The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-27 00:00:00

ur foullou Corrtspoitt(tnt.
[We deem it right to state that we gdo not at all times
identify ourselves with our Correspondent's opinions.]

The' right of petitioning the Crown and Parliament
for redress of grievances is a fundamental principle of
the Constitution. Petitions are, to this day, extant
from the time of Edward 1., and very singular looking
documents they are. At the beginning of every
session a Committee of Public Petitions is nominated
by the House of Commons for the examination of all
petitions presented to that assembly, and it is not un-
common for the forgeries of signatures to be reported,
and to be voted a breach of privilege. The theory is
that a document of this kind after presentation, lies
upon the table for the inspection of any member; but
in practice they are thrust into a huge green baize bag,
which is suspended not far from the Speaker's chair,
wad are seen no more except by the Committee afore-
naid. They are always presented at the beginning of
the sitting immediately after prayers. When public
business of importance is expected to come on at once
—such as for instance in the case of the Tipperary
election last week—the Chamber of the Commons is
crowded to its utmost capacity, and the petitioning
ceremonial is carried on in dumb show. Every member
is talking to his neighbour. So clearly marked is
the hum of conversation that the only sound to
t-o distinctly heard is the voice of the Speaker uttering
the single word "Table !" What does this mean?
'Well, just this. "The question before the House is
that the petition from the inhabitants of such-and-such-
a-place do lie upon the table. Honourable members
who are of that opinion will say Aye—to the contrary,
No. The ayes have it." But nothing of this is heard
except the solitary word which I have quoted. As a
rule only the object of the petition is stated, but any
member may call upon the clerk to read it. The word
"humble" must always appear in it, whether it be
addressed to the Queen in Council, the Lords, or the
Commons. Some years ago the Queen of Oude pre-
sented a petition to the peers, praying for a restitution
of the rights of her sovereignty, but on Lord Campbell
calling attention to the fact that the expression
" humble " did not once appear in it, their lordships
refused to receive it. A petition to the House of
Commons is generally presented by the member repre-
senting the constitueucy from which it emanates, but
any peer can be called uponito perform this duty, even
though he may disapprove of the contents and purpose
of the document whiCh has been entrusted to his care.

