§ MR. GRAHAMsaid, he would beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, What, if any, arrangement has been or is being made for the conveyance of the Mails between Great Britain and the United States of America after the termination, on Saturday, the 28th of December, of 334 the present service, which has been so efficiently conducted? He would also beg to ask whether the Government will produce the Correspondence with Mr. Burns, of the Cunard Company, and another between the Postmaster General and the Treasury on the same subject?
§ MR. HUNTSir, it will be in the recollection of the House that an arrangement was come to by the late Government, and adopted by the present one, that at the expiration of the Cunard Contract tenders should be asked for by public advertisement. It was determined that there should be no regular system of subsidy for a term, but that shipowners should be asked to make offers for the conveyance of the mails on particular days of the week, and that they should receive the sea postage, leaving it to the Government of the United States to make a similar arrangement on their side. The answers received to our advertisement did not come up to our expectations. There was an offer from the North German Lloyds for Tuesday, one from the Messrs. Inman's for Thursday, one from the National Steamship Company for Friday, and one from the Hamburg American Steam Shipping Company for the same day; but there was no offer in the terms of our advertisement for that day on which the larger portion of our correspondence is in the habit of being sent—namely, Saturday, the mails of which leave Queenstown on Sunday. I should add that there was appended to our advertisement a note, stating that parties not wishing to tender in the form specified should be at liberty to tender in any form of their own. Accordingly, Messrs. Cunard wrote that they were unwilling to make an offer in the way that was asked, but that if the Postmaster General would consent they would propose a contract for a period on terms much lower than those on which they had hitherto performed the service. The Postmaster General having expressed his willingness to receive such an offer, they said they would enter into a contract terminable after ten years certain at one year's notice. It was for a fixed sum, and the contractors were to receive no sea postage, but the office was to receive the homeward sea postage from the American Government. An officer was at once sent to the United States to confer with the Government; and communications have been constantly going on upon the subject; but the information Her Majesty's Government have received from America renders it im- 335 possible for them to enter into the proposed arrangement. Under these circumstances, and seeing the great inconvenience to which the merchants would be put if, on the morning after the termination of the contract, they found they had no means of sending their letters on the day on which they prefer sending them, I have entered into personal communication with Mr. J. Burns, of the firm of Cunard. That gentleman has met us in what I must call a public spirit. He has expressed a wish to fall in with the views of the Government, and within the last few hours an arrangement has been concluded for continuing the present service for one year at a fixed sum. I will lay the whole of the Correspondence on the table, so as to put the House in possession of all the facts of the case.