IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

JUNE 10, 1858.-Ordered to be printed.

Mr. MALLORY made the following

REPORT.

[To accompany Bill S. 450.]

The Committee on Naval Affairs, to whom was referred the petition of Hiram McCullough, have had the same under consideration, and report:

That Samuel A. West and George McCullough contracted with the United States, on the 17th of November, 1856, to deliver at the navy yard at Gosport, Virginia, certain quantities of stone: one-fourth in ninety, one-fourth in one hundred and fifty, and one-fourth in one hundred and eighty days, and the balance within nine months from the date of the contract; and that if the parties failed to deliver at the times specified, they should forfeit and pay to the government a sum of money equal to twice the amount of the contract price agreed upon as the price to be paid in case of the actual delivery thereof.

From the letter of the chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, communicated to your committee in response to a call upon the Navy Department for information in regard to the facts involved in this case, it appears that none of the stone contracted for by said West and McCullough was delivered, and that the department was compelled to procure it by open purchase, at an advance of some $20,000 on the amount at which the contractors had agreed to furnish." The chief of the bureau, however, states that "the offer of West and McCullough, on which their contract was based, was $11,232 16 less than the next lowest bidder, and at rates so much below the current market prices of the article that the bureau believed at the time that they would not be able to comply with their engagements; but as they gave satisfactory security for the fulfilment of the terms of the contract, the bureau could exercise no discretion in the matter, the law imperatively requiring all contracts to be given to the lowest bidder.” It further appears, from the affidavits of five creditable persons conversant with the facts and filed with the papers in this case, that the contractors promptly proceeded toward the execution of their agree

ment, by erecting the necessary machinery for loading vessels, and in quarrying the stone, but that the violent and unusual freshets that prevailed and continued in the Susquehanna river during the winter and spring of 1856 and 1857, carrying with them immense masses of ice, completely destroyed the cranes and derricks erected by them, the wharves and the bridge between the quarries and the river, and rendered physically impossible the fulfilment of their contract.

Your committee, therefore, believing that the agreement of these parties was entered into in good faith, and from the evidence that they sustained heavy losses in the destruction of their works by the freshets during that season, large sums of which were at various times advanced by your petitioner, and, as he alleges, never repaid by said contractors, who are poor, and the probable ruinous effect the enforcement of the penalty of said contract would have upon the sureties, are of opinion that Congress should accord the relief prayed, report the accompanying bill, with a recommendation that it do pass.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

JUNE 10, 1858.-Ordered to be printed.

Mr. IVERSON made the following

REPORT.

[To accompany Bill S. 420.]

The Committee on Claims, to whom was referred the Senate bill No. 420, "For the relief of James Collier," together with papers in relation to the claim of James Collier, report:

The claim which the bill referred to the committee is intended to liquidate originated in the loss of certain public money from the office of the deputy collector of Monterey, in California. A suit, in which the merits of this claim as well as many other matters in controversy between the United States and Mr. Collier were involved, was tried in the United States circuit court for the southern district of New York in 1856, in which the following was added to the usual judgment, that the defendant go without day: "And it is further considered and certified that the said balance of $8,110 29, so due from the United States, be certified in his favor.

"Judgment signed this 29th day of October, A. D. 1856.

"R. E. STILLWELL, Deputy Clerk." Which judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court, April, 1858. The matter having been brought to the attention of the Secretary of the Treasury, he says, in a letter addressed to the chairman of the Finance Committee: "While the department does not concur with the decision of the court below, confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States upon an equal division of opinion of said court, yet an appropriation to pay said claim by Congress will be necessary, as the department has no fund out of which to pay the same.

Under these circumstances, the committee report the bill back to the Senate, with an amendment.