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08 GOVERNiWENT CONTROL OF TELEGRAPHS, BTC. z8r
exds 4 os. it is charged 2d. It is obvious that the chergee
i of the Post Office are for the most part a purely arbitrary
system of taxes, designed to maintain the large net revenue
of the Post Office, now amounting to a million and a half
sterling.
It will thus be apparent that Sir Rowland Hill's scheme of
postal tars consisted in substituting one arbitrary system of
charges for a system more arbitrary and onerous. This was
effected by a sacrifice, at the time, of about one million
sterling of revenue; but it must be distinctly remembered
that it was net revenue only which was sacrificed, and not
commercial loss which was incurred.
A telegraph system appears to me to possess the chsraoteristics
which favour unity and Stato manngement aImost in
as high a degree as the Post Office. If this bo SO, great
advantages will undoubtedly be attained by the puwhase of
the telegraphs and their union, under the direction of the
Post Office department.
It is obvious in the first place that the public will be able,
and in fact obliged, constantly to test tho ef€iciency of tho
proposed Government telegraphs, as they now test the efficiency
of the Post Office. The least delay or inaccuracy in the transmission
of measages will become known, and will be made the
ground of complaint. The work, too, of receiving, transmitting,
and delivering messages, is for the most part of an
entirely routine nature, as in tho case of the Post Office. The
only exception to this consists perhaps in the special arrangements
whichwill bo needed for the transmission of intelligence
and reports to the newspapers.
It is hardly necessary to point out, in the second place,
that a single Government telegraph system will possess great
advantages from its unity, economy, and comprehensive character.
Instead of two or three companies with parallel
conterminous wires, and different sets of costly city stations,
we shall have a single set of stations ; and the very same wires,
when aggregated into one body, will admit of more convenient
arrangements, and more economical employment. The greater
the number of messages sent through a given office, the more