Tuoee. may be some of our readers who remember the grent case about the' Boghead gas coal or 'Torbane Hill mineral. 'The owner of an estate had lensed the. right to work. various minerals,' the lessee! paying: 80 ranch per ton: on' the quantity extracted. A certain black shale, which had previously boon thrown away, was found to be most: valuable gas coal. It came to: be question' whether "the: lessee ' was entitled to work this at all, and if 0, bow much por ton he was to pay, and half the chemists and mining authorities in the kingdom wore called to sny whether this was or wasnotcoal, The only point on which'tho Court had no difficulty' in': forming? an opinion: was that no'oné knew: What coal was. The case might have been' going on yet bad not, the landlord and tenant come.to the: conolusion that, whether the mineral was coal or not, there were'two fortunes in' it, and they had better compromise fiatter by taking one fortune each. A somewhat. similar., case' has -lately. been "engaging. the': attention. of: the Conrte'at Home. The British Government have brought an action against the."Edison Telephone Company of London for i ringing the Government' nionopoly of telegraphic communication. The fact that the Government have a monopoly of-some sort is not denied, but the-Company maintains that: this monopoly does not extend to telephones, or' at all'events does not' extend" to their method of employing them, which simply,, gives additional facilities.to people who-have private wires, If Avand B wish'to have a private tole-graph they can have it, and each may undoubtedly erect half the wire. and.C may do-thesame thing, and the Company says it does not alter the matter if C erects -his wire-so-as to come fo the junction of "A and B's wires sofas to be able to converse with both A and B. The argument is ingenious, but to. non-legal mind singularly unconvincing. - Immediately the business "is" large enough "for a third party to'take charge of the point of junction and connect up the several wires as-required, the business ceases to all intents: and purposes to be private, though the messages are kept secret. Bat farther than this, the Company maintain that the telephone does not come within the scope of the mouopoly. The Judges found it necessary from time to time to remind those in of the word "tele. graph" as used in three Acts of Parliament, It would have been difficult to believe before this trial that any could have hesitated to assent to Sir William Thomson's statement that at the time of passing the Telegraph Acts nothing like the telephone was in existence, and that it was utterly ankuown both in practice and in the scientific world. Wher the Attorney-General tried to combat this opinion by reference to earlier lustraments by which musical sounds could be transmitted, he only showed himself to be inuperfectly acquainted with the subject. It was known that musical sounds could be transmitted thirty years ago or more, but the methods of transi " bore no resemblance to the telephone. But if the Attorney-General's description of the telephone was inaccurate, it hing to Mr. Webster's. Mr. Webster is reported to have said that sound was transtnitted by the telephone practically in the same way us it was by a speaking tube. One might of course say that sovereigns are tr mitted by telegraph or by bills. practically in the same way as they are transmitted by ships, but such a statomont would not indicate a profound knowledge of modern financial transnetions, The sound which comes out of a telephone is no more the same sound that goes into it than is the coin which is paid into a Bank at Shanghai the same coin which is paid out of the corresponding Bank in London, But even through all these difficulties it is possible to see a glimmer of light, We will pass over the contention that the remarks which one man addresses to another by menus of a telephone are not "messages or other communications," and it then appears to be clear enough that messages sent by the telephone are really messages transmitted electrically by means of an instrument, the principles of which were unknown at the date of passing the Telegraph Act. We do not'see how it can be seriously maintained that this means anything else than that they are tranemitied by telegraph. The act gives the Govern-A ment a monopoly of sending telegrams, and a telegram is defined to be "any message or other communication trans. mitted or intended for transmission _by a telegraph." It is just possible that it may be decided that the monopoly only refers to doing the work by meaua known at the time of passing. the. Act. or. modifications..of euch means, but is hardly likely. If before the inven tion of steamers @ monopoly had been granted for carrying passenger: by ships or boats between two places, it would be hard to. prove afterwards that thie did not include steam-bontejand on the whole it appears to us that the Goversiment. have much the strongest case. But while saying this, we think it isa norry spectacle to see the officers of the Crown arguing in favour of the right of Great Britain to put. obstacles in the way of progress. If the Edison Telephone Company had no right to do what they have done, then the Govern. ment were beaud to have done it. It very hard to defend monopolies: any case, and. they "become: utterly indefensible when their holders do not grant every possible' facility under them, and absolutely intolerable when they interfere in the slightest degree with the granting of facilities by others. It is trae that the nation has paid £10,000,000 for the telegraphs, is i he purpose of obtaining greater facilities than previously existed for the trans. would-be to retard progress undeniable that the advance.in tele. graphic it struments and methods of n since the passing: of the Telegraph Acts has not been dus so much to British as to "American inventors, While then, we believe the telephone to be within the limi the Telegraph Act, we boliovo a grave mistake to frame the Act so aa to take in such novelties and so burk invention for the future, and if there be no middle course between a repeal of the Act and a repetition of scenes like the present, we think the loss even of the entire sum of £10,000,000 would be a small price to pay to clear such a miserable piece of obstruction out of our statute-book, Since the above was written another mail has arrived bringing nows substantiating the correctness of the views we have expressed. Judgmont''has' been given in favour of the Govern. ment, and it is a coincidence worthy of notice that the Times, in commenting on the decision, takes exactly: our view of the position of the Government, expressing the belief. that "it might be better policy at once to' write off the purchase money of the telegraphs as @ loss than to increase the cost of communication and restrict invention by seeking to include the telephone and its whole fature in the bargain."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.