before the House of Commons, we think
we have reason to render due homage
both to the Tory government which
proposed an essentially liberal measure, and
to the Liberal government which had
the magnanimity to carry out an
arrangement which was obviously for the
public benefit, notwithstanding that it was
not originated by themselves. Of course
this happy result has not been arrived at,
without a certain amount of trouble and
opposition. That magnanimous creature,
Vested Interests (who had thought but
little of his property invested in telegraphic
shares, for some years past), no sooner
heard of the proposition than, like the
merry Swiss boy mentioned in song, he
took up his milking pail, and was "off
and to labour away," determined to drain
the last drop from that finest and fattest
of milch-kine, the public. Holders of
telegraphic stock, to whom such a thing
as a dividend was unknown, began to study
the auctioneers' advertisements of "estates
to be sold," and asked their friends if they
knew of any three hundred guinea weight-
carriers likely to come into the market at
the end of the season? The names of the
Electric and International, and the British
and Irish Magnetic, began to be bandied
about among flannel clothed stockbrokers
making Saturday holiday, but never
forgetting business, going through
Shepperton Lock or dropping into the Bells at
Ousely; in the fast morning train from
Teddington there was much speculation;
the noble army of jobbers and riggers
saw a new field for their exertions, and
made harvest therein accordingly; the City
spectres who haunt the purlieus of the
Exchange gibbered to each other over
their mouldy Abernethy biscuits, of a new
chance for obtaining a few half crowns
without the outlay of a sixpence; and
monied respectability, which did not at the
moment see its way to realising at a profit,
wanted to know where this government
interference was going to stop?

In the House of Commons also the
scheme had its opponents. The honourable
member to whom the mere notion that
the government proposes to carry on any
business hitherto carried on by private
individuals or public companies acts as a
red rag acts on a bull, had his say. The
honourable member who won the first prize
for arithmetic at St. Beomulph's Grammar
School, Market Drayton, and the wooden
spoon at Cambridge, who has ever since been
"nuts" on his statistical powers, and who
thinks rather meanly of the abilities of the
people who check the income and outlay
of the entire Post Office service and prepare
the estimates for parliament, had his say
in which he demonstrated the absurdity
of the generally received axiom that two
and two make four, and that only
departmental sophistry would have the hardihood
to assert that three being taken from six,
so many as three remain. The honourable
member who dabbles in the milder and
less recondite Latin quotations, stepped in
promptly and glibly with his "caveat
emptor:" the classical expression of his
distrust in the gift-bearing Greeks (in neat
allusion to the advantages offered by the
government); and his belief in those
principles of fair play which were summed up
in three words, "audi alteram partem."
Other honourable members were there
who thought the Post Office clerks would
rush wildly through the streets, proclaiming
the secrets with which they might
become acquainted in the course of their
telegraph duties: as though Post Office
clerks were more given to gossip than
telegraph clerks, who have always had that
opportunity; honourable members who
thought that the wires might be
surreptitiously and dishonestly "tapped," and
messages thus extracted in course of
transit; honourable members who thought that
the obstructive and lethargic Post Office
would object to the employment of private
wires between houses of business; honourable
members who grieve the human soul
on every subject under the sun, and
suggest to the unparliamentary mind that the
last Reform Bill must have endowed
Bedlam with at least one hundred members.
But men of tact, ability, and honest
purpose have overcome all this nonsense,
the bill has become law, the whole
telegraphic system of the United Kingdom
will from the first of January next be
under the sole control of the Postmaster-
General, and will be worked wholly by his
clerks and servants. Let us see what
advantages will accrue to the public, beyond
those broadly stated in our former article
on the subject: premising that the public
has no doubt paid dearly for its telegraphic
whistle, but that we hold it to be a whistle
far better worth its money than any whistle
the public has bought for a very long
time.

The existing telegraphic system is mainly
defective in this respect: that the telegraph
offices are situated at railway stations, and
out of the principal centres of business and