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No. 6. Mr. Walkee, Superintendent of Telegraphs, Sydney, to Superintendent of Telegraphs, Wellington. (Telegram.) Sydney, SOth October, 1885. Please give cable matter attention, and get your Government to forward answer to correspondence on the subject. Dr. Lemon, Wellington. P. B. Walker.

No. 7. The Agent-General to the Hon. the Postmaster-General, Wellington. Sir, — 7, Westminster Chambers, London, S.W., 19th November, 1885. In continuation of my letter of the 31st October last, respecting the interview between the Agents-General and Mr. Pender upon the question of the cable tariff, I now transmit to you herewith copy of a joint letter which the Crown Agents and the Agents-General are sending in to the Colonial Office. I have, &c, The Hon. the Postmaster-General, Wellington. P. D. Bell.

Enclosure in No. 7. Copy of Letter from the Agents-General to the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. Sir, — We have the honour to request, on behalf of our respective Governments, that you will move Colonel Stanley to use his good offices with the Secretary of State for India, to obtain such a a reduction as wo will now proceed to indicate in the rates for telegraphic messages to Australasia at present charged by the Indian Government on its lines between Bombay and Madras. You are already aware that, for some time past, there has been much complaint of the loss to public and private interests necessarily involved in the excessively heavy charges for telegraphic communication between Australasia and Europe—charges which, it may be fairly said, are not due to any want of public spirit on the part of the colonies. At present, the companies which own the communicating cables, and the South Australian Government, which owns the trans-Australian land line, are ready, in the common interest, to make a considerable reduction on their respective charges, and our hope now is that Lord Eandolph Churchill may be disposed to advise the Government of India to do likewise on the lines crossing its territory. The subject was, as jrou may be aware, much discussed at the Telegraphic Conference recently held in Berlin, and, an appeal having been made by the delegates interested to the chairman of the Eastern and Eastern Extension Telegraph Companies, an intimation was conveyed to the Conference, on the part of his Boards, to the effect that a reduction of 2s. per word might be fairly made, so as to come into force simultaneously with the promulgation of the new convention on the Ist of July next, and that the companies would bear their share of this reduction provided the other interested Administrations—lndia and South Australia—would agree to diminish in due proportion their transit rates. The Government of South Australia at once signified by telegraph its readiness to make the required concession, but the Indian Telegraph Administration has hitherto declined to reduce its transit rates. We do not believe any decision to this effect can have been adequately considered either by the Secretary of State or the Viceroy in Council, for we submit with great respect that, whether from the point of view of policy or of equity, the Indian rate must be regarded as manifestly excessive. No other Government, that we are aware of, charges a sum one-half more for a message in transit than it charges for the same message if sent from point to point of its territory. But, as we are informed, the Indian Government charges 7|d. a word for transmitting an Australasian message from Bombay to Madras, while the rate for " urgent " internal telegrams from any station in India to any other is only sd. per word, for ordinary 2-Jd., and for deferred messages ljd. per word. Mr. Pender was urged by the Australasian delegates to the Conference to make and announce the proposed reduction at once, trusting that the Indian Government would subsequently concur in regard to its proportion of the charge; but he declined, on the ground that for a considerable time the subject had been under discussion between the companies and the Administration of the Indian Telegraphs, and that it would plainly be inequitable to expect his shareholders to submit to the risk of so heavy a loss for the convenience of the public, while the Imperial Government still stood in the way between Europe and Australia, levying a manifest overcharge. To this argument the delegates of the Australasian Governments felt they had no becoming reply. They therefore trust that the question may be viewed by the Secretary of State and Viceroy in Council not merely as a question of tariff rate, though even in this view it would probably be found that the increase of business with reduced rates would fully compensate the Indian Administration. Apart from this consideration, however, it is not believed that, at a time when all the other Governments of the world are making really liberal and costly concessions to facilitate the transmission of telegraphic messages, the Government of Her Majesty the Empress will wish to stand alone in maintaining a system of excessive overcharge on communications between the subjects of her other dominions. We have, &c.