It is pleasing and instructive to examine the steam mail service of Great Britain, and see the gradual, unfaltering progress that she has made from year to year, since 1833; increasing the mail facilities and the sums paid for them by constant accretion based on system, rather than by any spasmodic legislation, or the ruling caprices of the moment. These improvements have not come all in a mass, or in any one year. Neither have they been abandoned at times of financial embarrassment, or commercial depression. At such periods they have been as regularly fostered as in the times of the most flush prosperity; and have ever been properly considered one of the prime agents and necessities for restoring commerce to its normal condition and a safe equilibrium. The transmarine service, which cost but £583,793, or $2,918,965, per annum until 1850,[G] now costs £1,062,797, or $5,333,985; within a fraction of double the sum. While the increase has not been slow, it has been steady and systematic, just as it was necessary to meet the wants of British commerce throughout the world. The language of the Hon. Senator Rusk on this subject, in his Report made to the Senate, Sep. 18th, 1850, found in Senate Ex. Doc. No. 50, 1st Session of 32d Congress, in Special Rep. Secretary of the Navy, 1852, is forcible and worthy of remembrance. He says:
[G] See Second Report, Steam Communication with India, 1851. Appendix, page 419.
"The importance of the steam mail service, when considered with reference to the convenience which it affords to the social intercourse of the country, is as nothing when compared with its vast bearing upon the commerce of the world. Wherever facilities of rapid travel exist, trade will be found with its attendant wealth. Of the truth of this proposition, no country, perhaps, affords a more forcible illustration than Great Britain, as none has ever availed itself, to so great an extent, of the benefits of easy and rapid intercommunication between the various portions of her almost boundless empire. The commercial history of England has shown that mail facilities have uniformly gone hand in hand with the extension of trade; and wherever British subjects are found forming communities, there do we find the hand of the government busy in supplying the means of easy and safe communication with the mother country. With a view to this, we have beheld England increasing her steam marine at an enormous expense, and sustaining packet lines connecting with every quarter of the globe, even in cases where any immediate and direct remuneration was out of the question. The great object in view was, to draw together the portions of an empire upon which the sun never sets, and the martial airs of which encircle the globe, and to make British subjects who dwell in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and even Oceanica, all feel alike that they are Britons."
The Hon. Thomas Butler King, formerly Chairman of the Naval Committee, in a speech in the House, 19th July, 1848, said on this subject:
"In the year 1840 a contract was made by the Admiralty with the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, at two hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling, or one million two hundred thousand dollars per annum, for fourteen steamers to carry the mails from Southampton to the West-Indies, the ports of Mexico in the Gulf, and to New-Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston. These ships are of the largest class, and are to conform in all respects, concerning size and adaptation to the purposes of war, to the conditions prescribed in the Cunard contracts. They are to make twenty-four voyages or forty-eight trips a year, leaving and returning to Southampton semi-monthly.
"Another contract has recently been entered into, as I am informed, for two ships to run between Bermuda and New-York. The West-India line, in consequence of some disasters during the first years of its service, was relieved from touching at the ports of the United States; but in the spring of last year it was required to resume its communication with New-Orleans, and is at any time liable to be required to touch at the other ports on our coast which I have named. Thus it will be perceived that this system of mail steam-packet service is so arranged as not only to communicate with Canada and the West-Indies, the ports on the Spanish Main and the Gulf coast of Mexico, but also to touch at every important port in the United States, from Boston to New-Orleans.
"These three lines employ twenty-five steamers of the largest and most efficient description, where familiarity with our seaports and the whole extent of our coast would render them the most formidable enemies in time of war. It is scarcely possible to imagine a system more skillfully devised to bring down upon us, at any given point, and at any unexpected moment, the whole force of British power. More especially is this true with respect to our southern coast, where the great number of accessible and unprotected harbors, both on the Atlantic and the Gulf, would render such incursions comparatively safe to them, and terrible to us. And when we reflect that the design of this system is, that it shall draw the means of its support from our own commerce and intercourse, we should surely have been wanting in the duty we owed to ourselves and to our country, if we had failed to adopt measures towards the establishment of such an American system of Atlantic steam navigation as would compete successfully with it."
Previous to the renewal of the several foreign mail contracts, in 1850, the Treasury ordered, 26th April, 1849, the formation of a Committee in these words: "Ordered, that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the Contract Packet Service." That Committee was composed of Sir James Hogg, Mr. Cardwell, Sir Wm. Clay, Mr. Cowper, Mr. Alderman Thompson, Mr. Fitz Roy, Mr. Hastie, Mr. Mangles, Mr. Thomas Baring, Mr. Bankes, Mr. William Brown, Mr. Childers, Mr. Wilcox, Mr. Crogan, and Mr. Henley. Mr. Elliot was added in the place of Mr. Baring. The Committee sat seventeen days, and examined fifteen witnesses under oath, many of these being commanders in the Navy, Secretaries, Presidents, and engineers of the Companies, and other eminent men in steam. Mr. Cunard was among the witnesses. After taking evidence and papers extending over about seven hundred and eighty-three octavo pages, they said in their report, after recommending that great care should be exercised in making all future contracts:
"1. That so far as the Committee are able to judge, from the evidence they have taken, it appears that the mails are conveyed at a less cost by Hired Packets than by Her Majesty's Vessels.
"2. That some of the existing Contracts have been put up to public tender, and some arranged by private negotiation; and that a very large sum beyond what is received from postage is paid on some of the lines; but considering that at the time these contracts were arranged the success of these large undertakings was uncertain, Your Committee see no reason to think that better terms could have been obtained for the public."