The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-05-08 00:00:00

"A FAMOUS VICTORY!"

The Times of Wednesday had a leader on the late General
Election, from which we make the following extract :
"The late General Election has been a famous
victory. This involves an equal defeat, for the one is
the measure of the other; but defeats are not famous.
They are made the best of, wholly ignored if possible,
like the Battle of Fontenoy, very famous in French
and even Irish history, but unknown to ours. But of
victory there is no end. The conquerors are never
tired of beating their drums, blowing their trum-
pets, and flourishing their banners. Victory pro-
claims and commemorates itself till it becomes
as eternal as the limits of time will allow. His-
torians, poets, sculptors, and painters, if paid up
to a requisite enthusiasm, describe and portray the
powers of truth and goodness transfixing and hurling
clown to the lowest abyss their time-honoured an-
tagonists, the dragons, snakes, and monsters believed
to be the proper forms of the public and private
vices. The dragons and snakes and monsters con-
tinuall37 re-appear, not only unhurt, but even assailed
with fresh accusation, and menaced with fresh de-
struction. But there is no doubt that in the first
blare and flare of a triumph the worsted must hide
their diminished heads,. hold their tongues, if they
are not very clever, and simply bide their day. In
six years, or a less time, the sun will come round to their
windows, and they will have their day again. But
though the laws of reaction and vicissitude bring hope,
and may well moderate alike exultation and despon-
dency, they may also suggest to many minds to keep
out of an arena in which for one sorry triumph there
are many deaths and wounds. In all the rivalries and
struggles of time there is more disappointment than
success. The great author wins the race against a gene-
ration of scribblers; the hero stands on -a field covered
with the slain; the millionaire is the complement of
ten thousand paupers; the inventor has distanced
rivals that fill workhouses, gaols, and asylums. But
in no competition or cause are the prizes so few and
so precarious, and the blanks so many and so certain
as in politics. All take an interest in diem, and Heaven
only knows how much of that interest is public, how
much private. It is hardly possible, or even con-
ceivable, that a man should dwell long upon any prac-
ticable ideal of a well-constituted and well-administered
common weal without feeling himself bound up with
it in a community of advantage. Every member of
Parliament knows to his cost the number of aspirants
for public employment, and the obligations he is
himself supposed to be under to all who have contri-
buted to place him where he is. His experience is
that there is no such thing as a patriotism which
is its own reward. But he cannot be hard on impor-
tunity even in its most troublesome and ridiculous
forms, because when he looks inwards he knows that
he is serving himself and his country, in what relative
precedence he will not be bold to say. Thus the
general action, as the election may be called, has
resulted in the political and personal discomfiture of
more than a million persons who had founded pleasant
expectations on the success of their party. Another
million is now building houiei of carda..anci castles in!
the air, certain one day to be as rudely overthrown, as!
those on the wreck of which they stand."
.- •
At Bonn, on the 2nd ,inat., was unveiled Awej
schuman )frocgai, "raise 4 liklionotir of the, t 'cora-
poser by his en ana tlioie woo were
present at the ceremony were his vridowi the local adminis-
trative and railitarY Personages, and all the musical
lades from that pelt of Gernialiy. • --
sary (May 1) was tlle 30th ani*er_saryaf_tlikp biTthi
Of the uke of Clonnaught-andtrathearn Ke, .G.tnird,pon 9t;
her 3th dety and the la* "Prince Consort, biz Ito* H4hOial,
having been born at Buckinghitta Palace pulley 1, ISVM
Princc (Arthur William Patrick Albert) was named after the,
great bake of Wellington,
on whose 82nd birthdape first;
saw the lig,ht, and who_NYall T22Df sponscos % 4f9-
tisni. He entered the Hoyt' mutely Aoadetrty at aoivtich
*us a cadet in Feb. 186(1; and hatserved Indist HeyatArtillery,
Royal Engineers, Rifle ifrige, de, and flb I:fustian, finally be.
corning lieut.-cb.lcami of the ifie Drigade, to mhich he is at
present attached, in Sept. 187.