alike beneficial to every citizen of the Republic. And
as this service so greatly benefits commerce, it is well that it
should be paid from the general revenues of the country; from the
duties which it creates. At any rate, almost every Post Master General
will feel better disposed to subsidize ocean mail steamers adequately
if the bills are payable by the treasury department, and not
chargeable upon his own.

It would be well in all new contracts that the law of Congress
authorizing them should require strength of vessel, a fair dynamic
efficiency of performance, water-tight bulkheads for the safety both
of the vessel, and passengers and mails, and all those other
safeguards compatible with speed and mail efficiency. But the most
essential point is the mode of making the contracts. We have pursued
two system in this country, that of the lowest bidder, and that of
Congressional contracts. Some have supposed that as the land mails are
submitted to the lowest bidder, so those of the ocean ought to be
also. But the cases are very unlike. The land service is a familiar
thing, which every farmer understands, because running a wagon is one
of the first things in life that he learns. Every body is familiar
with the land service, and every body has more or less experimented in
it, or in something very similar to it. But it is far otherwise with
that of the ocean. Steamshipping is a comparatively new, a very
difficult, and a very little understood science. But few who know its
difficulties will undertake its hazards. Steam power and its expenses
are by no means understood by the people; and the first mistake made
by those unacquainted with it is in supposing it much cheaper than it
really is. This mistake leads to fatal consequences in bidding for the
ocean service, as most of those unacquainted with the business would
engage to perform a given service for less than the actual price that
it would cost them, and certainly for much less than practical,
experienced men would. And herein consists one of the evils of the
lowest bidder system, that inexperienced persons taking such contracts
either perform them inefficiently, or appeal constantly to Congress
for relief, or for increase of their pay. Such cases are exceedingly
numerous. Post Master General Campbell said that the lowest bidder
system was "a nuisance." Senator Mallory declared in a debate about
the close of the last Congress, that it was a system which never
wrought eff