The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-01-11 00:00:00

Our Tonkin Contsponbtali

We (seem nght to st—te that we do not at all MOO.
Centlfy ourselves with our Correspondent'. opinionial

We are within a month of the meeting of Parlia-
ment, and speculation as to what Ministers may in.
tend to propose will soon be resolved into certainty,
the only uncertainty being whether any, and which, of
these promises will he realised. Th, non-parliamentary
average amount of Ministerial utterances, and from
these the public have bees able to gather lees than the
ordinary amount of information as to Ministerial
policy so far as the coming session is concerned.
Ministers have told us rather what they not intend
to undertake than what they mean to endeavour to do,
and really I cannot see that the public have any occasion
to grumble at this. Members .if the Government keep
their own counsel, and they cannot be blamed for this.
Nothing, however, will prevent the public speculating
en the probable leading features of the coming session.
The only point to which I shall allude is whether Mr.
Lowe is likely to reduce the Income-tax. As to his
abolishing it, that is far to good to hope for. But will
he reduce it? Mr. Cardwell, the last authoritative
speaker on the subject, does not give us much ground
for hope. All he will tell us is that it cannot be re-
duced without a great reduction in our expenditure.
Then why not have both ? But seeing that 1872
brought us nearly five millions and a half of revenue
over 1871, I, for one, cannot see the necemiity for such
a great reduction in our expenditure, and will only
&if that as the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have
• large surplus hs ought to reduce this obnoxious im-
post, which is becoming more and moreunpopular.
The brief letter of Mr. Bright's, introducing to pub-
lic notice • very long letter by the late Richard Cobden
on the Land Question, comes opportunely when the
public mind is brginniug to be so decidrdly turned
towards this subject. hook upon the Land Question, in-
cluding WI it does so many subsidiary questions, as of
deeper interest, of a more exciting character, and of
more intrinsic importance, than even the question
of "Reform," with all that that much-meaning word
include.. If therefore the Government intends this
next session to tackle the thorny subject of the land
we may expect, from this coarse alone, a most excit-
ing parliamentary campaign. But itria Ministers do
this? I pause, like Brutus, for a reply which I can.
not give.

What particular phase may be assumed by the con-
test between employers and employed in the coal and
iron trades is quite uncertain, but whatever may be
the result these continual disturbances of the labour
market in these two important branches of industry,
on which so many other branches depend, are very
serious, and no one can tell where they will end.
There was reason to hope that the miners had become
prosperous and contented, but it seems they have be-
come the one without being the other. These disputes
excite great interest in London, as they are known to
affect many trades here as elsewhere, as well as the
price of coals, which are now dreadfully dear, ranging
from 275. to 375. a ton. Happily we have hitherto
had a very mild winter, but if frost sets in this will be
very serious to the poor.
We are officially informed that during the laat
quarter we have paid nearly a million and a half off
the National Debt. So far so good. Whether any-
body feels an atom the better for it may be doubted,
but at all events we ought to pay what we owe, and if
we—no, not we, but the present and succeeding genera-
tions—go on as at present, why perhaps the National
Debt may be paid off in a few centuries, more or less.
A popular London daily paper has opened its
colorists to correspondence on the subject of poor =-
employed and employed clerks, for poverty is not
wholly barred by employment, so wretched is the pay
In some cases. And truly the revelations of these
correspondents are painful indeed. Two thoughts
will occur to most readers—that these men are on the
whole worse off than our mechanics and artisans, and
that the combination which raises the wages of the
latter is denied to the former, simply because their
number is so large that if the employed were to refuse
their services under such or such a salary, large
numbers of unemployed would come forward. Having
read most of the letters on this painful subject I can-
not see that either the employers of the clerks on the
one hand or the clerks themselves on the other are to
blame. The plain truth, 'the inexorable logic if
Is that the market for clerks is overstocked in this
country, and that there is no demand for English
clerks abroad ; indeed there would be similar
complaints in France and Ceinmany were it not that
their wretched newspapers are never opened to
the expression of the wants of the people. It would
certainly be of no use for our unemployed clerks to go
to the United States, or Canada, or to any of our
colonies, for the market in these countries Is also over.
stocked. The inference is obvious. Parents in far too
many Cans bring up their boys to the counting-house.
The boys are "educated for commercial life," OA the '
school prospectuses say; they easily get their first
place, because they give six months', or even a year's
services for nothing ; but when it comes to a question
of • living salary, why their employers—some employers ,
rather—find that they can discharge the clerk who, like II
Oliver Twist, asks for more, and take on another
"young gentleman "who is desirous of an introduction
to commercial life. That there is no exaggeration in this
full many of my readers know to their coat, and I would
urge, therefore, the desirability of bringing up boys rather
to trades than as clerks. Thus gradually the competi.
tion among clerks would be diminished, and our manu-
facturers and trading employers generally would have
somewhat less difficulty with their men than they now
have.

