failure, and the discouragement of nearly every one connected with it was most profound.
Mr. Field and one or two others were the only persons who retained the slightest confidence in the enterprise, and it was clear to them that any further effort to secure the aid of private capital would be useless just then. An appeal was made to the British Government. It was urged that the work was too great to be undertaken by private capital alone, and that, since it was to be more of a public than a private nature, it was but just that the Government should undertake it. The company asked the Government to guarantee the interest on a certain amount of stock, even if the second attempt should not prove a complete success. The failure of the Red Sea cable, to which the British Government had given an unconditional guarantee, had just occurred, and had caused a considerable loss to the treasury, and the Government was not willing to assume another such risk. Anxious, however, for the success of the Atlantic telegraph, it increased its subsidy from fourteen thousand to twenty thousand pounds, and agreed to guarantee eight per cent, on six hundred thousand pounds of new capital for twenty-five years, upon the single condition that the cable should be made to work successfully.