F.—3

2

Enclosure 1 in No. 3. Mr. Tilley to Sir D. Cooper, Bart. Sir, — General Post Office, London, 25th August, 1875. I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of the letter,* signed by yourself and Mr. Russell as joint special representatives of New South Wales and New Zealand, forwarding copies of the contract which you have entered into on behalf of the two colonies with the Pacific Mail Steam Ship Company of New York, for the conveyance of mails between New South Wales, New Zealand, and San Francisco, commencing in November next. You also enclosed time tables for the outward and homeward services from October next to the end of the year 1876, which have been approved by the Postmasters-General of New South Wales and New Zealand. Arrangements shall be duly made for the despatch of mails from London on every fourth Thursday evening, commencing on the 21st October next, as laid down by these time tables. As regards the homeward service, you express your desire that the mail should be despatched from New York by one of the fast boats leaving that port on Saturday, or that if at any time the mail should not arrive in time for the Saturday boat, it should then be held over for the Cunard steamer of the following Wednesday,—that, in fact, the homeward mail should not be sent by any vessels except the Saturday boats of the White Star, Inman, or Cunard lines, or by the Cunard steamer of Wednesday, and you request that a communication to this effect may be addressed to the United States Post Office. The Postmaster-General will be quite prepared to comply with your wishes in this respect, if upon consideration you still think it would be advisable to limit the conveyance of the homeward mails in the manner proposed. An instance has just occurred in which, by the special desire of the agents for the two colonies, preference was given to the Cunard steamer "Bothnia" over the Guion steamer " Dakota" in despatching a mail from New York to Queenstown, and, as you are aware, this resulted in a delay of half a day in the delivery of the mails. If the rule which you propose to lay down should be followed, such instances of delay may recur, and in that case it may be expected that not only would the public complain, but also that the owners of the excluded steamships would challenge an arrangement which, while depriving them of the advantage of carrying a mail, is at the same time detrimental to public interests. To keep over a mail from Saturday till Wednesday, when other good ships are leaving in the meantime, seems to me a step which it would be difficult to justify; and I think it well, therefore, to invite a reconsideration of this point before making any communication to Washington. I am, &c, Sir D. Cooper, Bart., London. J. Tilley.

P.—3c, 1875. Enclosure 1 in

No. 1,

Enclosure 2 in No. 3. Sir D. Cooper and Mr. Russell to the Secretary, General Post Office, London. Sir, — London, 23rd September, 1875. I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 25th August last (the delay in replying to which has arisen from my absence from town), and to thank you for the effect you propose giving to the requests preferred by Sir Daniel Cooper and myself on behalf of the Governments of New South Wales and New Zealand. I have also to thank you for the opportunity you have given us of reconsidering the request we made to have the colonial mails sent forward from New York by particular boats only. You refer to the result of sending the mail in August last by the " Bothnia " instead of by the " Dakota," as unfavourable to the proposed change, and you rightly show that it resulted in a loss of time of half a day. The action taken in the case referred to was caused by the writer, and he was induced to do so from his knowledge of the inferior power and speed of the Williams and Guion boats compared with those of the Cunard Company. The homeward mail for the previous month, which was shipped by the New York postal authorities in the " Idaho," one of the Williams and Guion boats, on Tuesday, the 20th July, reached the General Post Office at 8.12 a.m. on the 3rd August, while the mail by the Cunard boat " Algeria," which left New York on Wednesday, 21st July, was delivered in the General Post Office at 7.45 a.m. on the Ist August, or two days before that of the " Idaho," thus making a difference of three days in the passage in favour of the Cunard boat. Several such instances have previously occurred in connection with the transit of our mails from New York, and they appeared and still appear to me to justify the sending of the mail in the "Bothnia" instead of the "Dakota," on the occasion you refer to. You put the question incorrectly when you say it is "to keep over a mail from Saturday till Wednesday, when other good ships are leaving in the meantime." If I am correctly informed, no mail steamships leave New York on Sunday or Monday, and the first departure would be in a Tuesday boat; and the question really is, whether the mail should be despatched in one of the Tuesday boats, or held, as we request, for the Cunard boat on Wednesday. We believe that none of the Tuesday boats are remarkable for speed. The Cunard boats enjoy the highest reputation for safety, power, and speed; and we think, after further con-