IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

JUNE 8, 1858.-Ordered to be printed.

Mr. YULEE submitted the following

REPORT.

[To accompany Bill S. 447.]

The Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, to whom was referred the memorial of Daniel B. Hibbard, of Michigan, praying an appropriation in payment of his account for carrying the United States mail on special contract with the deputy postmaster at St. John's, in the State of Michigan, have had the same under consideration, and beg leave respectfully to submit the following report:

It appears from the papers before the committee in this case, properly authenticated, (the principal facts contained in which are corroborated by a letter to the committee from the Postmaster General,) that the memorialist, at the earnest solicitation of the deputy postmaster at St. John's, Michigan, engaged in carrying the United States mail from said St. John's to the village of Lyons, also in said State of Michigan, a distance of some twenty miles; that he carried said mail, back and forth, between said places, six times per week, from the third day of February to the tenth day of May, 1857, making eighty-three days; that in performing such service, he was obliged to employ three four-horse teams on account of the bad state of the roads, the expense of keeping which teams, and the necessary carriages and wagons frequently out of repair on account of the bad roads, was very great, the country being new, and feed having to be brought from Detroit, a distance of about one hundred miles, at large cost; that the deputy postmaster at St. John's estimated the value of said service himself at ten dollars per day, for which price the memorialist agreed to perform the service, and did perform it faithfully, as he shows by the certificate of the deputy postmasters at St. John's and Lyons, on file in the office of the Second Assistant Postmaster General. It further appears that, at the time the memorialist commenced carrying the said mail in accordance with his agreement with said deputy postmaster at St. John's, the Detroit and Milwaukie Railroad Company had just completed their road from Detroit to St. John's, and it was expected they would very soon get the iron laid and the road ready for running cars to Lyons, in which case the employment of the memorialist would

have ceased, as it did after the railroad was complete to said Lyons. It appears, also, that when the railroad was complete to said St. John's, the mail for Lansing, which heretofore had been carried on the direct route from Detroit, was transported over the railroad to St. John's, and thence twenty-one miles south, by stage, to Lansing, from which latter point there was a mail route to said Lyons. This change of the route for transporting the mail from Detroit to Lansing was ordered by the special agent of the Post Office Department, one Mr. Hart, and was done, of course, to facilitate the transportation of the mail. If, then, the mails for Lyons and towns west of that point, on their arrival at St. John's by railroad, was to be sent first to Lansing, (twenty-one miles from St. John's,) to get on to a regular route to Lyons, they would, on their arrival at Lansing, be some distance further from Lyons than when at St. John's, and, instead of facilitating, would greatly retard the transportation of the mail. Your committee consider the claim a just one; and although the employment was irregular, the service against the government having been beneficial, and there being no law of Congress which authorizes the Postmaster General to settle for or pay the same, they recommend a special act for the relief of the memorialist. They report a bill accordingly.