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 efficiently, which never gave final satisfaction, and which generally brought in a set of adventurers. The department and members of Congress had experienced the annoyance and inefficiency of the system in the contract for carrying the mails between Key West and New-Orleans through the Gulf. It was several times given to the lowest bidder, and as often fell through; being finally awarded by private arrangement to other parties, at more than double the prices of the lowest bidders. In the elaborate Report made in 1852 to the Senate by Gen. Rusk, as Chairman of the Committee on the _Post Office and Post Roads_, of which Messrs. Soule, Hamlin, Upham, and Morton were members, in speaking on this subject the Committee said: