i;6 THE ADDRESSES LECTURES, ETC., OF 



provided in the United States, being in the one case a station for 

 every 5,607, and in the other for every 5,494 inhabitants*), and a 

 better guarantee for the secrecy of messages. The growing con- 

 nection between the telegraph systems of this and other countries 

 would have compelled by degrees the active intervention of the 

 Government, which alone could arrange effectively with the tele- 

 graph administrations of other countries general questions of tariff 

 and modes of working. The triennial meeting of the Telegraph 

 Conference will, as you are aware, take place this year in London, 

 and will enable us to judge more fully of the beneficial results of 

 co-operation between the telegraphic systems of the world. 



The conference does not interfere, however, with matters of 

 technical import, such as the construction of lines and improve- 

 ment of instruments for working the same, in which we are 

 chiefly interested, and it is a question worthy of consideration 

 whether the Acts of Parliament of 18G8 69, by which the 

 Government Department of Telegraphs was created in this 

 country, do not go beyond the limits necessary to insure a well- 

 regulated public service in taking the construction as well as the 

 working of the lines out of the hands of public enterprise. They 

 give for instance to the Department the faculty of purchasing 

 letters patent, whereby an interest is created in favour of particu- 

 lar instruments, to the prejudice of others of perhaps equal 

 merit, and such a course is by no means calculated to stimulate 

 invention. 



The erection of lines for local and private purposes is an im- 

 portant branch of telegraphy which I submit should have remained 

 entirely outside the scope of a public department, in order that 

 competition might have a free opportunity of developing such 

 applications, as is the case in the United States, where private 

 and circular telegraphy is undoubtedly in advance of other 

 countries. 



In venturing upon these observations, I wish it to be clearly 

 understood that I do not mean to insinuate that the engineers and 

 other officers of the telegraph administration have not been most 

 anxious to secure the greatest amount of public benefit, or that 

 they have been remiss in their endeavours to improve the condition 



* See Statistical Tables in the "Iron Age," for 14 June, 1877. 



