The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-12-13 00:00:00

THE STOURBRIDGE OBSERVER.

Litdy Wood who had been the guests of the Queen
since Monday, left Windsor by the 3.40 p.m. up train
for London, their departure being witnessed by a
crowd of spectators, who gave them some hearty cheers
upon their departure.

commenting upon the interesting facts furnished by
the lettere of its Special Correspondent :

The North-Western States of the American Melon have
been long looked to as the future granariel of the world.
There has been no doubt as to their capacity of producing
crops in any abundance as soon as it was found worth while
to grow them. It is quite lately, however, that these
regions have even begun to be put to the use for which
Nature long ago fitted them. They lie in a sort of corner,
far off from the beaten track of commerce, and not easy of
access to the first adventurers who may approach them
The process by which they have at length been
reached has been slow and gradual. The tide of emi-
grants and settlers, which has always been moving westward
at a calculable yearly rate, has now proceede4 thus far
in the course of its shifting stages. As each new point
has been made good, and as the impulse from the rear
ranks of the great moving column has become once more
pressing, the pioneers in front have been again forced on.
Go as tar as they would, there was always a farther country
beyond, as fruitful as they had left behind them. Often and
often as the trial was repeated, the result was still the same.
What these newly explored regions w.nild be worth when
they had been brought under cultivation could he civined
with some certainty from the bountiful rewards they
gave to the first rude attempts at cultivating; them.
The series of letters we have been lately publishing
from our Special Correspondent in the United States
show the process after it has been carried some way,
and the conditions under which it has proved sue-
'cessful. Our correspondent has now gone over well
nigh the whole ground. Starting from the Atlantic States,
he has worked westward along the course which the sett-
lers have themselves followed. He has left behind him the
small New England diary farms and the rich orchards and
vegetable gardens of Long Island and New York. From
plots of ten acres or less, in which every foot of ground is
looked after and stirred and turned carefhily to account,
be has passed to regions where single farms are to be found
as large as an English county, and where there is room left
on every side for even larger farms as soon as it becomes
worth while to appropriate the virgin ground. It is a
land of wonders, of which our correspondent writes.
The scale of things is gigantic, and yet perfect
order prevails everywhere, and details are as well
looked after as if profits and leases were counted
en the old-world standards of value. Corn and cattle
are the staple produe.e, and are likely to continue so
for some time yet. At some future day the stores of mineral
wealth which the country contains will be opened out.
Mines will be sunk, and manufactories established under
conditions in every way favourable to them. But in the
extreme North-West, in Dakota and in Minnesota, the age
of manufactures has not yet come. The advancing wave of
civilization has swept up to these regions, but it has not yet
swept over them. The buffalo and the elk have retreated
before it, but the primmval forest is still standing, and mil-
lions of acres of prairie land are still welting for the first
ploughshare to be driven into them.
The difficulty of the North-Western States has always been
not so much in growing corn and cattle as in finding a
market for them afterwards. Local market there was none
and could be none. Everybody, or nearly everybody, was
engaged in the same business. There were sellers of produce
everywhere, and there were purchasers nowhere. But now
at length even this difficulty has been overcome. The far
West has been connected with the East by a network of rail-
ways, and has been thus, for all practical purposes, brought
close to the most distant markets of the world. In this
region of enterprise the railways are the most enterprising.
The farmers are no laggards. They have been pushing
on at so rapid a pace that they have kept well ahead of
weeds and wire worm. Even the rats and mice have not
yet come up with them. They brave the cold of a winter
which is too severe for others of their accustomed persecu-
• tors. But the railway people have been moving on more
rapidly still, and have been beckoning the rest to follow
them As soon as they have secured a sufficient grant of
land from the btate, they ran a line through it, so as to
make it easy for the migratory folk a little further East to
settle down upon it or near to it, and thus to give it
a market value, or to improve what it has got
already,. Our Correspondent's letters abound with
facts and figures of the moat interesting kind.
They show in detail the exact cost of corn-growing
and cattle-raising in the several districts he has been vlait-
ing ; the items from which the outlay is made up, and the
dual profit which remains over and above when all expenses
have been paid. Closely connected with this is the branch
of the subject which comes most home to us, and touches
our hopes or our fears most closely. The exact course and
the exact cost of farming operations in the far West are
matters of somewhat tame interest apart from the bearing
they have upon the future price of corn in this country.
Oar Correspondent's calculation is that corn grow in
Minnesota can be delivered at an English port for thirty-five
shillings and fourpence a quarter, and will so yield a good
profit all round to growers, carriers, shippers, agents, and
all others concerned with it The supply, it would appear,
is illimitable. We are told that the Red River valley would
alone yield enough corn for the whole demand of the United
Kingdom, and that there are other valleys to the north side of
the great watershed which could be made equally produc-
tive. When we take into account the farther capacity of
the valleys of the Missouri and of the Mississippi and
of their tributaries, the prospecc is the more startling.
We are driven to believe that Western America could
feed us from her superflous wealth so easily that she
would scarcely miss what she sent over in full satisfaction
of our demand. She has quite lately got the machinery of
transport into complete working oroer, and she has already
produced an effect on English prices more satisfactory to the
Eeglisti consumer than to the English farmer. Both will
ask how far the process is to be carried, and whether thirty-
five shillings and fourpence is really to be looked forward
to as henceforth the ruling price of wheat In this
country.

