WHEN a sovereign or other important personage disappears from the scene, it is only by degrees that those who are left behind realise the full extent of their loss. It is only inow, eight months afterwards, that we learn that to the lamented death of Queen Victoria in January last' we owe the maintenance for another year of the exorbitant rates charged by the Joint Cable Companies for tele-12 ins between Shanghai, and Europe 12 and the United States. The Inter-{ national Telegraphic Conference was {to have been held in London last spring: at that Conference the telegraphic rates to and from the Far East would certainly have been reduced; but in consequence of Queen Victoria's death it was postponed to February 1902. And so it was that the death of the good Queen imposed an enormous and unnecessary fine on all residents in the Far East and their correspondents in the West for the benefit of two Telegraph Companies.
Turning back to the reports of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, it will be found that in June 1899, more than two years ago, the Colombo Chamber of Commerce called on all the Chambers in the East to take combined action in order to secure a reduction of the cost of cable messages. After some sorrespondenss between the Hongkong and Shanghai Chambers, the former on the 8th of October 1899 sent to the latter a set of resolutions unanimously adopted by the Hongkong Chamber, begging the Shanghai Chamber to assist it in getting the rates reduced. The resolutions are interesting enough to bear reprinting "1.—This Committee, having carefully considered the cost of telegraphy and the rates charged between the Far East and Europe, are strongly of opinion that the existing tariff is needlessly high, and tends to prevent that expansion of business which, with greater facilities of communication, would inevitably take place.
—The rate charged between London and Hongkong is relatively much higher than that ruling for many other countries, as the following figures will show
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.