Tue Convention which is said to have been recently made at Chefoo between the Chinese Telegraph Administration and the two foreign cable companies, is of such importance to every merchant, and indeed to almost every resident, in China, Japan and Hongkong, that it is somewhat remarkable that it should have attracted so little attention. To enter once more into the question of the value to residents in the East of the existence of telegraphic communication with Europe and America, is wmecessary. Most merchants would declare, and indeed often have declared, that the introduction of the wire has been anything but a benefit to the foreign trade with China; but like other inevitable evils it had to come, and we have learnt to put up with it. Having forced themselves upon us, and being conscious of their unpopularity, the telegraph companies, one would have thought, would have done everything in their power to coucilinte public opinion. This is far from having been the case, nor have we gained anything from the fact of their being two competing counections with the West. They soon saw that it was to their advantage to combine to extract all they could out of their customers, and not to cut each other's throats; and it is well known how profitable this combination has been to the Danish Company, which charges submarine rates from Shanghai, while the only submarine portion of its line is the comparatively trifling distance between Shanghai and Wladiwastock. The two companies have taken advantage of the Telegraph Convention to hedge their customers round with every possible restriction. It was not perhaps unreasonable to limit the len of words to ten letters, for without that restriction the most portentous compounds which the genius of the German language allows would have been presented for transmission. But they did not get more liberal as time went on, and the use of the wire extended. At first five ciphers were allowed to go as one word, and as it is no more trouble to telegraph a cipher than a letter, this was in itself a restriction; but of late years the number allowed to count as one word has been reduced to three, and an enormous number of codes was thrown out of use by the reduction. It is unnecessary to say much about the habit the cables have of breaking down at critical moments, and of the fact that such failures are often not notified to the public at all, who have no redress whatever if a message is delayed by a breakdown or a block on the line. Fleeced as we have been by these two companies, the Eastern Extension and the Great Northern, we have looked forward to the time when the completion of the Chinese land line to the Russian frontier should give us an alternative route. It would have the Chinese administration well tomake messages from any part of China to any part of Europe for $1 a word, the Russian tariff being extremely moderate, and the knowledge of this has greatly exercised the cable companies for the last year or two, and they have worked day and night to persuadethe Russian Government, by means well understood by the Great Northern Telegraph Company, to refuse to allow the ese to be connected with the Russian lines on the Siberian frontier. This was the original defence of the united companies, but since the return to China of the two managers in the East, a more certain course has suggested itself, and has been followed, and that is, to buy off the threatened Chinese opposition. People at home who read of the Inperial armies, and Imperial navies, and of the Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration, have a natural idea that these are government. services as in the West. Really they are local institutions, the property of the various Viceroys, and the Imperial Telegraph Administration is a company controlled and directed by HE. Li Hung-chang, However truly patriotic and above suspicion Li may be himself, he has an unfortunate habit of surrounding himself with creatures whose reputations have occasionally been open to question, and it would be more satisfactory to all concerned, and better for his country and its government, if Li would take the negotiation of matters of this kind more into his own hands.
Undoubtedly had Messrs. Judd and Henningsen, the agents of the two cable companies, had to deal, as they would have had to do in a Western country, with the Government at the Capital, they would probably have found it didicult to succeed with the questionable scheme that they have hatched; questionable, because it is a betrayal alike of the interests of their countrymen, and of the Chinese Government. But they had only to persuade the taotai Sheng, and armed as they were with arguments which he can thoroughly appreciate, they have succeeded only too well. The Chinese Telegraph Administration consents, condition of receiving a subsidy, stated to be Nis. 100,000 a year, to Keep up the rate at $2 word to Europe, and the foreign community will continue to be fleeced for the sake of the shareholders of the two cable companies. It would have been unpleasant, we allow, for the shareholders of the Eastern Extension Company to see the profits they derive from their Chinese line annihilated by the reduction of the rate to $1.a word, a rate which would have paid the Danish Company and the Chinese handsomely but it is the community who use the line who ought to be considered, and the shareholders had to expect that a time would come when competition would lower the exorbitant charges from which their customers have suffered. And we have not indeed much sympathy for Mr, Tol Pender, and none whatever for the Great Northern Telegraph Company which, by means which were exposed a couple of years ago in our columns, lias for years been drawing an enormous income from the China trade, for a ridiculously trifling service. We suppose the Ministers in Peking will find it impossible to make the T'sung-li yamen understand that stich an agreement as Sheng Taotai has made is utterly unworthy of a great power, such as China would like to be considered; the Government makes itself a partner with two private companies in the exploitation of the public for the sake of a hundred thousand taels ayeer. We have been looking forward to the opening of another telegraphic route to England by the junction of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.