The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-04-02 00:00:00

Our IConban Correspenbuq,

-' [We deem it right to state that we do Rot at all I'AMeS
Identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.

The financial year always closes on the 31st March,
and when the balance between revenue and expendi-
ture has been struck, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
is enabled to settle the details of the Budget, the prin-
ciples of which he has already determined. Seeing
that the Budget is to be produced on the 4th of April,
not much time will be lost. The closing two or three
weel:s of the financial year is always a busy time at
the Treasury, which is constantly being called
upon to meet drafts from the great spending de-
partments, such as the War Office, the Admiralty,
and the Civil Service. It is essential that the
accounts should strictly balance up to the
31st of March; and all round in the Government
offices it is held to be a canon of procedure "that if
any money is wanted, it is better that the amount shall
figure in the old year's statement than to wait until
the new year's money is coming in." Again, imme-
diately before the explanation of the Budget proposals
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the officials at the
Treasury are often occupied in all kinds of calcula-
tions as to the probable effects of various fiscal changes.
As the work of a newspaper is not to be judged by
that which actually appears in its columns, but
also by the quantity of rejected matter in the
waste-paper basket, so the Finance Minister makes a
selection from th 3 ideas which have occurred to him
and which have been wrought out in detail by his sub-
ordinates. With these all before him he snakes his
final choice, and the taxation of the country is re-
adjusted ac,:ordingly.

"Budget night" is one of the great nights of the
session in the House of Commons. The changes an-
nounced often affect very materially great commercial
interests, and these are fully represented in the
Lower House. The lobby is crowded by bankers,
merchants, brokers, colonial dealers, and traders
of all descriptions, to get the first ne w 3 of
what is going to be done. The galleries are
packed to their utmost capacity. Formerly, when
the admission of strangers was by rotation on
the principle of "first come first in," the people
who had secured members' orders were in St.
Stephens' Hall as early as eight o'clock in the morn-
ing, eight hours before time. This, however, was
found to be productive of inconvenience, and involved
Loss of time and of temper. So the ballot was resorted
to; and under the new arrangement there is no neces-
sity for a stranger to be at the House before half-past
three, when the whole of the orders are cast into
a bag, and lots are drawn for entrance into the gal-
lery. The experience of the present Chancellor of the
Exchequer at the Treasury has extended intermit-
tently over nearly half a century. It was in 1834 that
Mr. Gladstone first entered upon public life on his
appointment as a Lord of the Treasury in Sir Robert
Peel's Government; well nigh thirty years have
elapsed since in 1852 he made his deiut as Chancellor
of the Exchequer.
The Lords have arranged for themselves a substa.n-
tialeholiclay at Easter, and from the 7th of April to the
4th of May, no voices will be heard in the gilded
chamber, for the peers will be resting from their legis-
lative labours, which thus far have not been heavy.
The Commons will be satisfied with a clear
fortnight, and this no one will grudge them after the
wear and tear of the past few weeks. As Easter falls
late this year, the vacation should be one of enjoy-
ment. The further away we get from the cold blasts
which have characterised the vernal equinox the
longer will be the days, with more hope of finer
weather. Winter has made a strong effort to stand
its ground in the, presence of the advancing sunshine.
Snow in October, snow in January, snow at Lady-day,
here are times which stand for three distinct quarters
of the year, wherein winter has held sway in the tem-
perate zone. Geologists have estimated that in about
seven thousand years the climate of these islands will
be assimilated to that of the glacial period ; but
judging from recent experience of prolonged and bitter
winters, we seem to be hastening towards the glacial
epoch with more speed than the original calculations
would appear to indicate.
Travellers amid the snows of Russia have given
graphic descriptions of the desire of the people for a
land of bright skies and long summer days. In the
cities and in the towns, in the villages and in the
isolated dwellings on the black steppes, the protracted
acquaintance of the inhabitants with snow and ice
causes them to sigh after the fertile plains of the
sunny south, where the rivers are not frostbound
and vegetation responds readily to the efforts put forth
by the cultivators of the soil. Many of the illustrious
guests who have been to St. Petersburg on the occa-
sion of the impressive ceremonial in connection with
the funeral of the late Czar, must have marvelled at
the choice of such a spot for a new capital by Peter
the Great. The ice will not be out of the Neva
for the next two months, and .the city is still
enveloped in a mantle of snow. Czar Peter
was an original man ; so he determined to
build a capital to be called after himself, at
the extremity of the European end of his empire,
and right in the midst of the marshes of Finland.
Moscow, with its old traditions, its splendid palaces,
and its comparatively central position, was abandoned
for a place many degrees colder, and much further
away from the confines of Continental civilization.
The way in which the Neva is blocked up with ice
during half the year must always seriously affect
the po,ition of St. Petersburg as a commercial
city. During the few weeks of summer the weather
is hot and the air is stagnant. Some historians
have declared that inasmuch as the modern capital
of Russia' rose like an ignis fatuus from the
Finnish marshes, so it will one day disappear.
It is built upon an enormous raft, and when the
raft rots the city will vanish.
The death of Sir Charles Reed, the Chairman of
the School Board for London, has been heard with
sincere regret by all friends of the cause of education.
Less than six months ago the Rev. John Rodgers,
vice-chairman of the Board, died after only a few
days' illness, and now the chairman himself has been
called to his rest after a brief indisposition never looked
upon as serious until within a few hours of his death.
On the 9th March he addressed a great election meet-
ing at Coventry, and a day or two afterwards was
seized with a fainting fit, the result of a strain of the
heart, never again taking his seat in the School Board.
The chairmanship of this body is an honorary office,
involving an immense amount of labour and attention,
for its holder must of necessity be acquainted
with all the working of the vast organisation
of which he is the head. Sir Charles Reed
was, in addition, one of the Peabody trustees, so that
In additian to superintending his business of a type-
- founder, he led a busy life between providing London
with elementary education and supplying the humbler
classes of the capital with better dwellings. His years
are ended at the comparatively early age of sixty-two,
a time of life at which many of our statesmen are in
their prime.

