The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-02-08 00:00:00

Two successive reductions in the Bank of England
rate of discount in a fortnight, first from 5 to 4 per
cent., and then from 4 to 3, would appear to indicate
an easier feeling in monetary circles, seeing that three
kths ago the Bank rate stood at double the last-
ttioned figure. Immediately after the ' failure "of
the City of Glasgow Bank early in October, a feeling
of uneasiness approaching almost to alarm, seemed to
take possession of monied men, and no clearer instance
of this was apparent than in the fact that on a Monday
morning the Bank of Englarid directors met, and ad-
Vanced the rate of accommodation from 5 to 6 per cent.
As the usual day of meeting is on Thursday, the fact
that such a measure was taken three days before the cus-
tomary time of consultation, together with the fall in
bank and gas shares, and other descriptions of securities
were indications of at least considerable anxiety. A
six per cent, bank rate was bringing us perilously near
the quotation which prevailed during the panic of
1866; and many of us remember what a time it took
the country to recover frdin the effects of that
disastrous collapse. The danger has, however, passed
away, and the fact that the bank-rate went down by
2 per cent, in fourteen days, is an evidence not only
of the removal of an unpleasant stringency, but gives
hope that money will be cheap in the market for some
time to come.

The difficulty in South Africa is one which would
have a chance of being better understood were it not
for the great distance which separates Eng-
land from that, important dependency. Lord Macau-
lay once laid down the dictum that a broken
head in the Tower Hamlets created more sen-
sation in the British capital than a mutiny in
Benares ; and although there must be many a cracked
skull in the east of London from the beginning to the
end of the year, there is more of truth than of
exaggeration in the idea hersin conveyed. Unless the
mutiny is very terrible in its reality, as in 1857,
a rising of that kind in India would not attract
the attention which it would deserve to command;
and the quarrel with the Zulu king may be placed
in a similar category. It appears, however, that
when two years ago we
_took over the Transvaal, a

country about the size of France, the agreement be-
tween ourselves and Cetewayo was not sufficiently ex-
plicit concerning a piece of territory lying between the
Transvaal and the Zulu king's dominions, and as this
slice of land is extremely fertile, and is clothed in the
verdure of spring from four to six weeks earlier than
the surrounaing country, which is comparatively waste
and barren, the contention over it has waxed warm
between Sir Bartle Frere and Cetewayo—so waim,
indeed, as to threaten war. It seems a matter for
deep regret that the boundaries were not effectually
settled at the time of the transfer of the Transvaal,
and that the most careful measures were not taken to
avert a calamity alike to civilisation and humanity,
and a reflection upon the nation which sends the
gospel of Christianity throughout the earth.