The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-10-01 00:00:00

Plisallanrous
HOME, FORMAN, AND COLONIAL

THE BRIMISN Frame. The annual fetes to
celebrate the declaration of Belgian Independence,
and the usual Tie International, opened last Sunday.
During the day King Leopold If. visited the 'Fir, the
regatta, and several other lilacs s where public celebra-
tions were in progress. l'ao Englishmen was present
in Brussels for the shooting, and the number of Eng-
lish visitors was very small. There was, however, a
lar:e number of French people present, many of them
being men wounded in the recent batiks+ near the
frontier; and in the cathedral and the park every at-
tention was bestowed upon them.
GiteaY WANT OF IahIOATION. We have
heard more than erough lately of that horrid imple-
ment of destruction, the Mitrailltuse. But coulin't
some ilever engineer devise an analogous engine fortha
peaceful purpose of throwing water? If a sufficient
qnsiniity of col i water were thrown on the crowds of
kali who are in the habit of taking every passible
occasion to "demonstrate" their rancorous disaffection
in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, it would always
cliiptrie them, and prevent them from creating further
disgust, if not terror and alarm, in the minds of Her
Maj .sty'a subjecia—Panch.
" '

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Twin MISSIONARIEB.—An interestim incident
iskelsted in connection with the Archbishop of Canter-
bury's ordination at Croydon last Sunday morning.
Two of the gentl-men ordained (the Itev. H. C.
Squires, 8.A., of Wadham College, Oxford, and the
Rev. It. A. Squires, I. A., of St. John's College,
Cambridge) were twin brothtret. Born together, GffeC•
time ad sympathies and their future dectiny stem to
run together. Their features are no much alike that it
is difficult to distinguish them. Ti,,, thouz,hts of both
were directed to the ministry, and they both have
soucht for missionary work. In the Archbishop's ex-
amination they both showed themselves excellent
scholars, one of them (Mr. R. A. Squires) being placed
first in the examination, and selected, constqueutly, to
read the Gospel in the Ordination Service. As their
aff ction will not allow them to be separated, they will
both precood to India, and their labours among the
heathen will be conducted within a few miles of each
other. They nil work in connection with the Church
Missionary Society.
' • "

TAXING TEM D,&l).—To prosecute criminally
defunct individuals is a freak not allowed to many.
Tbere is, however, in Bengal a special income-tax
assessor, by name Copal Ciatudsr Dlitter, who not only
assessed, but prosecuted for nompayment 40 persons.
who, when the police went to find them, were discovered
to he dead. The Baboo attempts to < xplain his con-
duct by saying that be "was impreved with the idea
that if anybody name.: in the notice was dead, and his
heir followed the same calling as the deceased, the
Latter was lialde is ths name degree as the person he
represented ; " but the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal
has subsequently impressed upon him the fast that the
explanation is very unsatisfactory. The 'taboo ht.o
been offic;ally informed that "the prosemition crimi-
tally of 40 parlour, who apparently were dead when he
served notices upon them, was an act of very reprehen-
sible careleesuese."—Mmiras Tints.

NOT LlK6nose Full/LION COUNTD.II s —Mrs.
Malaprop hopes she never will live to see the day
when all the tine young Mali in this happy country
will be turoe:t into soldiers by a Subscription. Sue
vows she will not distribute a sixpence towards it.—
Punch.

TIIK FATE or A TRAITOR. A French paper
Am the tollowitut .

A t rench captain in illegals°, who had escaped from Sedan,
was making a frugal repast in a small cabaret not far from
the frontier. alien he observed a butcher from liontanedy
Conte In. and shortly afterwards a Prussian officer. The two
entered an aoj doing room, but tbrowh a crack to the door
the French captain saw the Prussian officer taking notes in
his book, and give to the butcher some gold pleces. The cap-
lain wiote a fee lines on a slip of paper, post his bill, and
waited at the ilor, of the naharet natal he saw the Prussian
officer and the butcher separate and move away in opposite
dir..ctione. He hurried after the latter and overtook
him. "My Mend," he said, "I think you come from
Houtrocity 4" " Tee," said the butcher, " I live there and
have come to lock for cattle; hut there are note to be bad;
the troope have oaten every thing." So &ha'," said the cap-
tain, "yen would not he sorry to makes little money hi what
Is not your re;ular buYineas. I understand lb it. Here Is &note
eshleli I wish to have sent la the comm indent of SI yntmedy.
II you will take &ergs of lit give you 20!, e,ol promise you
as much for the reply." The butcher, well pleased, under-
took the cominleslon, and handed the note to the com-
mandant no soon at he reecho; Montan dv. The commandant
read the note. Called (or • corporal and four men, who con-
ducted the butcher beh;nd one of the rampart ivotie, whence
the sound of firing was speedily heard. The French captain,
before prooeeding to Part, oy way of Lille watched the pro-
eeedingi of the Prnialan oilier, who came regalarly twice a
day to the place and waited all hour each time, rata/ran
afterwards to Sedan.—Standard, Sept. 23.

