SUBMARINE CABLES.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 306, 5 June 1875, Page 3

SUBMARINE CABLES.

The following paragraph appeared in a late number of the Sydney Morning Herald : — “ Some months ago a preliminary agreement was concluded between the respective Governments of New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, for a guarantee of 5 per cent, towards the construction and maintenance of a submarine cable from Singapore to Normantown, and from Sydney to New Zealand. This arrangement, we now , understand, has been abrogated, and fresh negotiations are pending with the agent of Messrs Siemens, of London, for laying a cable from Botany Bay to Cape Farewell, on the south-west side of Cook Strait. The New South Wales Government are favorable to the undertaking, and are now arranging by telegraphic correspondence for more favorable terms than those proposed by the former agreement. It is also probable that arrangements will shortly be concluded with the French Government for laying a cable between Cape Moreton, in Queensland, and Now Caledonia —a distance of 700 miles,”

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE COLONIES,

On Saturday evening, 20th March, a public dinner was given at the Westminster Palace Hotel, by a committee of merchants and ot her gentlemen connected with South Africa, to Mr J. A Froude, the historian, on his return from a visit to the Transvaal, Orange Free States, Natal and the Cape Colonies. In proposing the usual introductory toasts, the chairman said whatever doubts there might have been of our colonial empire holding together when her Gracious Majesty ascended to the throne, those doubts were now dissipated. Whatever their difficulties might be in the future, he believed our colonies would long cherish their connection with the ancient and constitutional monarchy of Great Britain. Mr H. Blaine, chairman of the entertainment committee, briefly proposed the toast of the evening—“ The health of Mr Fronde," Mr Froude, in his reply, said that he had gone to the Cape because he was exceedingly anxious to know how responsible Governments were working in the colonies where they had been established. Various persons had prophesied that to grant self-government to the colonies was to insure their being at no very distant time separated from the mother country. It had seemed to him wholly incredible that, giving them the Government they desired, and so removing all possible grounds of quarrel between them and us, would tend to separation, Well, when he got to the Cape his mind was entirely set at rest on that score. A few light words, might have been uttered here and there by people who did not consider what they were saying ; but, as regarded the great body of the colonists, he had never met any class of men—English, Scotch, or even Dutch —who were more heartily attached to the mother country than his fellow-countrymen at the Cape. [Cheers.] They were Englishmen and Scotchmen first, and South Africans afterwards. For himself, he believed that South Africa could not stand alone, and that her liberties and the liberties of the Free States were safer while the colony was connected with Great Britain than they could possibly be if connected with any other power. If a federation with the Dutch could not be now effected, at any rate, by some decent kind of good management, we could establish a cordial alliance with them ; and if that were done, and a just, rational, and uniform system organised for all those colonies, no native would then think of rising from the mouth of the Zambesi down to Table Bay. [Cheers.] Let them get the best counsel they could from the Free States, and also from our own colonies ; let such a set of principles be drawn up as could be accepted both by the Parliament at home and the Parliaments in the colonies j let those principles be adopted and adhered to throughout South Africa, and then they would have no more s trouble in that region. Mr Froude concluded by giving—“ Prosperity to South Africa,” which was responded to by Mr H. Blaine and Mr J. P. Glanville, The chairman, in proposing “ The Health of Her Majesty’s Ministers,” said there could be no greater mistake than to suppose that any British Government desired that England should be isolated and her colonies separated from her, and he could not conceive that any historian, any Froude of the future, should have anything so suicidal to record of the mother country as that by any act of her own she should sever the tie which bound her offspring to her. Mr Lowther, M.P., in • responding to the toast of “Her Majesty’s Government,” said that between the chairman and the politicians with whom he acted there was this bond of union—namely, a disposition, not only not to weaken the existing ties between the mother country and her colonies, but to strengthen them in every possible way. Indeed, so far from being insensible to the responsibilities cast upon them by our colonial empire, her Majesty’s Government had, during the past year, shown that they were not disinclined even to add to those responsibilities, Mr G. M. Kiel next proposed the toast of “ The Houses of Parliament,” which was acknowledged by Mr J. Holms, M.P., who urged that the true commercial policy for the colonies to adopt was to admit our manufactured goods into their ports as freely as we admitted their raw produce into ours, [Cheers.]