The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-02-05 00:00:00

at Introit CorresprAtnt.
(We deem it right to state that we do not at ar tliV/3
Wleatlfy ourselves with our Correspondent's opiniow,

It is satisfactory to note that the era of Inter-
national Exhibitions has not yet passed away. It is
probable that, so far as this country is concerned, the
time can never come back when so much interest can
be excited in these :gatherings as in years gone by.
The International Exhibition of 1862 was, for instance,
an important event in our social history. Ten years
ago a series of exhibitions was inaugurated at South
Kensington, which were intended to be annual'; but
after two or three had been held, they were discon-
tinued. An attempt is now to be made in another
direction. The directors of the Crystal Palace have
ceganized a project to hold neat summer an Interna-
tional Exhibition of Wool and its attendant industries.
The idea has been cordially taken up hj the Lord,
Mayor, who has presided over a meeting; at the
Mansion-house in furtherance of the object. A
number of noblemen and gentlemen were appointed
an honorary council to assist the directors of
the Crystal Palace in the matter. Should this
experiment prove suocessful, it will prove the
first of a series annually to be devoted to
the great national industries and manufactures. In
the collection of specimens of wool, bcth the United
States-and the Australian colonies will be largely re-
presented ; cotton will follow in the succeeding year.
Apart from the usefulness of such exhibitions, their
success would tend to the prosperity of an institution
of which the people of London are proud, as having
contributed so materially to the innocence of its amuse-
ments and the wholesome chaiscter of its recreations.
No more appropriate site for the memorial to Sir
Rowland Hill could have been selected than the Royal
Exchange, the seat and centre of the commerce of the
city. Of the numerous designs sent in for the inspec-
tion of the judges (the President of the Royal
Academy, Mr. Calder Marshall, R.A., and Mr.
Woolner, R.A.), these gentlemen have decided that a
model which proved to be the work of Mr. E. Onslew
Ford, gives the best promise; but they advise that
the artist should be requested to send in the design on
s larger scale. In front of the Royal Exchange
there now stands the statue of the 1 uke of Wel-
lington, a hero who made the name of his country
famous in the history of war. The reputation of
Sir Rowland Hill was won in another way, but
it ought not to be less enduring. If peace has her
victories as well as war, the fame of the great
Postal reformer will long stand out as that of a man
who, by his foresight andiperseverance, contributed im-
mensely to the facilities for the expansion of our
commerce. It is by our commercial position that we
must exist as a nation; and the honour of a statue on
the Royal Exchange, where the congregated mer-
chants are ever reminded that he Earth is the
Lords' and the fulness thereof," is justly due to one
who did so much to develope the commercial inter-
course of the country as Sir Rowland Hill.
A committee for the Prevention of Floods in the
Thames, which was appointed by the Metropolitan
Board of Works, has presented a report to that body.
It embodies a series of recommendations and plans to
the effect that the existing embankments and river
wall should be raised not less than six inches, making
the height sft. Gin, above Trinity high water mark,
and that steps should be taken for commencing the
works required for the prevention of floods in the
Chelsea and Westminster Districts. It appears that
up to the day of the great snow storm no tide in the
Thames had risen more than four-and-a-half feet over
high water mark; but the late disastrous tide was five
feet above it. Long as the day of that storm will be
remembered all over the country, the incidents of this
overflow combined with it will make it doubly borne
in mind on the southern bank of the Thames; and it
is satisfactory to know that prompt measures have
been taken to guard against a recurrence of a calamity
which has for some years been of too frequent occur-
rences on the southern bank of the metropolitan river.
An all-night sitting of the House of Commons is an
experience which from the wear and tear involved in
it is one which members would like to come as seldom
as possible. Prevbusly to the sitting of twenty-six
hours on two days late in July, 1877, when the South
African Confederation Bill was passed, there had been
nothing of the kind for a very long number of years
In the great struggle over the passing of the Reform
Bill of 1832, there.was an occasional all-night sitting,
and at one of these the House sat until half-
past seven in the morning. But supposing the
business to have begun at four, on the previous
afternoon this would account for only 15 hours, This
falls very short of the sitting of July, 187 r, or of
August last year, when there was one of 20 hours, er
that of the 25th-26th January, which ran to 22 hours.
From four in the afternoon until six in the following
morning, the Speaker was then in his chair without
being relieved. It isimpossible not to see that a con-
tinuous run of fourteen hours is a great strain upon
the physical powers. Nor are such long sittings less
trying to Ministers, who, in addition to their noc-
turnal duties in the House of Commons, have to
attend to heavy departmental work by day, often
fatigued both in body and in mind.
The proposed abolition of two chief judgeships,
which is recommended by a majority of the Queen's
justices as an accessory to the efficient worleing of the
Judicature Act, has been pronounced against, by a
majority of the members of the Bar, at a meeting of
that influential body held in the hall of Lincoln's Inn,
under the presidency of the Attorney-General. The
principal law officer.of the Crown, as the head of the
English Bar, is accustomed to convene gatherings of
its leading members on requisition, and does not
necessarily concur in the object in view. His duty is
siniply ministerial; and in the present instance the
Attorney-General, whilst presidingat the assemblage of
Queen's Counsel, explained that his opinion did not
accord with the majority of is learned brethren. The
two distinguished posts which it is proposed to abolish
—the Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas and the
Chief Barony of the Exchequer are, as was stated at the
meeting in question, older than the Norman Con-
quest; and have, century after century, been filled by
the most illustrious of our jurisconsults. The income of
each was £2,000 a year more than that of the ordinary
judges ; the holders were exempted from the trial of
election petitions; and enjoyed the rank and dignity
of 'Privy Councillors. It is now proposed to extin-
guish these offices, and to substitute two judges at the
usual salary, who, by taking the customary duties of
their brethren, shall contribute to the more elastic
working of our judicial machinery. The Lord Chan-
cellor and most of the judges now on the bench are in
favour of this coarse, but the Bar not unnaturally
enters a protest against the sweeping away of two
splendid prizes which in all ages have been held by
ornaments of the legal profession.
The Temple Bar Memorial was unveiled by Prince
Leopold on the Bth November last, and immediately
at the close of the ceremony the late Lord Mayor
drove back to Guildhall, and handed the insignia of
office over to his successor. It was urged at the time
that a mode of marking the site of old Temple Bar
might have been adopted which did not occupy so
much of the space of a crowded thoroughfare; and
this point having been considered by the Court of
Common Council, has been referred by that body to
the City Lands Committee for its report. Mr. Shaw-
Lefevre, the First Commissioner of Works, in suggest-
ing the removal of the Memorial from the front of the
Law Courts, paid a well-merited tribute to the public
spirit of the Corporation, as manifested of late years
in many ways, which will be cordially endorsed by all
_ _ _ . . _ . .

