The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-01-01 00:00:00

day that Mr. Mitchel was first elected—the 16th Feb-
ruary—Dr. Kenealy was sent in by Stoke-upon-Trent
by a considerable majority; but his son, Mr.
Ahmed John Kenealy, was not equally suc- •
cessful at Hartlepool, a few months later.
The seat gained,by _the Liberals at Norwich was
lost through the unseating of Mr. Tillet, and the
victory won by the Liberal party in Breconshire, was
counterbalanced by the seating of Mr. Moore, a Con-
servative,'for Tipperary. The Liberals won Horsham,
but lost East Aberdeen. _ Of the members of the
House of Commons who bad seats in that assembbrat
the beginning of the year, Admiral Elliott has beCome
the naval commander-in-chief at Portsmouth; Mr.
Huddleston, a Baron of the Exchequer; and Sir
Seymour , Fitzgerald, Chief. Charity Commissioner for
England and -Wales. The- deaths have been—Mr.
Thomas Mitchell, 63; Mr. John Martin, 63; Mr.
Robert paid,. 44; Sir John Gray, 60; Lord- Aueustuif
Hervey, 38;, Col. Maitland Wilson, 501 Mr. H. M,
Fielden, 57; Mr. John Vance, 60; Mr. Charles
Turner, 72 • Mr. J. P. Cobbold, 44; Mr. Dingwall
Fordyce .39'. Five members have this year resigned
their seas from various causes—Mr. George Welley,
Col. White, Mr. Francis Basset, Mr. Thomas Richard-
son, and Mr. Richard Arkwright. One member has
become a peer, the Hon. Godfrey Morgan having suc-
ceeded to the title and estates of his father, Lord
Tredegar. --
To our immediate neighbours across the Channel,
the year has, npor the whole, been an uneventful one.
It opened, on the sth of January, with the inaugura-
tion of the new Opera House in Paris, Marshal Mac-
Mahon King Al phonso of Spain, 3 ex-Queen
Isabella, the King of Hanover, and the Lord Mayor
of London being present. The splendid equipages of
the chief Civic Magistrate and the Sheriffs, with- the
gorgeous liveries of their attendants, formed the
greatest of the many attractions of that display, and
will not soon be forgotten by the Parisians. Turning
to political questions in France, we find that on the
6th of January, Marshal MacMahon sent a message to
the Assembly affecting the Constitutional laws of the
Second Chamber. The Ministry, declining to give
priority to the Bill for creating the Senate, was
defeated, but a Ministerial crisis in France is a different
affair from one in England, and nothing serious arose
out of this vote, for on the 25th the bill of M. Lefevre-
Pontalis, for the formation of the Senate, was read a
second time in the Assembly. On the 30th, M.
Wallon's amendment, providing that the President of
the Republic was to be named for seven years, and to
be eligible for re-election, was carried by a majority of
one. On the 11th February the Assembly adopted
M. Duprat's proposal for the election of the Senate by
universal suffrage by 322 against 310; and on the
following day the Senate Bill itself was rejected in the
Assembly on its third reading by a majority of 25.
But on the 24th, the Senate Bill having in the mean-
time been amended, was passed by the Assembly. Early
in March M. Buffet undertook to form a new Cabinet,
and on his succeeding, he was replaced as President
of the Assembly by the Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier.
With the exception of an occasionally stormy scene,
political affairs have since been conducted in France
with an average quietude, and have given rise to no
complications.
Across the Rhine, Prussia—the hereditary foe of
France—may be said to stand with her hand grasping
the hilt of the sword. Her opponent, although
beaten down in the tremendous conflict of 1870, was
not annihilated, and the French make no secret of their
intention to renew the struggle when opportunity
offers. That opportunity can only be when Prussia is
engaged in war with one of her neighbours- Austria or
Russia. At present there is nothing between Prussia
and Austria of so serious a complexion as to necessitate
its being submitted to the arbitrament of the sword.
Prussia does not desire the subjugation of Austria;
she is content to be the predominant power in Ger-
many, and this she succeeded in becoming at the
battle of Sadowa in 1866. As to any variance be-
twe cn Prussia and Russia, there are, it is true, those
who predict a fight between those two great military
Powers for the possession of the German provinces in
the Baltic now owning the dominion of the Czar.
Prussia certainly went to war, eleven years ago, with
Denmark on behalf of the German speaking popula-
tions in the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein ; but war
with the vast armies of the Autocrat would be quite
another matter. There can be little doubt that Ger-
many would rather have the Baltic provinces under
her rule than under that of the Muscovite;
there can be equally little doubt that the policy of
Russsia is to keep what she has, and to grasp what she
can. She would not surrender those Baltic po:ses-
sions without an effort of arms to retain, thein, and it
is because Prussia is well aware of this that she will
hesitate long before she demands them. She knows
also that war with Russia would mean at the same
-time war with France, and the sympathy of none. It
is the revengeful attitude of the Gaul which renders
, the Teuton so uneasy ; and causes Europe to be turned
into a huge military camp in time of peace. And if
we are to have war sooner or later' then in the words
of Mr. Canning, "let it be later." The next wrestling
of the nations will be a veritable Armageddon; and
whether France or Germany fail, there is likely to
be no mercy extended to the vanquished.
As to poor torn, distracted Spain, she seem to be no
nearer to the attainment of internal peace than she
was when the year was in its infancy. On the 6th of
January Don Carlos, taking to himself the title of
king, issued a proclamation protesting against the
'assumption of the crown by Alphonso, who however,
landed at Barcelona two days afterwards, and on the
14th entered Madrid. Most of the twelve months
have been taken up in skirnaishes between the monarchi-
cal and the Carlist -forces. The varying fortunes of
the contending parties have, however, ceased to be re-
garded with much interest in this country, for it is
generally felt that, no matter which side may ulti-
mately prevail, Span cannot fail to he the victim of
anarchy and faction.
One of the most pleasing incidents cf the year was
the visit paid by the Emperor oi Austria to the King
of Italy in a city formerly und r the dominion of the
Kaiser, but now a part of the reorganized Italian king-
dom. That meeting in Venice was one of the most
remarkable spectacles which modern history has
furnished. For ages the Venetians groaned under the
iron yoke of the Austrians, and never was there a more
deadly enmity than between these two races. When
Austria was beset by misfortunes in 1866, she ceded
Venetia to Italy rather than have a disaffected people
upon her hands; and yet, on the Austrian Emperor
visiting his former possession, and becoming the guest
of his old foe, had he always been Italy's firmest friend,
he could net have been received with more cordial ac-
clamations. Severel months afterwards, King Victor
Emmanuel had the honour of receiving another dis•
tinguished sovereign, none other than the Emperor of
Germany. The meeting took place in the city of
Milan, and will long be remembered by the enthusias-
tic multitudes who gathered under the shadow of the
stately Cathedral of St. Ambrose.

