The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-07-12

Forty years ago I asked Liebig, walking
somewhere in the country, If he believed
| that the grass and flowers which we saw
around us grew by mere chemical force
He answered. No! no more than / could
believe that a book of botany describing
them could grow by mere chemical force
Every action of human free will Is a
miracle to physical and chemical and
mathematical science"
To this most interesting statement OF
the leading British man of science-far
ahead of any of Americas small-fry who
worship at the shrine of Darwin--the Nor
folk paper adds: THE view of LORD
Kelvin is mainly the view Of the science
of today. 1t has been forced to accept a
creator as the only logical alternative of
| a blind chance that. as Lord Kelvin says.
could not have given us the world we
know in a million million years"
| A reform movement in no country ever
succeeds until public opinion is strongly
in favor of it. When the public senti-
ment is Overwhelmingly in favor of keep
| ing children under fourteen out OF Drl-
vate factories or is in favor of the dis
pensary system as to liquor drinking, or
favors prohibition outright; or is against
debasng, unscriptural divorce laws, which
disgrace North Carolina; or is for equal
taxation compelling all corporations and
all people to pay equally, justly, honestly
according to actual fair valuation; or is
dead against making public debt for
any purpose, be it education or what not,
remembering the States former bank
ruptcy and heavy reputation, then public
opinion will be the winner, and the lniqul-
ties and expressions and vices will disap-
pear. Let people know what is right and
proper and wise and necessary for good
government. Let all have chance to
know of inequalities and injustices and
outrages. Let the people see just how far
are the criminal laws, and how the vile
and influential escape by reason OF said
laws and their neglect of enforcement
how one class escapes retrlbutlve justice
and the poorer class easily catch it-how
the one-man power is baleful, deceptive
and dangerous and then reforms of the
right kind will come or the people like
! in the time of Trelawney when it was
given out by the powers that be must
die''-will be ready to say as it was said
"Then thirty thousand Cornishmen will
know the reason why" When there was
a greet stir in England thirty or forty
years ago over the publicity of debates in
the Parliament, the cry went up from ali
parts of the kingdom for free publication
of speeches, debates, revision, resolutions,
ETC., in the Parliament. Mr.. Mccarthy
in his well known history says truly, that
when public opinion is strong enough to
help the Government through with a re-
ta1
interests, then and not till then, the
reform is carried" He says all are in
terested in this, and especially the poor. l
quote: 1.-THE factory child, the climbing
boy, the appointee under colonial sys-
TENS of modified slavery, the seamen sent
to sea in the rotten ship; the women clad
in unwomanly rags who sings her Song of
the Shirt; the other woman almost liter
ally unsexed in form, function and soul,
who in her filthy trousers of sacking.
dragged on all tours the coal trucks in
the mines-these are the tyrants and the
monopolists for whom we assert the privi-
lege of Parliamentary publication" But
what picture of misery does Mccarthy
present. The publications in Pennsylvania
last winter of conditions in the coal mines
opened wide the eyes of the American PEG.
zple The horrors ought to be made TO
stop forever and no more coal famines
affecting thirty millions of people, should
be tolerated for a day when brought on
by the cupidity and meanness of men.
The first sheriff of Jewish birth ever
elected Sheriff of London was Mr.. Monte
fore This was few days after Queen
yictoria's accession to the throne. she
conferred the Knighthood upon him when
she visited what is called 1.-THE City" on
(, the following Lord Mayors day. The
name City is confined to old London IN
the remote past when the population was
quite small. 1t had been hundreds Of
years since Royalty had honored Jew.
1t was in the far away times, according
to Mr. Mccarthy, when royalty was
pleased to borrow the Jews money. or
order instead the extraction of his teeth,
because of his unwillingness or inability
to respond promptly to the demands Of
the king" During the long reign of the
late Queen there was a most notable ad-
vance in both religious liberty and equali-
ty. Mr.. Gladstone, among all British
statesman is the most typical in the
broadening of religious liberation as in
the extension of the franchise and popular
education Sir Moses Montefiore was a
very worthy subject and a man OF high
character. Mccarthy says in his very en-
tertaining History of Our Own Times"
that the Queen could not have more be-
comingly inaugurated "the broadening of
/ religious federation" "than by the com
phment which sovereigns and city paid
him.
| l have read my dear brother John r..
Brookss book a second time, on holy llv-
4 ing and holy dying, which by the way IS
the title of two of the works of that sin
gularly ornate end beautiful writer, whose
diction is sometimes gorgeous and splen-
did, and whose isagination is poctical, and
whose figures and decorations are among
the most engaging and commanding in lit
erature. The precise title of Bishop
Jeremy Taylor's works that have long
ago become classical among religious pub
| LEGATIONS, is THE Rule and Exercise of
Holy Living" and "The Rule and Exercise
of Holy Dying" These are treatises upon
| Christian conduct. / do not remember to