WHEN the Chairman of the ROYAL NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION brings the present lamentable state of our coast communications under the notice of Parliament next Session, it is to be hoped that the Government will either accept Ms proposals to remedy a flagrant scandal, or be ready with alternative proposals of their own. At any rate, if they intend to per- severe in the attitude of helpless benevolence hitherto taken up by successive Administrations upon this subject, public opinion will require them to justify that favourite official position by arguments a good deal more forcible than any hitherto , adduced in its defence. The main features of the subject are familiar to our readers. It has been abundantly shown in these columns that no system of telegraphic or telephonic communication worthy of the name exists between the coastguard stations, the lighthouses, and the lightships round our shores. They girdle these islands with a chain of out- posts whose value both in peace and war might be indefinitely increased were they put in touch with the shore and with each other. Many of them are admirably situated to observe passing ships, whether those ships are the cruisers of an enemy seeking what they may destroy, or the vessels of our mercantile marine pressing home to gladden the hearts of anxious owners. All of them have necessarily the first news of disaster on the rocks and shoals they guard, and the earliest in- formation of the numbers and the movements of the imperilled crews. But for the ends of peace and war alike this in- formation is now of little value. It is locked in the bosoms of the lightkeepers, and, unless the atmospheric conditions are favourable, there it must remain, until it can no longer be of use. Nobody questions the facts. Nobody denies that a remedy is possible; nobody denies that it would prove efficient. Shippers and merchants interested in the safety of their ships and cargoes, and philanthropists concerned for the lives of our merchant sailors, have repeatedly urged the Government of the day to adopt it. Mr. PENDARVES VIVIAN, who long represented West Cornwall, put a question, on the subject in the House of Commons seventeen years ago, and repeated it eight years later. He did not meet with a rebuff—though, possibly, to an old parliamentary and a rebuff might have carried lees discouragement. He was told that the matter had received careful attention from two public offices; that the official mind was not entirely convinced that the result would justify the expenditure; that independent experiments were in progress, and that if they succeeded they would even be paid for.

Mr. VIVIAN says he acted with the sup- port and approval of the Committee of Lloyd's, and for many years past the Associated Chambers of Commerce have passed annual resolutions on the subject, varying the monotony of this proceeding by occasional deputations to the PRESIDENT or THE BOARD OF TRADE. But the experiments have never emerged from the probationary state, and the authorities have not yet solved the equation between result and expenditure.

People are beginning to think that perhaps they have not tried quite so hard as they ought where lives are at stake. Seven hundred men and boys die yearly within sight and hearing of our shores, many of them after prolonged suffering of the most cruel kind. What proportion of this "regiment of human beings in the prime of life "—to borrow the forcible description of Mr. ROBERT BAYLY—is sacrificed for want of proper coast communications, it is not easy to estimate, but there is abundant reason to believe that, both absolutely and rela-ively, the number is large. In a few hours of a single night last March, fifty- three men perished off the Start Light alone, and it seems probable that had the keepers been able to send a message to the shore, many, if not all, of those lives would have been saved. No storm of the present winter has yet taught us the same lesson by an example at once so apt and so appalling, but the lesson, nevertheless, has been repeated. The wreck of the Enterkin in the middle of last month cannot yet be quite forgotten.

She was cast away on the North Galloper Sands, not far from the Galloper lightship. When she struck she fired rockets, and the rockets were seen and answered by the lightkeepers. But the keepers were unable to telegraph her position to the shore, and so, within a few miles of Ramsgate Harbour, and within easy reach of Dover, Deal, and Harwich, the Enterkin went to pieces while brave men were vainly striving to discover where she lay. Twenty-five lives were lost in the Enterkin. The case of the gunboat Banterer, quoted by Mr. BAYLY, although it was not pointed by a disaster; is hardly less instructive. The Eanterer was caught in a heavy gale on her way from Queenstown to Plymouth, and driven to take refuge under Londy Island, where she found thirteen steamers seeking shelter. Had there been a wire to the shore the position of all these vessels would have been telegraphed, and no further anxiety need have been felt about them. No wire exists, and accordingly the commander of the Santerer thought it his duty to quit his anchorage the day after he had made it, for the express purpose of signalling to the shore.

Before he succeeded in doing so, two cruisers had been ordered to sea to search for the missing gunboat, and one of them was actually under way when his telegram arrived. In this instance the want of a cable put the Admiralty to the cost of getting the two cruisers ready for sea at a few hours' notice—an incident to be remembered when the relation of results and expenditure is again discussed.

That the establishment and maintenance of an efficient system of shore cables will cost money, and possibly a good deal of money, is, of course, undeniable. But in the first place we do not think that the nation, which was BO profoundly moved by the Plimsoll agitation, will stop to scrutinise the cost of protecting the lives of its sailors, and, in the next, we believe that as a mere matter of investment the creation of such a system would actually pay. That, at any rate, is the deliberate opinion of those best qualified to judge.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and the Committee of Lloyd's do not pretend that their support of the project is inspired by motives of pure humanity.

The terrible loss of life which now takes place is constantly brought home to them, and for that reason they doubtless feel it more acutely than the rest of the community. But they do not ground their demand for reform on the loss of life alone. They are business men, and they ask for the establishment of an adequate system to protect their property as well as to safeguard the lives of their servants.

They say that so vast is the amount of our national wealth constantly invested in ships and cargoes that the sum required to provide and keep up the shore cables would be well spent by way of insurance, nor does there seem to be any reason to question their contention. Mr. CULLEY, who, as engineer-in-chief of postal telegraphs, had much practical knowledge of submarine telegraphy as it was practised, some years ago, has described, in letters to us, the second of which we print to-day, some of the physical difficulties to be overcome in connecting the lighthouses and lightships with the shore. Light- houses are usually built on rocks rising j abruptly from the sea, and cables in such sites would be subjected to strains far more severe than those which the shore- ends landed on the rockiest coasts now undergo. Lightships, on the other hand, | swing and shift with the tides in a way which tends to twist and wrench cables of the ordinary pattern until they snap.

Mr. BAYLY, indeed, has quoted, from the report of a committee of the Board of Trade which sat in 1889, a statement that experiments have " completely shown the possibility of establishing electrical communication" between the lightships and the mainland " even where . . . the conditions of tides and currents, as well as the foul and rocky bottom, are most unfavourable"; but Mr. CULLEY answers that the trials on which this statement was based, were made under specially favourable conditions, and that neverthe- less the telegraph frequently broke down.

The difficulties indicated by Mr. CULLEY. undoubtedly exist, but it is hard to believe that, in an age in which science has ac- complished so much, these would long continue to baffle the skill of our engineers, if only the necessary funds were placed at their disposal. There remains the question as to the source from which those funds ought to be drawn. Two parties, as it seems, are interested in the reform. It is the duty of the State to protect the lives of all its citizens, and it is in a special sense the duty of the greatest of maritime powers to watch over the safety of her sailors. The State may therefore fairly undertake some portion of the charge.

But the shipowners, the merchants, and the underwriters acknowledge that they expect to derive substantial pecuniary benefit from the system they demand.

They advocate it expressly upon the ground that it will constitute a valuable insurance of their property. It seems only reasonable that they should be invited to contribute to the insurance fund.