The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-11-22
THE NEWS FROM LONDON


 London, November 21.-Sturdy Britons change. Ideas as to the privileges cre- ated by government are undergoing a change. It has been for centuries all one-sided. A popular awakening Is at hand. Politics amounts to a continual struggle between the ''uncommon" and the common people. The "uncommon" people insist that they have the right to govern; the right to be paid for govern ing. and the right to enjoy many privi- leges, because they govern. To enable them to enforce those claims the more easily, they resisted giving votes to their fellow-subjects and they resisted the ef- forts of the latter to obtain education until circumstances compelled them to diminish this resistance. They resist, and still resist, every endeavor to make pro- gress-and they describe themselves as patriotsl They maintain that it is dan gerous to permit the common people to interfere in the government of the coun- try, because the common people are un- educated-and they, themselves, retard ed the education of those people, Gov ernment of the people, by the peers, for the peers, is their avowed maxim.
 'orhe younger sons must live on the state; the elder, on the estate' once said an astute dowager. That plan is follow ed in these directions. The elder sons of peers, or of the territorial magnates. are distributed in parliament, in the gov ernment, and in the guards; the younger sons in the government offices and in di- plomacy, where they get pay and pen- sions. For the elder sons of the smaller landlords there is the army; for the younger, the church, the navy, and-the daughters of the rich middle class. It is an admirably organized system for the purpose of maintaining a hundred thou sand people at the expense of forty odd millions.
 It is curious fact that there are only seven million Jews In the world, out of an estimated population of over a billion and a half, and yet their successful com petition, after centuries of oppression. has aroused the acute hatred of almost every civilized country! It is the most stupendous compliment that was ever paid to any body of men.
 There has been a deporable outburst of race feeling in India lately over some cases in which Europeans were charged with assaults upon natives, and the vice. roy Is being bitterly attacked by certain Anglo-Indian journals, on account of the steps he has taken to prevent such as- saults being passed over without proper punishment. The leading case Is that of MT. P. w. B. Bain, an Assam tea-plant- CT. who was alleged to have beaten a coolie so mercilessly that he died. and also to have caused two women to be brutally fiogged At Balns' trial at the Cachar Sessions, jury of five Europeans acquitted him of "culpable homicide" and "grievous hurt" and the judge pass ed sentence of six months imprison- ment. At the instance of the Indian gov ernment, an appeal was entered against the prisoners acauittal on the more serious charges. and a divisional bench of the Calcutta high court. consisting of MT. Justice Handley and Mir. Justice Bonnerjee. ordered new trial. on the ground that the sessions jury had been misdirected in regard to those charges The new trial was fixed to take place be- fore another judge of the high court MT. Justice Sale. Before the jury were empannelled, however, this judge an- nounced that. having read the evidence given at the previous trial, he had come to the conclusion that the graver charges against Bain were unsustainabe and he furthermore expressed astonlshment that he should have been convicted even on 1