THE INDO-EUROPEAN TELEGRAPH. (FROM THE "COLOMBO EXAMINER," MARCH 2.)

Evening Post, Issue 115, 22 June 1865, Page 3

THE INDO-EUROPEAN TELEGRAPH. (FROM THE "COLOMBO EXAMINER," MARCH 2.)

When Lord Palmerston, more than thirteen years ago, at a public dinner at Southampton, spoke of the probability of daily communication between England and India being established at no distant date, and said that the day might come when if the Minister were asked in the House of Commons whether war had broken out in India, he might answer, " Wait a minute, I will telegraph to the Governor-General und ascertain," we wonder whether his lordship hoped he would live to realise so grand an idea. But now that the Indo-. European line is completed, and is proved to be in working order, Lord Palmerstou may flash any day a message to Calcutta to ascertain the result of the campagin in Bhootan or the state of political affairs in €abul, for the purpose of affording such information as may be asked for by some inquisitive or meddlesome M.P. The only official telegram which has as yet reached India is, we believe, the following from Sir Charles Wood to the Governor of Bombay: — " London, March 1, 5 p.m.—The Secretary of Mate, in congratulating the Governor of Bombay, in Council, on the successful completion of an undertaking calculated to bring India into closer union with Great Britain, and und<.r GoJ's blessing, |greatly to promote the common interests of both countries, desires to express to Sir Bartle Frere the sense entertained by her Majesty's Government of the value of bis zealous and energetic co-operation in the work which has now been brought to so prospering (prosperous ?) a conclusion.'' The above bulletin reached Bombay on the 3rd of March, and though' sufficiently indicative ot the recognition by the Home j Government of the success of the great j undertaking, it appears to have caused some little disappointment on account of its not having come direct from her Majesty the Queen. On the three following days private telegrams were regularly received by mercantile firms, but for a week afterwards i communication was interrupted, and the J confusion in the commercial world, caused i by the intelligence of Federal successes in America and the consequent critical state of the Liverpool market, was thereby Tendered " worse confounded." Reference i is made, we find, to this circumstance as one of the disadvantages attaching to the improved means of communication, and a Bombay contemporary, in alluding to this subject, suggests, as a remedy, a new Indian telegraph from Kurrachee to Bom* bay.