The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-01-04 00:00:00

"GOD SPEED TO ALL."

The following appropriate leader, from The Times
of New Year's Day, deserves a thoughtful perusal,
and we have therefore much pleasure in reprinting
it:—

To-day we all wish one another a Happy New Year. We
do not consider much that happiness is &contr name for
good fortune, and that the wish is a prayer for the ape 2ill
favours of a kmd Frovelence during the twelvemonth to
come. If only things happen well to us, we are confident
that our growing wisdom and experience will turn our good
fortune to • hater account year by year. Such is cur faith
In ourselves, and such, too, in people generaily, and In ,iur
own nation etyma all. This Is the very lotion and fete of
those joyful expectations when we can almost forget the
pelt In the dawn of a brighter future. The bursting of a bud
now delights more than a whole forest if Autumn foliage:
even though the hidden lesson be that hope to better than
the fulfilment. In one mood or another we all hope ; and
the hopes of a nation are something accumulated, carryieg
us all on, with a bound, over the ettlf of midwinter, and ever
many a buried sorrow. It is only upon second thoughts,
and with acme strait log of the mental vision, that we recog
line in this ever.recarrlng expectation definite fore-
castings, ettapee of hope and of fear, objects far or
near, shadows of the past, and the underteklngs that
have pre engaged or Interest and affection for years
to come. We wake from the old year with hdlg.
remembered dream, that will haunt our wakiug hours Wies
wake, too, as they who have weerily laid down a hard piece
of work, or Idly postponed it S imething, we feel, has to be
finished, or begun. But Winter, like sleep, restores and
strengthens heart and brain. Even now we can fare
with more ease and more sense of power the future, which
It was • burden to think of a few months ago. Ent the most
sanguine mood and buoyant spirit takes its form from
circumstances. It would almost seem now ste If the entire
population of these Isles had the rising fevi r. Every-
body and every class and conditii n would emerge h.to
the higher rank and larger space and ampler range of
faculties All would grow, even though that growth he at
the necessary expense of those about them It would not
be easy to name any, untiess they be the merest wrecks and
loge, with life hardly left in them, that do not share the uni-
versal instinct, certainly much developed in these day.. It
has become vain to put the qnestion once thought the test
of an unreasonable and unsoctal ambition. Zech class, each
employment, each trade, each office and department, honestly
end seriously endeavour, to throw eft some yoke, to dispense
with some encumbrance or some sharer of its gains,
to subordinate all the rest, or at least make the
connection all gain on is own side, and all lost
on theirs. The rock of the imprisoned winds Is but a feeble
type of innumerable ambition., incompatible becauen deal-
ing with. limited atm k, and therefore not to be sainted, ex-
cept at the cost of one mother. With the disappointment and
still worse trouble that may be in store for us severally, we
may be thankful for the 1.0111111011 matters which interest
all equally, even though there be pain in th, m Split as we
are hito a thousand interests and factions, we may be thank
till for our vast material enterprieee, our railways, improve
ments, public building', and iiiecoverieainart and gel ence. We
may all agree to he thankful lir averted war, coueolidoted
unity, or extrication, near or accomplished, from formidable
difficulty. Even our fretful neighbour has le Teething to he
thankful for, and to re-uulte society upon, in the steady pay.
melt of her vast war dont. If excess of prosperity le only to
end in war, revolution, and anarchy, and depletion is the
only cure, then France may even rel ice that a bitter
medicine hss been administered, that the pstlent gets on
even better than might be expected and that, meanwhile,
some conetitutionat disorders have less power, and are
shamed into dlsgulsiug themselves.

