[FLEMING] POST OFFICE REFORMS IN THE VICTORIAN ERA 81 
THE FOURTH REFORM. 
While the third reform is the expansion of the first, the fourth 
reform is the expansion of the second. A state-owned trans-marine 
Cable Service, encircling the globe, may be regarded as the comple- 
ment of the three preceding reforms. Not only is it rendered neces- 
sary by the evolution of the Empire, and the enormous expans.on of 
British interests during the Victorian era, but it is made possible by 
a number of contributing circumstances which have arisen during 
the same period. 
In the tenth year of Her Majesty’s reign, electricity was first em- 
ployed as a means of telegraphing. The London Journal of Botany 
for that year, 1847, refers to the gum of a new plant from the Ma- 
lay Peninsula, which had found its way to England, and states that 
the plant itself had then been named by Sir Joseph Hooker, the fa- 
mous director of the Royal Gardens at Kew. The new found gum, 
gutta-percha, was soon afterwards discovered to have an extraordinary 
degree of electrical non-conductivity, and on that account it has proved 
indispensable in the manufacture of sub-marine telegraph cables. 
Since its introduction and the laying of the first Atlantic cable, about 
30,000 tons of this gum have been used for electrical purposes. As 
every effort to find a substitute for gutta-percha has so far failed, it is 
clear, that, but for the discovery of this substance, the immense pro- 
gress that has taken place in ocean telegraphy would have been im- 
possible. The development of ocean steamships may be instanced as 
another contributing cause. Before the Queen ascended the throne, 
there were no steamships which could have been employed in cable 
laying. Even if it had been possible to manufacture cables, it would 
have been impossible without steamships to stretch them across the 
ocean. A sailing ship, tacking in adverse winds, or driven out of her 
course by storms, would have been ill-suited for cable laying. 
As in the case of the land telegraphs of the United Kingdom, we 
are indebted in the first place, to the enterprise of private companies 
for the establishment of ocean cables. Some of the cable companics 
have been assisted in their enterprises by liberal government subsidies, 
and the companies so assisted, such as those connecting Great Bri- 
tain with Australia, have met with rich returns. Having regard sole- 
ly to the public interests, it has long been in contemplation to estab- 
lish a cable across the Pacific, so as to connect Australia with the 
Mother Country by way of Canada, and to retain the new cable under 
the direct control of the State so as to render it in the highet 
degree serviceable. This proposal was strongly advocated at the Colo- 
