results when Colonial financiers, acting with 'extreme caution,' direct the policy of the Empire! Meanwhile, a few words must be said as regards the connection of Tasmania and New Zealand with Australia.
A cable was laid between Tasmania and Australia so far back as 1869. It was duplicated in 1885. These cables have been laid by a British private company under a Government subsidy, the Tasmanian Government retaining the right to regulate the rate, which is now ½d. a word, in return for a guarantee of traffic revenue. But these arrangements expire in 1909.
New Zealand was connected to the mainland by cable in 1876 under a ten years' subsidy. Though this had expired in 1886, the British company, in 1890, duplicated the line, and further, to meet the needs of the case, reduced the tariff in 1898 from 8s. 6d to 2s. 0d. for ten words, the Government agreeing to bear three-quarters of any loss that might result. The loss was so serious that in 1895 the Government cancelled the above basis, and agreed to guarantee the sum by which the receipts should fall below £20,000 a year, provided that the amount payable did not exceed £9,000 in any year. This arrangement ended in 1900. In that year the company established a rate of 3d. per word. In 1902 the company was earning about 1·17 per cent, on the £450,000 invested in New Zealand cables. In that year British and Colonial Government competition, by the opening of the cable from Brisbane to Norfolk Island and New Zealand en route to Canada, reduced this modest yield by one-half.
My conclusion on the Australasian section of this subject is that British cable enterprise, while contending in all parts of the world against foreign rivalry, has received, in Australasia and the Far East, its severest blow from the Imperial Government, a policy directly contrary to the advice of the Committee on Cable Communications of 1902.
