office have really made no advance on the total price of the message; but this is not an exactly fair way of looking at the case--we may have cheap porterage as well as cheap telegrams, and the Secretary takes credit for having provided us with it. In the head office the messengers are glad to carry telegrams half-a-mile for a halfpenny, and a mile for a penny; with very few exceptions the larger distance would cover the porterage in the metropolis at least. It must be conceded that our relations with distant cities are incomparably trifling compared with our more immediate relations. For one letter sent into the country, the Londoner writes fifty to town correspondents. The same proportion would undoubtedly obtain with respect to these metropolitan telegraphs provided the public could recover the sixpenny tariff. In the year 1865, when the old company had only eighty-three stations open, it forwarded 316,272 messages. It would be difficult to estimate the number that would pass under the cheap rate from the 489 postal telegraph offices that have taken their places. Surely, when telegrams are sent all over Belgium and Switzerland for fivepence, and at this rate pay their Governments, the metropolis and other great towns of the Empire should not be deprived of an equal advantage; and we think we may with effect here reproduce Mr. Scudamore's own words :--

'It is not necessary to restrict the provisions of such facilities [those of Belgium and Switzerland] more narrowly than elsewhere, or to make higher charges for their use and enjoyment.'

We know the argument will be used against us, that if the uniform shilling rate were departed from, a scale of graduated payments according to distance would be the only logical sequence, and possibly the uniform penny fee will be quoted in opposition; but there is all the difference in the world between a penny and a shilling. The time may arrive, perhaps, when a halfpenny delivery may come in vogue; no one would care much to save the halfpenny, but the saving of sixpence would be quite a different matter. A minutely graduated scale, no doubt, would entail much more extra labour; but a uniform sixpenny tariff within a few large towns would scarcely mar the original simplicity of the shilling scheme. We have so high an opinion of the administrative skill of the Secretary of the Post-office, that nothing but the clear justice of the case compells us to dwell upon this, to us, obvious shortcoming of his programme.

It is a very good thing to be able to send a telegram to the Land's-end or John o' Groat's House for a shilling, but how

many of us want to do so? The practical value of an invention is measured by the answer it makes to our daily wants. Now we do want to talk with those we are in daily mutual relationship; but what the gulls are saying in the far west, or what the sheep may be about in the bleak northern limit of the land, troubles but few people. Give us back then, we say, the old sixpenny metropolitan tariff, together with all the improvements offered by the postal establishments, and a prompt answer will be made by the great civic populations to such a wise departure from the hard and fast line of uniformity.

We do not doubt but that Mr. Scudamore is fully aware that a uniform tariff which is found to pay in the two small countries we have named could not fail to succeed with the population of these kingdoms. Viewed in this light, it is possible that he contemplates a reduction to a sixpenny rate, after he has tested the working of the scheme for a few years. If this is the reason for his insisting upon a uniform rate, we may be content to wait for its realisation, otherwise we think our argument is unassailable.

Irrespective of the value of the telegraph pure and simple in the hands of the Post-office, we have to consider the facilities of working the postal telegraphic system-in other words, the method the authorities of St. Martin's-le-Grand will have of completing the one power by the other. In all cases where great speed is not required, we are inclined to think that the mixed system will meet the wants of a large section of the community, and it will certainly be very economical. We cannot do better than give, in the words of the Secretary of the Post-office (written in 1868), the method of working this double system :

'I will take the case of a person residing in a suburban district of London, for instance, Sydenham, receiving a letter from a correspondent in a suburban district of Liverpool, by the first morning delivery, and desiring to send an immediate reply, in the hope of receiving a rejoinder from his correspondent by night mail. As matters at present stand, he can send a telegram through the London District and Electric and International Telegraph Companies; but to do this he must walk or send to the telegraph-office, and the transmission and delivery of the message will in no case cost him less than 1s. 6d. for twenty words. The cost will increase with the distance of the addressee's residence from the receiving telegraphic office, and in all but extremely urgent cases the labour and the cost combined will deter him from using the telegraph. If the scheme which I have described were in operation, and if he could confine his message to twenty words, write it on stamped paper, and deposit it in the nearest pillar-box or deposit-office before 12.45 P.M., he would secure its delivery free of further charge

beyond one shilling in any part of the postal district of Liverpool by 5 P.M., which delivery would leave his correspondent ample time for a rejoinder by night mail. The course which the message would take in this instance would be as follows:-From the pillar-box or depositoffice to the sorting-office by telegraph, through the South-Eastern District office, and the East Central office to the Liverpool office, and from the Liverpool office by the 3.45 P.M. delivery to the addressee.

'But let us suppose that the resident at Sydenham desires something more than a rejoinder by night mail: let us suppose that he desires his correspondent to leave Liverpool by a train starting from Liverpool at 5 P.M. In this case he might, if the scheme which I have indicated were in operation, take his message to the Sydenham sorting-office by say 11 A.M., and secure its delivery for one shilling in any part of the postal district of Liverpool at 3 P.M.; which delivery would give his correspondent time to catch the 5 P.M. train.

