The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-12-13 00:00:00

-Our DWI (forrtsrlnttnt

(We deem it right to state that we do not at all Muni
Identify Ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

For months past the subject of interest and specu-
lation amongst men on both sides of politics has been
the fate of the Franchise Bill in the House of Lords.
Nothing could have looked more unpropitious for the
measure than the division early in July, when the
peers, led by the Marquis of Salisbury, decided by 205
to 146 not to read the bill a second time until the
Government produced the Ministerial scheme for the
redistribution of seats. Then began that series of
demonstrations, led off by the vast gathering in Hyde-
park on the 21st of that month, which on both sides
lasted just three moneis, and until Parliament
assembled on the 23rd October. • At these
gatherings, organised on both sides, very
strong language was undoubtedly used. The
scene was varied by the Aston riots, and only two
days before the meeting of the Legislature an attack
was made upon Lord Salisbury at Dumfries, and the
windows of his carriage were broken. The political
outlook was gloomy, and many had resigned them-
selves to a winter of agitation, and to the continuance
of a heated controversy. The present Parliament
seemed likely to run to its close without bringing to a
settlement a question which engendered acerbity and
distracted the minds of people from subjects of social
reform.

Suddenly the scene changed as though the trad-
tional wand of the magician had passed over it. The
trumpet blasts of defiance ceased, and nothing was
heard but the language of canciliation and compli-
ment. The Franchise Bill was speedily through the
Commons, and was once niore before a hostile
assembly. The Redistribution Bill Vl'a laid before
the Opposition leaders, and was wad() the subject of
friendly conference and suggestion. Lord Salisbury
and Sir Stafford Nortlicote drove no to Downing-
street day after day—a region with whose associations
they are both familiar—and met Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Hartington, and Sir Charles Dilke. Some of the rank
and file on both sides objected to the settlement of
affairs. in this way; but the great body of the House,
no less than the country, had had nearly enough of
the controversy. And so the Franchise Bill is now
the law of the land, and the Seats Bill is to be taken
in committee when the House of Commons re-
assembles on the second half of the month of Feb-
ruary. -

Happily Christmas now rapidly 'approaches as an
interlude to the discussion of the burning topics
raised by the Redistribution Bill. The proposed
division of the great towns into wards, each ward to
return one member, appears to be disliked in all the
places to which it is proposed to be applied; Liver-
pool, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, and
Glasgow all protest against it. No doubt this
would immensely complicate the publication of the
vast number of returns which even now a general
election brings. For instance, hitherto, when we
have received the Liverpool poll, one return
suffices to show who has been elected and who
defeated in that great community. But let us
imagine nine polls to come from Liverpool alone,
divided into Toxteth, St. Ann's, West Derby, and so
on, after the names of the different contested wards.
It is obvious that no newspaper in the kingdom could
attempt to print anything like it, and even if it did
the reader would be hopelessly confused. Imagine
also Mr. Bright, instead of being described in the
House as the right hon. gentleman the member for
Birmingham, spoken of as the member for Deritend
or Edgbaston. No one would be surprised when
February comes to find this part of the measure
abandoned, so strongly are the great municipalities
oppo4 to it.

The Christmas Cattle Show has once more brought
with it a reminder of the fact that a class of workers
exists of whom very little is heard except when the
great December exhibition is being held at the Agri-
cultural Hall. That class is the drover. If a man
has to choose an avocation whereby he is bound to
earn his livelihood, it is difficult to
.understand his
selection of the calling of a goadsman. It has been
laid down as an axiom that "who feeds fat
oxen should himself be fat ;" but it is not
easy to see how the drover, who must
necessity attend to such detail, can ex-
pect to answer to this description. The pay is
poor, the exposure to all weathers continuous, and the
fatigue at times exhausting. The drover can exercise
his vocation in London only at stated Lours, in which
darkness preponderates; and many of those hours,
when the Monday Cattle Market is over, are occu-
pied in tramping through the country roads of the
home counties a weary caretaker of weary
beasts. I have seen a flock „of sheep so
tired at nightfall that on their way back to
.one of the farmsteads of Surrey or Bent they
have with one accord laid down at the foot
of Blackfriars-bridge, the :unhappy drover having
the utmost trouble to get them along. Fortunately
there are some kind thoughts for the drover, and
when this Class assemblies in force in London during
the Cattle Show week, his comforts are attended to,
nor is his spiritual condition forgotten.

The pantomime season is not usually a reflective
one. The merry laughter over Jack in the Bean
Stalk, or Cinderella, or Robinson Crusoe, or any
other of the favourite titles given to the representa-
tions of fairy-land is a practical application of the
injunction, "Begone, dull care !" But as we
seem to lose sight of the drover except
when he gathers in considerable numbers
during the week of the Cattle Show; so clown and
pantaloon, harlequin, columbine, and sprite disappear
from mortal ken when the pantomime season is over,
not to come back to similar scenes for certainly
another ten months. How does Clown occupy him-
self during the torrid heats of July and August?
What is the destination of Columbine? What be-
comes of the lithe and agile sprites? What are the
recreations of the dazzling and resplendent harlequin?
And where has the quaint-looking pantaloon betaken
himself? Questions like these might possibly occur
to the thoughtful and the sentimental, but it is ques-
tionable whether this is a class which largely attends
Drury-lane or the Surrey when the pantomime occu-
pies the boards.
The office of Financial Secretary to the Treasury,
which was vacated by the resignation of Mr. Leonard
Courtney, is the most important outside the Cabinet,
to which, as in the case of Mr. W. li. Smith, it is
often a stepping stone. The salary is £2OOO a year,
and a copsiderable advantage is that its acceptance
does not involve the necessity for re-election. The
choice of subordinates by a Prime Minister must, as
a matter of course, be restricted by the working of
the Act of Queen Anne, which provides that no
member of the House of Commons shall accept a
place of profit under the Crown without the sanction
of his constituents. The Financial Secretaryship of
the Treasury is, however, held not directly from the
Crown—technically the appointment is made
.by the
Prime Minister as First Lord of the Treasury.

On the eve of the opening of the Smithfield Club
Cattle Show, the Royal Agricultural Society lost its
consulting chemist, Dr. Augustus Voeleker, in the
sixty-second year of his age. Dr. Voeleker was one
of the most eminent analysts of his time, and the
value of his labours in connection with the applica-
tion of science to the development of agriculture was
incalculable. For more than thirty years his name
has been prominently before the country in this
capacity, and he will long be remembered no less for
the modesty of his demeanour than for his superior
ability, and the wide range of his comprehensive
intellect. _

The announcement of the death of Mr. Charles
Ross, who only last year retired from the post of
chief of the Times Parliamentary Corps, takes gallery
men back a couple of generations. Mr. Ross, who
has died at the age of 85, entered the Reporter's
Gallery as farback as 1820, in the days of Castlereagh
and Canning, and more than a decade before Lord
John Russell introduced the first Reform Bill. Mr.
Gladstone, the oldest member of his Cabinet, was a
boy at Eton, while Sir Charles Dilke, the youngest
of the Cabinet Ministers, was not born until nearly a
quarter of a century afterwards. If Mr. Ross has
left behind him a volume of reminiscences, it ought
to be of the deepest interest to every reader of con-
temporary polities.

"No," he said, as they congratuiated him on his
engagement, "I'm not so particularly charmed with
the girl, but I expect to be rery happy. Hr mother
is about the best tempered women I know o`.'
An eminent scientist says that when a la„y cannot
sit down without her nose becoming red it shows that
there is imperfect circulation of the blood, caused by
sight lacing. Same with gentlemen. A red nose is a
sure sign of tightness somewhere.