The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-09-18 00:00:00

LITIES.

THE very last days of Parliament, before the
p orogation, were occupied in debates which
showed at a glance the cconplex interests of the
British Empire, the duties of its rulers, and the
responsibilities of its people. Debates upon the
security of our Indian frontier, upon the relations
of our South African colonists to the tribes upon
the borders of those widely-spreading territories,
and upon the course of action which, in concert
will other European Powers, we shall pursue
towards the Porte, served to bring home to the
minds of all the vast extent of the Queen's do-
minions and the enormous area which owns her
sway.
The little island in the cold and boisterous
northern seas which is the centre of an empire
that even Imperial Rome might envy, directs the
destinies of three hundred million of human be-
ings scattered over an area of four million square
miles. Upon the map it Seems so small that,
when compared with India, Australia, or Canada,
it hardly equals in extent the principality of a
petty ruler, the kangaroo ground of a savage
tribe, or the hunting-range of a camp of Red
Indians. Yet this little gem sot in the silver sea,
has girdled the habitable globe with her power.
Whiteninc, the ocean with the sails of her com-
merce, she sends her traders into every port
where the marts of men teem with traffic. Belt-
ing the earth with her colonies, dotting its sur-
face with her fortresses, and anchoring her navies
in all its harbours, in the language of an eloquent
American, "her morning drum-beat, keeping
company with the sun, and following the hours,
encircles the world with a continuous and un-
broken strain of the martial airs of England."
Her ships convey civilization and the gespel
throughout the earth. English ideas. Eng ih
manners, English art, science, literature and
laws, are daily influencing, in a varying degree,
all the races, creeds, colours. customs, acts,
modes of life, and social orders of mankind.
Under her Majesty's sceptre are ranged not only
the white Anglo-Saxon, but peoples with skins
black, yellow, brown, copper coloured and tat-
tooed—all owning the supremacy of the Britidt
flag. The negro and the Chinaman are British
subjects, and so are the swarming millions of
Hiudostan, the broeze-hided Malay and the Bur-
man, the tawry Tartar, the savage redskin, and
the fierce Maori. The ships of England are
found in the Arctic regions, where her men of
science pursue their researches amid the long
night of a northern winter ; they make their way
over the surface of the stormy Atlantic; they
traverse the boundless wastes of the Pacific's
calmer main; they carry the wealth of the world
over the tideless Mediterranean; they plough
the blue waves of the Indian ocean; they sum-
mer in the waters of the Persian Gulf and of the
Red Sea. Watch the sun in his course from
east to west, and note the varied scenes upon
which he shines during a brief twenty-four liburs
—scenes all illustrative of the immense area of
the Queen's empire. In the far-off waters of
China or Japan the sun rises on the Saxon astir
on board his ships and in the seaside stores of
his merchandise. Upon Burmese rivers and in
the teak forests of Tenasserim, as well as in the
cocoa groves of the eastern archipelago, there he
is also. It shines upon him in the cities and
Wallis of India, where he is the proportion of
one to ten thousand, and subdues the old civil-
ization to the new. Upon many a parched and*
yellow plain, in many a city magnificent even
for) the past thousands of years ago, and upon
the banks of many a stream which had its name
in history when Britain was a barbarous laud,
is the Anglo-Saxon now to be found. He is
cultivating tea on the heights of the Hituatayake
watching the production of coffee on Singhalese
hills, hunting down the slaver in the bays of
Sierra Leone, doing duty in a hundred sea-girt
islets, mounting guard in the embrasures of
Malta, Gibraltar St. Helena, and Heligoland.
busy amongst the sugar canes of the West ludies
alive amidst the coral islands of the South Seas,
astir over the sheepwalks of Australia and the
fern groves of New Zealand. And when the sun
has set in England, the heart and centre of it
all, it is still shintng upon that great western
dominion of Canada, and lighting up the path-
way of the toilers in the New World.
The responsibility of governing such an ehor-
mous range of territory is as heavy as tire duties
of such a rule are manifold. Our erepire liter-
ally stretches from the Tropics to the Poles.
Like the _Romans of antiquity, the Eeg .sh have
long manifested a marvellous faculty for coloniz-
ation. With all the rivalry between tireat Britain
and the United States, the people of the latter
never forget that they are Anglo-Saxons, aria
that English colonies developed into the Great
Republic of the West. Though the bond which
politically joined the United States to. England
is broken, British America is yet a land laraer
than the Russian Empire in Europi,. But
whether in Canada or in the West Indies, on the
enormous is:and of Auetratia, ie the beautiful
island:, of New Zealand, or in the possession of
South Africa, every Englishman must feel that,
to guide and help as their need may be is the
high destiny which those of her children who
love her best will most fervently desire that their
country may fulfil.