The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-12-20 00:00:00

TAP STOtTRBRIDGE OBSE RVET,•

THE AFGHAN WAR.

drawn from line of communications. We have ample force.
Telegraph is still open, and no disturbances reported along
line of communication.
(From Viceroy, 15th December, 1879.)
Roberts reports force now collected in Shirpur. Losses
yesterday, 19 killed, including Captain Spews and Lieutenant
Galosford, 72nd Highlanders; 88 wounded, incluglirg Captain
Gordon, 92nd, Captain Battye, Guides, and Lieutenant
Egerton, 72nd. Telegraphic communication still open.
(From Viceroy, December 16, 1879.)
Further telegraph from Roberts reports that in yesterday's
fighting one mountain gun was lost, the enemy numbered
nearly 30,000, and the fire was very severe; he adds, how.
ever, that he does not for a moment doubt being able to
restore our command, but that reinforcements are necessary
to enable him to act with necessary vigour.
(From Viceroy, December 17, 1879.)
Communication with Sir Frederick Roberts at Cahill Is
now interrupted.

Her Majesty has telegraphed to Sir Francis Roberts
requesting him to make known to the troops engaged
in the action before Cabnl her admiration of their
gallantry, and her sympathy for the officers and men
wounded in action.

the soil had nothing to do but to enjoy themselves and add
what was wanting to complete the agreeableness of their poet-
tion. At that tune, unless it be with some insignificant excep-
tion, all the legislative conditions of British agriealtare were
the same as they are now. Strict!), speaking, whatever cause
for insfulry there is now there was then. The farmer had
then a good hand ; he has now a bad one ; but the game is
the same. Nor is the bad hand peculiar to the farmer. It
is by no means a case in which if one player has a bad hand
the other players are so much the more likely to have good
hands. There is a deficiency of trumps and court cards all
round; and all find that, even if they come off beet, there is
not much to win. It is impossible to single out any clans that
has'proppered on the losses and difficulties of the rest, unless it
be the lawyers and auctioneers, to whom weal and woe
come equally well. The present, then, is an inquiry, not
only into the "depression," which is but the ebb of the
tide, but necessarily into the flow also. Why a high tide
three years ago and a low tide flow? Why was the ocean at
our doors this morning and now a mile off? This may serve
to chastise the expectation of a royal road to agricultural
wealth and a comprehensive remedy for all the mischances
a man has suffered and all the mistakes he has committed.

The chief difficulty in the way of applying economical and
even political considerations to the land question is that it
is mixed and complicated with other questions, carrying it
out of the range of economy and politics. Large as is the
range of inquiry entered on by the Commissioners, we do
not gather that they are prepared to take a broad and prac-
tical view of land as a thing people wish to have, or to hold,
or to work upon for other than economical reasons. In point
of fact, the soil of these isles is not regarded with a view to
profit only, or even mainly by any of the classes connected with
it. There is something like a national mania in the tenacity
with which people invest in it for only two per cent, on the
market value, rent it when with the same capital and
trouble they could make their fortune in any British colony,
and labour on it when they could easily acquire an !depen-
dence by accepting an assisted passage to eanada or Aus-
tralasia. We are not only the descendants, but in all re-
spects the representatives, of the men who contested for
many centuries tne possession of these isles, and who fought
for rights of water and wood, and tillage and open pasturage,
and game of all kinds, and tolls, honours, and services,
with their pockets alway empty and their lives always
in their hands. They enjoyed the land as the creatures
that lived on it, in the same way, only infinitely
more. Nobody, high or low, ever left the land
willingly, or willingly resigned the struggle for it, in
favour of any money-making occupation whatever. It
Is idle to ascribe these vestiges of aboriginal man to groat
landowners alone. There is nothing a tenant-farmer likes
so much as a day's sport. Give him all the rabbits on his
farm, and he will immediately set about destroying, net the
rabbits, but the cats which prey upon them. He cares more
far a tolerable head of rabbits than for a good crop. Half
our labourers would like to giVe up work for poaching, with
all its dangers and uncertainties. The greater part of the
soli, indeed all except the utterly unpicturesque and dreary
portions, is held, and managed with a deliberate preference
of its enjoyable or sentimental aspects to the profit-
able. Dakeries, cottage gardens, parks, shootings, villa
residences, all tell the same tale and prove us all alike in
this respect. The gentlemen who want England divided into
estates of twelve acres apiece) truthfully represent a universal
Instinct. Supposing the plan to be possible, instead of being
utterly impossible, its only result would be to multiply the
much envied race of landowners. Is it possible, then, for a
national inquiry to put out of question a national taste,
deeply rooted in our natures, and manifesting itself in every
position and employment'? Is it possible to proclaim and
compel by Act of Parliament an economical—that is, com-
mercial—estimate of land and mode of dealing with it?
Our political position does not compel this course. It leads
us to regard the whole world as our farm, and to throw
In our lot with the human race. grant that there
is hazard in this, as there is in every course
it would be still more perilous to neglect opportunities,
fetter enterprise, and deprive life of many comforts for the
Bake at making the soil of these isles produce as much food
as possible. The present inquiry, then, wide as it is, multi-
farious as it is, searching as it will be, is necessarily sub-
ordinate to the common weal, in the largest and highest
sense of that word—the ,well•being and happiness of this
country and of all classes in it. If they are much happier
and better off with a considerable disregard ef economical
principles in the matter of land, it would be simple
tyranny, and certainly attended with very ill results, to
attempt to deny them their own ideas of happiness in order
that they spay help to solve the perfectly gratuitous problem
of the greatest quantity of food out of a given acreage.