The public generally and the directors of the company were greatly disappointed, and many of-the latter and nearly all of the former declared that all such attempts must of necessity fail.  Some persons even went so far as to avow their belief that the statements as to the successful transmission of signals over the wire were false; but the proofs that the wire did work properly for awhile are too strong to allow us to accord the slightest weight to this disbelief.  But whether signals had passed over the wire or not, there could be no doubt that the cable had ceased to respond to the efforts of the electricians, and was a total 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.

This was not all, however.  The Government caused further soundings to be made off the coast of Ireland, which effectually dispelled all the fears which had been entertained of a submarine mountain which would prove an impassable barrier in the path of an ocean telegraph.  In addition to this, it caused the organization of a board of distinguished scientific men for the purpose of determining all the difficult problems of submarine telegraphy.  This board met in 1859, and sat two years.  The result of its experiments and investigations was a declaration, signed by the members, that a cable properly made, “and paid into the ocean with the most improved machinery, possesses every prospect of not only being successfully laid in the first instance, but may reasonably be relied upon to continue many years in an efficient-state for the transmission of signals.”