The conclusion of peace in the Transvaal, and the
passing away of the cloud which only a short time ago
seemed to hang over our relations with the King of
the Ashantees, together with the satisfactory Revenue
Returns, are like so many gleams of light in a firma-
ment which has so long been gray, and occasionally
dark and louring. Our only outstanding difference
now is with the Basutos ; and that, according to the
Colonial Secretary, is capable of an adjustment which
will not give much trouble. There was a pecu-
liarity in the conflict with the Boers which has
caused the incidents of the struggle to be followed
with more interest than that which usually attends
a scene of hostilities eight thousand miles distant.
Unlike the Basutos, the Kaffirs, the Pondos, and the
Zulus, the Boers were neither negroes nor rude bar-
barians ; they were white settlers colonising the land
of the Africans, and as far removed from savages
as the English colonists themselves. Those who
viewed with equanimity the slaughter of 10,000
Zulus in the camraign of 1879—and that was
the estimate of Sir Bartle Frere himself—would
have recoiled from the sacrifice of anything like that
number of white men. As to General Roberts,
who, upon his arrival found a telegram awaiting him
with instructions to come back, every one will endorse
the sentiments of Lord Kimberley and Mr. Childers,
who paid a well-deserved tribute to his devotion to
the public service as illustrated by the manner in
which, without the slightest loss of time, he set sail
for South Africa on receiving his appointment.
An experiment with three different systems of the
electric light is to be tried in the City of London
at a cost of £B,OOO. Seci.ions of the civic streets, and
the whole of London, Southwark, and Blackfriars
Iridgei, are to be illuminated by the Brush,-
Joblackhoff and Siemens plans respectively, with a
view to ascertain which, if either, is to be permanently
adopted. The success which has attended the applica-
tion of the electric light on the Thames Embankment,
Waterloo Bridge; and more recently at the Paddington
terminus of the Great Western Railway, has enabled
the City authorities to move in this matter with some
degree of confidence; and it may be added , that,
during the Easter recess, a, trial of the electric
light i 4 to he made in the Hoff ie Of C6rnmoris.
William Tyndale was the first translatr of the
Bible into English, and a meeting has been held at
• the Mansion House, the Lord Mayor in the
for the purpose of aiding the movement whi .h seeks
to perpetuate his name ard to commemorate his life's
valuable work by a statue on the ThMiles Embank-
ment. in a line with the Embankment on the eastern
side is Queen:Victoria-street, where are situated the
offices of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and

one of the principal attractions of its windows are
the Bibles in the various difficult languages of
oriental lands, Arabic, Hindoostanee, and Sanscrit
being amongst the number. Whenever the pedes-
trian passes that way he may see people gazing
at the curious characters which convey the know-
ledge of the Bible to the dwellers in those countries
where the Gospel was first preached. Since Tyndale's
time scholars and divines have translated the Bible
into the languages of all nations, and peoples, and
kindreds, and tongues; but the work which he did
was, in his day, unquestionably a great one; and
there ought to be no difficulty in raising the neces-
sary sum for a statue which on one of London's
busy highways will keep green the name and memory
of a man who applied his life's energies to so great and
noble a work.