Tue cost of Telegraphy constitutes such a heavy charge upon the trade of China—remote as we are from the great Western ports with which it is chiefly carried on—that any change affecting the cost or conditions of transmission has especial interest. A circular lately issued by Reuters' regarding certain regulations agreed on at a late Interna. tial Congress at St. Petersburg, indicates very material changes as likely to be soon made. In the first place, the maximum number of letters allowed to a single word is restricted to ten; the object avowedly being to prevent a practice which has sprung up of sending long polyglot words, difficult to read, and always liable to be transmitted inaccurately. Theoretically, from this point of view, the change is a good one; but it will practically entail on merchants the inconvenience and expense of altering their codes; and the proviso that only plain dictionary words shall be used, under penalty of liability to extra charge, would seem to exclude the alternative of simply striking off a syllable. "Pandemonin," for instance, would answer the purpose of a code word as well as "pandemonium;" but would it not be ae. cused as an illegitimate word, and assessed at the secret code rate? The principle of a word rate, which is to be at length adopted, is a reason.. able concession. Nothing but the virtual monopoly which Telegraph Com. panies enjoy over many of the main lines of communication, could have enabled them to refuse, for so long, to receive messages of less than 10 or 20 words; and the restriction has indeed been virtually defeated by the operation of agencies like Reuters', which pack the short telegrams of various senders, This practice has however involved delay, as the agencies had of course to wait till telegrams had accumulated in their hands; whereas the acceptance of the word principle by the Telegraph Companies will enable the immediate transmission of short messages directly they are received. Practically, it will of course reduce very much the use of transmitting agencies, which must have saved Shanghai several hundred thousand taels while the restriction was operative. But these still offer an advantage, in the shape of registered addresses, which enable the transmission as one word of what would otberwise occupy three or four in the telegram. But the value of the concession is likely, unless we are
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.