The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-25 00:00:00

allies.

Reverting to that one particular line of electric
communication which we are all of us so peculiarly
desirous of seeing carried out between England
and her enormous empire in Hindostan, an
intelligent correspondent of the chief among our
morning contemporaries, a writer signing him-
self Alpha, has explained in a very clear and
succinct manner the stages of its development, the
intervals of its success, and the causes of its inter-
ruption. The Red Sea cable, for instance, he re-
minds us, worked during very nearly nine months
consecutively—namely, from the 29th of May,
1859, to the 10th of February, 1860—to admiration.
At the latter date, namely, on the 10th of last
February, the section between Aden and Souakin
was interrupted. That section was satisfactorily
repaired by the 7th of July—not, however, until
after 200 miles of cable had' been cautiously un-
derrun, and when lifted thus bit by bit to view,
subjected inch by inch to a minute examination. The
outer iron wires were then found corroded
—insomuch that the gutta percha underneath was
laid bare at those points of corrosion. What was
worse still—the gutta percha itself was found at
intervals to be perforated by little circular pea-
holes, the result of latent bubbles exploded by the
force of the gassing electricity—exposing the cop-
per wire at these apertures, and thereby subjecting
the copper wire at these points to the destructive
influence of decomposition. Wherever the cable
was discovered to have been thus flawed it was
repaired, and repaired so successfully, that by the
7th of July the line between Aden and Souakin
was again in operation. Five days, however, were
scarcely passed by after this when again, viz., on

the 12th of July, the electric action ceased—since

which period the section here particularized has
been altogether unemployed. The interruption,
moreover, was in point of fact all the more
tantalizing from the circumstance that but three

clays prior to the first interruption, namely, on the
7th of last February, the cable (in continuation

of the route to India) was successfully laid between

Aden and Kurrachee !

While we are in the midst of these con-
siderations, the hon. gentleman, late Under-
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under

Lord DERBY'S Government (Mr. SEYMOUR

FITZGERALD), elicits, by his inquiries from

her MAJESTY'S Government, the acceptable intima-
tion that her MAJESTY'S advisers will, at the
very least, "wcit a wee" before aezteding to the

modifications now audaciously proposed by the

Austrian Government—the monstrous and impu-

dent modifications proposed to be made in the con-

vention entered into between that Government and

our ovra, as to the submergence of electric cables

between Ragusa and Corfu, and between Corfu and

Alexandria , In the submergence of our electric
cables we vf,lnt no conventions with any other

fearless independence is worth all the assistance of
combined armies, and the professions of " ideals'

Everybody recognizes the vital importance to
England of a direct line of electric communication
being established forthwith between her own shores
and those of her vast and remote Asiatic possessions.
A direct line, observe, is the desideratum ! To
carry the route unnecessarily through the dominions
of any other power—however friendly, however
old and firm and faithful an ally--were obviously
in this design a blunder of the very first magnitude.
The ally of yesterday may be the foe of to-morrow.
And if humanity, and even prudence, bid us generally
treat all our enemies as though they were one day
to be our friends—experience tells us plainly that
we should no less cautiously in all political
transactions and diplomatic negotiations hold
in view perpetually the possibility—not the proba-
bility, observe, but the mere obvious poribility—
that our friends may later on be our enemies. If
there is one thing, therefore, that is manifestly
more desirable than another in the laying down of
electric submarine cables between the capital of
our Empire and our distant provinces—whether in
Europe, Asia, Africa, America, or Australasia—it is
that we should carry the route, as uninterruptedly
as may well be, from point to point through our
own territories. These territories are happily so
very numerous, and they are so widely scattered,
that we believe it will prove eventually quite
practicable to unite the whole of our enormous
and widely-distributed empire in a network
of submarine electric cables, having its central core
in the metropolis. It is only a question of time,
expense, and engineering. There are those three
obstacles alone to its instant development. But
each of these three we believe to be an obstacle
only in appearance. The rapidity with which the
submarine electric system has already grown to its
present dimensions, gives assurance that a compara-
tively moderate period is yet requisite for its
further advance to the point already indicated.
As to the seeming impediment of expenditure
—that we have already been enabled to recognize
as wholly illusory, even from our small past expe-
rience. Take, as a case in point, a portion of that
grand series of telegraphic lines that we are now
endeavouring to extend, section by section, until
we brought London into instantaneous communi-
cation with Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Take
the single isolated section known as the Aden-Suez
cable. That, while actually in working order, we
know to have already, within a comparatively
brief interval, paid its expenses ; we know it to
have very nearly, if not entirely, relieved
her MAJESTY'S Government of the preconcerted
guarantee. Nay in every individual instance in
which a submarine cable has yet afforded us an
opportunity of testing its capabilities as a mercan-
tile speculation, we have found it to be an enter-
prise essentially, largely, and immediately remune-
rative. So that in regard to expense, as in regard
to time, the dreaded obstacle turns out upon exami-
nation to be purely imaginary. Then remains the
one simple question as to the capabilities of en-
gineering. As to which—the world knows per-
fectly well by this time that the problem has been
again and again solved, and that it has been solved
definitively and triumphantly. Fugitive though
the success of the Atlantic cable was, that mere
fugitive success would of itself have been all-suffi-
cient. For remember only for an instant what was
then done, what was thereby actually accomplished !
At the clicking of the electric needle Europe and
America, then and there (upon the shores of Ireland
and upon the shores of Newfoundland), mos►tentarily
talked with each other—their thoughts, their visible
and audible words (visible and audible in the click-
ing vibrations of the electric needle indicators ?)
thrilling to and fro under the depths of the mighty
Atlantic Ocean ! The subsequent interruption of
that actual converse has merely demonstrated the
existence of some flaw in the arrangements, of some
error in the calculations. The feasibility of the
enterprize has been—in spite of that subsequent
interruption—conclusively and absolutely proved to
demonstration. It is comprehensible, therefore, that
submarine cables of minor difficulty are regarded
by our electric engineers with a very natural and
very reasonable complacency, as cables that may be
not only readily but securely submerged—as enter-
prises that may be not only possibly but probably
accomplished for us to our most complete satisfac.
tion.