The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-09-21 00:00:00

u r onhn Corrtsponbtnt.

:We deem it right to state that we do not at all times
'depth), uurselves with our Correspondent's opirjoraj

The visitor from the country, who has spent a short
time in the metropolis, will not have failed to note
that within a little radius between the Mansion House
and London Bridge is every sign of wealth, bustle,
and activity. The Mansion House itself is the resi-
dence of the Lord Mayor, or the Civic Palace, as the
citizens love to call it. The great square building
directly opposite is the Bank of England, where you
may see sovereigns being measured out by the pailful,
and rolls of cancelled notes once in circulation, and
representing enormous sums of money. Within view
of both, and a few yards only from either, is the Royal
Exchange, surmounted with the legend on its grand
façade, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness
thereof." Lombard-street, with its banks, Cornhill,
with its jeweller's shops, King William-street, with
its insurance offices, Gracechurch-street, with its
ehipping agencies, Leadenhall-street, with its vast pro-
vision steres, and the streets of Threadneedle, Bishops-
,
gate, and Fenchnrch, all seem to contribute to the
great stream of traffic which is constantly being poured
through the heart and centre of the city. The heart,
we heve been told, is the seat of life; and no one who
stands upon the steps of the Royal Exchange at noon can
have the slightest doubt that he is gazing down not,
only upon the heart of the capital, but of the natien,
the empire, and the world. Go into any quarter ot the
glot,e you may, and you will see nothing like this.
Paris, Berlin, Visnna, Rome, Constantinople, St.
Petersburg, New York, none of these cities an make
any approach to the living tide which is eternally rush-
ing through the City of London. Yet it is almost
as quiet and still in the silent watches of the night as
a country village. The merchants and the traders
who congregate by day do not sleep within the civic
precincts. They come in the morning from their
suburban homes in that greater London spoken of by
the Registrar-General—northward from Highgate and
Hornsey, westward from Bayswater and Kensington,
southward from Norwood and Sydenham, eastward
from Bow and Bromley. Railways, tramcars, omni-
buses, and steamers are called into requisition to
convey the busy throng into the City, and they pour
into it literally by hundreds of thousands. Indeed, it
has been estimated that three-quarters of a million
persons daily enter it, transact their business, and
leave for their homes in the evening. And so it comes
to pass that in the hours of darkness, St. Paul's sends
out the hours over a solitude of offices and ware-
houses, the clangour of the passing hours being re-
echoed through one thoroughfare after another as
silent as the still-flowing stream of the river itself.
It is to merchants assembling in such marts of men
as these that the present condition and future
prospects of British commerce have proved to be
subjEicts for serious consideration. There can be no
question that our commerce has grown into a com-
plicated system in which the welfare of one interest
materially depends upon the prosperity of another.
Great Britain, whose capital nourishes the sinews of
industry throughout the world, is the strongest to bear
but the first to feel the rebound of depression else-
where. If the trading communities in other parts of
the globe would but regain the elasticity by which
they were once characterised, English prosperity would
revive spontaneously. But with general stagnation
abroad, there cannot fail to be dulness at home.
Statesmen and politicians have attributed the de-
pression to various mime Differences between
capital and labour, overtrading, national extra-
vagance, and too often an overshooting of incomes on
the part of private individuals, have all been more or
less named as responsible for the industrial paralysis
from which most classes have suffered. For example
it has been pointed out that Englishmen have spent
during the past year one hundred and sixty millions
sterling on imported food, including wines and
spirits. Then the exigencies of our position with
respect to the Eastern Question have run up the
State expenditure to an abnormal height, and it is now
greater than during the war with Russia three-and
twenty years ago. Yet English expenditure, whether
personal or national, would not be felt should the
gloom which has settled down over foreign markets
soon disperse. As there is nothing more timid than
trade in the presence of the fear of war, so there is
nothing more confident than capital when the clouds
have dispersed, and a fair field is opened to the exer-
cise of its employment.
The Cricket season which has just been brought to a
close will for many years be remembered as one of the
most successful which has been known—in London, at
all events—for many years. To this result the visit of
the Australians has very materially contributed.
When they have played, either at Lords' Or
Princes' Grounds, or at Kennington Oval, specta-
tors have flocked in thousands to the place, and
the keenest interest has been manifested in the
triumph or the failure of the colonists. Whether in
the metropolis itself, on the sea-beaten coasts of
Sussex, amid the smoke-clouds of the manufacturing
districts, or amongst the blies, industry of the midland
counties, the Australians have received a hearty
welcome from all classes in the mother land, and will
return to their homes with a most favourable im-
pression of the greeting which has been extended to
them. One effect of the stay of the colonial cricketers
in our midst has been to give an impetus to the
already growing inclination for muscular exercise that
has been developed with the progress of education.
The one has kept pace with the other, and the
advance of the physical has been equal to the march
of the mental. Athletics, gymnastics, bicycling,
pedestrianism, swimming, and military evolutions are
now in many cases the attendants of educational in-
struction; and it is satisfactory to note that while
the rising generation give so much of their time to
cricket, football, vaulting, and boating, the inclination
for the boxing gloves has diminished, and the public
interest in the doings of the prize ring is totally
extinct,