Replying to a memorial from Galway, Mr. Glad-
stone writes to Lord Clanricarde to ray that Govern-
ment has under its consideration the subject of pur-
chasing the Irish railways, remarking that the chief
difficulty appears to be that if Government buys it
must al.o work the lines. No doubt of it. And why
not? The Belgian Government, for example, work
the railways, and it is universally admitted that on the
whole the Belgian railways are better managed than
those of the United Kingdom. One thing is at lea 4
tolerably certain, that the feeling in favour of the Go-
vernment —or Ray the State control of railways, not
in Ireland only, but in other parts of the kingdom, is
•
growing.
A few meetings have been held here with the view
of inducing the Home Secretary to procurelhe mmii
sion of the whole or part of ths twelve months' im-
prisonment which certain gaa-stokers are suffering for
alleged conspiracy. The eumming-up by Mr. Justice
Brett, and his declining to give effect to the jury's
recommendation to mercy have been severely coin-
-mented upon. Some of the resolutions passed at these
meetings and ranch of the language used are utterly
unjustifiable, and opposed to common sense. I confess
that I should not now be sorry to tee the punishment of
these men mitigated, inasmuch as I believe them to
have been to a considerable extent misled by others.
But that the stokers deserved some punishment I hold
to be beyond dispute. Apropos of gas-stokers I may
mention that an agitation has sprung up in an aristo-
cratic quarter of the metropolis against the attempt of
a company to increase the price of gas from Is. to
ss. Id. per 1,000. As other companies are following
or threatening to follow the same course I fully expect
that by the time Parliament meets there will be a
determined opposition to the monopoly of the com-
panies, and I should be by no means surprised if this
monopoly were swept away.
The weather is the most prominent topic of anxious
conversation. I have been reading some noteworthy
remarks in the Gardener's Magazine on this subject.
It tells us that • lonjpcontinued rainfall in the
autumn has usually been folloped by a severe winter,
and that the winter of 1860 1, under these conditions,
was the most destructive of any within the memory of
the oldest man living, and that trees and shrubs burst
In the act of freezing. "Let the frost come," it added,
"if it will, but come gently; it will be a blessed change
from fog and mud; Nit we need dryness more than
cold, and a really Revere winter will be in an especial
manner • great calamity." May we be spared from
this calamity; but at present we are dreading disasters
from an opposite cause.
I see that the journeymen bill-posters have eetab-
'hoed a benefit society for the members of their
track I have not that neat pocket volume, the
"_Poot Office Directory," by me, to ascertain
something of the extent of this trade, but there
is no doubt that it has immensely increased within
the last few yearn. What we may call our moral
literature has also vastly improved during this
time. The artistic talent displayed in our posting.
bills is highly creditable to their printers and
artiats, and it may well be imagined that the
journeymen bill-posters now feel themselves a rather
Important body. What sort of • (society the new asso-
ciation Is! know not, but I suppose that, established
first as a benefit society it will develope into a trade-
union society. I wonder whether our brethren of the
paste-can regard themselves as skilled workmen There
obdoes not appear to be much art in posting a bill, but
there may be more than meets the eye.

