THE PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1872.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1234, 12 July 1872, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1872.

The long-anticipated change in the direction and means of receiving our intelligence from England ii at last an accomplished fact. The names of the San Francisco mail and the Suez mail are not likely longer to continue to figure with prominence in New Zealand newspaper columns, in connection with the occasions on which we receive either European or American news. Though by the mails, or by one or other of them, we may continue to receive the details of each month's intelligence, it will be by cable under the Indian Ocean, and by. the wire stretching across the vast Australian continent, that we shall in future obtain the principal items, and much that we may now pcruae with avidity on the arrival of each mail will then come to us as something stale, flat, and unprofitable. Such, at least, is the anticipation which may be fairly formed from the nature of the contents of the first telegram which has been forwarded for Press purposes by the In doAustralian line of telegraph, and by the agency or agencies with which the Australian and New Zealand Press are associated. It is true that the very first telegram thus received announces the circumstance of a breakage in the communication, and there may for a time be delay in the continuance of intelligence by this new route, but the breakage, though submarine, is not likely to be so difficult of repair as in the case of the sub-Atlantic cables, or to be so prolonged as to make dependence^ upon the ancient means of communication more than a mere temporary necessity. By the first telegram which has thns been transmitted, and which is published in another column, news a fortnight freaher than that brought by the

last Suez mail has been received, and, with the line repaired, we may now expect weekly or bi-weekly instalments of equally late or even later intelligence, according to the dates upon which the intercolonial steamers arrive at the Bluff, Hokitika, or Auckland. In the present instance the news almost simultaneously reached Auckland and Hokitika, but, landed more readily at the former port, it was thence transmitted to the papers throughout the Colony. As will be seen, it possesses the attribute of freshness more in point of time than of character; The items relating to the attitude of England and America oh the Alabama question, though nominally six days later than those to hand by the Suez mail, do not materially alter the aspect of the question which was then represented, though they rather favor the beVef that the feeling between the countries had not improved. The other and later items are chiefly commercial, and it is in that connection, no doubt, that the Colonies will chiefly find the advantage of this new' litlß'of communication, and seek chiefly to utilise it. Consols are likely to be mentioned in future more frequently than the minutiae of Court gossip, and increase or decrease in the price of Colonial products than the arrivals and departures of Continental princes. Dignitaries will take second place to dealers, and quotations will be even more amply made from the price- | lists at Mark Lane than from speeches in St. Stephen's. The cost of transmission is considerable, and brevity is not more the soul of wit than it is a necessary element of economy in the working of a wire extending half-round the world, and upon which the demands of the world's inhabitants must be great so long as it has no competitor.