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Leader (1850-1860), 16th June 1860, Edition 1 of 2, Page 562, HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF PACKET CONTRACTS.

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    • HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF PACKET CONTRACTS.
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      simply-because they do not forget that they are human beings of like passions with-themselves , ami quite as much entitled to gentlemanly treatment as the highest persons in . the land . The capitalists most ready to quarrel are the most ignorant and the most neglectful of social duties . They look upon human labour like bricks or timber , as a ¦ commodity to be purchased , and when tlie man refuses to be a chattel , they think themselves aggrieved . The conduct of the angry workman may not be reasonable , and his ostensible ground of quarrel often unjust , but no employment of force will generate ' that good understanding that can only

      come from obeying Christian principles as well as trade laws ; and if union men decline to work with non-unionists , the masters should appeal to reason , and make provisional arrangements , by selecting servants from the class willing to submit to their terms . If their statement be true that the societies are tyrannical , there must be plenty of workmen who will be glad to join them . If , on the other " hand , the workmen as a rule do not consider the Society ' s regulations hostile to the general interests of their order , " then the masters have been deceiving the public by their statements , and must seek to ' influence opinion by more legitimate methods than violence and abuse .

      Untitled Article

      THE subject of mail contracts , and the delinquencies .. public officers , to which we adverted last week , requires farther elucidation . Some of us remember , and most of us are aware , that the Ocean packet-service was formerly carried on from Harwich , Calais , and Falmouth by cutters and ' brigs ,. which formed a part of our naval establishment . ' At Falmouth there was a Commodore of the packet-service , and he had under his orders some dozen of

      small brigs , denominated coffins , from their bad habit of sinking with mails and passengers , instead of carrying them to their destination : and there were about four still smaller vessels at-eacli of the other ports . There were , if we recollect right , no Royal mail-packets to the- United States . The many passenger-ships that passed to and fro . conveyed the moils , Miserable _ \ vas theaccoimnodatiori the Royal packets afforded , and dire were the complaints of passengers tossed about foran uncertain period on the ocean .

      The first considerable improvement was made by the London Steani Navigation Company . It began to carry passengers regularly to and fro between London and Hamburg and Rotterdam , and soon took away from the Harwich mail-packets all the passengers . The mails for the North were then sent by this company's vessels , which continued till the extension of railways from Calais and Osteud to the North made it more expeditious —to send all letters by the shortest sea-voyage , to meet the system of continental railroads ^ Why the same phin was not extended from communicating with the continent of . Europe to communicating with America , and the transmission , by rail and otherwise ,

      front the point of arrival there , b y the shortest sea-voyage through a greater part of that continent , and to all the contiguous islands , we are not aware . The Treasury preferred a . costly system of steam-packets ,. even where it had none before ,. to convey mails by three or four routes across the ocean to the United States , the \ Vest Tndies , and South America . The most important fact in this brief history is the establishment of steampackets carrying passengers to the Continent , and the complete supercession by them of the Government mail-packets that

      formerly ran fronl Harwich . It is almost unnecessary to add , that that acceleration of communication between distant countries was entirely brought about by private interest , and likely to be very successful , wherever there are many passengers , as between Europe and America . We arc only now beginning to learn , as wx > never can learn till after wo have ascertained how our officials have perverted a system which began in private interest , and which private interest continually tends to improve , into a contrivarice for fleecing the tax-paying people .

      In 1838 , the Great Western , a sternum * of 1 , 200 tons , designed for the purpose , . completed her passage from Bristol to New York in fifteen and a half days , and returned from Mow York to Bristol in thirteen and a quarter days . The company which despatched her has the merit of first demonstrating the practicability of performing stqnm voyages across - ¦¦ the ocean quickly , regularly , and punctually . Private enterprise actually

      company to which the Great Western belonged-necessarily failed in competition , with a company so largely subsidised by the Government , though experience has proved that the immense passenger traffic between Liverpool and the United States can employ and remunerate several companies . ¦¦¦ ¦ In 1830 , also , when the success of the Great ' Western had stimulated both enterprise and cupidity , " a number of gentlemen interested in . the West Indies , " — amongst them , probably , some staunch Whigs— " offered to provide steamers for keeping up a communication , with that part of the world for £ 24-0 , 000 a year , " and this offer was agreed to by Government without inviting tenders by advertisement . The contract was entered into for ten years . " From that time to this the company

      then formed has continued to receive a quarter of a million of the public money yearly . It now receives , having- extended its services , £ 268 , 500 for carrying mails which might be much more advantageously sent through the United States ; and from their southern post on the Gulf of Mexico distributed with ease ami economy over all the West India islands . The possibility of effecting an improvement of this kind and of many other kinds was shut out from the day that the offer of these gentlemen to accept . € 240 , 000 of the public money per annum was agreed to by the servants of the public . Following this precedent exactly , Mr . Levjsk . . made his offer , ami Lord Derby , accepted-it . In entering into their agreement in IS 38 , they followed very closely the Whig precedent established by Sir C . Wood in 183 i > . ¦

