Note 365 — Chapter XI

An amusing incident occurred at this time to myself not altogether unworthy of notice. When the discussions were going on about the irregularity of the sailing-ship mails, the late Mr. James Wilson, then Secretary to the Treasury, one day asked me how these irregularities could best be remedied. “Oh,” I said, half in joke and half in earnest, “adopt the horse-shoe nail mode of levying your penalties: inflict, as you do now, 20l. for the first day’s delay, but increase it to 40l. for the second, 80l. for the third, 160l. for the fourth, 320l. for the fifth, 640l. for the sixth, and no pay at all for the conveyance of the mails if the ships are seven days beyond the time stipulated in their contract, and you will be no longer troubled with tenders professing to deliver your letters in less time than the passage, under ordinary circumstances, can be accomplished.”

A scheme of penalties, somewhat after this fashion, was immediately afterwards adopted; but I had unwittingly prepared a stick to break my own back. The second contract for the Cape and India mails, to which I have referred in the text, was one of the earliest to which this new principle was applied, and I could not of course object to the stringency of this new fashioned penalty clause, as it was of my own creation. Nor did the Government hesitate to put it in force when my ships were behind time, as also in the case of the unfortunate European and Australian Steam Navigation Company. But though the new principle promptly and effectually put a stop to all tenders of the class of which Mr. Wilson complained, it was much too rigorous to be continued and was abolished.