That the wheat can be produced we are in no doubt what-
ever. It seems, too, that the process might go on, net only
without check, but even with increasing ease, for some
time yet to come. The choice of land is so extensive that
what the first comers leave is about as good as what they
take. A decreasieg rate of return to additional labour and
capital employed in cultivating the ground is a formula
true enough for the old country, but not yet true for the
new. But will the enormous yield of corn last, and will
it be given a dozen years hence on the same easy terms
as it is given now? Our Correspondent tells us of twenty
successive wheat crops grown on the same soil with no
manure added and with no interval of rest allowed, and all
this with no seeming injury to the land and no deterioration
in the quality or quantity of the produce. If change there
must be, it is easily made. The plough has only to he driven
a few inches deeper and the new soil will be laid bare. Even
if this resource were at length to fail him, the farmer would
only have to move a little further on and to enter upon fresh
ground and upon another twenty years' cycle. The growth of
the corn may be thus taken as assured. It is at a later
stage of the process of supply that the first hitch must
be looked for. It is passible' as Mr. Gladstone pointed out
in his address to the West Calder farmers, that the Ma-
chinery of distribution may not always work as smoothly
and as easily as it has been working. With an increased
demand for the conveyance of minerals by the American
railroads, the conveyance of corn will become more costly,
while the facilities for it will be lessened. The rates
of carriage have, in fact, been raised already since
the date of our Correspondent's letter With the
revival of trade freights by sea may be expected
to rise too. Again, as population increases in the
Western States, and as occupations become more
varied, the local demand for food will Increase. We have
moreover' to consider, not what the soil of America could
be made to produce if it were taxed to the uttermost, but
what it is likely it will produce with the capital and labour
which can be spared for it. But when all allowances have
been made, the lessons of our Correipondent's letters will
remain still of the utmost practical importance. The scenes he
has described for the first time to English readers, and the
whole mass of facts he has written down, are both curious
and instructive in the highest degree. The rivalry of North-
Western America ought to find our farmers not unprepared to
meet it. They at least know what they must expect, in what
way they are threatened by it, and how they can best guard
themselves against its possibly disastrous results. Mr.
Gladstone suggests that they might do well to grow less
corn and more fruit and more vegetables, just as the farmers
in the Atlantic States have been doing in a very similar
case to theirs, and that there ought at all events to be
nothing in their leases to forbid them from making the
change. They will probably prefer for the present to
keep to their old courses, and will pin their hope on
the chance of better weather next year than they have
had this year or last. We may bo quite sure they
will succeed sooner or later in getting a good crop of
wheat where wheat is traditionally due. But if it is to be
sold after all for Sss. 9d. a quarter or even at some lower
rate which home plenty will bring after it, it will hardly
pay expenses. A change of values—it a change of values
there is to be—ls, of course, a thing to which the English
farming world will be able in the end to accommodate
itself. The process of settling dawn may be a troublesome
one but fits the province of intelligence and good sense
to provide for this in advance, and, if come it must, at least
to insure that it shall entail the minimum of suffering and
of waste.

