The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-06-05 00:00:00

'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE.

The Globe of Monday has a most interesting article under
the above title, from which we make the following ex-
tracts :

The celebration on Saturday of her Majesty's
birthday may justly be regarded as a milestone in
our national life, a convenient halting-place from
which we may look back and take stock of our
progress. On Saturday, in an especial manner and
with especial emphasis, the morning drum-beat,
"following the sun and keeping company with the
hours, encircled the earth with one continuous
and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."
When in 1814, " Waverleyr ; or, 'Tis Sixty Years
Since," appeared, and startled the reading world, it
was found that the time represented and reproduced
by the magic pen of the great unknown novelist
was sufficiently remote in character and incident to
be romantic to his generation, and to interest a greater
number of people than had ever before been interested
in a work of fiction. The difference in the condition
of the world between 1814 and 1754 is, however, as
nothing when compared with that between 1880 and
1820. Between these dates there is immeasurable
distance. The six intervening decades have, indeed,
witnessed greater changes than any six centuries of
our era. It is only necessary to mention a few
to show the vast gulf between the first birthday of
our Sovereign Lady and that which was celebrated on
Saturday.

In 1820 Napoleon was still alive in St. Helena,
and Louis XVII. was King of France, Alexander I.
was autocrat of All the Russia.s. There was no
kingdom of Greece; no kingdom of Belgium. But
there was a kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In Ger-
many there were more than thirty reigning princes,
and in Italy several; while the Pope was still a
temporal sovereign. Among the eminent immortals
then living were the poets Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Scott, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Shelley, and Keats;
the musical composers Beethoven and Weber; the
actors Kean, Kemble, Siddons, and Talma ; and the
sculptors Flaxman and Canova.. Goethe and Jean
Paul Richter were still living in Germany, and
Kotzebue died only the previous year. When her
Majesty's first birthday was kept the population of
Great Britain did not exceed fourteen millions. The
two great colonies of South Australia and New Zea-
land had no existence. The one, founded in 1836, has
now a thriving population of over 250,000, and the
other, first colonised in 1839, a population of over
420,060. That the material, moral, and legal condi-
tion of the people at home and in the colonies has
been ameliorated in the interval will be manifest from
an enumeration of some of the most notable changes
that have been effected since that event.

In 1820 slavery was at its height in the British
colonies. So long ago as 1772, in a suit in the King's
Bench, in the caseof the slave, Somerset, it was esta-
blished that slavery could not exist in Great Britain.
But it was not till 1833 that the Act for the abolition
of slavery in the colonies, and the compensation of
persons entitled to the services of such slaves was
passed. In 1820, coining, forgery, arson, and horse-
stealing were punishable with death. So late as 1827,
Edward Lowe, a coiner, was drawn to the scaffold on
a hurdle; and it was only in 1829 that Thomas May-
nard completed the catalogue of those who were exe-
cuted for forgery.
There were no railways, the Stockton and Dar-
lington Railway, constructed by Stephenson and
Pease, not having been opened till 1825; and
the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, at the
opening of which Mr. Huskisson was killed,
not till 1830. Only the year before the first
steamer, the Savannah, crossed the Atlantic. Gas
had not yet been supplied to all London, and
some of the most important provincial towns were
lighted with flickering oil-lamps. The London police
did not commence duty till 1829. The first omnibus
run in London started from Paddington to the
Bank of England on Saturday, 4th July, 1829.
"Sixty years since" nobody would have dreamed
that in the lifetime of any then living one would be
able to hold immediate communication with another
at the end of the earth, and receive an answ i
er n a
moment. In that year Apere had invented his tele-
graphic arrangement, employing the magnetic needle
and coil, and the galvanic battery; but it was not till
1838-9 that Mr. Cooke set up a telegraphic line on the
Great Western Railway from Paddington to West
Drayton. It was only in 1824 that M. Daguerre com-
menced those curious experiments which resulted in
the wonderful art of photography, which has not yet
reached the limits of its power.

After alluding to the progress shown in the manu-
facture of steel pens, as also pins, as instances of cheap
production, the writer refers to the remission of taxes
on tea, sugar, and salt, and the restrictions which then
existed on the importation of foreign corn. The
writer, in remarking on the state of literature at that
period, says—" There was no literature for the people,
and newspapers were so taxed that only the rich could
procure them; even had they been reduced in price to
what they novr are the vast majority would have been
unable to benefit from them, as they were unable to
read." After reference to other social changes, the
article concludes :

There are signs that changes of even greater mag-
nitude, political and scientific, are close approaching.
It seems as if Science is now about to grasp the
secrets of Nature, and to be able to utilise her forces
at will. It is probable that progress for the next
sixty years will be much more rapid than during the
past. In one direction, however, there is no indication
ef a new departure. Loyalty to the throne does not
abate, but has immeasurably incryased and deepened
since the accession of our Sovereign Lady. In 1820
high treason was not an unknown crime, and in the
May of that year five men were executed as traitors
for what was known as the Cato-street conspiracy. In
this May of 1880 hundreds of millions of people of all
races, forming a Power which, to use again the words
of the American Webster, "has dotted over the sur-
face of the whole globe her possessions and military
posts," look with reverential affection to Queen
Victoria. •