The return of, winter must have made many an
invalid ng for a sojourn in the genial climes of the
sunny south, of whose glories poets have so often sang. I
Lord Brougham, who died in his 90th year, could
never be persuaded to face the rigours of an English
winter during the last quarter of his prolonged career.
No sooner had the chills of October set in than his
lordship withdrew to his pleasant villa in the extreme
south-eastern corner of France, and England saw no
more of him until the following spring was firmly
established. His life seemed to be passed in perpetual
summer, and there is little doubt that the course
adopted by him tended to longevity. There are many
besides the aristocracy who escape the bleak winds,
frost, snow, and fogs of our northern climate. The
extremities of France which touch upon Spain and
Italy are most pleasant places of resort in cold weather.
Pau and Biarritz, in the south-west; and Cannes,
Mentone, and San Remo in the south-east, are warm
enough to suit the tastes of most Englishmen even in
midwinter. Thirty hours will suffice to carry the
traveller from London to Pau, and five hours more will
take him to Mentone. On the last day of the old
year, which was so bitterly cold with us that people
whose vital power was low could hardly keep
the life within them, the residents at Mentone
were enjoying brilliant sunshine, balmy air,
and the perfumes of fragrant flowers. A large
English colony is permanently settled in and about
Pau; and English amusements—hunting in par-
ticular—are freely indulged in. Sheltered from the
wind, and with a suffieiently powerful sun, even in the
depth of winter, possessing also a light and pure air,
Pau is, perhaps, the most popular of all French towns
resorted to by our countrymen. Those, however, who
enjoy the balmy breezes of the south, are but a small
proportion of the people who turn their longing eyes
there in vain.
The free opening of the Tower on two days in the
week is a concession which is likely to be highly ap-
preciated. An extraordinary place is the Tower of
London. Flanked with busy marts upon the land,
and with the peaceful fleets of our merchant navy
gliding up and down the surface of the river upon
which it grimly frowns, it seems like an anachronism
in the present day. There it stands—cruelty and
tyranny struck into stone—in the very heart of the
city, and in the centre' of civilisation. Its hoary battle-
ments carry the mind back to the days when William,
Duke of Normandy, flushed with the victory of Hast-
ings, lorded it over this fair land, and built the Tower
'in order to strike terror into the hearts of the citizens
of London. Commanding alike the Thames and the
city itself, it was a most formidable engine of des-
potism in the hands of an absolute monarch
Every one of its venerable gateways has been a silent
witness of instances of oppression and misrule. There
is a tradition that none who passed in at the Traitor's
Gate ever came out alive, and a sort of mystic awe
surrounds it to this day. It faces the river, and is an
object of daily interest to hundreds who pass up and
down the stream on the decks of penny steamboats.
There are iconoclastic persons who, without much re-
gard to historic associations, and looking at the present
enormous value of the site occupied by the Tower,
would not hesitate to vote for its destruction, and the
turning of its acres to national account' But without
such a place as the Tower, we should have 'little to
tell us of the contrast between the times of cruel
tyranny and the freedom of to-day—the savage ferocity
of Henry VIII. and the mild and gentle rule of a
constitutional sovereign. Type of feudalism and a
reminiscence of barbaric ages though it be, let us keep
the Tower as long as its ancient walls will hold to-
gether, for in a sense it is an education to all who
wander through it, and as they note the axe and the
block, the darksome dungeon, and the trebly-locked
doors, the racks, the thumbscrew, and all the other
instruments of torture, they cannot but be thankful
that their lot is cast in more enlightened days.
Amid the general demand for technical education, a
satisfactory feature is the increasing popularity of the
institutions known as training ships. The working of
the Education Act has materially contributed to the
number of their inmates, for it is becoming more and
more a recognised truth, that whether in the Royal
Navy or in the merchant service, the more instruction
a youngster is enabled to receive, the better seaman
he is likely to make. Considering the free use made
of the pressgang, and the cansequent ignorance of
most of its victims as to anything but the basest rudi-
ments of their duties, the great victories won by our
fleets 70 or 80 years ago seem little less than marvel-
lous. Had our sailors received the highest and most
scientific training at the best naval college, they could
not have achieved more splendid successes. At the
same time we should not care now to venture upon a
war with a maritime Power with such raw material as
Neilson was compelled to be content. The more a
youth learns, the better is he qualified to succeed in
his profession, whether at sea or upon the land, and
the increase of training ships is thus a guarantee for
an efficient and well-instructed navy in a future
generation.
If the National School of Cookery which is in opera-
tion at South Kensington succeeds in spreading a
better knowledge of one important duty at the table,
it will not have been established in vain. I refer to
the work of the carver. To say nothing of the economy
which may be exercised by a proficiency in the art—
for a good carver will make a joint or a bird go half as
far again as a bad one, the miseries which would be
avoided at public dinners are incalculable. How many
an indifferent wielder of the knife has felt his heart
sink within him at being placed opposite a couple of
fowls, and how many have lost their appetites alto-
gether on finding that they are expected to dissect a
turkey! No malefactor ever put on a more agonising ex-
pression of countena.nce. At home, with your wife and
children, it is all very well; but when you go out, pro-
bably you meet people who kno4omething of carving
themselves, and are inclined to be critical if they see
that you are making a mess of it. You get very
little relief by declaring that the knife must be a
trifle blunt, or that the bird is remarkably
strong in its joints. The waiters cast knowing
looks one at the other' as they politely inti-
mate severally that Mr. Thompson would like a
liver-wing and white meat, Mr. Johnson a slice of un.
adulterated breast, Mr. Anderson, a merry-thought,
Mr. Biggins the parson's nose, and Mr. Stiggins a
drumstick. These technicalities are in all possibility
new to you, and in
*your confusion you splash the
gravy, or upset the sauce, your enjoyment for the
evening having been effectually spoiled. The picture
here drawn is by no means a fancy, or an imaginary
one, and many an indifferent carver has returned
home, declaring that, come what may, he will have
his children taught in this way, better than he was. It
was a happy thought on the part of the founders of
the institution at South Kensington, that they should
not only teach a housewife how to cook a bird with the
least possible waste, but also instruct her husband how
to cut it up so as to get out of it the greatest possible
benefit.
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Official papers presented to Parliament show that
the cost of the Arctic Expedition, which is to sail next
May, has up to the present time been 9bout £lOO,OOO.
It is believed that no newspaper correspondent will be
permitted to accompany the ships, which in the interest
of the public, who have to pay the piper over this mat-
ter, is to be yegrotted._People. would road with in-

tense interest a description from a graphic pen of the
impressions produced by a visit to those lonely seas,
which seem to be excluded from all civilization by a
perpetualbelt of ice; of the long unbroken night, which
lasts for months; of the darting of the many-coloured
aurora across the wintry firmament; of the swell
caused in that solitary ocean by the movement of those
vast icebergs, which, sometimes sailing along in com-
pany, catch a ship between their enormous bulk, and
shiver her to pieces as easily as a giant could crush a
beetle! Really, we should like to know something of
the manners and customs of the people of Spitzbergen,
which our maps tell us is a city situate within the limits
of the pole itself. What are their ideas of the great
world which roars far away beyond the limits covered
by their perpetual snow and their eternal ice? Have
they ever heard of the Queen of England—do they
know that there is such a place as London; or such
an ocean as the Atlantic? What kind of flesh and
blood must thqy have to stand against the everlasting
cold; have they any agriculture, any collieries, steam
engines, railways, manufactories, or newspapers? The
truth is that we know quite as much of the inhabitants
of the moon as of the people of Spitzbergen. They seem
to belong to another planet altogether, and for anything
that is known of them might as well be in Mars or in
Jupiter as upon the surface of the earth. A graphic
picture of their mode of life would be one of the most
interesting things ever published.

Lord Northbrook's successful coping with the Indian
famine will entitle him to the dignity of an earldom
when he returns to this country, for the Viceroyalty
is held for a term of five years, three of which Lord
Northbrook has already served. The appointment is
the most splendid in the nomination of the Crown—
£.3o,ooo a-year, the allowance to the Lord-Lieutenaut
of Ireland being £20,000. An earldom ensures its
possessor the courtesy title of Lord for his eldest son,
and of Lady for his daughters, while the sons and
daughters of a Viscount or a Baron are Hon. Mr. and
Hon. Miss respectively.