In 1860 a competing company, the London District Telegraph Company, started operations in the Metropolitan District, and offered a low rate of 6_d._ a message. In the following year a far more dangerous rival, the United Kingdom Telegraph Company, announced that henceforth it would charge a uniform shilling rate irrespective of distance. Four years later both of these companies fell into line, forced according to some by the unfair tactics of their competitors, according to others by the utter impossibility of making both ends meet, while charging a uniform rate irrespective of distance. The tariff agreed to in 1865 was as follows:--[797] _Acc. & P._, 1867-68, xli, 202, pp. 43, 73, 74. For a distance not exceeding 100 miles 1_s._ from 100 to 200 miles 1_s._ 6_d._ beyond 200 miles 2_s._ Between Great Britain and Ireland from 3_s._ to 6_s._ In some cases these rates applied only to wires of a single company, and, where a message was transmitted over the wires of two or more companies, an additional charge was made. Special rates were offered for press messages, the news being supplied by the agency of the intelligence department of the telegraph companies.[798] [798] _Acc. & P._, 1867-68, xli, 202, pp. 87-88, 126; _Rep. Com._, 1867-68, xi, 435, pp. 31, 68. The earliest proposal for government ownership of the telegraphs seems to have originated with Thomas Allan, the same Allan who was later instrumental in establishing the United Kingdom Telegraph Company. In 1854 he submitted arguments to the government through Sir Rowland Hill in favour of the change, arguments which met with the approval of Lord Stanley, the President of the Board of Trade, and Mr. Ricardo, formerly Chairman of the International Electric Telegraph Company, and ex-member for Stoke. Two years later Mr. Barnes, an official in the Post Office Department, submitted to my Lords a plan "for the establishment in connection with the Post Office of a comprehensive scheme of electric telegraphs throughout the kingdom." In 1866, Lord Stanley, as Postmaster-General, in a letter to the Lords of the Treasury called their attention to the fact that the question of the propriety of the assumption by the government of the telegraphic systems of the Kingdom had been revived in the previous year by the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, and still more recently the proposition had been embodied in a petition from the Association of Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom. As he himself had for many years been in favour of such a change and found his opinion shared by more than one important body of public men, he directed Mr. Scudamore[799] to report whether, in his opinion, the telegraphs could be successfully operated by the Post Office, whether such operation would result in any advantages to the public over the present system by means of private companies, and whether it would entail upon the department any large expenditure beyond