6. Your Petitioners most humbly represent to your Majesty that the successful conduct of their commercial operations depends in these days, very largely, on tele-graphic communication, and that it is essential that that communication be regular, effective and cheap, and that as many different lines of communication be opened and kept open as possible."
Your Petitioners are now in communication with Europe by means of two separate telegraphic lines, one in the hands of "The Eastern Telegraph Company" and "The Eastern Extension Australian and China Telegraph Company Limited," starting from Shanghai in the Empire of China and passing South by Foochow, Hongkong, Saigon and Singapore to Australia and British India; the other, under the management of a Danish Corporation, "The Great Northern Telegraph Company," going North from Hongkong via Amoy, Shanghai, Nagasaki (in Japan) and Vladivostock (in Siberia).
Your Petitioners can only communicate with America, by telegraph, through Europe.
7. Your Petitioners have not derived from the existence of these two separate and independent lines of telegraphic communication all the advantages that they ought to have obtained, because since the year 1875, or thereabouts, the above-mentioned companies have, to the great injury of trade, been working in combination, and have by agreement between themselves established and maintained a rate of two dollars or over six shillings a word between Hongkong and Europe, and a proportionately higher rate from other ports and places in China and Japan, and have refused to reduce that rate, in spite of the vast increase in the number of messages transmitted over their lines, and of the many improvements in the means of sending and recording messages and in telegraphy generally.
8. For many years past Your Petitioners have anticipated important and valuable additions to their means of telegraphic communication with Europe, by the completion and opening of lines in the hands of the Chinese Government connecting all parts of the Chinese Empire with each other and with the lines of the Russian Government at Kiachta on the north-western frontier of China, and through them with the general European system, and by the entrance of China into the Union created by the International Telegraphic Convention of the Tenth of July 1875.
Your Petitioners are also looking forward to the early connection of the Chinese lines with the British Indian System through Burmah, and to the possibility of a cable from San Francisco or from Your Majesty's Colony of Vancouver, and seeking a landing place on the shores of the Chinese Empire.
9. The connection of the Chinese lines with the lines of the Russian Government at Kiachta, would open for your Petitioners the most direct line with Europe, and the cheapest. Telegraphic Rates on the Russian Lines are phenomenally low, and the Chinese lines, wherever they come into competition with the lines of the existing cable companies, as in the south through Annam and Tonking in connection with the French lines, charge less than one half the rate per word now charged over the same distances by the Great Northern and Eastern Extension Companies.
10. Your Petitioners are well assured that if the Chinese lines are connected with those of the Russian Government at Kiachta and are thrown freely open to the public, unhampered by any secret Convention or Agreement with the competing companies already named, the cost of a telegram to Europe from China or Japan would be at once considerably reduced, to the immense gain of your Majesty's subjects, to the great advantage of British Trade in the East, and to the profit and advantage of Your Majesty's friend and ally the Emperor of China and his subjects.
11. But, unfortunately, as Your Majesty and Your Majesty's Ministers are aware, a Convention between the Chinese Government, the Great Northern Telegraph Company and the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company has been entered into and signed as far back as August 1887, by which the Chinese Government bound itself, subject to the approval of Your Majesty's Government and of the Imperial Government of Russia, to charge, over its lines to Kiachta, a fixed sum of $2 per word on all messages to Europe, and not except with the consent of the Companies to reduce or alter that rate. The Chinese Government further bound itself to maintain that rate until the year 1903, and to apply it over any line whatever that might in the meanwhile be opened, whether through British Burmah, with India and Europe or through America, by any cable that may be laid.
12. That Convention has not yet been made public, and Your Petitioners speak with all deference when they submit to Your Majesty, that that Convention is publicly stated and believed to contain a provision establishing a differential rate largely in favour of Russian subjects in China, sending messages over the Chinese lines to Europe, and therefore in violation of the provisions of existing Treaties securing for Your Majesty's subjects in China rights and privileges equal to those granted to the subjects of any other nation.
It is further stated and believed publicly that the said Convention secures to the existing Companies, the Great Northern, and the Eastern Extension, the monopoly of all messages despatched from Shanghai, Amoy, Foochow and Hongkong, by far the larger and more important portion of the traffic and that in which Your Majesty's subjects are most largely interested.
13. If the Chinese lines, when completed, were thrown open freely to the public unhampered by this or any similar convention, the greater portion of the traffic from the above-named ports would flow naturally to the Chinese lines as the most direct, to the very great gain of the Chinese Government.
14. Your Petitioners most humbly thank Your Majesty for having refused your assent to the Convention and to any modification of it, and for Your Majesty's most gracious assurance, through Your Ministers in the Commons House of Parliament, that no consent will be given to the Convention without full consideration of all the interests involved and without consultation with the representatives of British Commerce.
15. Your Petitioners most respectfully represent to Your Majesty that the ratification of the Convention of the 10th August 1887, between the Chinese Government and the Companies hereinbefore mentioned, would be a serious injury to the future of Telegraphic Communication in China and throughout the world, would seriously hamper trade and especially the trade of Your Majesty's subjects in the East, and would be, they humbly conceive and represent, in breach, if not of the precise words, certainly of the spirit of the International Telegraphic Convention entered into by Your Most Gracious Majesty at St. Petersburgh the 10/22 of July 1875, and especially of clause 19 of that convention.
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