Mr. Fawcett's estimate of the cost of introducing a 6d.
mini- mum for telegrams, with a halfpenny a word for all words over the minimum, was as follows The annual increase of working expenses would be £50,000 ; the loss of revenue in the first, year (on a total of £1,400,000) would be £112,000 ; while fresh capital to the amount of £100,000 must be sunk, on which the charge, including a sinking fund for paying it off, would be £5,000 annually,—making in all a total annual loss of £167,000. It was, of course, for the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer to determine how soon such a sacrifice of revenue could be incurred. Mr. Fawcett calculates that if such a loss were• now incurred, the Telegraphic Service would not at first fully pay both its own cost and the whole interest upon the extravagant price at which the telegraphs were at first pur- chased by the State, but would just pay its own cost, together with interest upon the reasonable price at which they ought to have been acquired. If, therefore, the sum wasted on the first acquisition of the telegraphic system were written off as a bad debt, the reduction to 6d. and a id.-word rate might be justified, as at least involving no bounty, paid at the cost of the general public, on the use of telegraphs, though in that case there would be no proper tax on telegrams, but only the bare charge to the consumer of their cost. Mr. Fawcett did not say what it would cost to charge ld. a word without any minimum,. the address, of course, not being paid for as part of the message. Would not that encourage brevity and bring in a larger revenue than a 6d. minimum, with a id.-word rate above the 6d., and involve also a simpler principle ?
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