The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-06-27 00:00:00

SIR BARTLE FRERE ON LIVINGSTONE.

In London, on Monday, the anniversary meeting of the
Royal Geographical Society was held, under the presidency
of the Right lion. Sir H. Bartle Frere, KCB. in the hall
of the University of London, and was attended by Major-
General Sir Henry Rawlinson, K.C.8., Lord Cottesloe, Count
Minister, German Ambassador, Malcom Khan, Persian
Minister, and a number of ladies and gentlemen interested
in geographical pursuits.

The Royal (Founder's) Medal, for the encouragement of
geographmal science and discovery, was awarded, through
Count Mlluster, to Dr. Schweinfurth, for his explorations in
Central Airiest, his discovery of the Tele river, beyond the
south-western limits of the Nile basin, and for his admirable
work, "The Ileart of Africa," in which he has recorded the
results of his travels ; and the Victoria, or Patron's Medal,
was presented, through Mr. Bateman, to Colonel P. Egerton.
Warburton (now in Australia), for his journey across the
previously unknown western interior of Australia, from
Alice Springs, on the line of overland telegraph, to the west
coast, near De Grey river.
Public school medals were presented as follows
Physical Geography—Gold, L Weston, City of Loudon
School ; bronze, F. C. Montague, University College School.
Political Geography—Gold, W. li. Dirton, Clifton College
Bristol bronze, L Jacob, City of London School.

