“21 Regent Street, Londres.
“Envoyez télégramme suivant à Field, Great Eastern:
“Félicitations pour persévérance et grand succès.
“Lesseps.”
“11 Carlton House Terrace. S.W.,
“August 28, ’66.
“My dear Sir,—The message which you did me the honor to send me from Newfoundland at the commencement of this month, embodying in part the contents of a speech delivered by me in the House of Commons a few hours before, was a signal illustration of the great triumph which energy and intelligence in your person, and in those of your coadjutors, have achieved over difficulties that might well have been deemed insurmountable by weaker men. I offer you my cordial congratulations, and I trust that the electric line may powerfully contribute to binding our two countries together in perfect harmony.
“The message reached me among friends interested in America and produced a very lively sensation.
“We live in times of great events. Europe has not often of late seen greater than those of the present year, which apparently go far to complete the glorious work of the reconstruction of Italy, and which seem in substance both to begin and complete another hardly less needed work in the reconstruction of Germany. But I must say that few political phenomena have ever struck me more than the recent conduct of American finance. I admire beyond expression the courage which has carried through the threefold operation of cutting down in earnest your war establishments, maintaining for the time your war taxes, and paying off in your first year of peace twenty-five millions sterling of your debt. There are nations that could lay an electric telegraph under the Atlantic and yet could not do this. I wish my humble congratulations might be conveyed to your finance minister. This scale can hardly be kept up, but I do not doubt the future will be worthy of the past, and I hope he will shame us and the Continent into at least a distant and humble imitation.”
“I remain very faithfully yours,
“W. E. Gladstone.