The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-09-15 00:00:00

Out Nankin 6orrespodent.

C 779 deem it right to state th7•,t we do not at all t;me,
Lentify ou7selves with our correspondent's 3pinlous.)

A. good many worthy citizens of the English metro-
polis who had taken their usual autumnal out-of-town
trip must have felt a tremor of alarm as, sitticg on the
sands, or on the mountain-side, or in some other
pleasure resort, they read in their daily paper that
the Lcndon Police had issued a notice warning them
of the perilous position in which they had placed their
dwellings. "Persons," so the notice ran, "who have
left their houses in London unoccupied, and have
failed to give notice to the Superintendent of Police of
the district, should do so at once. This will not throw
any add;tional responsibility on the police, but such
extra attention as is possible will be paid. Caretakers
should also be enjoined not to leave the houses they
are in cuarge of site: dark." The notice was certainly
needed in view of the many burglaries which have of
late been perpetrated within the London area, many
of these having taken place in houses left unoccupied
whil3 their owners were enjoying a holiday in the
country. In some cases the robbery has been of
peculiar audacity, there having been more than one
instance in whieh a van has been deliberately
brought to the house, and the furniture and
valnablea put into it as in case of ordinary re-
moval. This would not be possible in places where
folks knew or were interested in their neighbours, but
in London what is commonly known as neighbour-
liness is practically non•existent, it being possible for
a family to live in a street for twenty years and their
very name not to be known to a third part of the
dwellers in the same thoroughfare.

It is the unneighbourliness of London that makes I
the metropolis seem so chilling a place to strangers I
who come to live in it for the first time. To feel
alone among four millions may appear to those with-
out the requisite experience an impracticable thing,
taut it is a feeling well known to thousands who have
trod the London streets weary and heart-sore, as they
have watched the never-ceasing crowd pass by and
have not kn ma one to whom they could appeal for
sympathy and succour. And the feeling is not con-
find to those who wish actual aid; it is one which is
entertained by the young of both sexes, who flock to
the metropolis from the country districts, ignorant of
the perils to whizh they will be exposed, and hoping
for a happiness net always attained. It is these more
especially who keenly feel the need of Ey ra paths ti
converse, and it is tor •sealiti dif such that Bo many fall
by the way never to recover on this side the grave.
The old saying that in London no man has a neigh-
hour still holds true in the most essential cases, but
the old corollary that no man wants one is an illusion
which it would be to the interest of humanity quickly
to dispel.
- - •

. -
A very good idea of the immensity of the metro
-
polls may be formed from the statistics of railway
travelling to and from it. It appears that a total of
2,260 trains leave London stations every twenty-four
hours, whilst every day between ten am. and eleven
p.m., 1,600 trains start for the metropolitan termini,
this being at the rata of more than two per minute.
Of the total of trains leaving London 1,710 are
suburban, the remainder comprising the service for
the provinces and the continent, and some notion
of the traffic at one or two of the stations may
be gathered from the fact that 395 trains daily
start from Broad-street and 312 from Liverpool-street
—two stations which stand side by side at the Eastern
end of the City, and which face another important
station, that being of the Metropolitan Railway.
The surburban traffic, which forms the bulk of
that at the two stations just mentioned, is a
branch which, in the very nature of things,is al-
most weekly growing. As London expands and
swallows up green space after green space, cover
ing what but a few years since were fields far in the
country with row after row of house., additional railway
accommodation is nece-sary, and where that accommo-
dation is the best there will the heaviest building
operations be carried on. It is an old problem among
the curious in such matters as to how large London
is likely to become. A safe guess on a point so Bur-
rounded with possibilities is scarcely to be indulged
in, but it may almost he *accepted as an axiom that
when London ceases to grow, the Empire will ;A
becoming a lessened force.