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•
THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER ON
KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.
In London, on Sunday evening, a large number of
the delegates to the I 'ongress of Secieties for the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Animals, attended, by invita-
tion, the service at St. Paul's Cathedral, there being
also a crowded congregation.
The seneon was preached by Dr. Fraser, the Bishop
of Mancheeten who took for his text the first nine
VerSCA .f the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, in which the
prophet *fake uf the peace awl happiuees that will I
attend the coming of Christ's Kingdom. " When the
uf shall dwelt with the hunt and the 4,1 eat straw like
the of, lend they shut' sot hurt our destroy in all not
holy mountain." He could appreciate. said the
Bishop, the propriety of the desire which led the
delegates to wish to place the cause they advocated
under the shelter of religion and even of Chris-
tianity. He used the latter word advisedly, for
he was not blind to the charge frequently brought
against Christ's Gospel that, professing to be a com-
plete rule of life, it yet left almoet untouched great
departments of humanity and wide lielde of conduct,
hardly touching, for instance, questions of politics and
war, slavery, social ethics, the relations of capital to
labour, or the special province, for the time, of the
delegates— the behaviour of man towards those in-
ferior orders of beings, living, sentient, some would
add intelligent, as himself, over which even philosophy
admitted some power or law f nature had made him
supreme. It must be allowed that there was nothing
in the teaching of ('hrist or the Apostles which
directly instructed them in their conduct towards
the brute, but before they admitted this charge of
want of completeness against Christianity, they must
remember what it was and what it undertook to do ; it
started on the deposit of truth already existing in the
world, from the spirit tif the old Mosaic law, and thus
the great heroic virtues of Paganism, justice, love of
freedom, magnanimity, courage, patriotism were not,
as was sometimes supposed, ignored by Christianity,
but rather taken for granted. The essential virtue and
spirit .f Christianity was that it set before men a
Divine ideal, and then put into their hearts a yearning
desire to make that ideal their own, to know Christ,
and to follow Him. So it was that Christianity was
seen not ao much in the creeds which it formulated,
or in the worship which it celebrated, as in the temper
which it trained, and certainly mercifulness to animals
would be an element of this temper. Dr. Fraserquoted
a very long extract from Mrs. Oliphant's essay on St.
Francis d'Aseisi, as illustrating his contention, and
then in slow, clear, scornful accents went on :—" It
I may be difficult to persuade a costennonger, or an officer
' of a crack regiment playing at the noble game of polo,
or a delicate lady of fashion looking on with midis.
turbed eye, making her little bets of so many pairs of
kid gloves, if she does not venture on deeper play,
while the poor fluttering, maimed pigeons are dropping
on the aristocratic turf of Hurlingliam, that of mush
sort—tender, sympathising, shrinking from the inflic-
tion of needless wanton pain—is the temper of
Christianity, but the fact nevertheless remains so.
Cruelty to animals, by whomsoever perpetrated,
whether by peer or coetermonger, is certainly not
included in the right of dominion which is undoubtedly
given to man, and must be displeasing to Him
who heareth the young ravens when they call,
and without whom not even a sparrow falleth to the
ground." his lordship went on to observe that
periods of high civilization, or what were called
such, had seldom been remarkable for the tender-
ness of their moral sentiments. It was not
fashionable to be sympathetic, and regard for the feel-
ings of others was considered an inconvenient weak-
ness. The Dean of Ely, in his history of the Roman
Empire, said that the effect of the cruel gladlatorial
spectacles in Rome was wholly evil. While they utterly
failed to supply the bastard courage forwhich they were
designed, they destroyed that nerve of sympathy for
suffering which distinguished man from the brute crea-
tion. Yet high-born Roman ladies, at great risk, for
it was a cause for divorce if a lady went to the amphi-
theatre without her husband's knowledge, looked on at
these scenes of blood from their lofty galleries, while
secret taps of ecented water laid on over the whole
building imparted a delicious fragrance and coolness
to the air. In their own time the Spanish women,
waving their fans with inimitable grace, could gaze
unmoved upon the sand below them, stained and clotted
with the blood of bulls, of horses, and of men. And
not only were the sports and pastimes of the present
time all of them more or less cruel, but the impatiences
of their everyday life, the humours and whims of the
moment, were ministered at a cost to a man and beast
which they little dreamt of. But the members of the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in
csleleating their jubilee, could look back upon a work
which, if not widely known or unit nil, successful,
i had been benevolent n its aim and beneheieut in its
effect. They were engaged in at least as high and
Christian an enterprise as that of the Crusaders, and
to his idea it was a thousand times more after the
mind of Christ to rescue poor dumb animals from
cruel treatment than to deliver a cave hewn out of
the rock, even although it was that in which the
body .4 their Lord had lain, from the hands of
the infidels. It was the English society which gave
effect to Martin's Act, that had before
nearly helpless in the Statute Book, and much of
the inhumanity that prior to it had existed, by their
efforts and their watchfulness hail been abated. But
some was still perpetrated in the name of science, some
in pursuit of sport, some in the mere wantonness of
the spirit that needed exeitement to kill time; some in
ministering to the wants of '-Teat cities ; some out of
simple hrutality of nature. Part of these evils they
might hope in time to cure, or at least to alleviate, by
the force of public opinion; others might be mitigated
by giving more prominence to the duty of kindness to
animals in the education of the young, which might
well be a third classification of duty in a revised
Church Catechism; and others would be robbed of
what was cruel and revolting in them when men and
women hail learned the simple Christian lessen that
pleasure was not to be purchased at any price, cer-
tainly not at the price of the needless suffering of
any creature that the Lord God had made. But as
long as the present order of things lasted they must
be prepared to see some pain, some suffering, and,
he feared, some cruelty ; for they could not by con-
gresses, or Acts of Parliament, or learned essays, or
eloquent speeches or sermons, change human nature,
in which what the witty Frenchman called In bête still
, lurked, even when it seemed to have been subdued.
Never perhaps in this world would the glorious vision
of Isaiah, when no one should hurt or destroy in all
' God's holy mountain, be fulfilled. It was the tendency
of things, rather than the result, which was indicated
—a tendency to that time, far off even at present, to
which the whole creation was moving. Meanwhile,
. .