'Or let us take the case of a solicitor having his place of business in Chancery Lane or Bedford Row, and being desirous to summons a number of witnesses from the suburban district of Liverpool, and at the same time to send them money on account of the expenses of their journey. Such a solicitor, if such a scheme as I have described were in operation, might not only, by depositing his message at the West Central office by 11 A.M., have a copy sent to each witness by the 1 P.M. delivery of Liverpool, but might at the same time furnish each witness with a telegraphic money-order, and the witnesses would have ample time to obtain cash for these telegraphic money-orders before their departure from Liverpool on the same day.'

This scheme no doubt is very convenient, but unfortunately it is only likely to be a matter of the future, inasmuch as the forwarding of money-orders by electric telegraph has been deferred, at least for the present. Seeing that money-order telegraphic offices are the centre of life of the new system, it certainly is to be regretted that their usefulness, after being promised in such glowing language, is still in futuro. The scheme is in full work in Belgium, and we cannot see that its introduction here would overtax the powers of the Post-office. These facilities were given us by the Electric and International Company; it is hard that the public should have to pay dear for intercivic telegrams, and at the same time have less facility than it had before.

It would seem that our natural predilection for the sea has shown itself in the vigour with which our public companies have already, or are preparing to thread the ocean with electric cables. When the first cable from Dover to Cape Griznez was made in 1850, and its rapid destruction took place through fretting upon the rocks of that promontory, other ventures, it might have been thought, would have been discouraged, but, on the contrary, the mishap only served to incite us to

further exertions. In another month, a still stronger cable, well armoured with iron wires externally, was constructed. But Neptune again seemed to resent the intrusion upon his domain ; for whilst the cable was being laid a gale of wind sprang up, the cable was violently dragged out of the ship, and she drifted full a mile out of her course, and in addition, a kink, or twist in the cable, took place. These mishaps so shortened it, that when an attempt to land it was made, it was found to be half a mile too short. A fresh piece was, however, spliced, and this very cable-the first that ever laid in sea-water, has remained in perfect condition ever since. These mishaps, however, were sufficient to create grave doubts of the practicability of laying marine cables of any great length. It was admitted that we knew nothing of the bottom of the ocean; it was supposed to be interspersed with hills and valleys, and submarine rocks just as abrupt as those found in mountainous countries; and it was suggested that the feeble cable, suspended from point to point of these elevations, would inevitably break by its own weight; that unknown ocean currents would drift the cable away; and it was gravely argued in a volume written by a naval officer, that it would never sink to the bottom when laid in oceans of great depth, the condensation of the water being sufficient to suspend it in mid-ocean. Unacquainted as we were with the laying of submarine cables, it did seem discouraging to find so many disasters occurring in a channel only twenty miles across; but further knowledge has taught us that these are the most dangerous of all places in which cables can be laid. The rush of waters in such confined channels is far more disturbing to their position and to their subsequent repose than are the deepest ocean beds. Marine life, which is sometimes injurious to cables, is also more abundant; and in addition, there are all the chances of breakage consequent upon their being within anchorage ground, and their liability to be dragged by ships. These circumstances are all drawbacks to these small ventures, from which the larger ocean cables are free.

The next cable attempted to be laid was the one between Donaghadee and Port Patrick, by the Magnetic Telegraph Company, in 1852. This failed in consequence of a violent storm in the comparatively shallow waters of the Irish Sea. The failure, again, of the cable from Orfordness to the Hague, in 1854; the Verona and Balaclava, in 1855; and of others, either from being laid in shallow water, or from being too slight, and more especially the destruction of the Atlantic Cable from Valentia to Newfoundland, in 1858,

through defective insulation, completely discouraged speculation, especially in the longer lengths of submarine cables. The public looked upon such ventures as purely speculative; some, indeed, who should have known better, condemned them as impossibilities; and the chance of speaking with our children across the Atlantic was looked upon as a mere dream to impose upon shareholders. Science, however, was not to be denied ; she still, although cruelly balked, believed in the perfect feasibility of the undertaking. The cable had spoken during the month that had elapsed before it failed: 366 messages passed through it between this country and America. The Queen had addressed the President in words of congratulation; our Waroffice had stopped the departure of two regiments from Canada, at a saving of 50,000l.; and we had received the news of the safe arrival of the Europa' after her collision with the 'Arabia.' The engineers discovered where the electrical leakage was, and measured it off to the mile in which it occurred. Having proved that we could pass the electric fire beneath the deep sea for such a distance, it was not to be supposed that the enterprise would be abandoned; although for a moment there had been a failure, those best able to judge had discovered the various causes that led to it.

6

It was seen that with cables that had to be submerged to such a tremendous depth, it was advisable to construct them proportionately stronger and specifically lighter than the first Atlantic line, so that they might be more easily recoverable. It was also obvious that for so long an unbroken circuit, the copper conductor should be larger and the gutta-percha insulator more perfect, so as to enable a greater speed of transmission to be obtained with a less current; the fact being ascertained that, the weaker the electric charge capable of producing an effect at the other end, the less tendency it would have to burst its way through the gutta-percha at any defective point, and get to earth, and therefore the more likely the cable would be to last. It was eight years, however, before public confidence could be re-established. Through this period of despondency, however, the Company managed to keep the venture afloat, and in 1865 a new cable was manufactured both stronger and specifically lighter than its predecessor, with a far heavier conducting strand. The great additional weight in the cable, however, led to a change in the method of paying it out. For the former cable the reader will possibly remember two ships were employed for that purpose, the 'Agamemnon' and the Niagara,' supplied by the navies of