed day of the month, should be on a fixed day in the week, as was the case with the Cunard mails to North America, he wished to say that the Postmaster General was quite as sensible of the value of such a change as any one could be. The question, however, was one of expense. It must be remembered that the mail service to India did not stand alone, but was connected with the mail service to China and Australia, and it would be impossible to make alterations in one service without making them in the others. The scheme of the mail service was this:—The Indian mails went out four times in the month to Alexandria, both by the way of Falmouth and Southampton on this side of Egypt, and on the other side they went twice in the mouth from Egypt to Bombay, and the other twice to Ceylon, and thence to Calcutta and China. One of these two last mails went on to Australia. So that there were 48 departures in the year for India, 24 for China, and 12 for Australia. If, therefore, weekly departures were substituted for the present departures of four times a month, the mail service would be increased by one-twelfth—there would be 52 departures for India instead of 48, 26 for China, and 13 for Australia. The increase in the frequency of departure would, of course, increase the expense to a proportionate amount. The expense of the service, as hon. Members were aware, was very large indeed. The total expense amounted to about £390,000 a year; and of that £160,000 belonged to the Australian service, the loss upon which was divided between the Imperial Government and the Australian Colonies. The remainder — £230,000 — represented the gross cost of the service to India and China, and the net loss upon that was divided between the Indian and the Imperial Government, The proposed increase of service would entail a further expenditure of about £35,000 a year, and though that 474 might be probably covered by an increase in the number of letters sent, there would still be a large sum to be added to the present cost of the service. The proposal which had been made by the Post Office was, that the postage to India should be increased from 6d. to 1s.; and, when it was proposed that a fortnightly mail should he sent to Hong Kong, he believed that the commercial community had cheerfully acquiesced in such an increase, nor was he aware that any single complaint had been raised. The hon. Member for the City spoke of a charge of 16d.; but that referred to letters going by the way of Marseilles, the additional 1d. being the charge of the French Government for the transit through France. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets had called attention to the impolicy of foreign Governments imposing heavy transit rates, and he quite concurred in the hon. Gentleman's observations. The present payment to the French Government was 10d. per ounce, but in the opinion of the Post Office the French Government would be indemnified if the charge were reduced by one-fourth; and in that case the transit charge on an ordinary letter, instead of being id., would be only 1d.; and the charge under the new system would be 1s. for letters going by Southampton, and 1s. 1d. for letters via Marseilles. This change would enable the Government to give additional postal facilities. It had been suggested that there should be a weekly mail to Bombay, but that would necessitate an increase in the number of vessels running from Bombay to Suez; but, judging from some recent tenders which had been received, that would be an additional expense, which could only be defrayed by an additional charge on the public. No decision had been come to yet, for it did not appear that the mercantile community would be satisfied to pay the additional charge. With regard to fixed days weekly for the departure of mails to India he thought it ought not to be confined to Bombay, but to go alternately to Bombay and Calcutta, the railway facilities from the latter place being now very great. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen (Colonel Sykes) had referred to the communication between this country and Alexandria, and between Suez and Bombay and Calcutta, and he also referred to some transport vessels that were being built for that purpose by the Indian Government. At present he believed there were only two running this 475 side of Egypt and three on the other side. He did not know the number of transports that would be necessary for that service, but as the whole of the ships would not be finished until the 1st of October, 1867, there would be ample time to discuss that question on a future occasion. With regard to the West India packets receiving their mails at Falmouth instead of Southampton, he thought it would not be easy to make the transfer, considering the immense docks the company had established at the latter place; but, on the other hand, he thought that if a saving of time could be effected by landing and receiving the mails at Falmouth, instead of at Southampton, and proper arrangements could be made with the railway companies, the Post Office authorities would have no hesitation in adopting it. He, however, doubted that there would be such a saving in the landing of the mails at Falmouth as had been stated by the hon. Member (Mr. Crum-Ewing). As to the postal service for the West Indies, the increase this year arose from their not having made any reduction in anticipation of a contribution from the colonies. The expense of the service to the West Indies was now much less than it had been. The old contract required an annual subsidy to be paid of £230,000; but the amount was last year reduced under the new contract to £170,000. It was also expected that the colonies would pay half the loss upon that portion of the service, but their Governments had not yet been able to make arrangements on that subject, and it had been necessary, therefore, to provide in the present Estimates for the entire cost of the service until the arrangements as to the colonial contributions were made. With regard to the Indian service, the contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Company provided for their carrying Government passengers at two-thirds of their ordinary passenger rates. But it had been thought that the Government ought not to make a contribution towards the cost of the passage of persons travelling between this country and India, and the company had arranged to charge the ordinary passenger fare for Government passengers, making to the Government an abatement of £15,000 from the subsidy on that account. There was not a real increase of cost for the Indian service, but, on the contrary, a reduction. The total charge was £162,125. From this they must deduct £44,000, the proportion to be paid 476 by the Indian Government. A less sum would be paid by the Indian Government than last year, and the reason was that the postage was more. They had to deduct the amount of the postage from the whole charge, and what remained was divided equally between the Governments of this country and of India. The net loss last year was £100,000, but this year it was reduced to £80,000, half of which the Indian Government paid; but, of course, the gross charge had to be voted.
