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POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT, _July 9, 1853_.
SIR: Your letter of the 15th ultimo came duly to hand. My attention
having been specially called to the circumstances connected with the
contemplated line to the Pacific via Vera Cruz and Acapulco, I feel it
my duty, after due deliberation, to inform you that the conditional
contract entered into between my predecessor, Mr. Hubbard, and Messrs.
Ramsey and Carmick, for the conveyance of the mails over this line to San
Francisco, does not meet with my approbation.
In the first place, as at present advised, I consider the route
impracticable for mail purposes.
In the second place, the sums of money yearly drawn from the treasury
for contracts, which have for several years been, and are still in
force, for the transportation of the mails between the Atlantic and the
Pacific, are very considerable, amounting to about $731,868. In view of
this fact, and of the many sections and neighborhoods, in the different
States, which are either greatly restricted in, or deprived altogether of
mail facilities, it appears to me both inexpedient and unjust to go into
the expenditure of a still further sum of $424,000 for the service in
question.
Moreover, I disapprove of the principle upon which this contract is
made. In my opinion, if the Postmaster General has the right to make
such a contract at all, it ought to be made without the restriction or
limitation contained in yours, by which its force or validity is made
to depend upon the passage of an appropriation by Congress to carry
it into effect. I am unwilling to recognise any contingency of this
kind, because, although the contractors may, under such conditional
arrangement, establish no legal claim for compensation, they may,
nevertheless, go on and incur expenses, in the expectation that they will
be paid, and Congress, more from private sympathy than from public policy
or right, be at length induced to yield to a measure to which its prior
sanction never could have been obtained.