Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/272

 the cable companies. They could not see the practicability of my ideas. But in the course of the rolling years these so-called visionary projects have already come appreciably near to realization. That which I advocated in the closing years of the last century was a mild reform compared with what presents itself within a wider horizon in this twentieth century. To-day what we want is a universal penny-a-word rate, and he would be a bold man indeed who would deny the certain realization of our hopes.

"Let me go back for a moment to that stormy night in 1887, which is full of suggestiveness to all those who have stood with me in the forefront of this battle waged against reluctant officialism, which, vowing that it will never surrender, always ends by giving way. On that occasion I advocated the construction of a cable from the Cape of Good Hope to Australia. The Eastern Telegraph Company, in the person of one whom even his opponents would call our dear old friend, Sir James Anderson, deemed the notion impossible. Sir James Anderson said: 'There is some talk of taking a cable all the way from Australia to Mauritius across the route of the trade winds to the Cape. There is not even a sandbank on which to catch fish. There is not a port to which a cruiser or a cable-ship can go to replenish their supply of coal, which they are certain to require to do. There are no ships going there. There is no trade, and nobody wants to go there.'

"This was very plain and to the point. And now what has occurred? On January 1, 1901—only fourteen years afterwards—the Eastern Telegraph Company finished the construction, at their own expense, of this very cable which they had denounced me for advocating. Sandbank or no sandbank, fish or no fish, observant men knew it was to come. I must quote Sir James Anderson's speech that night once more: 'Take the cable from Canada down to