The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-04-09 00:00:00

EVENING EDITION.

air An Evening Edition of the NORTHERN DAILY
TIMES is now Published every Afternoon, at Three o'clock,
containing the Markets, together with all the News of the
Day, up to the hour of going to Press.

TKx Ai,
DAIL'?

priori TO THE NORTHEItN
'WO GUINEAS PER ANNUM.

t)4e

LottliPnt fitnes

WEDNESDAY,

IPlill 9, 1856

THE Go

nt, we are told, for the hundredth
time, are deeply iropressfd with the importance

and necessit

y of re-establishing a regular postal
communication with the Australian Colonies.
The Duke of Argyll conveyed this stale but agree-
ble intelligence, to the House of Lords on
Monday. The Earl of HARDWTCKE declared him-
self in. favour of the Aden, Diego Garcia, and
King George's Sound route, so forcibly advocated
by the London Times. The noble Earl said that,
" in the present state of steam navigation, he had
" no hesitation in saying that there was nothing
" in the shape of tides, currents, rocks, or shoals,
" which could prevent steamers from taking this
" direct line." The Singapore route he would
abandon altogether, while that via Panama the
noble Lord could not deign to notice. But the
Government appear to overlook in toto the
evidence given before the Commons' Committee
of 1851 ; and the " leading journal" seems pledged
to forget all it has said since that date on this
important subject. Captain Sir EDWARD BEL'
CHER, R.N., when speaking of the Panama and
Aden routes, said, before the Committee :

I think by way of Panama that the passage out is secure
and smooth, and that the return is not liable to so many
dangers, either to the machinery or to the vessel, as by
either of the other routes. I consider that by the other two
routes you would have in most cases either the outward
passage to perform before the wind, or the passage back
dead against the wind, in either ease with very heavy seas
or with calm, as the case may be, and I think you are more
subject to be influenced by the different monsoons; whereas
in the Pacific I think in either case you would have a
leafiing wind, which is the best wind always for a screw

steamer, or you would have an opportunity on the return
passage of having what is called a soldier's wind, and that
the breezes which blow there would enable a vessel to go
faster than she would even with strong breezes on the other
side. If the company had a coal depot at Gambier's Group,
the distance across by Gambier's Group to Sydney would be
6,574 miles, it would be further windward in coming back,
which would be particularly advantageous to a screw
steamer. In returning she might be compelled to go as high
she might be enabled to make a passage in
there would be no necessity for her touching
th American coast at all; I think she would
reach from Gambier's Group, with a soldier's wind, to the
--a from the Gallipagos up to Panama she
winds, favourable, not adverse,

as 40°, but

35 or 36°

on the Soul

Gallipag

would have calm or ligh

under steam

In opposition to this

line Lord HARDWICKE, and

all who think with hirx

ffould advocate a route

where they cannot deny the existence of monsoons,
tides, currents, rocks, and shoals ! But what
appears still more strange is that the London Times
should have forgotten all it said in favour of the
Panama line only as far back as the 4th of April,

1853, when condemning the management of the
Overland Company. " The Panama line to

" Australia,'

cotemporary, " is 1
4, about to be opened, and that will be
1
" by far the shortest and quickest route to our mag-
" nificent Australian possessions, the chances of

I " great and permanent success which have been
" thrown away and wasted by the want of energy,
" forethought, and enterprise of this Association,

" are certainly sufficient to lead the public to anti-
" cipate very little improvement for the future, but
"to entertain the expectation that everything will
henceforward be conducted on the old beaten

" track of hesitancy and confidence in the yet
" undeveloped resources of a traffic which deserves
" to be conducted on a scale the most enlightened,
`4 and with a policy that should secure a most
" effective performance of this important link in
" the chain of communieation between the old and
" the new worlds." Not satisfied with all this,
the same journal gives us another proof that its
writers were alive to the truth, on the 26th
of April, 1853, in these remarkable words :

" The steamer Unicorn was to leave Panama for

" Australia on the 6th of April, and the prospects
" of trade with that country were of a nature to
" excite increased interest at all the ports on the

" Pacific, from the demonstrations constantly occur-

ring that the Panama route is the true one between

England and Sydney

Some very remarkable

changes must have come over the material world

within the last two years, to account for the
miraculous perversion of understanding which the
Editor of that journal must have laboured under
at the dates to which we alluded.

What can have happened to induce the House
of Lords to believe that the evidence given before

Commons by

practical men was erroneous,
or to convince the London Times that that
which was "by far the shortest and

"quickest line in 1853, is not the true one between
``England and Sydney" in 1856? As far as our
ducal POSTMASTER-GENERAL iS concerned, we think
he knows no more about the matter than that the
Government is deeply impressed with the import-
ance and necessity of re-establishing the postal
communication which, despite " the chances of
" great and permanent success, was thrown away
" and wasted by want of energy, forethought, and
" enterprise." A juvenile Postmaster may be able
to explain a blunder, but our cotemporary can
scarcely expect that the public will place much
reliance-on his geographical statistics of the Aden
and Diego Garcia, after his having declared that
the Panama line was the skor test and quickest!
Probably the " leading journal" had never heard
of the Chagos and Seychelles groups, the peculiar
atmospheric conditions of the South Seas, and
other phenomena of the Indian Ocean, when
its scribes talked so loudly and truly of
Panama and the Pacific. That journal does
however, admit still that " there is no doubt that

" prima facie the shortest route is the best."
that " the organization of the shortest possible corn
" munication with Australia is just now, or should

" be, a leading feature of Imperial policy." There
is some hope for Liverpool and Panama in these
admissions. We have the shortest line, as proved
by scientific persons, naval officers, and masters of
merchant ships ; and before the Mersey allows its
legitimate rights to be stultified, we promise the
POSTMASTER-GENERAL, and the London Times, a
display of such a catalogue of facts, as will lead to
the ultimate selection of this port as the Australian
packet station, in opposition to all party or
individual trickery. We give them a few to-day,
and they shall have more anon.