The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-05-14 00:00:00

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COMMENTS ON CURRENT NEWS

THIS is a time of exhibitions, truly. The
exhibition mania is extending all over the
land. Manchester has its big Jubilee Show,
twice the size of the four held at South
Kensington; Saltaire followed suit with one
on a smaller scale, dignified, however, by a
Royal opening and a message from her
Majesty ; Newcastle has opened its exhibi-
tion with a flourish and a speech from the
Commander-in-Chief; London has been alt
agog with excitement concerning the great
American Exhibition at Earl's Court and its
novel appanage, Col. Cody's "Wild West ;"
and now Havre has its great display of arts
and manufactures. The Exhibition idea is
being worked almost to death; and, it may
be noted, the internationalism is seeming to
drop out of it. • Poor France, whose pro-
mised great Exposition of nextyear is having
cold water thrown on it by every European
country, has found this out; though in this
ease there are peculiar reasons. No doubt
there is a growing disposition to see these
things "stand on their own bottoms" with-
out adventitious aid. One wonders how the
Imperial Institute, the foundation of which
her Majesty is to lay on July 4th, will fare
in this respect.

A COMMENTATOR in a London contemporary,
adverting to the hanging of a man for murder
at Oxford on Monday, and speaking in a
sympathetic way of the shock to the crimin-
al's nerves at sight of the engine of the law's
retribution, says: "Nature kindly came to
the relief of the man," that is, he fainted, and
was executed in an unconscious state. Then
our contemporary goes on to argue, Very
humanitarianly, that science should in all
cases co-operate with Jack Ketch in dis-
patching murderers, and produce insensi-
bility before the pinioning process com-
mences. Not so, say we; if you deprive
hanging of its awful moments you destroy
its deterrent effect upon the mind of the
brute whom you can only make feel through
his own cowardice. He will inflict lingerin,4
mental misery upon his poor victims, along
with physical torture of the most excruciat-
ing type. without one single qualm; and if
you punish him by painlessly transferring
him into a future state respecting which be
is callously careless, the hangman's drop
will be no longer a terror to him. This
tenderness towards the feelingless wretches
who defame the name of man is out of place
altogether. The hoary-headed brute whc)
paid the penalty of his dreadful deed at
Oxford had in a most horrible manner
mangled the life out of the poor woman who
had given up all to minister to him, and yet
we have a piteous wail about the suffering
he endured in going to the gallows. This
utterly misplaced sentimentality makes the
sturdy, health r-mincled Briton inclined, in
sheer disgust, say that rather tli3n one sting
should be withdrawn from the pangs of
those who foully slay their fellows he would
have back again the old Mosiac la wof "an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

OUR French neighbours are very wroth
with as for repudiating their coppers, and
are going to retaliate by prohibiting the
effigy of her Majesty in bronze to circulate
as current coin across the: Channel. So be
it. Thereby we shall be liberated from a
difficulty. So enormously were the
" Frenchmen" in use in London and the
southernly towns that their withdrawal has
caused a great scarcity of" browns." When
England gets her own again we shall be hll
right.

THREE town in flames! This is a terrible
newspaper headline; but the terrors which
followed were harrowing in the extreme.
Such conflagrations as those which have
recently happened in Hungary were probably
without precedent, and one wonders at their
magnitude, even in a country of wooden
dwellings in the May month. There has
been a dearth of rain, truly; but then in the
spring the houses are not nearly so dry as in
August, say; yet there is no record of any
Hungarian autumnal visitations of flame of
such magnitude as this. Insurance is quite
as prevalent in Hungary as here; but we are
far ahead of the inhabitants of that country
in our immunity from the peril of the de-
vouring :element. We have, relatively, a
great many more fire engines and fire es-
capes and hose than they; and our houses
are built of less inflammable materials, and
not huddled dangerously together in the
village as many Hungarian homes are. No
untoward wind nor lengthy drought,
happily, could work such havoc here as have
the fires in Hungary which have rendered
thousands homeless.

THIS bogus petition business has an un-
lovely savour. Witne=ses have admitted
that they received substantial monetary con-
sideration from the City of London solicitor
for obtaining signatures to petitions iti
favour of the continuance of the Coal and
Wine Dues. That their subordinates were
not clean-handed was abundantly demon-
strated, and it is certainly not at all credit-
able to the greatest and wealthiest civic
body in the world to he so mixed up with
underhand enginry to conserve its own em-
oluments. There were names of race horses
and al sons of ribaldry put on these peti-
tions to the High Court of Parliament by
irreverent and opposing persons, but the
well-paid agents of the City Fathers man-
aged som :how to get together an imposing
array of signs manual in justification of the
not inconsiderable sums of money they re-
ceived from the City Treasury, which, of
course, came from the public funds. It is
to be hoped that the labours of the Petitions
Committee of the House of Commons will
put a stop to this sort of corruption—for
corruption it certainly is whoever is to
blame for its being.

THE Colonial Conference has concluded
its deliberations, and has submitted a re-
quest that her Majesty should formally as-
sume the title of Queen of the Colories and
Mpendeneies in all parts of the globe. This
is sentiment, but it is that sort of sentiment
which has an engaging charm, which draws
hearts to kindred hearts over wide expanses
of ocean; and those who would bind tighter
the bonds between Britain and her offshoots
will wish that some graceful and practical
mode of carrying the wishes of the Colonists
into effect will be devised.

A.:Ottto.—To all ell, are auff g from the erscra
azê wltscrett4 of ruth, ivlue wedciess, ear y
decay exhaost..l vitality. I )All of ~ionr, norro•l9 1 batty.
&Co. so d a prevr pu that widen's y frac, of
charge Inis great re(n,dy wai diic-m4red by A llimi:oza-
ary -)li MetC. Send adir,a.d at.to Jai uv.dope
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