Sir St. Vincent Keene Hawkins-Whitshed, Bart, by
whom, who died in 1858, he had issue a son, John
William Arthur Charles James Cavendish Bentinck,
now Duke of Portland, who was born on the 28th of
December, 1857, and is now a Second-Lieutenant in
the Coldstream Guards,late of the 2nd Stafford Militia.
The Bentinck family held two centuries ago, and we
believe, still hold, a high position in Holland, and
like the Keppels, the Schombergs, and the Ginkells,
came over to England with William of Orange.
William Bentinck, son of Henry Bentinck, Herr Van
Dipenharo, in Overyssel, at first page of honour and
subsequently confidential adviser to William, Prince
of Orange, accompanied his Royal master to Eng-
land, and after the success of the Revolution
of 1688 was firmly assured by the elevation of
that Prince to the throne of Great Britain he
was sworn a member of the Privy Council, appointed
Groom of the Stole and First Gentleman of the
Bedchamber to the King, and soon afterwards created
a peer by the titles of Baron of Cirencester,
Viscount. Woodstock, and Earl of Portland. This
nobleman subsequently held the command of the
King's Dutch Regiment of Horse Guards; as Lien-
tenant-General, he took a distinguished pf.hrt in the
battle of the Boyne, and some 14 years later was in-
vested with the blue riband of the Order of the
Garter, His son Henry, the second earl, was raised
in 1716 to the Marquisate of Tichfield and the Dukedom
of Portland, His eldest son, William, the second
duke, married Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley, the
only daughter and heiress of Edward, second Earl of
Oxford, A lady whom the poet Prior has celebrated as
"My noble, lovely little Peggy." The next possessor
of the title, William Henry, third duke, was a distin-
guished statesman in the reign of George 111., and in
1782 was appointed Viceroy of Ireland. He subse-
quently filled some of the highest political offices, and
was twice Prime Minister; and on his death in 1809
was succeeded in the title and estates by his eldest
son, William Henry Cavendish, fourth duke, who was
the father of the subject of this notice.

In a leader noticing the Duke of Portland's death, the
Standard remarks :—" The fifth Duke of Portland has
reached the age of seventy-nine years, and during a con-
siderable portion of that time he had led not so much a
retired as an invisible life. He came of a stock which had
furnished friend; Councillors, and Ministers to successive
Sovereigns. No man ever stood so high among the
intimate acquaintances of Kings as his ancestor, who
accompanied William 111. to England. The late Duke's
father was Lord Privy Seal. in Canning's Cabinet
of 1827. His grandfather was for two years Prime
Moister in the reign of George 111., and had been a mem-
ber of more than one Cabinet. The annals of his race were
of the most stimulating kind, and political activity might
well have been thought his natural heritage. But perhaps
owing to an enforced seclusion from the world, neither
in the pursuit of politics nor pleasure, neither in
statesmanship nor sport, did he attempt or accomplish
anything. All that the world of London knew of him was,
that he erected an unsightly screen of dull thick glass,
towering above the houses in Cavendish-squara, and that there
are in that quarter of the town two or three thoroughfares
called after his title or his patronymic. All that his country
arid those famous "Dukerles" from which the glory
has in a great measure already departed, knew of him was
that he lived a life of extreme eccentricity. The Duke of
Portland was one of the half-dozen territorial magnates of
the United Kingdom who are not so much great landlords as
the rulers of petty principalities. He owned thousands of
acres which he had never, seen; built hundreds of houses
and cottages which he never entered; preserved enormous
coverts of game, which be never shot; was the proprietor
of long leagues of matchless salmon streams over which he
nevef threw a fly. He was solicitous for the welfare of
tenants whese appearance was unknown to him, and he was
the zealous promoter of pastimes in which he never joined.
His shooting parties in Nottinghamshire were famous. In
Welbeck-nark itself the Duke would indeed never permit a
gun to be fired; hue the surrounding woodlands were
magnificently stocked with pheasants. In Scotland he had
grouse moors and fishing rivers, which regularly supplied
splendid sport t 2 his friends, but none to him. His interest
in the turf was as keen as it was in architecture. He waited
for the result of the chief races of the year with much
anxiety in the recesses of his private rooms, though ha pro-
bably never saw a race run in his life. His fruit and flowers,
his vineries and conservatories, his peaches, melons, pine
apples, the roses and the rare exotic plants which his
gardener grew, and which carried off floricultural prizes in-
numerable, were some of the finest in England, but their
possessor was never beheld amongst them." . . . .