      To officials it is nothing that this scheme of ' blind contracts , " to last for a series of years , has been denounced in Parliament ; nothing that it was demonstrated that improvements in steam navigation made such contracts . unnecessarilyonerous for the country and very advantageous to contractors ; nothing that committees " have reported , that where there is effective competition , as there is to America , it is not necessary to subsidise contractors ; nothing that two of the original pretexts for-paying such subsidies—viz ., that these packets should be made

      avail" able as armed vessels in case of war , " and that British liners must be maintained in competition with the United States—have been given Up , for the United States' subsidised line has ceased , and- the construction of . , var ious iron-plated steamers , &c . with all the organised , preparations for maritime warfare has rendered paddle-wheel packets nearly useless in such a contest : and nothing that rails now extend from ' "Portland to Georgia , and make it as unnecessary to send great ' mail -packets to the "West Indies and South America with letters ; , as to scud them to

      Hamburg and Bordeaux . In spite of all the altered circumstances , the precedent of giving gentlemen interested in the West Indies £ 2-J . 0 , 0 (><) a-year to carry , letters thither , set by Sir . Charles Wood in 1 S 3 JJ , was closely followed in IS 57 , in the attempt to establish an Austra"TiaTrimurrimTr ^^ contract was completed . To follow precedents ' is the rule of official life , the justification of official acts j and so Sir Ciiaklks Wood ' s precedent , properly followed by his successor . ' ? , now lands the country in an annual expense of £ 1 , 000 , 000 a-year , at the option of the Secretary of the Treasury . Tin ; whol ^ co ntrivance seems to us a financial juggle for the benefit ' of officials and contractors .

      ¦ Experience had , before 1839 , proved beyond all contradiction that bounties of all kinds for the encouragement of enterprise were mischievous . Parliament , though very slow in recognising new truths , had accepted this ; and bounties generally , even on baking sugar and curing herrings , had been given up . Bounties on the cultivation of the soil were indeed continued ,-but were reprobated as a -scandalous injustice . After all this , expense and this practice , the present SirCu . vu . iiBs Wood , thennu Admiralty official , with the sanction of the Treasury , with which the

      Admiralty must then have acted in . concert , began , in 1 S : J 9 , to givi ) enormous bounties fpv the encouragement of steam navigation . It needed none . That was the professed object of the subsidies . They might ns well have been bestowed on railways , but for them there was no foreign competition . The subsidies were ; to stifle competition on the old anti-social policy , by keeping the Americans oil' the line . At that time the town interest—generally the reforming interest—predominated in Parliament , and so the false principle which put monuy into the --pockets-. , of . nil connected with .. steam vessels wna not reprobated . The landowners and agriculturists knew nothing about the matter , and u Fjysteni of bounties for the encouragement of steam navigatipn was established , to the scandal of t | ie commercial ' conscience , as the anile of-modern

      policy . , ' Tlic money in expended without any control . Parliament cannot possibly audit the Treasury accounts . The Audit Board which exists foi the purpose , does its duty when it ascertains that the money voted for these bounties goes , at leost nominally , into

      did th < i work , and continued to do it , inthont ( lonwintinit ait / . In 1889 , the Government , which , had declined in 18 : JS to contract with the Great Western Company to carry the mails to America , contracted with an individual ( . Mr . Cun . vrd ) to convey mails to Halifax once a fortnight for . € 50 , 000 a-year . ' This contract was soon enlarged , and . extended , till it gradually attained the gigantic dimensions of a subsidy of £ 170 , M 0 a year for carrying letters between England and North America . Tho

      Untitled Article

      562 The Leader andSaturday Analyst . [ June 16 , 1800 .

      History And Principles Of Packet Contracts.

      HISTORY AND PRINCIPLES OF PACKET CONTRACTS .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1860, page 562, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2352/page/6/