The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-11-30 00:00:00

_
- - - __ • .._ _ •
• _ , -________ - - -

hihiNiimm.

(Our Yogon 613ipspOutt.

.We deem it right to state that we do not a: all times
,ventily ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions./

some years ago, in a debate which tooK place in the
House of Commons on the foreign policy of Great
Britain, an honourable member made an objection to
this country embarking in so many "little wars."
Why not go in for a great war at once, as France did
in 1870, and have done with it? But we should not
like to go to war, and to pay the penalty which was
exacted from France; at the same time there can be
little doubt that we are seldom thoroughly at peace.
Reaching to the uttermost ends of the earth, extend-
ing to every clime, and washed by the waves of the
most distant oceans, our widely-stretching territories
are a constant source of anxiety to us. When
we are not punishing Indian mutineers, or chas-
tising rebellious Maories, or dealing with trouble-
some Kaffirs, we are involved in some difficulty
with China or Persia, fighting the Emperor of
Abyssinia, destroying the capital of the Ashantee
king, or invading the territories of the Ameer of
Afghanistan. No one political party in the state is
responsible for these doings. Lord Palmerston
ordered the bombardment of Canton, Lord Derby the
capture of Magdala, Mr. Gladstone the destruction of
Coomassie, and Lord Beaconsfield the advance upon
Cabul. These little wars are one of the penalties we
pay for our sway of empire. Two thousand years ago
Imperial Rome had a similar experience, and at last,
becoming careless, sank beneath the weight of her own
magnificence, and fell an easy prey to the hordes of
fierce barbarians which swept down upon her from the
centre of Europe.
The Cassandra-like warnings, which are heard in
times of national prospority, when the country seems
upon the flood-tide of fortune, that a period may
arrive when we, too, like proud Rome, shall be over-
burdened with wealth, do not seem to be just yet on
the point of realization. Indulgence in luxury and in
voluptuous pleasures are not now in the line of the
people. The condition of trade will not admit of
it. Numerous have been the causes assigned for the
existing commercial depression. Foreign competition,
want of protection, over-production, trades-unionism,
war, peace, want of gold, over-abundance of silver,
the growth of public expenditure, the absence
of private thrift, the uneasy state of the public
mind and a generally prevailing distrust, are
amongst the reasons advanced for the collapse of our
industry. But it is a remarkable fact that
once in every ten or eleven years this wave
of adversity sweeps over us, and that the flow
of its gloomy waters is concurrent with the existence
of vast spots upon the sun. Who does not remember
the autumn of 1867, and the number of unemployed
then abroad in the land? Go back to 1857, then to
1847, again to 1837, to 1826, to 1816, and it will be
found that in every case commercial distress and
the appearance of huge solar spots came together.
The causes of the former have been widely varied.
The depression in 1867 was traced to the financial
panic of the previous sear; in 1857 there was the
Mutiny in India, and a commercial breakdown in
the United States; in 1847 the Irish famine and
a failure of European harvests generally; the crisis of
1837 succeeded an immense expansion of home trade;
the establishment of,j oint-stock bank; and the building
of multitudes of factories and other permanent works;
1826 was preceded by extravagant foreign speculations,
and foreign loans; 1816 followed a three-and-twenty
years' war, and the break up of the artificial sources of
income which it had produced. Every one of these
succeeding periods hasibeen almost perfectly coincident
with the return of enormous sun-spots. Above is a huge
blank space in the sun, beneath are distress and
depression in many lands. Professor Jevons, who
has devoted much attention to this subject, believes
that the time will come when the most important
news in the journals will be the telegrams showing the
amount of the solar power. He suggests the
establishment of observatories upon the table lands
of Quito or Cuaco, in Cashmere, on the Peak of
Teneriffe, in Central Australia, or wherever
the great luminary of the day can be observed most
free from atmospheric opacity. Our empire upon
which the sun never sets, and whose commerce per-
vades every port and creek of the southern seas, might
well set a watch on that great fountain of light, heat,
and energy, which }shines brightly in the time of
financial prosperity, and darkens with despondency
in the hour of our commercial depression.
What would Cleopatra's Needle say could that dis-
tinguished monolith express its opinion with respect
to the place where its lot is now cast? Its first home,
when it pointed to the sky long before Moses received
the Ten Commandments, was in Heliopolis, or the City
of the Sun, so named from the clearness of its atmo-
sphere. It is called in the Bible the City of On.
where, in the midst of a community enlivened by
brilliant sunshine, surrounded by neither fog nor
smoke, enveloped in no gloom, it was standing when
Joseph was a prisoner, and was brought from his
dungeon to give an interpretation to the royal dreams.
Familiar to every Sunday scholar is the interesting
narrative of the fate of the chief butler and the chief
baker, and of the experience of the fat and the lean
kine. As Heliopolis was on the high road between
the great cities of Thebes and Memphis, multitudes
of travellers must have gazed upon our Needle of to-
day, and it is believed by some writers that Abraham
passed it whilst upon his journey into the land of
Mizrain. More than three thousand five hundred years
roll away—a huge space in the history of this planet
—and a very different home is that of the
obelisk now. In its present resting-place it
seeks vainly for the sun, once so familiar, and no
longer is its base thronged by lounging crowds. It has
been set up in a grey and gloomy city, never more
gley and gloomy than in the month of November
when vast banks of murky-looking cloud cover the sky
from morn to dewy eve. Placed between two busy
highways, one upon the land and the other over the
tide of the river, it looks down upon an ever-hurrying
multitude, all on business bent; and in tastes, pursuits,
.costumes, and aspirations offering the strongest pos-
sible contrast to the subjects of that monarch whose
heart was BD often hardened, and whose people were
sr, frequently the victims of an obstinacy which at last
terminated in such disastrous results.

