SIR: In accordance with a request from Messrs. Ramsey and Carmick, the contractors named in the contract hereinafter mentioned, I have the honor of reporting to your department _the real character of the relations this company sustains to the contract; the obstacles to the non-fulfilment of it by a date as early as was anticipated; and a few remarks explanatory of the route_. On the 15th day of February, 1853, a contract was made by the United States government, acting by the Postmaster General, with Albert C. Ramsey and Edward H. Carmick, of Pennsylvania, to carry the United States mails between San Francisco and Vera Cruz, at certain definite and specific periods mentioned in the schedule of the contract, for the sum of $424,000 per year, for the period of four years, with the privilege of extending it one year if the Post Office Department thought proper. This contract was not of that liberal form heretofore characteristic of all the other ocean mail contracts, but was in a form of that specific and detailed character peculiar to any short land service, where time might be insured to a minute. The contract was, in fact, so stringent as to be incompatible with any but an honest intention to fulfil its spirit and letter, in which spirit it was, in fact, assumed by the parties associated in its performance. This contract was printed and sent to the Senate at its last session, and is now on its files. By the 5th section of the law of 1848 it is illegal for contractors to assign their contracts; and although aware that the department is not bound to recognise any but the contractors, yet, frankness enforces the propriety of saying that, by specific covenants, this company have agreed with Messrs. Ramsey and Carmick to fulfil all the conditions of the contract on their part, to be kept and performed in relation to the land service between Vera Cruz and Acapulco, and that similar covenants have been made with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (William H. Aspinwall, esq., president) for the sea service between Acapulco and San Francisco. The contract distinctly specified that its schedule time (and in fact the spirit of the contract) was to the intent that it should form part and parcel of the contract for the gulf service, being an extension of two of the trips between New Orleans and Vera Cruz, made (under a specific law, August 30, 1852) with Mr. Carmick, so as to form, in its own language, “_one through-line in sixteen days between New Orleans and San Francisco_.” The gulf contract is without any condition as to an appropriation; but the larger or Pacific contract is made contingent upon an appropriation by Congress for its approval. The question might be gravely raised, in looking at one contract as an integral part of the other, whether the appropriation by Congress of $70,000 (a trifle more than it was bid for and taken by Mr. Carmick, viz: $69,750) for the gulf service, was not an approval in terms of the Pacific contract, and