Our. own royal visitors in 1875 have not been
numerous. The Queen of the Netherlands was here
in the summer, but her Majesty led a very quiet life,
and went about with little ostentation. The sultan of
Zanzibar spent several weeks in London in June and
the early part of July, and was much impressed with
the magnitude of the place, and the enterprise of
its people. Should the visit of this ruler tend to the
suppression of the slave trade in the territories over
which he has sway, such a result would be hailed with
satisfaction by Britons of every class and degree, who
have in times past made such efforts to stamp out the
traffic in human life.

The meteorological disturbances of the year have
left a heavy chronicle of disaster behind them. The
first six months passed over with such weather as we
generally get in these islands, but no sooner had July
made its appearance than a succession of storms swept
over not only our own land, but visited almost every
known country on the face of the globe. In France the
flood of waters was so terrible that the picturesque city
of Toulouse was partially swept away, and hundreds of
people were drowned. A similar sad story came from
Buda-Pesth, in Plungary ; and by the time we had
organized a relief fund for our suffering neighbours, the
visitation of rain descended upon ourselves with a
fierceness and a persistency to which we are unaccus-
tomed in these latitudes. Lives were lost, houses
hurled into the seething streams, land laid under water
for miles and miles, tiny brooks converted into rush-
ing torrents, and happy smiling valleys presenting the
aspect of inland seas. Still the damage to the standing
crops was not so great as might have been expected;
and the harvest, although not so abundant as in some
previous years, was upon the whole a fair average
one. .ief ter such an immense quantity of rain had
fallen, people believed that the remainder of the year
would be comparatively free from moisture, but in this
they were disappointed, for in the third week of
October the windows of heaven were again opened,
and all over the kingdom the rainfall was enormous.
It was not only in the rural districts that stories came,
telling of scenes of desolation, but in busy towns like
Nottingham and Sheffield, rivers poured in mighty
volume through the streets, and many lives were lost.
At the same time the proximity of the moon to the
earth caused the tides to flow to an unusual height,
and on Sunday, the 14th of November, all along the
south coast, the sea burst in alike upon the seaport
town and upon the cultivated land, doing incalculable
damage. The inhabitants of London, who had hitherto
enjoyed an immunity from inundation, at length had
their share of this national calamity. A tide of extra-
ordinary altitude swept up the Thames, where it was
met by a vast body of land water brought down by the
river from the great valley which it drains. The op-
posing forces met; the channel Of the stream, broad
ndtha
was insufficient to carry
off
miles along the southern
empl
deluge,
a s t a
n may a
for
oarpfpoerat;,
bank, streets and squares and fields were overflowed,
causing much Buffering and distress, and destroying
properly estimated in value at a million sterling. A
relief fund was at once opened at the Mansion House,
to which liberal subscriptions have been made for the
help of those whose homes were thus rendered deso-
late.
Although the calamities of the year have not been
numerous, some of them have attracted considerable
attention. On the first of January, the notice of the
public was exclusively directed to the arrival at
Plymouth of three men, the only survivors of the pas-
sengers and crew of the Cospatrick, an emigrant ship,
which had been burnt at sea whilst on her voyage to
New Zealand, with a loss of 460 lives. On the 7th
May the American steamship Sohiller, whilst on her
voyage from New York to England, got out of her
course off the Scilly Islands, and, striking upon the
Retarrier Ledge, off the Bishop Rock Lighthouse, was
lost with over 300 lives. Exactly seven months after-
wards—on the 7th December—the attention of the
.boatmen of Harwich was called to the perilous position
of the North German Lloyd's steamer Deutschland,
which, in the midst of a fierce snowstorm, had stranded
upon the Kentish Knock, where she was gradually
.beaten to pieces, and fifty lives were lost. On the
tp.revious day there had been a terrible colliery explo-
.sion at Swaithe Main, near Barnsley, causing a less
of 140 lives. At the same time, colliery explosion;
less extensively fatal, took place in other parts of the
coalfields of Great Britain. A maritime casualty
which formed the topic of discussion for
weeks, and will give rise to debates in Parliament next
session, was that which happened in the Irish
Channel on the Ist of September. The Reserve
Squadron of the Channel Fleet was steaming from
Kingstown to Queenstown, when in the midst of a
dense fog which suddenly came on, the ironclad
vanguard was run into by her sister ship Iron Duke,
and in the short space of an hour she was at the
bottom of the sea. Fortunately every soul on board
wA§ 'saved. A court-martial upon the captain, mull
. :nil zAuiria. uutiu