The Daily Telegraph, in a leader, remark.:—" The fifth
Duke, always of a retiring and reserved disposition, had
during his declining years, such a disinclination to see fresh
faces that, both in town and country, his homes grew more
and more to resemble monastic retreats. There were ser-
vants who had been in his employ for years without ever
seeing their master, and, his exercise was taken in
a part of the garden at Welbeck *Abbey to
which, between certain hours, no other living
person was admitted. A public footpath across the
park at Welbeck became intolerable to him because he saw
strange human beings from his windows, and he quickly
disposed of the difficulties attaching to a "right of way"
by driving a tunnel through the ground, which was lighted
with vas by night and day. Few were at any time aware
whether the Duke was in town or in the country, and
although there were favoured kinsman and kinswomen
upon whom he occasionally lavished gif is, and to whom
he lent horses and carriages, it was, as they soon
found, upon condition that 'ltch favours were not
to be regarded as rights. If, as is only too pro-
bable, there are not wanting many to assert that a life blessed
with such opportunities for doing good was turned to small
account by the great and wealthy Duke who has just brought
his four score years to a close, it is but just to add that he
had long suffered from a malady which made the presence of
strangers peculiarly distasteful to him, and that seclusion
from mankind, acting upon a nktturally proud and retiring
temperament, incapacitated him alter awhile for holding
Intercourse with others." .

The Morning Post says :—" Born with the century, and
not succeeding to the title and estates until the year 1814,
the late Duke brought with him the experience necessarily
denied to younger men. Devoting, as he had done, the
earlier portion of his life rather to the cultivation of art
than to the pursuit of politics, and naturally disinclined
from any ardent devotion to the pleasures of the chase or the
sports of the field—though he was one of the beet judges of
a horse in England, and up to the latest period of his life
made his stud A peculiar hobby—the late peer, shortly after
his succession to the dukedom, took up his residence at
Welbeck Abbey, and there commenced the extraordinary
series of works which must for many generations to come be
associated with his name. Constituting himself in the main
his own designer and architect, he devised plans for render-
ing the entire house and park almost a new creation of fancy.
Semi-subterranean roads admirably lighted and ventilated,
were driven in all directions where carriage or footways
existed, so that no disagreeable impediments might break
the beauty of each vista—a riding-house of unequalled
dimensions was constructed for the exercise of the stud. A
picture gallery—a marvel of light and beauty—was erected
for the reception of the grand existing collection, and a suite
of the most elegant saloons were added to those already in
the edifice. Above and beyond a perhaps natural wish to
connect his name and memory with something new and
striking, the late Duke had at heart a sincere desire to
promote the welfare of the working classes, whether living
upon his estate or simply attracted to it for employment,
and he particularly made it his study to develop artistic
talent however and whenever exhibited. Such excellence of
work, therefore, may be seen in the new buildings at Wel.
beck as is rarely to be found in this age of cheapness,
hurry, and competition. Recluse though he, by choice,
was in the latter part of his life so far as society was
concerned, the late duke kept a watchful eye upon all
matters of social and political interest, and net seldom
manifested his own interest therein by some signal act of
liberality, as, for example, in recent munificent donation to
the fund raised for the alleviation of the sufferings of the
poor Turkish population ruined by the war. Not a few,
moreover,.can testify to his acts of private generosity, nor
fail to remember the thoughtful kindness which never
allowed itself to be diverted from its purpose. In his last
hours he experienced the loving and assiduous attentions of
relatives for whom he had always entertained a profound
regard; and there can be no doubt that he will bear with
him to his grave many a fond recollection from those—and
their name is legion—who knew that under a reserved
exterior there beat a warm and sensitive heart."