The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-09 00:00:00

fonbon t orrtsponbent.

fV deere.„At right to state that we do not at all times
1.-.l.4raty ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.)
I-
'Vth
tirlie:progress of the month of January, Lon-
don-gradually throws off the-listless appeaiance which
has characterised the fashionable quarters for several
weeks previously. Aristocratic families slowly return
to town, west-end mansions once more become
tenanted, the law courts are re-opened, and prepara-
tions are made for the re-assembling of Parliament.
Every week now makes an appreciable difference in
the length of the days; we have left gloomy December
teadad us, and can look forward to brighter if not to
better times. Occasionally, as the days draw out,
there comes isle ef bright, warm sunshine, whieh falls
upon the laud like a ray of light in a dark and cheer-
less time. It lasts but a few houre ; still it is welcome
as a foretaste of what is to come when winter shall
have given way to spring, and Nature has burst
the bands of ron in which the frost has bound
her as though in a vice. The present winter
will, indeed, never be forgotten by vast numbers
of those who have had to pass through it.
The amiable dreamers who have been grumbling
during the holt three or four years at the absence of
an "old-fashioned Christmas," have had no occasion
to complain this timae, certainly. More bitter weather
we have not experienced for years; in fact we must go
back to the opening of 1855 to find, in some respects,
anything like a parallel te it. That was the time, it
will be remembered, of the investment of Sebastopol
by the allied armies, when the number of gallant
soldiers who fell victims to cold and exposure was out
of all proportion to those who fell before the guns of
the Russian batteries. We are not at war now,
it is true; but to the poor, the aged, and
the infirm, it has been a time of sad conflict with
the relentless cold. In London alone thousands have
succumbed to its paralysing influence, and have been
beaten in the unequal strife. Only a few days ago we
were told, on the authority of the Registrar-General,
that in five of these cold weeks the bills of mortality
in the metropolis showed an excess of nearly 3,000
over the average. Thus, in thirty days, had the frost
iwept out of existence a population equal to that of
many a little English town.
The Old Year went out with the saddest of memories.
As the people gathered for the watch-night services,
and whispered one to the other "This is the bitterest
night we have yet had "—for the thermometer was
then marking fifteen degrees of frost—the London
daily papers were receiving by telegraph the ex-
traordinary story told by the survivors of the Cos-
patrick. The calamity was so stupendous that at first
no credence was given to the anneuncement ; but
when confirmatory telegrams came, and it was
known that the three men saved from the wreck
were on their way to England in the Cape mail
steamer, there was such a rush of Special Corre-
spondents to Plymouth as was without precedent in
the history of newspaper enterprise. One copy of the
St. Helena Guardian, containing Mr. Macdonald's
statement, fetched the extraordinary sum of eighteen
guineas! The recital was a very plain and simple
one, but the competing journalists were glad to get
hold of the slightest scrap of information respecting
catastrophe so overwhelming. If any one on board
the steamer had possessed the pen of a ready writer,
and in the course of conversation with the three men
during the passa,geAlia,d well worked up the story, he
might have made almost any money of it when he
came into Plymouth. The Nyanza was boarded by at
least thirty Special Correspondents, each outbidding the
other, for they had orders to go to any expense in the
hope of obtaining exclusive information. The repre-
sentative of one enterprising London journal had
formed the bold plan of bringing the men from
Plymouth to London in a special train, and writing
out their narrative on the journey, but this intention
was frustrated by the determination of the other
pressmen who crowded the deck of the steamer, and
who felt it to he almost a matter of life and death
that they should obtain some particulars of one of the
greatest of modern maritime disasters. May many a
year elapse before the public is so sated with horrors
as those which crowded the newspapers in the closing
days of 1874!
While the Home Secretary has been making a
personal examination of some of the blocks of houses
which have been erected or the accommodation of the
working classes, the Industrial Dwelling's Company,
of which Sir S. Waterlow, M.P., is chairman, has
offered premiums of £250 and £l5O respectively, for
the best and second best, designs of blocks combining
fitness for the intended purpose, and economy in the
cost of construction. Twenty sets of plans were sent
in, and these have been on view in the great hall of St.
Bartholomew's HospitaL The beiildings erein set
forth in miniature have a general resemblance to some
of those of the same class already in existence, pos-
sessing at the same time marked features of novelty
