The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-02-23 00:00:00

Our onon Ccartspnbtitt.

[We deem it right to state that we do not at all times
Identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

The marriage of the eldest daughter of the Crown
Princess of Germany, the Princess-Royal of Great
Britain and Ireland, seems to tell a remarkable story
of the flight of time. There are many who, looking
back a couple of decades, can well remember the ornate
wedding of the Princess herself in the Chapel Royal of
St. James's, when her father, the late Prince Consort,
stood by her side and gave her away. It was
on the 25th January, 1858, and those were the old
and happy days when the Court was kept at Buck-
ingham Palace. The marriage of the Princess-Royal,
or, as she was fondly called, "the daughter of Eng-
land," made the first vacant place in a house-
hold the members of which, in the course of
twenty years, have been scattered far and wide.
Two illustriq us persons who were present at that cere-
mony—the mother and the husband of the Queen—
died within a few months of each other in the year
1861; while of her Majesty's nine children, only one,
and that one the youngest, now remains at home with-
out a separate allowance provided by Parliament.
What changes have been witnessed in twenty years!
Prussia was then regarded as being little better than
a vassal of the Czar; to-day she repregents the
greatest military power in Europe. France was
then launching at us accusations on account

of the Orsini conspiracy, which less than a
fortnight before had resulted in an attempt to assassi-
nate the Emperor Napoleon ; and his Imperial Majesty
was importuned to give orders to his army "to pursue
these villains into their hiding-places "—that is to say,
they wanted to march upon London. To-day the
French Empire is a shadow of the past, and the
Emperor himself is at rest in a little Kentish church.
Four great wars -have convulsed the continent of
Europe during those twenty years, and the
political atmosphere upon the Continent is charged
with electricity, so much so that never more
true was the Biblical saying, "Thou knowest
not what a day may bring forth ! " Yet there
can be no suspension of irrevocable laws ; and
as during the siege of Paris, when the population

were starving, men continued to marry and to
give in marriage, so in the Royal Palace at Berlin the
guests assemble at the wedding feast, giving no thought
to the glint of arms in the distance, and to the sound
oi the beat of drums borne upon the wind.
The exciting events of the past few weeks have
shown in remarkable contrast the characteristics of
our two Houses of Parliament. In the midst of the
most momentous occurrences, shadowing forth con-
vulsions which may result in the most mighty poli-
tical changes upon the Continent, the Peers are
always sedate, calm, and orderly. There is
no excitement perceptible in the atmosphere of the
gilded chamber. The " cheers " of the newspaper
reports are more often a dropping fire of "hear,
hears," uttered feebly and without any sign of exertion.
Their lordships have so little fear of disorderly scenes
being enacted in their midst, that the Lord Chancellor,
who presides, is not invested with the power of calling
a peer to order, supposing such a rare incident to take
place as for a peer to be out of order. Their lordships
do not contemplate the possibility of one of their
number so forgetting himself as to transgress the
rules of debate; but when this does happen, it
Is left to the judgment of the House. All
this is in strong contrast with the practice and ex-
periences of the House of Commons, where
the Speaker is invested with the very fullest
powers for the maintenance of the dignity of the
assembly over which he presides. These extend even
to the ordering a member into custody who refuses
to obey his ruling. The tumultuous scenes in the
Lower House require the greatest firmness and tact
in dealing with, and the wild hubbub which sometimes
prevails call forth the Speaker's sternest tones of
" Order ! order !" And the cheers in that assembly,
when political champions come to the table, are such
as, once heard, are never forgot-Oen. They are
thundered forth in volleys and these are hurled back
again.
Sir Archibald Alison once wrote that the shores of
the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the ports on the
coast of the Sea of Marmora, were not only the envy
of every Russian, but their possession was the object
of his most sanguine anticipations. It has been seen
within the past few days how near the dream of ages
has been to its practical accomplishment. The
people in this country can have little idea of the
commotion in the Turkish capital—only thirteen
months ago the scene of a European Conference at

