The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-06-22 00:00:00

IL 11 c 3 toubrible *lamer.

SATURDAY, JUNE 1878, 22
JUNE AND ITS MEMORIES.

Passing gradually away, and becoming fewer
every year, are those who can remember the
thunder of the guns on the morning of the
Twentieth of Jane, 1877, when her Most
Gracious Majesty ascended the Throne. The
King was dead—Long Live the Queen! The
ruler of a great nation had passed away, but
that made no difference in the onward march of
the moving forces of national life. The State
must have a head, and no interregnum can be
permitted. The herald who proclaims the death
of the departed Sovereign calls in the same
breath for long life to his successor. The busi-
ness of a great empire must go on, and the
azigencies of its system of government have to
be dealt with, although the monarch keeps the
awfal silence of the death chamber. Just as
there can be no suspension of the action of the
tides, or in the return of spring time and of
licirsvat, of summer and winter, day and night,
c.)lo and heat, so the life of a people cannot
4.4.1. ever may na.puto its individual
unz'o,-14 - king or co ir-noner, prince or peasant.
ia-a.:103.4c0 ot the deata of Wiliiam IV.
' Was 'bought to the Pr.nceas Victoria by the
_ Archbishop al Caaierbuty iAud the Lord Cnani-
berlaia et fie. 4 o'cioek ia the morning of die
20th ot Jana, 1367, aea witain six hours her
,:olajea'y had iapld a Privy t.dutinen, at wince
the Ministers and the great officers of State
took the oaths of allegiance, and on the next
day Omen Victoria was proclaimed Sovereign
of this reAlm witu the usual formalities through-
out its length and breadth.
Tao situation wad a novel one, in more re-
spects than one. More than a hundred end
_twenty years had passed away since a woman
had wielded the sceptre in this country, and iii
that time mighty changes bad come over the
land. When Qaeen Anne died, we had to go to
Ger Many, for a Sovereign, and found in Han-
over a sou of the Electress Sophia, a descend-
ant of James I. It was the hest arrangement
LIZ
could toe rdade, but neither George I inor
successor cared to put himself to any in-
convenience-to conciliate his English subjects.
They were both born Germans, and thought
more of 'Hanover :_than of Great Britain. But
when George 111. came to the Throne in 1760,
he in his first speach delivered from the
Throne. made use of .these remarkable words:
I, Born and educated in this country, I glory
the n,sine ef Brit on." The rebtllions in the
inter..-ats of tioo ezoarts, which had marked the
two previous reigns, were not repeated; and
Aithou;,th during the rule of George 111. we lost-
. our American colonies, the prestige and renown
of this country was raised to a higher pitch
than had ever been known. Nine years after
the accession of George 111. Napoleon Bona-
parte was born, and within the lengthened
reign of ..hat Sovereign Napoleon carried the
fiery cross of w (tr.: through Europe, and after a
uohaerfal successioa ie
' of eraortlinary victories,
was t.LuUy solodued at W d.e:100. 111
veers' reign of George HE. Vl,t4 itfif ed a ftteu,ne
in itself, and when it end. ,A Lila Hs•,i urn cf
Iwo .soris upon tho Throne was necessarily
brie. When WiLiatn IV. died, the acceoion
of a young girl of eighteen, replacing en aged
nice of 4ev!!tity-two, was typical of the new and
upo,k wi}ie!, the people had entered,
,u,ts Ri.140 witnessed such a mat-
v .•% .v -,:ui.ineut. In the provious ten years
!--",-12- an ~,,aoasal that had swept
aim the PreiO4fOoi Of otatutuf Qil aud

religions'disabilities were removed ; the basis
of our repr !sentative system widened, deepened
and strengthened ; slavery abolished throughout
-the British dominions; municipal corporations
reformed and broadened. Ali these had been
witnessed in the few years preceding Queen
Victoria's coming to the Throne, Events have
proved that we were then but standing on the
threshold of yet more coini rchensive changes.
The people who looked to the Ow Queen as the
embodiment of all that was young, and fresh,
and vigorous in the national existence, were not
mistaken. Industry and enterprise, science and
art, improvement an invention, seemed' to take
a new lease of life. The history of these forty
years has yet to be writ;en, but when they are,
they will show- such a record of progress and
development as was never experienced before in
any age, country, or clime. - -
Of course such a period cannot pass over the
age of man without many changes in the
personnel of those who occupy conspicuous
positions on the great stage of human life.
Where are now the Ministers who on the first
day of the new Queen's reign took the oath of
allegiance to Her Majesty at Kensington ?
Lord Melbourne, the Premier, passed out of
political life more than a generation age; Lord
Palmerston lies in Westminster Abbey ; Lord
Russell was only a week or two ago buried
amid the sequestered quiet of a Buckingham-
shire village; Sir Robert Peel, then the leader
of the opposition has for eight and twenty
years been at rest in Tamworth Churchyard ;
Sir James Graham has gone, So has Lord
Stanley. Of the public men before the people.
the Prime Minister, at the present time the
principal representative of this country at the
Berlin Congress, was not in the House of Com-
mons, where Mr. Gladstone had:been a member
only about four or five years. Soine of the
Cabinet Ministers of to-day were not even born.
Not more than half a score of the present six
hundred and fifty odd representatives of the
people now occupy seats in toe Lower Chamber.
Death, the peerage, resignations, and the meni•
fold vicissitudes of political life, have wrought a
wondrous change in the composition of that
assembly. And between the Sovereign of
eighteen and the Sovereign now in her sixtieth
) ear, there is also a difference. Three years a
maiden, twenty-one a wife, seventeen a widow;
such is the domestic history of the forty-one
years of Queen Victoria's reign. Her Majesty's
youngest child, Princess Beatrice is now three
years older than her mother when she came to the
chrone. Bereavement and sorrow, so common
in the homes of the bumble, have niit spared
the royal palace ; and it is not too ranch to say.
that the Queen's sorrow at the loss of her
husband was shared by the entire people. It
was mournful to be left a widow at forty-two,
:ind the sad event has darkened the whole sub-
sequent portion of her life. Death has just
again shown us that there is a debt to nature
which all must pay, of whatever distinction or
merit in life, by striking down King George of
Hanover, the first cousin to her Majesty, and
for whom the court is now in mourning. The
deposed King was known to us only by
name ; but in the ineident we have another
illustration of the truth that whether kings or
princes die or live, the wants of the material
world must be provided for. Whoever may re-
main upon its surface, or be removed from it,
the earth continues her eternal revolution round
the sun, mighty rivers still make their way
towards the sea, and the work of the vast uni-
verse moves on, calling for the constant.
exercise of the vigilance, the energy, and the
activity of man.