The Sun.
London, England, 1858-03-27 00:00:00

altered, so far, at least% as the Executive is con-
cerned.

What more cau be desired I—what more popu-
lar
measure could be devised ? Of course we cannot
now enter into local jealousies or the claims that
different constituencies may put forward to be
represented, but the principle is good, and if that
be brought judiciously into operation, we shall be
satisfied. The Government will cheerfully consent
to any alterations by which the measure may be
rendered more advantageous either for the United
Kingdom or for India.

The completion of the electric communication
between Europe and America, by means of the
successful submersion of the telegraphic cable,
will, beyond all doubt, reawaken, and this time,
we may be sure, to a fortunate issue, a very grand
and long-neglected enterprise. That enterprise—
the construction of a trunk railway between the

Atlantic and the Pacific, across the entire width

of our North American possessions.

It is a project, upon the advantages of which
we, ourselves, have long ago, years and years
since, in these columns, very frequently expatiated.
It is an undertaking the time for which will at
length have arrived, when the wire of the electric
telegraph trailed along the bed of the Atlantic,

shall have actually brought the old world and the
new into all but instantaneous communication.

So soon of course as the present spring season
shall have sufficiently advanced, the expedition of
1857 will be renewed in 1858, under happier aus-
pices. Improved arrangements for the more secure
paying out of the electric cable will, we may now
not unreasonably anticipate—result in an issue al-

together different. The submarine telegraph having
been at length long ago successfully laid down
on the one hand between England and France,
and on the other- between 'England and Ireland,
we may confidently look forward to the time when
it shall have been laid down no less successfully,
as a subtle nerve thrilling to and fro, between the
eastern and the western hemispheres. What has
been effected under the waters of the British
Channel, and under the waters of St. George's
Channel, we may be tolerably certain must, sooner
sr later, be effected under those of the Atlantic
Ocean. Science has left us very little room for
day-dreaming. In talking thus, we are not talking
in any way of what is merely visionary.
It is purely, as we have said, now a ques-
tion of time. And, as surely as we have
telegraphic communication under the rolling
billows of the sea between this island of ours
and the European continent, so surely shall we,
by the same intervention of copper wire encased
in gutta percha roping, in the form of another
magical submarine cable, have a channel of instant
intercourse established between the British Islands
and the North American continent. The cable,
as all know, is long since actually made. It only
remains now to be " payed out" carefully inch by
inch, mile by mile, as the steamers bearing the

gigantic coil plough their way across the Atlantic.
One of those steam-frigates, the Niagara, has .
already arrived in this country from New York to
re-ship a portion of the cable, so as to be in readi-
ness, when the time arrives, for the second and,
it is to be hoped, more successful expedition.
Then, with the electric wire actually extending
from the shores of the Mediterranean across
Europe, beyond the British Channel, across Eng-
land, beyond the Irish Channel, across Ireland,
beyond the whole surging ocean of the Atlantic
to the coast of North America—then we shall
inevitably find ourselves drawn again, perforce, to
the consideration of the long-talked of and long
neglected scheme of a grand trunk railway right
onwards through the entire breadth of our vast
dominions i❑ the north of that northern continent.
Parallel with that future railroad, running of
course the continuation of the European telegra-
phic wire—bringing the commerce of the Atlantic
and Pacific in the end into momentary communi-
cation. Subsequently, of course, will come
the laying down then] of a submarine cable
trailed along the bed of the Pacific, bringing
our American possessions into rapid intercourse
with our vast, and populous, and fruitful Asiatic
dominion. The circling of the globe by electricity
being then completed by the extension of the
telegraphic wire along the route of the overland
mail, or otherwise, beyond the Mediterranean,
across Asia Minor, past the Arabian Sea, to Born- I
bay, thence onwards towards Calcutta. PUCK'S
girdling of the earth in fifty seconds will then be
nothing to the almost simultaneous vibration of
the telegraphic needles at London—Quebec—
and Calcutta! These are not simply fanciful or
whimsical speculations ; they are merely antici-
pations of absolute matters of fact. It is about as
certain that the time we are writing about will
cone, as that we are drawn over the surface of
the earth now-a-days with the speed of the wind by
the fiery dragon of the railway engine—as that we
have tutored the sunbeam to paint our likenesses—
or as that we have already made an instantaneous
messenger, across whole kingdoms of the earth,
and under the depths of the sea, of the winged and
mysterious lightning.