• -
BEER LICENCES AND THEIR RESULTS.—A re-
turn of the number of licences for the sale of beer and
cider in En.:land and Wales contains the opinions of I
the head constables of eeveral boroughs regarding the
operation if the \Vine and Beerhoume Act of 1869.
They generally agree in thinking that the inessur, hae
been an improvement, but also indirectly suggest some
modification in its provisions. The head constable of
Congleton, for instance, gives it as his opinion that the
Haulms granted for the ea'.. of beer to be mold ollt the
premiers is the cause of much private drinking. It is
stated that, through the power vested in the magis-
trates, many house, the resort of thieves and most".
tutex ale now eloeed.
THE ANTIQUITIES OF LAW—Lord Neaves, at
, the Social Science Congrees, at Newcastle. in a paper on
"Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law" amongst
other remarks, said—" Another of the difficulties pros
I ducieg uncertainty of the law a-isee in the oischarge of
the task imposed upon judges of interpreting words.
A great proportion of the cairn that are litigated turn
upon this matter, eepecially in parole contracts or in
wills and other inetrumente drawn up by the parties
themselVtltl. Some expressions are in themselves
almost ineolnble, as in the old story of the teetatur who
bequeath.' to a legatee all his black and white horses.
He had Nat k horses and he had white hon.+ F, iuil tot
had black and white—that is, pieba'd horses. Whist
was the battiest intended to cover? It is, perhaps. one
of the woes of the tautology of law that it serves to
provent ambiguities by not leaving the meaning of an
insumnp.nt to depend upon any single expremiom It
is manifest. however, looking at the various important
and delicate cueetions that arise out of the construction
of writing, that a high place in legal education ahould
he given to philological etudies. The power of skilfully
and correctly analyzing language in iedispeneable to
emcees in every legal function, and experience ahows
that no language can be thoroughly known without a
knowledge of more than one.
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MUSICAL hIsD MISLANCIIOLY.—May a conduc-
tor who beats time to on Op.' of Bach or iteeth,ven
lie rewonehly regarded by the audience as so Op-
taneist
Tim Vatua OF EDUCATION.---At the Social
Science Corgress Dr. Lyon Playfair, ALP., delivered
an able address as President of the Education Depart.
went. The exigencies of space prevent us from giving
Cl,ll u summary of the positions takrn by the learned
gentli luau. Perhaps the most remarkable passage
wa.i that in whith, speaking of the effects of the last
lieform bill, he raid :
The right of suffrage has for It. tertiary the duty of in- !
struction. Yen casual give political power to a people and
allow them to remain ignorant. That would be the political
suicide of a nation. The people, In all their grades, are
surrounded thd imbued with the rrejadicaa acquired in their
upbringing, either from their narrow or those around them.
An uneducated people is like • flatten one or two generations
back in Its history. It In linable to grasp the ideas of the
ate in while it live, and Is powerless 5, shake itself free
Iron the prejudices which the progress of thought hat proved
to be dangerous mans. I hey are i0.0.1e to • o so, as they
cannot take poseetalen of th Inheritancs of Intellectual
weeith ancumulski by their pro teoessors for they do not
gnaw how to read the books forming the testament by which
it was bequeathed.

A TRIJIBM OF TEE Tars— Prussia, says Count
Bernstorff, vrants m to observe towards her a ' benevo-
lent " neutrality. But a neutrality acknowledged to
be benevolent by Prussia would be resented as a
malevolent neutrality by France. It is too evident
that neutrality can please neither. --P unch.
—•

AT 14.15 T ! —Under the heading "At LaA," TJ
Tines, on Tuesday, bad the foilowing

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Summonses have been issued for • Cabinet Connell to b
holt, at the official residenc a of the First Lord of the Treasury,
In Downing-street, on Friday next, the 30th lust., at two
o'clock."

DisruTin ScAca PEERAGE Cence.—There ore
at present no fewer than three Scottish peerswe casee
before the House of Lords— the Earllom 4 Mar, the
Earldom of Airth, and *he Barony or Dingwall. A
fourth e Ise will, says the London Scotsmen, shortly
come before the House of Lard; affecting the Barony
of Somerville. Toe nineteenth and lent Lord Somer-
ville, our readers may remember, died suddenly at his
seat at Somerville Aston, near Eveeham, only a few
weeks ago, at the early age of thirty-two. He had
enjoyed the title and estatee only two year; having
succeeded his cousin, who was killed by being thrown
from his horse in the hunting-field at Leicesterin 1668.
The late lord had no family, and, it is said, no near
relations. The claimant to the honours, it appear; is
a well-known and estimable Glasgow minister, the
Rev. Alexander N. Somerville, of the Free Church,
Anderston. This reverend gentleman ie said to be a
direct representative of Somerville of Park, and the
closest branch in the geneelvical tree; und, according
to a Glasgow contemporary, steps are bcing taken with
a view of establishing his claims.
_ .