The summoning of Parliament for an autumn session
is quite in accordance with the precedents for the
meeting of the Legislature when a question of unusual
public interest is before the country. We are now at
war with Afghanistan, and that cannot be carried on
without supplies; in 1867, when there was an autumn
session, we were at war with Abyssinia, and then
again supplies had to be voted. But just ten years
previously to that Parliament was called together in
December for a very different reason. On the 3rd of
that month, in the year 1857, the Queen in person
went down to Westminster, and in opening the
two Houses of the Legislature, said in the
Royal speech—" circumstances have arisen connected
with the mercantile interests of the country which
have induced me to call Parliament together be-
fore the usual time. The failure of certain joint
stock banks and of some commercial firms produced
such an extent of distrust as led me to authorise my
Ministers to recommend to the Directors of the Bank
of England the adoption of a course of proceeding
which appeared necessary to allay the prevalent
alarm. As that course has involved a departure from
the existing law, a bill for indemnifying those who
advised and those who adopted it, will be submitted
for your consideration." The Indemnity Bill was
very speedily passed, and after a brief sitting, neces-
sary only for that purpose, there was an adjournment
over the Christmas recess. In the present instance it
is scarcely likely that the sitting will extend over a
fortnight.

The "callto arms" sent through the United Kingdom
on Saturday morning, when it became known that
Parliament was to meet on the sth December, could
scarcely have been an unexpected one, seeing that our
troops had for some days been on Afghan soil, and no
money had been voted towards the expenses of the
expedition. Yet the Royal Proclamation must have
found many of our legislators in different parts of
the world, for at the close of the session, arrangements
are made for the next Biz months, and until the
usual time of meeting. some
via i t
their property
in India, Jamaica, or Australia; and others arrange
for a trip to the United States or to Canada; and
others again penetrate as far as China or Japan.
With such it will be impossible to be back in time.
Those, however, wit() have merely taken
up
their
winter quarters in Rome or in Naples, in the south of
France, or in the cities of the Rhine, will have
no
difficulty in obeying her Majesty's mandate, The
quietude of the west end of London has been rather
suddenly broken by the summons. Lords and Corn.
mons Blid not expect to be in town until February;
they are called together early in December, and so
their houses must be set in order. This means that
about 1,200 establishments must be prepared for their
owners; consequently Regent-street rejoices and Pall
Mall is glad. Trade at that end of the town will be
all the better; the shopkeepers tell you that it could
not be much worse.
The probable adjustment of the difficulty with the
United States, as the Marquis of Lorne is to begin his
viceregal rule over the Dominion, is of good omen,
and the news of the payment of the Halifax award
has come precisely at the proper time. There is little
doubt that we have had more differences with the
Americans than with any other nation upon the earth;
but they all end peacefully. Just after the close of the
war with Russia, a very serious dispute took place upon
the alleged enlistment of Araerican citizens in the

British service, and the crisis was such that Mr.
Crampton, our Minister at Washington, had to
leave his post. It might have been very easy for
us to construe that into an affront, and to have
declared war, just as we have done now because
the Ameer of Cabnl would not receive our envoy;
but this was not the view of Lord Palmerston, who
was then Prime Minister. So he sent them out a
lord as our representative—Lord Napier—and they
kept him. A very critical state of relations arose
again over the Alabama correspondence, which went
on ten long years, and was at last settled by arbitra-
tion. The Newfoundland Fishery contention promised
to be a very ugly business, but by giving way a little
on either side there is every prospect of its being
satisfactorily disposed of. In the midst of the general
well-wishing to Lord Lorne and the Princess Louise,
surely this is a matter for congratulation on both sides
of the Atlantic.

On the same day that the Queen left Balmoral for
Windsor Castle, an official notice app •ared in the
papers that the Court would go into mourning for
ten days for the little Princess Marie of Hesse, the
youngest daughter of our beloved Princess Alice. That
day was also the thirty-eighth birthday of her Majesty's
eldest daughter, the Crown Princess of Germany. The
Princess of Wales will be thirty-four on the Ist Decem-
ber; the Prince was thirty-seven on Lord Mayor's Day.
On the 25th of next January the Princess Royal will
have been married one-and-twenty years. So daes time
march on with the highest as well as with the
humblest in the land. Many who remember the
Princess Royal's wedding will scarcely realise the fact
that so long a while has elapsed ; .but it is true never-
theless. Two of the illustrious persons then present—
the Queen's mother and her husband—have been dead
seventeen years; the Sovereign herself was then
thirty-nine, and her next birthday will find her sixty.