The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-08-07 00:00:00

ur XpOun Correspralnirt,
[We deem it right to state that we do not at all tmca
identity ourselves with our Correspondent's opiniona3

That this country is an eminently conservative one
there can he no question whatever. Ido not use the
word in the sense which is generally attached to it,
but in its proper and liberal signification. To conserve is
really to preserve; and it is in this way that I wish
the expression to be construed. A grievance in our
midst may exist, and its existence may be freely recog-

,
nised ; but the very fact of its existence is for a long
time an argument why it should not be.,gemoved. Let
—u see how this applies to the work of legislation.
When the Session begins, you will see honourable
raensbers on both sides of the House of Commons
burning for activity, and longing for work. Bills are
introduced by the score; I may more safely say by
the hundred. Other gentlemen, who do not think that
their especial subjects are ripe for Parliamentary
action, move that they be referred either to a Select
Committee or to a Royal Commission. The Com-
mittee or the Commission —whichever it may happen
to be—meets repeatedly, takes an immense body of
evidence, draws up an elaborate report, makes some
very important recommendations, and what then?
Why, in nine caees out of ten, nothing more is heard
of the matter for years. Take, for instance, the
Select Committee appointed early in the present
Session to inquire into the operation of the Corrupt
Practices Prevention Acts. The evidence disclosed
some real and substantial grievances; and the Com-
mittee, with a view of redressing these, made many
important suggestions in their report, which was
ready at the beginning of June. One was to the effect
that, in future, election petitions should be tried by
two judges of her Majeety's superior courts of Common
Law, instead of byone, as is now the case. It was gene-
rally admitted that this would secure greater uniformity
in judicial decisions, but it will be a long time before any
steps are taken to carry it out. The history of this
inquiry is the history of every Parliamentary Com-
mittee which has sat this session. Willing to make the
investigation an exhaustive one, they sit a long time,
and as a consequence the presentation of the report is
deferred until it is too late to legislate in the current
session. When next session comes, not only are the
grievances of this one partially forgotten, but it brings
its own werk. Thus matters go on until some long-
standing and flagrant injustice rouses the constituen-
cies; and there is legislation in a panic, with all its
resulting evils and defects.
How many people know anything about the Treaty
of Berne? Its provisions have elicited scant remark,
although they embody one of the most important re-
forms of the decade. This Treaty, which is now
actually in operation, has effected a revolution in the
old rates of postage between Great Britain, the United
States, and a host of European nations, a uniform rate
of 21d. on letters weighing half an ounce being now in
force. The people in all the countries named in this
convention, not only save time, trouble, and confusion,
but a direct gain in the cost of transmission is made,
sometimes to the amount of a hundred per cent.
Letter writers are not the only class who receive
benefit from this benevolent treaty. A quarter of a
pound of newspaper matter may now be sent abroad
for a penny. The rates for parcel pcst have also been
materially reduced. Altogether the Treaty of Berne
is a wonderful boon to millions of people, and although
it is to a great extent of an experimental character,
there is little doubt at the end of the three years of trial,
when the plenipotentiaries assemble to discuss sug-
gested improvements, the organisation will be placed
upon a permanent basis.

Monday's Bank Holiday is the last which we shall
have until "Boxing Day." It seems "A far cry" to
Boxing Day now—from the long summer evenings to the
darkest and gloomiest period of the year, and to write
off the months of autumn as a merchant puts his pen
through a bad debt. This August Bank Holiday is
one of the most highly appreciated of the whole four,
the main reason for this being that it is an entirely
new creation. Up to the passing of the Bank Holi-
day's Act of 1871, custom had made Easter Monday,
Whit-Monday,.and Boxing Day times for cessation
from business to large numbers of persons, but there
were no associations connected with the first Monday
in Argust to make that date a day of vacation, Par-
liament, at the suggestion of Sir John Lubbock, merci-
fully threw it in as a break between May and Decem-
ber; and how the people in a large town enjoy it if
the weather be fine, has been more than once abun-
dantly manifest. You don't lay yourself out for out-
door recreation in the winter, when there are compen-
sating pleasures indoors; but when, as in 1872, the
August Bank Holiday is irredeemably wet, the disap-
pointment is great, and it comes at a time of the year
when it cannot be counterbalanced by the festivities of
Christmas.