Sir Bartle Frere then delivered the annual address
on the progress of Geography. After congratulating the
members on the continued prosperity and activity of the
society no fewer than 342 new members, besides nine
honorary corresponding associates having been elected
during the year, making 2,809 ordinary and 76 correspond-
ing members on the rolls of the society— the right bon.
gentleman proceeded to mention the losses by death during
the year. The one, he observed, that had produced the
most unfeigned sorrow in every quarter of the globe was
that of the great explorer, David Livingstone-- so many
reflections were suggested by his late exertions, his
mitferings, his death in a land which he himself was the
first to explore. The circumstances connected with the
retain of his faithful followers, and the ultimate inter-
ment of his remains in England, made it difficult to re-
view the events of a life thus recently closed With the
ordinary ken of the friend or the chronicler. And yet,
was there not a true consolation for all who mourned his
loss, as they calmly endeavoured to think upon those
motives and ends which, in his hands, lent a constant lustre
to geography, and rendered the great traveller's member-
ship amongst the fellows of the society a matter of continual
satisfaction Could they conceal from themselves the
fact that the society to which he had so often contributed
priceless stores of actual observation had felt an increase of
vigour and prosperity from its close association with his
career? That mark by which the advancement in science
would be constantly detected in future ages they perceived
at a glance to be already stamped indelibly on modern
geography, and no hand had helped to imprint it so
clearly and sharply as Livingstone s. History must decide
whether his greatest glory was gathered as the explorer
eras the determined opposer of slavery. If Africa was large
enough for his wanderings, the slave trade was dread-
ful enough for all his pity. A lesser energy would have
been swallowed up in the vastness of either, and a
weaker heart would have stood still at the cruelties which
lie exposed and illustrated. Sir Bartle then gave a minute
history of Livings.one's career, starting from Ids birth-place
at Blantyre. near Glasgow, in 1813, ti lits death on the shores
of Lake itangweolo, in May, 1573. and to his interment in
Westminster Abbey in April last. Thanks to the indomitable
energy Id that extraordinary man, and to those who, bycons
tact with him, felt their lAvii natures raised to deeds of faith-
fulness and heroism. David Livingstone's journals were kept
with st-repidons core to within a few days of his death, xliii
brought hither by his negro followers with a devotion which,
whilst it had excited the admiration if every civilised nation,
had perhaps done more than any individual act on record to
mine the black races in the catiniation of the world. Let
them never forget what had been accomplished for geo-
graphy by the fsithful hand who restored to them all that it
vies in their power to bring of their lost friend and rescued
his priceless writings anti niaps from destruction. It might
easily be conceded that they stood too close in time to the
grand picture painted by such a career. As a mere explorer,
Livingstone trod some 29,000 miles of African soil, and laid
open nearly one million square nines of new country, equal
to one-fourth the area of Europe In ages to come it must
assuredly hold its own as one of the noblest purposes ever
followed up by human singleness of heart and unflinching
self-sacritlee. Enough hail been worked out by the
wonderful man in his life tp. call forth sympathy,
pity, let them say their defbrmination, to help hun-
dreds of millions whose previous existence was as un-
known as their sufferings were certainly uncared for.
Flo far back as the year 1659, the then president, Lord
Elleatnere, pointed to the rapidly filling blanks upon the
map of Africa, and he Lave praise and honour to Living-
stone. Ile bade his fellows look on his work that they
might read the nian. As they stood by his tomb, and once
again repeated the words then so aptly used, they knew that
no life ever drew from them more truly their innermost
meaning. Henceforth. in all ages and for all time to come.
let it be said of David Livingstone indeed, "Si monumentum
cpueris, circumspice."

they should all work on the line of this tendency, and
surely on ears that had heard, and hearts that had
been touched by the cry of suffering forced by cruelty
or wantonness from the very feeblest or meanest crea-
ture that God had made, the great voice from Heaven
would break as a sound of exceeding joy, when it
should be said, in the day of the restitution of all
things, the something higher than the primal bliss of
Paradise beheld, that "the tabernacle of God its with
man, anti there shall be no more death, neither sorrow
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for
the former things are passed away.'

Sir Bartie then referred to the hydrographital surveys
undertaken by the Admiralty during the past year, to the
deep-sea exploratory voyage of the Challenger, to the Indian
marine surveys, to the geographical progress in Central
Asia, America, New Guniea, Italy, Palestine, Persia and
elsewhere, to the anticipated Arctic expedition, as well as
to the correspondence which paased between himself and
the Hight Hon. W. E. Gladstone on the subject, and con-
eluded 's
more than ordinarily lengthy address amidst con-
aidagllia aPPl*use
Chief Justice Daly, President of the American Geom.,
phical Society, and Mr T. M. It. Livingstone, son of the
great explorer, were elected Fellows of the society.

At the close of the meeting Sir Bartle Frere called
Mind and James Chtunalt to him, and, In the name of
the society, presented to each of them the bronze medal, at
the same time telling them how highly their fidelity to their

truth.

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;every one I,eardeat the bravery which was shown ' objections which for generations obstructed the course
ole Weld of his aitpta when they undertook to of justice in our law Courts. It must rather be taken
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stances. There were enormotadifficulties on each side
of the question, and some danger of hardship either to
the wife or the „husband But the House of Lords
seems to us to hare adopted Oh the whole the sound
principle, and we has no fear that any injgstice will
be done.