Tyndall and Lord Kelvin warned the Government that it was making an indefensible mistake.

But nothing could be done.

Just as the first railways had been called toll-roads, so the telephone was solemnly declared to be a telegraph.

Also, to add to the absurd humor of the situation, Judge Stephen, of the High Court of Justice, spoke the final word that compelled the telephone legally to be a telegraph, and sustained his opinion by a quotation from Webster's Dictionary, which was published twenty years before the telephone was invented.
Having captured this new rival, what next?
The Postmaster General did not know.

He had, of course, no experience in telephony, and neither had any of his officials in the telegraph department.