Queen Victoria-street, a new and spacious thorough-
fare running from the Mansion House to Blackfriara
will in the course of ten years be one of the hand-
Bonet in London. The unsightly spaces which bordered
it at"first, as a consequence of the clearing away of
masses of old buildings, are rapidly being covered
with stately edifices of different styles of architecture,
and imparting great variety to its aspect. Places
which were formerly approached only by byeways, now
face the street, and are thus visible to tens of thou-
sands, who otherwise could know them only by re-
pate. The Times, for instance, was formerly content
with a position in Printing House-square, a little
court with tortuous ways of access on the south side of
Ludgate-Hill. Its new offices fronting Queen V ic-
toria-street, form a really imposing pile, either to the
wayfarer pursuing his route over Blackfriars Bridge,
or to the passenger in the steamboat upon the tide of
the river. Another world-famous organization—the
British and Foreign Bible Society—has its head-
quarters a little higher up on the same side, and it is
very seldom that you pass and do not see persons
gazing in at the windows, and gazing curiously at the
Bibles printed in all kinds of foreign languages.
Again you may note the Herald's College, and if you
are in the vein, carry your mind back to times when
"the boast of heraldry and the pomp of power" were
more of ruling influences in this country than they are
to-day. The new erection of the National Safe De-
posit Company, which is in this same thoroughfare, is
infinitely more suggestive of the chief aim of the pre-
sent age. In it are placed for safe keeping valuables
and securities of all descriptions; and the precautions
which are taken to guard against burglary as well as
against fire are of the most complete character.
It may not be generally known that August is one
of the months in which we may anticipate a periodical
star shower. The regular appeara,nce of shooting stars
upon the 10th was observed in the middle ages, when
they were termed " St. Laurence 's tears." The
August display is, however, seldom equal to that of the
14th of November, for on that night, in every year,
are to be witnessed these coruscations in the heavens.
The part played by luminous meteors in the spheres 1
has before to day opened up a wide field of speculation.
In the magnificent continuous star shower of the 14th
November, 1866, many thousands of these singular
bodies were scattered like chaff before a driving storm.
What was their place in creation, and of what manner
of materials were they composed? The spectacle, when
presented on a great scale, is a startling eminder of
the passage in the Book of Revelations, in which the
stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig-tree casteth
her untimely figs; and that aerolites have descended
in our midst admits of no doubt. Such may be found
in some of our museums; they contain iron, nickel,
and other minerals. Scientific men examine these rude
messengers from the upper world with the greatest
interest. These exhibitions of shooting stars are very
pretty to gaze upon; but most people would prefer not
to be in the way of a descending meteor if they could
possibly avoid it. Be its substance ever so small, the
enormous height from which it fell would add immea-
surably to its weight, and to the force with which it
would strike any object with which it came into col-
lision upon the surface of the earth.
Famous as the City of London is for the magnifi
ewe of its entertainments, there has never been a-
more splendid display of hospitality than that which
was presented by the International Municipal Banquet
at the Guildhall. The Lord Mayors of London, Edie.
burgh, and York, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the
Prefect of the Seine, the Syndic of Rome, the Burgo-
masters of Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Brussels, the
Mayors of Calais, Geneva, Turin, Florence, Quebec,
Bordeaux, Havre, and Toronto, the Presidents of the
Municipal Councils of Lisbon, Oporto, and Christiania,
and the chief magistrates and town clerks of most of
the cities and corporate boroughs in the United King-
dom combined to make up such a gathering as has sel-
dom assembled under the ancient roof of the historic
Guildhall. Ordinarily the banqueting hall of the Man-
sion House is sufficiently capacioug to accommodate
the guests at civie entertainments ; but so numerous
wa.s the company on this occasion that the Guildhall
had to be called into requisition—a very rare occur-
rence, for, as a rule, it.is used, only for such a purpose
on the 9th of November.
Another royal visitor has come to London—the
young Duke of Cimbra, brother of the King of Por-
tugal, a country which does not give munch trouble to
European politicians. The Duke of Cimbra is a young
man of 28, and with his brother, the king, escaped that
terrible attack of typhoid fever which laid so many of

his family low at the time that their relative, our own

Prince Consort, died. Prin-c-e-A—i-igustns, for that is
his name, comes without any state, and whilst here
took up his quarters at Claxidge's Hotel, where Prince
Humbert, the heir to the Crown of Italy, had been for
some time staying in a quiet and unostentatious way.
The improved weather which we have enjoyed of
late has gladdened the hearts of the promoters of those
exhibitions of fruit, flowers, and vegetables which are
looked forward to with so much interest in many a pro.