Note 9 — APPENDIX.

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 4s. 6d. (or rather, as was actually the rate, 4s. 3d.) 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.