These are cross-appeals from a judgment of the Court of Claims. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company asserted in that court a claim for $531,666.66, and recovered a judgment for $41,666.66. The United States desire to reverse this latter judgment. The company seeks to recover here the full sum claimed below.
The suit grows out of a contract for carrying the mail from San Francisco to certain Asiatic ports. The facts, as found by the Court of Claims, and so far as is necessary to our decision, will be stated as we proceed.
The steamship company entered, on the 16th of October, 1866, into a contract with the United States to carry a monthly mail from San Francisco to China and Japan, via the Sandwich Islands, for the sum of $500,000 per annum, for a period of ten years.
These mails were to be carried in first-class American seagoing side-wheel vessels of from 3,500 to 4,000 tons burden, to be inspected and accepted by the Postmaster-General. The company, in due time, entered upon the discharge of this duty. The steamships 'Colorado,' 'Great Republic,' 'China,' 'Japan,' 'America,' and 'Alaska' were duly inspected and were accepted by the government for that service. They had been in actual use in performing the contract for several years, when Congress by the act of June 1, 1872, c. 256, making appropriations for the service of the Post-Office Department for the next fiscal year, enacte as follows:--
'SECT. 3. . . . For steamship service between San Francisco, Japan, and China, five hundred thousand dollars; and the Postmaster-General is hereby authorized to contract with the lowest bidder, within three months after the passage of this act, after sixty days' public notice, for a term of ten years, from and after the first day of October, eighteen hundred and seventy-three, for the conveyance of an additional monthly mail, on the said route, at a compensation not to exceed the rate per voyage now paid, under the existing contracts, and upon the same conditions and limitations as prescribed by existing acts of Congress in reference thereto, and the respective contracts made in pursuance thereof; and the contractors, under the provisions of this section, shall be required to carry the United States mails during the existence of their contracts without additional charge, on all the steamers they may run upon said line, or any part of it, or any branch or extension thereof: Provided, that all steamships hereafter accepted for said service shall be of not less than four thousand tons register each, and shall be built of iron, and, with their engines and machinery, shall be wholly of American construction; and shall be so constructed as to be readily adapted to the armed naval service of the United States, in case of war, and, before acceptance, the officers by whom they are inspected shall report to the Secretary of the Navy and the Postmaster-General whether this condition has been complied with. . . . And the government of the United States shall have the right, in the case of war, to take for the use of the United States any of the steamers of said line, and, in such case, pay a reasonable compensation therefor: Provided, the price paid shall in no case exceed the original cost of the vessel so taken; and the provision shall extend to and be applicable to the steamers of the Brazilian line hereinafter provided for.' 'SECT. 6. That if the contract for the increase of the mail service between San Francisco and China and Japan to a semi-monthly service shall be made with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, or shall be performed in said company's ships, or the ships of its successors in interest, the moneys payable under such contract shall be paid while the said company, or its successors in interest, shall maintain and run the line of steamships for the transportation of freight and passengers, at present run between New York and San Francisco, via the Isthmus of Panama, by the said Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and no longer: Provided, that said requirements shall, in all respects, apply to any party contracting for the mail service between San Francisco and China and Japan, as well as to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.'