SILLIMAN'S JOURNAL. 



189 



It has often been said, that it is one of 

 the happiest circumstances for progress in 

 this country, that there are few or none of 

 the strongly entrenched old prejudices to 

 contend with among us, that so continually 

 stand in the way of all new inventions 

 abroad. The magnetic telegraph is at the 

 present moment a proof of this. Although 

 the principle is well understood in England, 

 at the present moment, and the fact of its 

 daily use over hundreds of miles in the 

 United States, is a matter of public noto- 

 riety, there is as yet not a single extended 

 line of telegraphic communication by this 

 means in Great Britain ; and it will be ob- 

 served that the President of the British As- 

 sociation, in his remarks on this subject, is 

 obliged to draw his illustrations from this 

 side of the Atlantic : 



The extension of the means of communication by 

 the Electric Telegraph is yearly fucilitating in- 

 tercourse, almost as rapid as liplit or as thought, 

 between distant portions of England, and between 

 distant provinces in the vast empire of our Queen. 



The last pamphlet which I had in my hand before 

 leaving home yesterday, was a report presented to 

 the Legislative Council and Assembly of New 

 Brunswick, relative to a project ibr constructing 

 a railway, and with it a line of electro-magnetic 

 telegraph, from Halifax to Quebec. 



Distance is time ; and when by steam, whether 

 on water or on land, personal communication is fa- 

 cilitated, and when armies can be transported with- 

 out fatigue in as many hours as days were formerly 

 required, and when orders are conveyed from one 

 extremity of an empire to another almost like a 

 flash of lightning, the facility of governing a large 

 state becomes almost equal to the facility of go- 

 verning the smallest. I remember, many years 

 ago, in the Scotsmaii, an ingenious and able article 

 showing how England could be governed as easy as 

 Attica under Pericles ; and I believe the same con- 

 clusion was deduced by William Cobbett from the 

 same illustration. 



The system is daily extending. It was, how- 

 ever, in the United States of America that it was 

 tirst adopted on a great scale, by Prof. Morse in 

 1844 ; and it is there that it is now already devel- 

 oped most extensively. Lines for above 1,300 miles 

 are in action, and connect those States with her Ma- 

 jesty's Canadian Provinces ; and it is in a course of 

 development so raj)id, that, in the words of the re- 

 port of Mr. Wilkinson, to my distinguished triend, 

 his Excellency SirW. E.Colebrooke, the governor of 

 New Brunswick, to which I have just adverted, 

 ■•^ No schedule of telegraphic lines can now be re- 



lied upon for a month in succession, as hundreds of 

 miles may be added in that space of time. So easy 

 of attainment does such a result appear to be, and 

 so lively is the interest felt in its accomplishment, 

 that it is scarcely doubtful that the whole of the 

 populous parts of the United States will, within 

 two or three years, be covered with a telegraphic 

 network like a spider's web, suspending its jirinci- 

 pal threads upon important points along the sea- 

 board of the Atlantic on one side, and upon smiilar 

 points along the lake frontier on the other." I am 

 indebted to the same report for another fact, which 

 I think the Association will regard with equal in- 

 terest. "The conhdence in tiie etficiencv of tele- 

 graphic communication has now become so estab- 

 lished, that the most important commercial trans- 

 actions daily transpire, by its means, between cor- 

 respondents several hundred miles apart. Ocular 

 evidence of this was aliorded me by a communica- 

 tion a few minutes old, between a merchant in 

 Toronto and his correspondent in New- York, dis- 

 tant about six hundred and thirty-two miles." I 

 am anxious to call your attention to the advantages 

 which other classes also may experience from this 

 mode of communication, as I tind it in the same 

 report. When the Hibernia steamer arrived in 

 Boston, in January. 1S47, with the news of the 

 scarcity in Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts 

 of Europe, and with heavy orders for agricultural 

 produce, the farmers in the interior of the state of 

 New-York, informed of the state of things by the 

 magnetic telegraph, were thronging the streets of 

 Albany with innumerable team loads of grain al- 

 most as quickly after the arrival of the steamer at 

 Boston as the news of that arrival could ordinarily 

 have reached them. I may add, that, irrespective- 

 ly of all its advantages to the general community, 

 the system appears to give already a fair return of 

 interest to individuals or companies who have in- 

 vested their capital in its application. 



The larger number of the members of this Asso- 

 ciation have probably already seen in London an 

 exhibition of a patent telegraph, which prints al- 

 phabetical letters as it works. Mr. Brett, one of 

 the proprietors, obligingly showed it to me ; and 

 stated that he hoped to carry it into effect on the 

 greatest scale ever yet imagined on the American 

 continent. Prof. Morse, however, does not ac- 

 knowledge that this system is susceptible of equal- 

 ity with his telegraphic alphabet for the purpose of 

 rapid communication ; and he conceives that there 

 is an increased risk of derangement in the mechan- 

 ism employed. 



I cannot refer to the extent of the lines of the 

 electric telegraph in America without an increased 

 feeling of regret that in our own country this great 

 discovery has been so inadequately adopted. So 

 far, at least, as the capital is concerned, the two 

 greatest of our railway companies have not, I be- 

 lieve, yet carried the electric telegraph further from 

 London than to Watford and Slough : an enterprise 

 measured in the United States by hundreds of miles 

 being measured by less than scores in England. 



In England, incieed, we have learnt the value of 

 the electric telegraph as a means of police in more 

 than one remarkable case : as a measure of govern- 



