THE OCEAN TELEGRAPH.

Of all the triumphs of modern science and discovery, the Telegraph is the most wonderful, and but a few years ago would have been incredible. Had we been told, before the discovery of Mr. Morse, that in 1858 John Bull and his son Jonathan, enemies of old, rivals always, but now friends, would converse together across three thousand miles of ocean with as much ease as if they were in the same room, we should have regarded the prophet "clean daft," and a fit subject for the lunatic asylum. It would have seemed as strange as improbable, and as utterly impossible as the announcement recently made, that Franklin and his associates had discovered a mode by which the spirits of the departed could telegraph to those they had left behind them, and which may be the case, for aught we know to the contrary, either of spirits or of the world which they inhabit.

Our thoughts are to pass instantaneously through fifteen hundred miles of a small wire lying on the bed of the ocean. The birth of a prince or the selling price of stocks on the London Exchange will be known

to us, perhaps, long before it is known to the citizens of London. Through London, we shall send a message to Asia and receive an answer the same day. What would the Calcutta merchant of the olden time have thought of sending word to his correspondent in Calcutta, and receiving an answer in a few hours (as we may hope soon to do), the work, when he commenced business, of from twelve to fifteen months? The human mind almost sinks under the attempt to grasp or realize the idea. With all our familiarity with telegraph operation we do not realize it now. It floats vaguely and mythically in our thoughts. Not one in a thousand can explain the philosophy of what is now so common. We find it most difficult to believe in the evidence of our senses. Man has sought out many inventions, but this seems to be something superhuman, and altogether above our comprehension. There is a divinity in man, and the Spirit of the Almighty has given him understanding. How else can he realize the wildest of all the wild dreams of Shakspeare, and "put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes." Suppose it had been told to that miracle of genius, whose thoughts, "glancing from earth to heaven," can alone be compared to the telegraphic miracle, that within three centuries from the time he wrote "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the feat of Puck would actually be performed. He would have regarded such an announcement with

hardly less astonishment and incredulity than that with which we now regard the receipt of messages from the other world. A revolution in human affairs is at hand, such as the wildest dreamer has never dreamed of. The office of diplomacy of ministers and of consuls is well nigh at an end. The events of war are made to depend not so much upon the thunder of the cannon as upon the lightning of the clouds. Commerce is to be conducted under the ocean as much as above it. The whole world is to be turned upside down and wrong side out. A new era dawns upon human affairs, and no man can calculate or imagine the result.

In all the glorious results of a common brotherhood of man, in that which makes of one family all the nations of the earth, binding them together with an iron cable not three eighths of an inch thick, promoting peace and commerce, and banishing war by doing away with those diplomatic misunderstandings out of which nearly all war arises, we shall enjoy our full proportion with England and the rest of the world. Peace, we are told, has her victories, but the greatest of all victories of peace, and the greatest victory for peace ever yet achieved, is the Telegraph. Nothing settles disputes so quickly as a prompt and mutual understanding, without the delays of weeks and months to aggravate the sore which the telegraphic lance pricks on its first appearance, and thus saves all

further trouble.

The Peace Societies of the world should erect to the inventor of the Telegraph a monument as high and as enduring as that which stands on Bunker Hill. He has done more for the cause of peace than they could have hoped to achieve in a thousand years of the most untiring exertion.

But if we regard the Ocean Telegraph as a matter of dollars and cents, we shall probably find that England, being the great centre, will reap the lion's share. Not only so, but that we shall be large losers by means of this cable, which we have sent our "Niagara," to assist in laying down. Under our present tariff system, we are already too near England, and whatever brings us nearer must enure to her benefit and our loss. A fortnight will be saved in the return of orders sent out to England for goods, and this will operate just so much against our own industry. It will afford additional facility for British agents, who are our principal importers, to watch the markets and flood us with foreign goods. It will make it so much the more difficult for us to compete with them, and injure us by just the time saved by the telegraphic wire, and that is about one half. Thus all great discoveries for facilitating the intercourse of nations enure to the benefit of those who have been wise, at the expense of those who have been foolish. We might have been in a position to have reaped as much benefit from this wonderful discovery as England, but we have

placed ourselves in such a position, that while she dances, we shall have the satisfaction of paying the piper. Of this great and glorious satisfaction we may be sure. Let us hope that what we are to lose in wealth may be made up to us in some other way, though, excepting in our diplomatic intercourse, it is not easy to see in what that way will be. Our merchants will have earlier intelligence of their vessels, and of the markets for freights, but whether that will increase their profits is by no means certain. The truth is, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the nearer you bring two nations, situated relatively as we are to England, the more you benefit the centre, and the more you reduce the extremity. We could have been a centre ourselves had we chosen, but we have not so chosen, and must be content to go to the wall as the weaker vessel. We must be a sort of suburb of the great metropolis, for such, under our present system of duties, the Telegraph will make us. As we have sowed we must be contented to reap. great law, and from that law we can exemption.

This is the

hope for no