[1] See question 2169, p. 45, and 2187, p. 48; also 2254, and 2255.
[2] Now reduced to £20,500.
[3] Note, the sum of £3500 was deducted subsequently by the Admiralty,
in consequence of their superseding the small vessel engaged in the
Ionian Mail Service by packets of their own; and this sum became
thereby reduced to £28,500.
[4] This sum, of £148,000 for 70,080 miles, is at the rate of 42s. 6d.
per mile. If the same amount for passage-money and parcels which the
East India Company’s packets earned, as shown by their return made
to Parliament, (No. 746,) for the same year, 1844-45, in which the
Peninsular and Oriental Company’s proposal was made, namely--
For passengers £23,543
freight of parcels 2,764
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Total £26,307
=======
be deducted from the above sum of £148,000, it will leave for the net
estimated cost of performing the Service between Bombay and Suez,
by Government vessels, of the power of those of the Peninsular and
Oriental Company, £121,693, being £41,693 in excess of the sum of
£80,000, for which the Peninsular and Oriental Company offered to do
it: or,
If this estimate of 42s. 6d. per mile be applied to the service between
Suez and Calcutta, for which the Peninsular and Oriental Company
receive £115,000 per annum, it will amount, for the annual mileage of
that Service--115,000 miles--to £244,375, being no less than £129,375
in excess of the sum received by this Company--or if the passage-money
on this line had been estimated at double the amount of that earned
by the East India packets, on the Bombay and Suez Line, say, in round
numbers, £52,000, an estimate certainly as high as prudence would have
warranted in its then untested state, there would still be an excess of
estimated expenditure, under Government management, of £77,375.
[5] See Lord Auckland’s expression, p. 77.
[6] Five _weeks_, and not months, being all the time necessary for a
communication between Ceylon and Southampton, the word “months” might
be taken to be a typographical error, were it not that the evident
drift of the following question is to make out a case against the
Company of tardiness in sending out another vessel to replace the
_alleged_ defective “Lady Mary Wood.”
[7] The investigation has since been completed, and the Admiralty have
acquitted the Company of the charge of overloading the vessels, and
of any breach of contract. One principal cause of the vessels being
occasionally beyond the time stipulated in the contract, in arriving at
Hong Kong, was, that in defining the time in the contract no allowance
was made for the north-east monsoon on the passage eastward, as is
done for the south-west monsoon on the passage westward. The grievance
to the Hong Kong merchants could, however, have been but of trifling
importance, as the steamers, even when behind contract time, always
arrived so as to afford to the China merchants ample opportunity to
answer letters by the return mail. No complaints from China were made
prior to the Company extending the terminus of the China Line to
Bombay, and thereby coming in competition with the opium clippers in
the carrying of that article to Hong Kong.
[8] Subscriptions referred to above:
£ _s._ _d._
Steam Association 133 6 8
Infirmary at Southampton 10 10 0
Rent of Children’s School at Southampton 20 0 0
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£163 16 8
============
[9] The tenor of this memorandum is satisfactory in so far as it
recognises the efficiency with which this Company has executed the
services contracted for, and its consequent claim to be continued in
the performance of it. But in two points his lordship has fallen into
error:--
First--In drawing the conclusion that the mileage rate of payment for
one line of mail service ought to regulate the payment for another
line, without taking into account the various circumstances, such as
the amount of commercial traffic, cost of fuel, &c., on one line as
compared with the other. Had his lordship informed himself on these
matters, he would have learned that it was the large amount of traffic,
in the carrying of merchandise to and from Constantinople and the Black
Sea, by those steamers carrying the India mails to and from Malta, that
enabled the Company to carry the mails in the Mediterranean at so low a
rate as 4_s._ 6_d._ (or rather, as was actually the rate, 4_s._ 3_d._)
per mile, and that such a circumstance formed no criterion of the rate
which would be remunerative on the Southampton and Alexandria line,
where there was no such amount of traffic to meet the expenses.
The second point is in his having mistaken those funds necessary to be
reserved out of earnings to maintain the integrity of the Company’s
property, for an accumulation of capital.
[10] “The company have since built premises in Leadenhall-street, and
the managing directors, in consequence, pay to the company £1,000 per
annum as a rental, under this agreement.”
[11] “The three managing directors established the trade at their risk,
before it became a joint-stock company; and the rate of commission
contemplated a remuneration for past as well as future services.”
[12] “This has since been modified: one managing director will retire
in 1850, without any consideration, the saving to be credited to the
Company.” The salaries of assistants, clerks, and other disbursements
which the managing directors have to pay out of their commissions, now
amount to £6,000 per annum.
[13] See Report of Committee of the House of Lords on the Post Office,
Session 1847.
[14] An instance of the value of these contract steamers, otherwise
than in the postal service, occurred at Ceylon, on the breaking out
of the insurrection in that island. The Governor, not having troops
sufficient at hand to quell it, this Company’s contract steamer,
“Lady Mary Wood,” (subsidiary vessel on the China line), proceeded to
Madras, and brought up a detachment, which mainly contributed to the
prompt putting down of that insurrection. The recent destruction of a
number of piratical vessels on the coast of China by this Company’s
armed steamer “Canton,” is another instance of their value on distant
stations.
[15] The enormous extent of the correspondence conveyed by this
Company’s steamers may be inferred from the fact that the mail for
India and China, forwarded from Southampton by the “Indus,” on the
20th instant, consisted of 157 chests, amounting, in bulk, to within a
fraction of twenty tons, exclusive of 13 bags for the Mediterranean. To
this must be added the mail despatched from London on the 24th, _viá_
Marseilles, to be taken up by the same vessel at Malta, averaging 120
smaller chests. Each of the chests or cases forwarded _viá_ Southampton
is computed to be capable of containing 10,000 single letters;
therefore, allowing that a portion of them is occupied with newspapers,
the number of letters must be very great.
[Transcriber’s Note: