in the Mutinies of 1857, so the telegraph department has been undergoing a series of collapses during the past ten years. If then Parliament were able to reconstruct the Government of an empire, that ability may well be exercised in reforming one of the petty sections of that administration. And the necessity for this is intensified by the fact that three fair trials at reform have been allowed by the public, and all have signally failed, supplemented by a large unnecessary loss to the State exchequer. One point is certain from the evidence, viz., that the Government in India will not, without Parliamentary intervention, surrender the clause in their local Acts securing to themselves the monopolies of telegraphic undertakings in India. But as the Indian Government have before now been compelled by public opinion to surrender other monopolies to private enterprise, it is to be hoped that Parliament will in its wisdom devise some plan for emancipating telegraphic science and progress in that empire. This little work might have been extended to a very considerable length, for there is no lack of evidence; but, for obvious reasons, the argument, often unpleasant, has chiefly been confined to official statements and documents, because these must necessarily be reliable. It is possible that in one or two places a strong expression may have accidentally crept in; if so, it must be excused on the plea that, with the public, the author has felt strongly on the subject. |