§ MR. CAVEsaid, there could be no doubt that a great saving of time would be effected in the landing and dispatch of the West India mails, both as regarded Scotland and the West Coast, and only in a less degree as regarded London, if the mails were landed and embarked at Falmouth instead of Southampton. At present the mail steamers sailed from Southampton at between two and three in the afternoon, and the consequence was that the mass of the correspondence went down by the evening mail of the day before, so that a day might be said to be lost, whereas, if the mails could be taken on board at Falmouth, the letters could be posted on the evening of the day on which the packets leave Southampton. The same applied to the arrival of the mails. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Peel) two questions. The first was with reference to the Liverpool steamers. A convention had been entered into with the Royal Mail Company by which a certain subsidy was to be paid to them for carrying the mails, and an arrangement had also been come to with a steam-packet company at Liverpool for carrying letters to certain places. It appeared to him that in that respect the right hon. Gentleman had made a bad bargain, because the postage of all the letters the latter carried must be added to the amount of subsidy to be paid to the Royal Mail Company. The other question he had to ask the right hon. Gentleman was how long the French convention would last. The right hon. Gentleman had said on a former occasion that it was an anomaly that the French Government should be able to send letters at a lower rate than was charged in this country, and he wished, therefore, to know whether there was any chance of our putting the French Government on a footing with ourselves.
§ MR. HENRY SEYMOURsaid, he thought they could not overrate the importance, in a social, commercial, and poli- 477 tical point of view, of increasing and facilitating their postal communication with all parts of the world. Greater convenience, he believed, might be secured to the public without burdening the Exchequer. Southampton was so flourishing that it did not require the Government contracts. He had long been of opinion that our communications with India were not as perfect as they ought to be. More use should be made of the Indian railways in the conveyance of mails. The mails were not sent out with sufficient frequency; and it was most desirable that the civil and military employœ's of India should be able to visit this country as often as possible, and at the most moderate cost. He objected to the arrangements that had recently been entered into, whereby the whole of the Indian civil servants, covenanted and un-covenanted, would have to pay the full passage rate to and from India. The contracts for India were not on the best footing. There ought to be a separate contract for Alexandria, a separate contract for the Red Sea and down as far as Aden, and then they should have branches for India, China, and Australia, the Mauritius, and the Cape. In that way they might, without greater expense, have a weekly communication with these various important places. An increase of the Indian postal rates was a most impolitic measure, while it would bring a mere peppercorn to the public revenue, and he trusted that the Government would carefully ro-consider the matter in the recess. In China the merchants were making large gains, and therefore, in equity, if the rate of postage to India was 1s., to China it should be 2s. 6d.
MR. PEELsaid, that the payment to the Liverpool Mail Company was for the conveyance of mails between Jamaica and Honduras. For that service a sum of £8,000 was paid last year, but this company undertook to carry the mails for £2,250, and, moreover, to carry letters between this country and Jamaica at the charge for ship letters. The arrangement had been subject to certain conditions of contribution on the part of the Honduras Government, which conditions had not been complied with, and therefore the Government had given notice to the company to discontinue the arrangement. With respect to the convention with France, he had to state that the French Government only paid one shilling per ounce for letters to the West Indies, which was less than the charge for English letters; but the total 478 postage on letters from France to the West Indies was not below that of letters from England to the West Indies.
§ MR. HENRY SEYMOURsaid, the right hon. Gentleman had not answered his question—whether the House would be consulted before an alteration was made in the rates of Indian postage.
MR, PEELsaid, no such arrangement could be carried out without the concurrence of the Indian Government, and at present that Government had not been applied to.
§ SIR FITZROY KELLYsaid, he wished to know why so extraordinary a course was adopted of excluding one particular person from all participation in the Vote. After listening patiently to the debate which took place three years ago upon the subject of Mr. Churchward's contract, he had been unable to understand why so extraordinary a course should be adopted. Upon what grounds was Mr. Churchward to be excluded Session after Session from payment for a contract duly entered into between himself and the Government? If some explanation were not given he should divide the House.
THE SOLICITOR GENERALsaid, the reason why the Vote was proposed in the present form had been stated over and over again, and he was not disposed to revive the discussion. The hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir FitzRoy Kelly) was aware that Mr. Churchward's contract had been fully considered and discussed, and that the House came to the conclusion that that gentleman had endeavoured to obtain a contract by corrupt means—not imputing to the Members of Lord Derby's Government who granted it corrupt motives. The House came to a determination that none of the money voted for the packet service should be paid to him, and therefore this Vote had since always been proposed in its present form.
§ SIR FITZROY KELLYsaid, that a charge of corruption had not been proved against Mr. Churchward; and, in the absence of a satisfactory explanation, he should divide the Committee against the Vote.
§ Question put, and agreed to.