254 Address of the President of the British Association. 



4 No schedule of telegraphic lines can now be relied 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 principal threads upon important points along the 

 sea-board of the Atlantic on one side, and upon similar points alongthe 

 lake frontier on the other.'' I am indebted to the same Report for an- 

 other fact, which I think the Association will regard with equal interest. 

 4 The confidence in the efficiency of telegraphic communication has 

 now become so established, that the most important commercial trans- 

 actions daily transpire, by its means, between correspondents several 

 hundred miles apart. Ocular evidence of this was afforded me by a 

 communication a few minutes old, between a merchant in Toronto and 

 his correspondent in New York, distant 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 find it in the same Report. When the Hibernia steamer arrived 

 in Boston, in January, 1847, with the news of the scarcity in Great Brit- 

 ain, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, and with heavy orders for ag- 

 ricultural produce, the farmers in the interior of the state of New York, 

 informed of the state of things by the magnetic telegraph, were throng- 

 ing the streets of Albany with innumerable team-loads of grain almost 

 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, irrespec- 

 tively of all its advantages to the general community, the system ap- 

 pears to give already a fair return of interest to the individuals or 

 companies who have invested their capital in its application. 



" The larger number of the members of this Association have prob- 

 ably already seen in London an exhibition of a patent telegraph, which 

 prints alphabetical letters as it works. Mr. Brett, one of the proprie- 

 tors, 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 acknowledge that this sys- 

 tem is susceptible of equality with his telegraphic alphabet for the pur- 

 pose of rapid communication ; and he conceives that there is an in- 

 creased risk of derangement in the mechanism 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 believe, yet carried the electric telegraph further from London 

 than to Watford and Slough : an enterprise measured in the United State* 

 by hundreds of miles being measured by less than scores in Englan • 



"In England, indeed, we have learnt the value of the electric tele- 

 graph as a measure of police in more than one remarkable case : as 

 measure of government it is not less important; — from the illustratio^ 

 which I have drawn from America, it is equally useful in commeI ?f i( ! 

 but as a measure almost of social intercourse in the discharge of pu 

 business, it is not without its uses aiso. The day before yesterday 1 ^ 

 an opportunity of examining the telegraph in the lobby of the W° 



