&
letter and to solicit Your
Your Lordships recommendation of the
consideration
favor abie
as accorded, by the
Government of the Umilect States .
J. have &c.
(Signed) Bred & C. G. Milver
G. Relsor
Agent of that and sudia bele graphe Company
any of eben tak.
Sir,
Mr. Hunt to Sir F. Rogers.
Treasury Chambers, 8th May, 1867. I AM commanded by the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury to transmit to you, for the information of the Duke of Buckingham, copy of a Treasury Minute, dated 10th January, 1867, relative to Telegraphic Communication between the United Kingdom and its Dependencies; and I am to request that, in laying the same before His Grace, you will state to him that my Lords, in laying down principles for their own governance in regard to the amount of encouragement which it may be deemed expedient on the part of the Imperial Government to afford towards the extension of Telegraphic Communi- cation, have no wish to interfere with any arrangements, whether pecuniary or otherwise, which the Governments of any of the Australian Colonies may be inclined to enter into with any company or companies formed for the fur- therance of the object in question.
Sir F. Rogers, Bart.,
&c. &c.
&c.
I &c.
am,
(Signed) GEORGE WARD HUNT,
Treasury Minute, dated 10th January, 1867.
THE First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer call
the attention of the Board to the important question in regard to the exten- sion of telegraphic communication which is likely to arise in consequence of the success which has attended the submerging of the Atlantic Cable of 1866, and the recovery and completion of that attempted to be laid in 1865.
It has already been intimated to Her Majesty's Government that it is in con- templation to form a Company for the purpose of laying a line of telegraphi between this country and Gibraltar, and from thence to Malta. Between Malta and Alexandria there is already telegraphic communication by means of the Malta and Alexandria Telegraph Cable belonging to Her Majesty's Government, which is at present agreed to be leased for a term of 42 years to the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company. The lease it is intended should be transferred to the new company, as well as the land line between Alexandria and Suez, originally belonging to the Red Sea Line, but now the property of the Telegraph to India Company." From some point on the Red Sea to which a land line will be laid, it is stated that the new Company will lay a telegraph cable to Aden, and from thence to Kurrachee, where the telegraph will become connected with the land lines of the Indian Government, which extend as far as Rangoon. From Rangoon it is proposed to carry a cable to Singapore, and from that place cables to China and Japan vid Saigon, and Australia vid Java and Copang.
C
Two other schemes for the extension of telegraphic communication beyond. Rangoon have also been brought under the notice of Her Majesty's Govern- ment, namely, one by Mr. F. Gisborne, which involves, however, financial assistance on the part of the Government; and another by Mr. Seymour Clarke, for "a line of telegraph from Rangoon, through the kingdom of Siam to Sin- gapore, from Malacca through Sumatra, Java, &c., to Australia, with a branch from Tavoy through Bangkok to Saigon, and thence, on the approval of France, through Cochin China to China Proper."
As, in the opinion of the Earl of Derby and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the establishment between this country and India of an alternative line of tele- graphic communication with that via the Persian Gulf, and the extension of such line to China and Japan on the one hand, and to the Australian Colonies on the other, is of great importance, they submit to the Board whether some encouragement may not be given for the formation of a Company or Companies
318