and originality. The company, although approving
of some of these designs, decline to carry out any of
them, on account of the cost involved. It has been
suggested that one consideration might well weigh in
the preparation of bliese plans, and it is this :—The
houses run to a great height, and are meant to accom
modate whole communities of men, women and
children; it would therefore be well to make
facility of escape in case of fire one of the condi-
tione which should entitle a competing plan to a
premium.
Mach discussion has lately taken place on the con-
dition of the naval medical service, which, many con-
tend, requires to be reformed. The journals devoted
to the interest of the navy tell us that it is not so popu-
lar with the medical profession as it once was. Can-
didates for the service are increasingly difficult to
obtain, and the efficiency of the staff cannot be re-
garded as permanently secured so long as this remains
the case. Should any sudden demand be made upon
the navy, it would probably be found that the num-
ber of the junior medical officers was altogether un-
equal to absolute requirements. In the meantime the
medical profession has done well to give a clear and
temperate utterance to their grievances. The matter
is one which will doubtless occupy the attention of
Parliament during the coming Session, which, by the
way, is expected to be rather a bluer one.
The first Cabinet Council of the present year will
be held in Downing-street on Tuesday the 12th in-
stant, when it is expected that Mr. Disraeli will have
sufficiently recovered from his recent indisposition to
preside. Unless the head of the Administration is
present, a council is of very little use, for any
decision which may be come to must be provisiona
under the circumstances. When the Prime Minister
is too unwell to venture out of doors, the councils are
held at his own house. In the last year of Lord Palmer-
ston's life this was very often the case. About twelve
months ago it was Mr. Gladstone's turn to be seriously
indisposed, and he actually got out of his bed to receive
a deputation urging the assimilation of the county with
the borough franchise. That was within forty-eight hours
of the clap of thunder which fell upon the country in
the announcement of a dissolution of Parlament. We
shall not have a similar surprise in the current month
of January, we may depend upon it. As to our states-
men, the air of Opposition seems to have a bracing
effect upon them. Mr. Gladstone felling trees in the
woods surroundieg Hawarden Castle is a different
looking man from the pale and careworn Prime
Minister of a, year ago. It is somewhat remark-
able that the two most prominent political
leaders of the time should celebrate their
birthdays within two days of each other. Mr.
Gladstone was sieety-five on the 29th of December, and
Mr. Disraeli sixty-nine on the 31st. There is hope.
that both have many years of usefulness before them
when it is recollected that Lord Palmerston filled the
office of First Lord of the Treasury at the age of
eighty-one.
I have referred above to the opening of Term. This
is one of the divisions of the legal year, which will be
abolished when the Judicature Act comes into opera-
tion next November. The existing system.kas been
found to be cumbrous, and not sufficiently elastic to
meet the necessities of the present day. For instance,
Hilary Term begins on the 11th of January and ends
on the 31st, so that it does not last but three weeks—a
time totally inadequate to deal with the mass of busi-
ness which is brought before the judges. Then again,
some of the vacations are much too long. One of these
continues three montlas, during which time there is
not a single superior court of justice open to the
people. One alteration to be made by the Judi-
cature Act will obliterate the distinction be-
tween law and equity which has hitherto prevailed.
I-n reality, however, it must still exist, for equity
often effects that which law is powerless to deal with.
The former applies common sense to the remedy of a
glaring injustice; the latter is tied down by the strict
terms of Acts of Parlament, and cannot move beyond
them. Only a little while ago the Court of Queen's
Bench was applied to for the redress of a very sub-
stantial grievance, and the Lord Chief Justice, in
refusing the application, regretted that by statute he
had no power to interfere, adding that a court of equity
possessed the requisite authority to do so. Therefore,
although there is to be a fusion of the two, it must not
be supposed that either is to be swept away. As to the
new law courts, for which an act was obtained ten
years ago, they will not be ready for a quarter of a
century to ccreae, at the present rate of progress.
In the absence of topics of political contreversy,
the London papers often take up social questions for
discussion during the recess, and one of these has

lately been—How to maintain discipline in our
schools. The subject has been made prominent
through the operations of the London School Board,
which has been gathering together the waifs of the
streets, and giving them such an amount of instruc-
p will'help-them through the world. Some of