PROVERB/I CONCERNING Nos.—We have no
fewer than fourteen English proverbe relatitg to this
important feature of the human face divine. They are
as follows —l. Follow your nose. 2. He cannot see
beyond his nose. 3. An inch is a good deal on a man's
none. 4. He would bite his own DOM off to spite his
face., 5. He has a none of noses. 6. As plain an the
nose on your face. 7. To hold one's nose to the grind-
stone. 8. To lead one by the nose. 9. To put one's
no‘c ont of joint. 10. To pay through the noise. IL
To have a good nose for a poor man's sow. 12. To
thrust one's nose into other people's business. 13. A
nose that can smell a rat. 14. Every man's nose will
not make a shoeing horn.

THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON.
(From The Times, Monday.)
SUNDAY, JAN. 6, 1
The Emperor haw passed & less tranquil night,
his general condition remains as satisfactory as before.
HENRY THOMPSON.
Da. CONNEAU.
DR. Lis BARON CORVISART.

" The very name of the disease, by which the Eme
peror is disabled will at once convey to the mi ads of pro-
tesaional readers= approximately correct idea of what
he must have been called upon to endure. It was his
experience of the same condition which induced
Paley to declare that no other conceivable pleasure
was comparable to the cessation of pain ; and
there are, indeed, few of the ills to which flesh is
heir that make a larger demand upon human for-
titude. Within the memory of many who are
now living there was for such sufferers no means
of escape from • lingering and painful death except by
a surgical operation of great severity, and one which
was attended, in persons past the middle period of
life, by such mortality that there was comparatively
ems llinducement to submit to it. According to statis-
tics founded upon large experience, about one in every
fons of the patients so operated upon, if above the age
of 45 or 50, died from the effects of the operation; and
hence it was commonly postponed to the latest possible
time, and practised only as a last resource. But
towards the close of the first quarter of the present
century attention began to be gives to a milder form
of operation, by which the intrusive substance could
be broken into fragments within the body of the pa-
tient, and then expelled by the efforts of nature. The
process, not actuaby originated, but practically intro-
duced into Europe by Civiale, was first employed in
this country by Baron Heurteloup, who spent seine
time in exhibiting and teaching it in English hospitals.
Slowly and by degrees it has been brought to its pre-
sent state of perfection, mainly by the labours of
Brodie, Fergusson, and Thompson among surgeons, and
by those of Messrs. Weiss in the invezton and construc-
tion of the instruments by which the me hanical
dith-
culties of the process are overcome. The Emperor Na-
p Icon is the second Royal patient for whom the skilled
Sir Henry Thompson has been put in requisition; for
he operated successfully upon the late King of the
Belgian., and thus enabled him to close peacefully his
long career. In this, as in every other surgical pro-
ceeding, the experience of the first years after its in-
troduction has been made available for the study of
the conditions which tend to failure, and of the means
of obviating them; and the last published statistics
of the crushing operation show 93 per cent. of re-
coveries, or even 96 per coot., if, out of a total of nearly
200 cases, we set aside a few deaths arising from
causes apparently unconnected with the operation.
In otherwise healthy persons, and when the calculus
is of small size, crushing may be considered wholly
free from danger, and it is only in dealing with
larger masses of deposit, and with cases complicated
by intercurrent maladies, that a certain though
small percentage of mortality is experienced. The
Emperor, unfortunately, has reached a period of
life at which the strength of maturity is usually
beginning to give way to the feebleness consequent
upon degeneration of the bodily texture.; and the
bulletin of Saturday informs us, not only that the
calculus was a large one, but that it bad probably
been some years in course of formation, and that it
may, therefore, have set up local mischief among the
structures irritated by its presence. It will doubtless
be necessary to repeat the crushing more than once,
perhaps several times; and each repetition will add to
the possible danger of the patient.. .. Happily the Em-
peror has at his command a degree of surgical expe-
rience and manipulative skill which no other country
in the world could furnish. To persona of less exalted
station it is often a comfort to reflect that, after all,
and whatever the result, the best possible thing has
been done ; and this consolation, at least, will be found
at Chiselhurst."

NT, JAN. 6, 8 P.M.
disturbance are