Those who lie in their beds in comfortable homes
and listen to the whistling of the wind, the wild
beating of the rain, the whole raging of the storm
without, are usually rather inclined to be thank-
ful that they thems4ves are not exposed to the
pitiless blast than to pay much heed to considerations
of how far the gale will affect other people. They
may occasionally murmur a prayer for these at sea,
a more than usually violent gust may make them ex-
press a hope for the safety of all poor wayfvers ; but
the deeper and more widespread destruction wrought
by the storm is not often present to their minds. All
these thoughts, however, will apply more to dwellers
in towns than to those in the country districts. In
these latter they know by hard experience how much
mischief may be wrought by a single gale. The corn
is beaten down, the fruit is blown from the trees, the
cattle are struck by lightning, the streams are swollen
into floods, and when day breaks, after a night of
high wind and heavy rain, of thunder and of lightning,
and of bail, it breaks upon a scene of devastation
which makes the farmer's heart full sore, for it means
a loss not easily recouped in times so bard as these.

This is a consideration which must have been borne
in upon a great many of our agricultural population
within the past few weeks. For years things have
gone but hardly with those who, in a very true sense,
are the bone and sinew of the country. This season
there seemed every prospect that a fair harvest would
do something to make up for the looses of years gone
by, and for a time the farmer rejoiced at his improved
prospects, thinking them a good omen for future pros-
perity, It is pleasant to know that in some districts
this is so still, but in others, and these by no means
few in number, the ravages of recent storms have
sufficed to diminish to a very large degree the profits
that might fairly have been expected to be made.
This has especially been the case in the fruit-bearing
counties; tons of apples, of pears, and of plums have
strewn the ground, many of them only to rot and be of
no service, while in the hop districts such damage
has been wrought as must have serious effects upon
many a one who thought by this yaar's yield to
compensate for the lack in previous seasons. Sympathy
in such a case may not appear of much practilal value;
but there is little doubt that it is being freely extended
just now to the British farmer by many who appre•
elate the difficulties of his position.

The tale of agricultural distress is completed by the
continued spread of the foot-and-mouth disease, the
accounts of which from many centres is most doleful
Probably greater attention will be paid to this by the
general public than is usually the case with a subject
which at the first sight appears mainly to concern the
country districts. At the first sight, and at the first
sight only; for this extension of the foot-and-mouth
disease to nearly every corner of the kingdom is a
fact of the most serious interest to one and all
of our householders. Ever since the cattle plague
which devastated oar locks and herds now seventeen
years since, the price of meat has placed it almost
beyond the reach of the very poor, and the
certain result of the spread of this. new murrain
among the cattle will be to still further elevate that
which was already high. This is not a good ontlock
for the winter ;it is one which, it may be hoped, some
means will be found in a degree to alleviate. Mean-
while, in this matter especially, the interest of the
farmer is the interest of the general public, and as
such the course of the disease will be eagerly watched.

Perhaps more interest would have been displayed
by many housekeepers than actually was the case in
the recently threatened war between France and
China, if it bad only been brought home to them that
one of the almost certain results of such a struggle
would have been a rise in the price of tea. Those
who are old enough to remember the Russian war
of 1854 cannot have forgotten that candles became
dearer because of the scarcity of tallow consequent
upon our military operations. Nowadays, what
with the increased facilities of obtaining gas, the
introduction of the electric light, and the importation
of refined petroleum, any temporary diminution in the
supply of tallow would not greatly affect us; but
no substitute has yet been found for tea, and any
stoppage in its export from China by reason of a
blockade, any elevation of its price in England, would
be felt not in one but in a Million homes. There are
many reasons why the .English, of all peoples in the
world, should hope for no hostilities between China
and France, but, perhaps, the one which would appeal
to the largest section of the population would be that
such hostilities could not but result in a rise in the
wiz-, of tea.

There are certain political subjects which are essen-
tially non-partisan, and one of these always gives rise
to some little discussion in the course of the recess.
It is an oft-debated question whether a member can
resign his seat when the Houses are not Bitting, and
as it is one which has rather a far reaching influence,
a correct answer to it might not be out of place. A
*great many-argne that -because no-new writ is even
issued during the recebe because of a member's resigna-
tion, therefore such resignation cannot take place, it
being evidently thought that the process of retire-
meet
_is that of yielding up to Parliament something
which it has given, or of receiving from it some office
which it can bestow. But, as a matter of fact, there
is no such thing as resignation known to the constitu-
tion. A member can vacate his seat only by one of
three ways; ha must die, must succeed, or be elevated