The Vienna Exhibition of 1873 was too distant from
Great Britain to permit of any large number of visitors
from this country to the Austrian capital. The same
may be said of Philadelphia, in the centennial year;
and even to those who could afford such an excursion,
the time consumed in the journey was often a subject
for serious consideration. Ten days on the passage out,
ten in the United States, and ten home, represented
a month; and comparatively few can spare such a
period. But to the Exhibition now open in Paris none
of these objections can possibly apply. The distance be-
tween the two capitals is much less than between Lon-
don and Edinburgh, and is accomplished in less than
ten hours. Paris, if no longer the political centre of
Europe—and it has certainly played but little part in
the excitement over the Eastern Question—is still the
home of fashion and of many attractions possessed by
no other European city. Fortunately its public
buildings were not wholly destroyed seven years
ago; its 4atmosphere is always beautifully clear;
the pleasure trips upon the Seine are thoroughly
enjoyable; and the Boulevards, when lighted up of
an evening, present a spectacle such as can be
witnessed in no city in this country. The
greenery of the trees, lighted by the reflection from
innumerable lamps, casts its shade over enormous
numbers of persons who sit irt th 3 open air, with
tables before them, the said tables being plentifully
supplied with various descriptions of light refresh-
ment, such as the French people, no less than the
Italians, largely patronise. The markets of Paris, too,
are well worth a visit. Go into the March d St.
Honore, not far from the Tuileries, and the dweller
on some of the desolate moorlands a England, who is
constantly contending with weeping skies and an un-
grateful soil, will be disposed to envy the good fortune
of the agriculturist of France, where a splendid climate
and a fruitful soil have enabled it to successfully con-
tend with the miseries which the ambition of its rulers
has so often brought upon the country.
The nations are apparently yet a long way from
reaching the predicted time when swords shall be
beaten into ploughsbarep, spears shall be turned into
pruning hooks, when they shall no longer rise against
each other, and learn war no more. There can be
no question that within the past generation a tre-
mendous impetus has been given to thq art of war'
The hopes founded upon the opening of the Temple
of Peace in Hyde Park in 1851 have not been realised.
It is a startling fact that at this moment one of the
most flourishing branches of industry in Prussia is the
manufacture of arms. The great works are busy,
especially with Russian orders, which have lately been
very numerous for ruitrailleuses of a new kind after a
Swedish model. This weapon is said to surpass all
that has hitherto been known both as to quickness and
the number of balls that can be fired at one time.
These mitraillenses, which have a lung range, are said
to be destined to render torpedo boats innocuouk
And so the long-continued contest goes on, heavier
armour being required for ships in consequence of the
production of bigger guns; and torpedoes, hitherto the
terror of men-of-war, being reduced to harmlessness
through the invention of a new roitrailleuse. If the
immense expenditure eternally going on upon warlike
purposes were turned into the channels of peaceful
industry, the prosperity of the peoples of civilization
would be materially increased. Much of the former is
and must remain unproductive; whilst in the latter
case the increased benefit might be likened to that of
the New Testament parable—some thirty, some sixty,
and others a hundred-fold.
The workmen who build our cities and fill the air
with the clang of hammers in our dockyards and
arsenals, possess many advantages which were un-
known to their predecesaore in the exercise of the art
of industry. It is not neseasary to go back to the
days thot rritnused the fotualsbio'n of Mechantoe

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