If, as a people, we are to he held true to our own principles
If action and legislation, the great matter for mutual con-
gratulation Just now should he that every inhabitant of
these Isles has been taught his value, and has learnt that
henceforth his position will depood on himself. That we
should do our duty in that station of life in which Heaven
had beet pleased to place us was always a hard doctrine to
any one of our insular races; hut Parliament has latterly ex-
plained that Providence acts through ourselves, and that a
man's proper station is that which he makes for himself.
The great rule of British society now is competition,
whether by examination, or by eeltassertion, or in the race
of life, or in the legislative course. This is no Jest—
it t. sober earnest; nor has Parliament had much chotee in
the matter. The necessary reply to Irremediable complaints
Is tat people must take care of themselves ; do the best for
themselves, put their own shoulders to the wheel, proteot
their own property, rights, and homes In the impossibility
of material relief, which would mills* the miracle of to,,
loaves and fishes to be repeated es ery day in • thousand
forms, Parliament elves all sonn-thing certainly better than
what most of the in ask for—the education what shout I quality
them for taking care of themselves, and even making their for'
tun., If they will sacrifice present ease and comfort to future
success. That this has been beset with difficulties, that
the week is Incomplete, and that there are not • few hitches
and obstacles, with perhaps a little going off the line, was
to be expected, from the fact that hitherto the work has
been found Impossible. It a man will be content to do
what his fathers did before him, he may do it as well as
they; if he must attempt what they did not, he can have
no certainty of success Where education already flourishes
It has had to be so enlarged as to cover the new ground
taken in; where it has not existed in any true sense,
there is the work of bringing light, life, order, classifica•
Hon, and obedience out of that which was without form and
I Told. In these valleys of the shadow of death there I. now
• struggle, and • warfare indeed and there are those who
must suffer for the shortcomings of their predecessors, lint
when all are to be made independent; when all are under
orders to help and right themselves; all enfranchised; all
told they are not only their own masters, but also the
governors of the nation; it follows that all most be taught,
even though we only see our way to a perely elementary
education. But out of au this there must also come an up-
rising. It has come. The solid ground is upheaved from
its deep foundations, and all are watching the towers that
must rock, tor they will fall.
But how will all this social enfranchisement, of which the
vote Is the least part, least worth, and lowest at praised,
affect the myriad happy recipients of a new political citizen-
ship? Every profession and institution of the country
must receive new colour and attritutes in accordanoe
with the changed state of possessors and Inheritors. If
the people are new, then all else is new—new the rela-
tion of labour and capital, new the rights of Industry,
new, so tar, the Church, the C mrta, the very soli we stand
on. Declare all equal, aid tell all it is their own fault if
they are not equal in deed is in word, and the revelation
is an Imposture, the promise void, irides& all the means
for fulfilling them be adaided to the pew work to I-, done.
Such lathe work of le tures years—ti be accomplished In In-
stalments year by yesr—and we are to congrattil to one
another today, with as good heart as we can, thit Prost-
denc • has put so great a work into our hands, and bids es
bequeath it to our children. We are committed to h. We
have been committed longer, perhaps, than we know. F. .e
a long time we have boasted that all mankind were cur
commercial tributaries : the towhtre of our Queen wow
stretched over all both hemispheres, and untold rec. s
and creeds. In Ake same sense that all the earth belones
to to, we belong to all the ettrth Eves), child of an
artisan or labourer born to-day is the born Golsen of an Ertl-
pin, which In extent, people, and variety tar SW putts all the
Empire. of antiquity massed together. When such lithe
fact, and such the inheritance, it is Impose to not to regard
as • thing nf the past the Old England of our memries
and affections, the creation of old barbarism, Inveterate
servitudes, and mighty conquests, consummated Inn magni-
ficent hmdallam. Yet this noble heritage may be the

leaven of a fax larger maze, In which It is to liVe
while itself disappears. Not • year now passes with-
out disclosing a larger breadth am! a deeper volume
of change. Only, as often before, if the change he premed,
and if people will insist on dohs; everything 16 thsir time.
there will be alternations of stubnorn resistance and violent
revolittlon. For our part we have no wish to survive Old
England The "till English Gentleman " is, happily, dead
and buried long ag.,, tut his sons survive and are civilised
linings, even though auth a strong family likeness to the
pictures in the gallery. We do not see why Old England,
mother of all our races, national or adoptive, should
not take long to die many centuries perhaps.
Would any of our colonies or dependencies, would the
United States themselves thank us if they crossed the ocean
only to tlnd its like themseives They want something
Quaint and revs read, naive, I icturesque, and not uniformly
reasonable. They want something which they could not
make, and will have to find ready made, no matter where
we are to look for the makers of it.
Could we, indeed, be content to be Englishmen alone, that
would be an easy pirt to play, but brief, Ineffectual, and
finally inglorious. But there Is no such part in real life it
Is a performance, and nothing more. We belong to a far
larger brotherhood, and have cast hi our lot with It. We
should labour in vain if we directed and confined our am-
bition to Anglicishig a fifth part of the human race. We
cannot even succeed at home We have an Empire, and we
have to conduct lion Imperial prim itdes, not on the tradi-
tions of one family in it. lint while we change all the world
changes and as our ~WI) people at home become ripe for this
or that addition to their powers and opportunities, all the
rations of the world—at least, those within our pale—are ad-
vancing to that maturity which precedes • nsw phase,
perhaps a glor:ous transformation But they who are too
eager for ripeness often find rottenness lu Its place, and
have to be content with it Let us all move on. gently, and
together—at the pace, if possible, that does not kill, hut yet
mike. a day's work. A New Year is the time to wish God
speed to all the wayfarers on the broad road of our common
humanity, We would see no laggards, no wanderers, and
none pushing on so impetuously as to lose all fellowship of
thought and feeling. It lathe world's work, not each man's
own, that late be done.