Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1891-11-28
eRIToNs WANT A CHANGE.


The Squandering of Vast Sums on Royalty
Must Cease.
NEW YORK, Nov. 28.-A dispatch from
London says:
Hitherto it has been an unwritten law
among the newspapers Of the United
Kingdom that no speculations should be
indulged in regarding the possibilities of
the death of Queen Victoria, or the pc
htical exigencies which might follow
such an event A profound sensation
has therefore been created by the appear
ance in the current issue of The Weekly
Times and Echo, a paper which circu-
lates nearly 1000, goo copies among mid
die and working classes of a leading edi-
torial over the caption when the Queen
Dies ?" and which deals in pronounced
language with such possibility, 1t says
that the recent rumors in the United
States and elsewhere of the death of
Queen Victoria, has had the effect of
bringing English people to realize that
such an event is bound to take place
sooner or later.
1t says that there is no doubt that if
the great bell of st. Paul's were to toll
that the great queen, of whom all En-
glishmen are proud had been gathered
to her faith rs, the high functionaries Of
state, Whose business it is to salute the
new sovereign, would have sought out
the middle-aged gentleman, just now
gradually growing out of the gloom OF
his latest indiscretiOns, and would hail
Edward VII with as much enthusiasm
as their regrets for his mother permitted.
But after the days of mourning had
passed and the great mass of the peo-
ple-the electors by right of household
suffrage, who have never had part or lot
in the bargain made by parliament with
a new sovereign-would have had time
to think out the situation, what would
have followed?
The question is difficult to answer, but
it is certain that there would be an IL
resistable demand for a full and prompt
revision of the terms on which the civil
list of the new king was to be settled.
For thirty years England has been
spared the ghttering absurdities of regal
pomp, but for thirty years the people
have had to pay for them all the same.
In the next reign England will neither
endure nor pay for them, There will be
no disposition to feel meanly with the
fgurehead of the country, but the En-
glish people will see to it that in the
next reign the immense sums squandered
on needless palaces on the idiotically
barbarous court splendor, are not
granted.
The time has arrived, says The Times,
to think about and discuss these mat
ters, and there is no disloyalty or disre-
spect to the lady who fills the throne in
discussing them. Whatever party is in
power when the queen dies, the people
will suffer lest they make their voices
heard. Probably if the queen lives for
ten or twenty years more the people
will formulate their demands in far
bolder key. The Prince of Wales is
even now scarcely entitled to his
mothers reasonable expectation of life.
If she lives another decade, the relatives
of royalty-all parasites of the nation
will have multiplied TO an extent that Is
appalling to contemplate,
"There is after all, concludes the
editorial IAN instinct of self-preserya-
ton. as regards the order itself in the
grim determination Of eastern despots to
destroy all but the immediate heirs to
the throne. When the England of 1900
or 1910-supposing the queen should live
so long. and there is really no reason
why she should not-will bend meekly
between the weight and cost of the
menagerie of royalties which have ac-
cummulated by them, the people of that
date will have to determine. All that
we urge now is the legitimate considera-
ton of the new problems that may pre-
sent themselves any day, that hang upon
the life of lady in her seventy-third
year; and that, unless we are strangely
mistaken, may unexpectedly twist the
whole course of our national history, if
they are precipitated on us unawares
and unforeseen