Treasury appointed a Committee, consisting of Viscount
Canning, Post Master General of Great Britain, as President; Hon. Wm.
Cowper, on behalf of the Board of Admiralty; Sir Stafford H.
Northcote, Bart.; and Mr. R. Madox Bromley, Secretary to the Board of
Audit. The Committee organized, examined the Evidence and Report of
the Committee of 1849, also the three large volumes of Evidence and
Report taken by the Committee in 1851 on "Steam Communication with
India and Australia," and the many elaborate documents of this class
published by the Admiralty. After discussing thoroughly all of the
political, financial, commercial, ethical, and social questions
connected with rapid steam mail communication, they made an elaborate
and detailed examination of all the contracts existing with the
Government, and of the affairs of the various companies, with a view
to deciding whether the ocean mail service should be abridged, or
continued, or extended. They reported to both Houses of Parliament,
July 8th, 1853. The conclusion of the Committee was, not only that the
present service was demanded by every interest of the country and
should be sustained, but that it should be judiciously extended, so as
to meet all of the wants of the British public of whatever class. As
elsewhere remarked, the new line established last year to Australia
and India, at a cost of $925,000 per annum, for seven years, was a
legitimate result of that test and that report, made in the most
searching manner by the very ablest men of the kingdom; and this,
notwithstanding the reports purposely circulated in this country every
few years that Great Britain intends abandoning her steam mail system.
She will abandon that system, as her practice plainly indicates, only
when her people shall have discovered some means of making and
preserving wealth without effort, enterprise, commerce, or
manufactures. (_See page 99, Mr. Atherton's Reply._) The Report says:

"Before the application of steam to the propulsion of ships, the
contracts were often made for short periods, the Government being
able to find, among the vessels already employed in trade, some of
speed sufficient for the purpose; but when it became requisite to
dispatch the mails by steam, the ordinary supply of trading
vessels would no longer suffice, and the Government had to call
into existence a new class of packets.

"The postal service between England and the adjacent shor