FACT , OF COULSF. —ln some parts of ELgland
the water is so hard that skating on it is kept up all
through the summer.— Punch,
WTI ITWORTII SCUOLABSII IPS TOR 1870. —The
award of the ten Whitworth Scholarships of 4:100 each
for the year 1870 has just been made to the under-
mentioned candidates --To those examined as stu•
dents—W. Garnett, 19 years of age, student, London ;
Jae. Taylor, 21 years of age, mechanic, Oldham ; J. A.
Griffiths. 22 years of age, engineer student, Middleton ;
B. W. M`Cdon, 17 years of age, student, Liverpool ;
J. Perry, 20 years of age, engineer, Belfast. To those
examined as workmen—Edwd. Tomtits, 24 years of
age, engineer and draughtsman, Manchester; Wm.
Dodgson, 25 years of age, mechanic, Manchester ;
Prank Salter, 21 years of age, mechanical engineer;
Leamington; NV. S Hall, 25 years of age, engineering
draughtsman, Nottingham; Ily. Dyer, 21 years of
age, mechaaical engineer, Glasgow.

A HINT RESF4CTING THE BITES OF DJUB.
Several deaths have occurred in Nottingham from
hydrophobia, resulting from bites of dogs, and Dr. W.
Tindal Robertson, our of the physicians of the General
spital of the town, has addressed a letter on the sub-
ject to the chairman of the weekly board of the institu-
tion, in which he says
Two Si the eufferers had been children, and the bites in
both them ease, had been inflmted by small dog; cot
known to be rabid, and belonging to the family. If these
wound. had been exceed immediately or soon after they
were received the terrible sequel would probably have been
prevented ; IlOd my ohf .ct on calling your attention to the
matter is that the public may hi some way be uPrised that
any rue suffering from the bite of a nog should immediately
be taken to the hospital or elsewhere to order that proper
steps may be promptly taken for the excision and proper
treatment of the wound.'

MILITILY HAIINtSTI3.—We fiud in a contem-
porary a fine big-sounding phrase about Prussia being
enriched by her lids harvest of vast military sue-
ceases" Well, there is clearly no denying that, as far
as glory goes. Pruseis has succeeded in gathering of
late a mos: abundant crop of it. But harvests such as
these are so expensive in the reaping that we doubt if
any country can be said to be enriched by them.
Military success is a good thing in its way, but it is
possible to have too much of a good thing, and even
such good things as a military triumph may be pur-
chased at a price which it is ruinous to pay for them.
However rich they may he, harvests such as these are
tolerably certain to impoverish a country. Tne work
of plantirog Corn, no doubt, is not so glorious as the
work of planting Cannon ; but however rich a crop of
military successes may be gathered by a war, we may
depend that a good crop of wheat must always prove
more profitable.—Pundi.

THE PROORREIS OF CIVILIZ It is interest-
ing to mark the prm,erese of civilization from ye-ir to
year (remarks; the Pall Mall Gaulle). On the 19:11 of
September, one twelve moutu ago, all Europe
cuivered with horror at the slaughter of the Kinck
family by Tropmaun. The violent death of seven per-
sona shocked the civilized world. How vast has been
our improvement in this short period ! What tone
have our nerves acquired ! We read of the slaughter of
7,01$ persons with far more calmness than we heard
of the slaughter of seven. The Kinck family were
oily sacrificed to the exigenciea of an individual;
the thousands whose corpses are lying beneath the bat-
tie-fields in Alsace and Lorraine have been escriticed
to the nec-asities of natione ; and herein lies the dif-
ference. Yet we should never forget that the victima
in each come are individuals ; every wounded man lying
now in a hospital aufTere more than any of the Kincks.
Gamblers tell no that it ia not so much the money they
lose at the table that ruins them as the impossibility
they find of economizing shillings in the ordinary
transactions of life, when they have accustomed them-
selves to et ake hundreds of pounds ounce ; hraw of the
dice ; and so it is with hum-on lives. We lose all sense
of their value in the lavish waste of war.
Hisksisx.—Coant Ilinnarck is said to have
declared that his great difficulty in entering into negotia -
Uinta for the conclusion of peace is the absence of any
stable Government to treat with him on the part of
France. Ras France no Jockey Club ?—Punch.