SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1270, 24 August 1872, Page 4

SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

In the form of a Parliamentary paper, a letter from the Hon. Mr Yogel to Messrs Webb and Holladay has recently been published, bearing date 6th July, 1872. Mr Yogel writes as follows :—

Gentlemen— l hare the honor to express to you the strong disapproval of the Government of New Zealand of the manner in which the Californian Mail Service is being performed. It appears to me that you have departed from the terms of your contract little by little, until you consider yourselves at liberty to pursue just that courso which satisfies your own convenience. For example, the mails from Great Britain, which reached San Francisco on the 21st May, were n«t forwarded thence until the 24th, owing to your not having ready a vessel to proceed with them. Yet you do not consider it ne*cessary that yon should inform me of the delay, or make any explanation respecting its cause. For the pervice between San Francisco and Honolulu, you have been using just such boats

as it suited you to use, and again you have not offered to this Government any explanation. That these boats would not have been approved of by the Government, I conclude alike from the information given by the mail agents, and from opinions published in San Francisco papers. As to tho latter, I must suppose them to be well founded, as I presume that, if thoy were not so, the libel law would be appealed to on your behalf. Apart from such opinions, the experience had of the Mahonga proves her to be not fit for the service which you have contracted to perform. You are continuing to make "connections" at Honolulu, instead of running boats through between San Francisco and Now Zealand, and we have not yet received trustworthy information of the Dacota having left New York to take her place on the line. Tho Government of New Zealand, as you know, have made to you many concessions to aid you in overcoming difficulties incidental to the establishment of an ocean mail service ; but you have steadily gone beyond our concessions without informing us either that you desired so to act, or had so acted. All such actions and omissions must now cease ; and I desire that you will understand and accept, in its fullest significance, my notification to you that the Government consider the time has come for holding you strictly to the terms of you contract. In a conversation with you in Melbourne, when you agreed to reduce to L 46,000, the sum receivable for tho service, pending the completion of the agreement with the A.S.N. Company, I stated that it was my intention not to recommend the Government to enforce against you the penalties to which you had rendered yourselves liable by breaches of your contract committed up to that time. Since our conversation, many provisions of the contract have been broken, and the effect of those breaches has been most irritating and serious. I desire therefore that you will not suppose that by giving you the written noti6cation, " That the Government consider the time has come for holding you strictly to the terms of your contract," I am waiving, or at all weakening, any rights we haye under the contract to demand penalties for breaches committed between the date of our conversation and that borne by this letter. I regret to say that the Nevada — in consequence, probably, of being over- worked, because you haye failed to supply a third suitable boat — is now in such a condition as to^ make repairs absolutely necessary. I notify to you that she will not, unless she has been thoroughly repaired, be permitted to carry passengers from New Zealand after the voyage which she has just commenced. lam content to believe that you will readily cause such a repair to be undertaken. But as the matter is one of great importance, I think it right to inform you that the Mail Agent is authorised, should the necessity unfortunately arise, to protest against yonr despatching the Nevada nn another voyage, unless she shall have been thoroughly repaired. — I have, &c, Julius Vooel.

J.

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