TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION BETWEEN AUSTRALIA & ENGLAND.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 75, 17 January 1872, Page 4

TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION BETWEEN AUSTRALIA & ENGLAND.

The Melbourne Leader, of the 30th December furnishes the following particulars of the thei present state of the telegraphic question in Aus tralia. Normantown and the Boper are 01 opposite sides of the Gulf of Carpentaria. - Thi former is in Queensland, at the outlet of tb< River Norman, on the south-east shore of thi Gulf, while the mouth of the Eoper is on thi south-western shore, in South Australian terri tory. The latter is no great distance from Porl Dennison, to which the cable from Java vie Timor is laid :— Not a very long time ago the prospect of th< cable being laid between Batuvia and Australia within the contract time seemed so remote, thai a proposal was seriously entertained to contraci for a mail service between Normantown, the extreme point of telegraphic communication ir Queensland, and the Batavian terminus of the Indo-European line. The proposal was not adopted, and the English Telegraph Company have since successfully landed the cable at Port Darwin. There has been an unlooked-for delay, however in the completion of the Adelaide land-line, which the South Australian Government have promptly met by augmenting the labour power of the contractors, and by guaranteeing the cable proprietors fire per cent, on their capital for the wholo period that the land-line remains unfinished. The Government at Adelaide could by no possibility do more to satisfy the other colonies that she is putting forth all her energies to complete her portion of the contract. But while she is doing this the northern colonies show but a poor appreciation of her efforts. Queensland ardently longs to be regarded as the first medium on this continent of direct communication with the mother country, and the Government at Sydney seconds her neighbour's attempts in this direction. The latest proposal is therefore to establish steam communication between Normantown and Port Darwin, via the Roper River, by which weekly communication may be opened with Europe and India for £1,000 a month. Another version puts the cost at £4,000 for eight months. Now, it is not at all probable that eight months will elapse before the intervening 300 miles of South Australian wires are fixed. It may possibly be three months, and scarcely perhaps so long in view of the heavy penalty the Adelaide Government will pay for delay. It will take a montJi to complete the Sydney arrangements for a steam contract, and that will materially reduce the term for which the steamers will have to run. All sorts of contingencies will have to be provided for, such as bad weather and delay of the boats, the imperfect working of a new line, and, more than all, an existing contract between the South Australian Government and the London Telegraph Company, by which it is doubtful if news can be received through the Timor cable by any other than the South Australian Government. Seeing, indeed, how near we are to the completion of the whole work as originally designed, and so far successfully carried out, it appears like a waste of public money to enter into a northern mail contract for some half-dozen weekly European messages, when by the exercise of a little patience we may almost be certain of having the direct line open early in the year by the vigorous efforts that are being made to that end by the Government of South Australia. Rather than expend public money in the way suggested by the Martin Ministry, it is desirable 'to husband our resources in view of the agitation that will certainly set in for cheap telegraphic communication with Europe, when the several Australian Governments may be called upon to subsidise the London Telegraph Company, instead of continuing to expend large sums on ocean steamboat services.

Australian Meat in Great Britain. — There is reason to believe that trouble is awaiting the butchers. They have continued to cut and carve, and charge great prices for their meat, and to smile contemptuously on Australian beef and mutton. What reason had they to care for what was going on at the antipodes ? Who would eat the nusty stringy stuff that was cent over in tins, when a leg of mutton was to be procured by only paying for it ? Yet this Australian meat is making its way in the country, and may even be said to have acquired a recognized position. No small consternation was excited last week in slaughtering circles by a glut of meat in the Manchester market, and a Biidden fall of twopence per pound in its price. This fall is attributed chiefly to the growing taste for Australian preserved meat. The beginning has been made at the circumference of the circle, in the provinces ; but it has not reached London, although at workhouses and other institutions Australian beef and mutton is taking the place of butchers' meat. Soon the " lower middle " and the working classes in London will awaken to the fact that they may hare good provisions at about two-thirds of the cost of those supplied to them by the butchers with whom they have been in the habit of dealing. — English Paper. The English Laio Magazine says : — " Some time since our contemporaries professed to be scandalized by a statement of ours as to the prevalence of alcoholism among lawyers. One of them confessed to blissful ignorance, another was more honest, and tried to prove a negative. We like the candour of the Americans. In noticing our remarks, and the comments of our contemporaries, the American Law Review) says : 'In America all lawyers drink; very few are sober after ten o'clock in the morning. It is not customary to keep sherry bottles or beer barrels in offices, because sherry and beer are rarely drunk in America, except by women. Lawyers like other men, drink whiskey, and for this purpose a hogshead of it is kept in every practitioner's cafe.'"