F

I

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who are acquainted with the history of that body.
Its action over theTreservation of Epping Forest for
the perpetual use of the people will always entitle it
to the gratitude of an enormous population in a part
of the metropolis where work is hard and ill-paid and
,recreation grounds are few.
The lessons of energy and perseverance have been
taugitt in many ways, but seldom with greater force
than in a. book which is being read a great deal just
now, edite4 by the Hon. Mrs. Hardcastle, who has
presented tlia public with the letters and autobio-
graphy of her ther, Lord Campbell. Those of us
who remember him RA Lord Chief Justice, and after-
wards as Lord Chancellor, find it difficult to believe
that lie was born more than a eentury ago—he seemed
bound up in so many ways with the public life of our
.Iwn. time. Lord Campbell came to London a poor
Scotch Lad in 1798, when he was nineteen years of age,
without friends or influence to push him on the road
fortune. We find him in 1800 recording his belief
in his diary that he would be Lord Chancellor, a
position which he reached fifty-nine years afterwards,
and when, s.s it turned out, he had only tvro years
left of his long :7:n,cl honourable, career. The diary of
such a man, extending ever a period of more than
sixty years, is of interest to it? 1 classes, and there is a
great demand for the book at the drculating libraries.
London in 1798, when Campbell arrived in it by coach
from Scotland, poor and friendless, and London in


1861, when as Lord Chancellor, he was suddenly
summoned from it to another world, were two
different places; and the pictures of life in it, as
dra.wu I.yy the d-ceased peer, are of great interest.
One thing in this autobiogiaphy is especially
chcervable, and might well be lonrne in mind by
other 3 besides thos?, who aim at the Woolsack.
However numerous might be Lord Campbell's en.
moments, and however fatigued from the work of
the day, he never failed to keep up his diary. The
result is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of
the long period represented by the life of this dis•
tinguished man.
While we are preparing to take our own Census in

4-1. 0741 toix

April next, we have been furnished wilh the figures
showing the astonishing growth of the population of
the United States. The declaration of American in-
dependence was made in 1776, not many years over a
century ago; and in 1790 the peDpl3 of that wide-

spreading Continent were rather over three millions;
in 1820 they were nearly ten millions; in 1830 they
were just under thirteen millions ; in 1840 they were
a little over seventeen millions; in 1850 they had
reached twenty-three millions; in 1860 thirty-one mil-
lions; in 1870 they were rather less than thirty-nine.mil-
lions ; and raft* more than fifty millions in 1880.
Twenty year ago the United States had more people
than the United Kingdom has now, and the present
probable excess cannot be less than seventeen mil-
lions. Emigration from this country and from Ger-
many have combined to swell the number of the
inhabitants upon the American continent one
upon which, however, there is ample room for all who
care to try their fortunes in what is practically a
new world. It has been said that the valley of
the Mississippi alone is capable of producing corn suf-
ficient to feed the whole of Europe ; but whatever may
be the experience of the other countries upon the con-
tinent, there can be no question respecting the aug-
mented quantities of American produoe which are
poured into this country.
Public attention is again directed to the military
operations in South Africa. It is within a day or two
of two years ago that the news arrived in this country
of the disaster at Isandula ; and now the interest of
the nation is concentrated on the advance against
the Boers. There can be no doubt that Sir George
Colley's movements had been retarded by heavy rains,
and this serves to remind us of one of the difficulties
which confront any expedition dispatched into the
Transvaal at this season of the year. Rains falls in
that region in the summer, which lasts from October
to March, the winter being the dry season. During
the rains the tracks which serve for roads soon be-
come impassable, the fords.flooded and dangerous; on
the other hand in the dry season the grass is burned
up and the water disappears. Towards its close,
that is from July to September, ox waggons are
brought to a standstill, mules can be employed
only to a limited extent. The time most favour-
able for transport purposes commences in March
and ends in July. The roads and rivers have then
become passable, and the sun has not yet scorched
up water and grass. Later on, too, the grass
becomes so dry as to be combustible, and it is pos-
sible that the Boers may lay waste their country by
means of grass fires, lighted, if practicable, to the
windward of our encampments. This can be done as
early as April, but later on the grass becomes like
tinder. It will thus be seen how important is the
early arrival of reinforcements, so as to enable Sir
George Colley to continue his advance. The next few
weeks of the rainy season form really the most
favourable time for the operations, for transport
would he impossible in a time of draught, and with a
prospect of a series of grass fires.