Ramsey & Carmick, contract. / Letter from the Postmaster General transmitting copy of a conditional mail contract; also copies of correspondence relative to the same

LETTER FROM THE POSTMASTER GENERAL, TRANSMITTING Copy of a conditional mail contract; also copies of correspondence relative to the same .
February 1, 1855.—Referred to the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, and ordered to be printed.
Post Office Department, Washington, January 31, 1855 .
Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith, in compliance with the resolution of the House of the 2d of January instant, a copy of the conditional contract made by my predecessor, Mr. Hubbard, with Messrs. Ramsey & Carmick, on the 3d of March, 1853, for the extension of two of the trips on the New Orleans and Vera Cruz line, from Vera Cruz, Mexico, via Acapulco, to San Francisco in California; also copies of all the correspondence relative to the same, and also relative to the change of schedule proposed on the line from New Orleans to Vera Cruz.
My views in regard to this contract were fully stated in my annual report to Congress of December 1, 1853, and are also contained in the correspondence herewith communicated. It was not deemed necessary to answer the letter of Robert G. Rankin, president of the Mexican Ocean Mail and Inland Company, dated November 23, 1853, and received at the department on the 30th of January, 1854. That they were not prepared to fulfil their conditional contract on the 23d of November, 1853, nine months after its execution, is therein conceded, and the department had neither the time nor desire to enter into a discussion of the irrelevant matters introduced into the body of that letter.
The objections which I entertained to the change of schedule on the New Orleans and Vera Cruz route, proposed, by Messrs. Harris & Morgan in their letter of the 26th October, 1853, were two-fold:
1st. That by authorizing the change proposed the original intent and object of my predecessor, Mr. Hubbard, in entering into the conditional contract with Messrs. Ramsey and Carmick—which was, to secure an additional semi-monthly mail between the Atlantic States and California by alternating at regular intervals with the present semi-monthly line via Panama—would have been entirely frustrated; and thus, instead of having a weekly mail between the Atlantic and Pacific, there would have been, as heretofore, only a semi-monthly communication.