The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-09-11 00:00:00

THE HARD WORK OF AN ENGLISH

PRINCE.

The Prince of Wales has been compelled by his
numerous engagements to abandon, with much regret,
the project of visiting the Australasian colonies on the
occasion of the Melbourne Exhibition. His Royal
Highness had greatly desired to carry out this
arrangement, if circumstances had permitted.

The Times of Wednesday, in a leader, thus comments upon
the above announcement :

The Prince of Wales is not to visit our Australian
Colonies on the occasion of the formal opening of the
Melbourne Exhibition. He proposed doing so, we
are told; but he has had to give up the idea with re-
gret. This will not be very much wondered at. It
would be well, of course, for him to go to Victoria to
gratify colonists who are so unfailingly loyal. The
Melbourne Exhibition is a great enterprise. It is a
circumstance of which we may be proud that one
of our colonies can vote £330,000 for an indus-
trial show, and can attract exhibitors and visitors
from all parts of the world. A signal acknowledg-
ment of this would, no doubt, be appreciated. But
Princes are but men, and their engagements at home
are so frequent that they may well shrink from under-
taking others at the Antipodes. They are wanted
here on all sorts of occasions. They must preside at
endless charity meetings and open picture galleries
and exhibitions, docks arid municipal halls. They are
expected to say a good word for any public enterprise
which is a little more important than its predecessors.
There was a time when Princes might concern them-
selves with their own affairs and pleasures. But it is
not so now ; there is always plenty of work before
them, and if they answered every call made upon
them, their fate would be unenviable indeed. It i
the common lot now-a-days for people of position.
The Bishop of olden times' who had abundance of
leisure at his disposal for the cultivation of elegant
scholarship and the enjoyment of society, is almost
extinct. His successor is a hard-working man of busi-
ness, who slaves away on committees, travels from one
confirleation to another, conducts an interminable oor-
resnondence with an importunate clergy, and cannot
call an hour his own. A popular English Prince is in a
fair way to be equally hard driven. He has a daily round
of business routine to perform. Every Mayor in whose
reign a public building is begun or finished secretly
feels that he has a sort of right to the good offices of
the members of the Royal Family. The sun never
rises and sets in these islands without some public
institution being opened, and on each occasion some
one in power is sure to think that the proceedings
would be gracefully rounded off by the presence of
Royalty. It is said of Louis XIV. that none but him-
self could have got through the fatiguing course of his
everyday duties: and an English Prinoe would re-
quice a stout constitution to comply with the urgent
requests which daily come to him. England, Ireland,
and Scotland are tolerably large fields to cover; but
if Royalty is expected to visit every colony which
happens to have something very interesting to show,
there is a terrible outlook. . . .