TRANSMARINE TELEGRAPH.
TIM electric telegraph is laid down across the Channel between England and France; the salt sea is traversed by instantaneous communication. We stand on the threshold of an improvement that may hasten the progress of our race more rapidly than any other. It provokes the most audacious speculation. The electric telegraph has received striking improvements in earn lification even before its known applicability has been realized; st 11 greater improvements may facilitate the economy of labour, and so remove what must henceforward be the chief obstacle to its
extension. The salt sea passed, direct communication between the British capital and the most distant of our dependencies becomes a question only of years. Calcutta may be brought within a few minutes of London. The post may be superseded. A merchant may have in London a wire to his countinghouse in Calcutta, and address his clerk down at the antipodes as he would in the countinghouse below stairs. Documents, nay " securities," might pass, under proper notarial attestation at the two extremities ; a man in London might sign a bill in Calcutta, transmit it for en- dorsement to St. Petersburg, and receive cash for it on authority from Cairo, in the space of an hour or so. Why not extend the communication to America P If the depth of the A.tlantio should forbid, go the other way—through Russia, the Alentians, and Oregon, to New York, Montreal, and New Or- leans, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro. You may put a wire round the earth that shall do your spiriting in forty minutes. Is not this compassing of the whole globe alarming? Does it not look as if the human mites had nearly taken the whole cheese, be and were about to thrown into some d of the universe, cheese and all ? Well—" nothing of him that doth fade " ! De- struction is a poor human notion. A duathole of the universe must be a very fine place. " Apres nous le deluge " : but in the history of worlds deluges are preludes to more glorious life.
Previous page
