We use the telegraph very extensively and pay it a good deal of money; so that there are few whose personal advantage from cheapening its use would be greater than our own; yet we do not regard with favor any of the bills looking to the establishment of a Government Telegraph. Here are some of our reasons:—

I. The prevalent tendency in our day is toward a further restriction rather than an enlargement of the sphere of government. We have (for instance) a good many public markets in this city, which are, for the most part, public nuisances. Had the city left this whole business of purveying free to private enterprise, only overseeing it in the interest of public health, few can doubt that our supply of food would have been better and cheaper than it is. The same is the case with many other attempts to serve or save the citizen through the agency of government. Most certainly, we would not limit the sphere of government to the mere prevention of breaking heads and picking pockets; but we should ponder long before enlarging it.

II. A Government Telegraph is usually proposed as an adjunct of the post-office. Our government already claims and enforces a monopoly of the business of carrying letters, charges its own prices, collects some $15,000,000 a year from the people for letter-carrying, and then loses some $6,000,000 a year by the business. We submit that it should show a better balance-sheet on this account before extending its sphere of operations.

III. We never owned any telegraph stock, and expect to own none; we are a daily and heavy customer to telegraphs, and expect to live and die such. We presume that a Government Telegraph would somewhat cheapen the cost of messages; but the money invested in establishing it would never be returned to the treasury. The clamor for a reduction of charges (as now with letters) would steadily overbear any hope of profit. Can it be right, we ask, to tax the whole people for the benefit of that small minority who send messages by telegraph? Would it not be better to start government establishments for potato-growing on a gigantic scale, so as to supply the poor cheaply with wholesome and nourishing food? Where one wants cheap messages, many would be benefited by having a sure and ample supply of cheap potatoes.

IV. Government, in this and other free countries, is and must be largely an affair of party. The government of this country has been, is, and must be, to a great extent, the rule of the dominant party. Would it be well to have the telegraph under the absolute control of either party in an excited Presidential election? Could the outs safely use it? Could the people implicitly trust it? Remember how the mails were rifled under Jackson, with the tacit approval of Postmaster-General Kendall, on the assumption that it was right to take and burn Abolition documents if circulated in Slave States. Consider General Jackson’s and Governor Marcy’s official recommendations that the circulation of such documents be prohibited by law. We should not like to have the telegraph controlled, throughout the ensuing Presidential canvasses, by our political adversaries, nor yet by our political friends.

V. The government is heavily in debt, and its finances are not in good condition; yet it is bored and importuned for subsidies on this side and on that,—all of them on the pretence of public advantage, many of them with just grounds for such assumption. If the Northern and Southern Pacific Railroads could both be built within the next five years, we believe they would add five hundred millions of dollars to our national wealth within the twenty years succeeding. We demur to their present construction by government aid, simply that the state of our finances forbids it. But if our government is able to build telegraphs where they are not wanted, why not railroads where they are the very first necessity of settlement and civilization?

We might go on for an hour longer, but let the above suffice for the present. We think the government should let the telegraph business alone.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.