The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-08-17 00:00:00

STATUTES OF LIMITATION.

The Times publishes the following hiller on the above
subject.--

Sir,—lt would be well if land-owners, estate agents
and managers were to devote a part of their vacation
this autumn in making a careful survey of their
estates, and taking notes of all encroachments on
them, especially of those which may have existed for
many years, as the Real Property Limitation Act,
1874, which will come into operation on the Ist of
January, 1879, enacts that :

"After the commencement of this Act no person shall
make an entry or distress or bring an action or suit to
recover any land or rent but within twelve years next after
the time at which the right to make such entry or distress or
to bring such action or suit shall have first accrued to some
person through whom he claims; or if such right shall not
have accrued to any person through whom he claims, then
within twelve years next after the time at which the right
to make such entry or distress or to bring such action or
suit shall have jirst accrued to the person making or bring-
ing the same."

It follows that all persons who on the Ist of Junuary,
1879, shall have been in uninterrupted adverse pos-
session of any land for twelve years without payment
of rent, or other acknowledgment of title to any per-
son, will have acquired a possessory title to such land;
and no action would lie to eject them. Landowners
should, therefore, look out for squatters and intruders.
—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, JAMES RAWLINSON,
Upper Holloway, N., August 9.

A LESSON ABOUT MUTUAL
DEPENDENCY.
One of the Paris correspondents of the Daily News, in
writing about the Cab Strike, says:—

The cabmen of Paris have gone on the strike. With
a happy a sense of appropriateness they have chosen
the moment when the big city can least do without
them, and they must be enjoying rare fun in watching
the helplessness of a population deprived of one of its
chief means of locomotion. Paris is overflowing with
strangers, and this is, mortover, breaking-up week in
all the schools, so that there are thousands of boys and
girls leaving Paris, whilst other thousands of juveniles
escorted by their relatives are corning up from the pro-
vinces to se s the Exhibition. Since Monday morning,
when the strike began, the railway stations have pre-
sented an animated appearance of confusion. Passen-
gers arriving have found no vehicles to convey them to
their hotels, and passengers anxious to depart have
been trooping up in broken-hearted batches—hot, foot-
sore, dragging luggage after them, and late, of course,
for the trains they wanted to catch. Hence a great
deal of strong language thrown at large. The emer-
gency has been met by a calling out of the vehicle
reserves—to wit, all the unemployed omnibuses,
vans, trucks, and wheelbarrows in the capital.
One never saw such an array. Cabriolets of forty
years ago dusty post-chaises, and broken.springed
chariots, which may have been used by the belles of the
elder Napoleon's reign, have come out of lumber-sheds,
and are jolting about with teams of seperannuated
roadsters, who golame on three feet out of four. Some
of these sorry greys look as if they had been fed on
old newspapers. Their drivers are to match, being
apparently recruited from the halt and maim in the
race of life, who have taken to driving for a day or two
as a change from cadgering. The sight is enough
to make a sensitive man sit down on a doorstep and
cry. To loafers and street Arabs, however, who
can now turn an honest sou out of the public dis-
tress, the occasion is a fine one, and so it
may be to those who,„having no need for cabs,
can watch the expedients of those who have, with
complacency, if not with amusement. The people
most to be pitied are those who have grown unaccus-
tomed to using their legs, and who cannot go
about their business in omnibuses and tram cars.
Ladies, professional men, and gentlemen hurrying to
social festivities in swallow-tail coats are in a sad way;
and all these persons have begun to discover that the
oft-abused cabman was one of their best friends. So
do we all learn a lesson about mutual dependency, and
perceive that self-reliance cannot do everything for us,
seeing that it will not conjure up a cab when wanted,
nor help us to bear the loss of cabs with entire philo-
sophy
This is not the first cab-strike which has taken
place in Paris. One occurred in 1865 and lasted four
days. It was stopped by the expedient of lending
soldiers to act temporarily as drivers, but it led to a
revision of the cab fares, and to the abolition of the
monopoly which the Compagnie des Petites Voitures
then enjoyed. The cab trade is now free, and
the number of hackney vehicles in Paris exceeds
15,000. No other city in the world has so many
cabs, and nowhere else is the public con-
venience so entirely dependent on them; for
as French fortunes get yearly more and more sub-
divided, the number of people who can afford private
carriages gets fewer and fewer. Since the transfer of
the Legislature to Versailles, the falling off in private
equipages has been very noticeable; and on great
days, when there is a review or race going on in the
Bois de Boulogne, and all Paris is out on wheels, the
proportion of cabs to carriages may be seen to be
about ten to one. . . .