which the Porte refused all concessions—when
the victorious enemy were actually at the gates
of the city, and the fleet of their old ally,
which had refused to tear shses siss2s
nour ot peril, had, in spite of protests, passed the
Straits of the Dardanelles, steamed through the
Sea of Marmora, and anchored within a few miles
of the city, prepared for any emergency. The
battle-ships of Great Britain are in Turkish waters for
the protection of British subjects in Constantinople
who might be in danger in case of a rising
of the Mussulman population against the Christians,
and not to help the Turks against their hereditary
enemy. What would Londoners say if a hostile
and triumphant army were encamped upon
its outskirts, and the fleet of another Power, in
defiance of the protests of the Government, were to
make its way up the Thames almost to Woolwich
Arsenal, where it cast anchor? That would indeed
be a case of national effacement, wherein the terms
" independence " and "territorial integrity" would
no 1 mger apply.
A home has at last been found for Cleopatra's
Needle, the giant monolith which has outlived so
inany changing scenes in the world's history, and has
been brought from Africa to Europe, across the tem-
pestuous Bay of Biscay. The Metropolitan Board of
Works has granted permission for its erection on the
Adelphi steps of the Thames Embankment between the
bridges of Waterloo and Charing-cross. Mr. Dixon, who
made the arrangements for transporting the obelisk to
this country, is enthusiastic in praise of the site which
has at last been fixed upon. There was at first some
doubt whether even the massive granite embankment
itself was sufficiently strong to bear the great weight
of this colossal column, nearly 170 tons. But Sir
James Bazalgette, the engineer and builder of the
structure, gives it as his opinion that it possesses
ample strength for that purpose; and so the Needle
will soon rear its head in one of the busiest parts of
the largest city in the world, overlooking crowded
marts upon the land upon the one side, and on the
other the broad stream of the Thames, less famous
than the Nile, but infinitely more representative of
the wealth of the country through which it flows.
There was a time when the declaration that every-
thing is fair in love and war met with general accept-
ance ; but, so far as war is concerned, there are many
now who do not endorse that sentiment. Lord
Dunsany, in a recent address at the Royal United
Service Institution, laid it down that the destruction
of masses of men by any secret agency was unfair. The
United Service Institution, in Whitehall-yard, almost
immediately opposite the Horse Guards, is the head-
quarters of all the most important scientific discussions
in London relating to the modern mode of warfare, and
it is not uncommon for the Secretary of State for War
to preside at one of the meetings. If it be wrong to
destroy masses of men by a secret agency, such as a
torpedo, it must be admitted that this instrument is
now being adopted by all civilized nations, our own
amongst the number. When in 1854 the Russians
sunk their Black Sea Fleet right across the entrance
to the harbour of Sebastopol, in order to prevent the
entry of the allied fleets, it was denounced as an
act of cowardice, and alleged that the Muscovites,
afraid to come out and fight us in the
open sea, had carried out this most effectual plan for
preventing us from going in and fighting them in their
own waters. Now, however, a very different kind of
warfare from that of merely sinking ships in silence
to keep out your enemies, has come into practice. The
most costly ironclad, which has taken years to build,
and has been turned out at an expense of perhaps half
a million sterling, may with its complement of hundreds
of men, now be blown into the air in a moment by an
innocent looking substance scarcely perceptible above
the surface of the water. What would Nelson have
said to such a mode of fighting as this?
The voting of six millions by the House of Com-
mons has been followed by the purchase of two iron-
dads by the Admiralty, which were building in the
Thames for the Turkish Government, and by the most
extraordinary activity throughout the naval yards of
the kingdom. Not only so, but in the dockyards at
Malta in the far-off Mediterranean, the same energy
prevails. The clang of the hammer and the
anvil is everywhere heard, and the once quiet
shipyards resound with the echoes of busy life.
Six millions sterling have been voted by the House
of Commons as a note of preparation, but what
a drop in the ocean this would be, if we were
to be actually involved in hostilities We have
lately had it upon the authority of Mr. Gladstone,
who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the earlier
stages of the Crimean war, that the total cost of that
struggle to this country was eighty millions. Yet
even this bears but a small proportion of what Great
Britain expended early in the present century to put
down the First Napoleon. Here was a man who was
regarded as a public enemy, and we expended several
hundred millions in fighting him in conjunction with
other Powers, before we succeeded in sending him to
Elba, (where, by the way in the year 1814, the present
Earl Rus,ell, then M.P. for Tavistock, had an inter-
view with him.) In March, 1815, when it became known

that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and was col-
lecting another army to disturb the peace of Europe,
the British Parliament met and voted one hundred
and ten millions for his overthrow. A. hundred and
ten millions in those days was a much larger sum than
it is now, and it came with but little intermission
after three-and-twenty years of warfare. We have
now had three-and-twenty years of peace, and shall
not much feel the six millions. Of course
the Parliament which voted that vast sum was not
called upon to pay the money; that, like all the other
enormous sums spent in beating down Napoleon, was
borrowed; and to-day the interest upon the National
Debt is twenty-eight millions a year, or more than
the cost of the Army and Navy put together.
The recent Ministerial changes have revived a ques-
tion which has been often asked before. There is
a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for the
Colonies, for War, and for India; why is there not one
for Ireland and for Scotland? A Secretary of State
is of necessity a member of the Cabinet, and he
takes precedence next after the Lord Privy Seal. But
the political representative of Ireland in Parliament
is the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and it
is quite within the discretion of the Prime Minister
whether he is in the Cabinet or not. The Scotch
business in the House of Commons is conducted by
the Lord Advocate, who, as a practising bar-
rister, is never under any circumstances a
Cabinet Minister. Without contending that Ire-
land and Scotland are as important as the
Colonies of India, there is no doubt that the exclusion
of the two sister kingdoms from the Cabinet often
gives rise to grave inconvenience. There was a time
when the Lord Chief Justice of England was a mem-
ber of the Cabinet, but this ceased to be the case after
Lord Ellenborough, who himself held that distinguished
office, expressed his disapprobation of the practice,
and there are many who contend that some of the
ornamental offices which by prescriptive right are now
in the Cabinet, might well give way to the necessities
of vast populations which instead of representing the
unaltered custom of successive ages, are constantly
showing forth the wants and requirements of the mov-
ing forces of social progress.