Lancaster Standard and County Advertiser. — 1903-06-19 (Lancaster, Lancashire, England)

LOCAL NOTES. ' 7 fe'tive way of marking the reprobation in e hich all civilised peoples hold the crime 'hat has been committed. As for the tragedy affording an excuse for interested inti-r-te•ntion. neither Austria nee Russia is likely to undertake the responsibility of is step whiell might plunge them into war. Servia will probably work out its own puniehment if left to itself. There is a Nemesis which overtakes crime, even if the murderer% be educated and patriotic officers, :ind they be ratified try the army and acquiceed in by the peeple. The habit of revo• tttien and of throat-cutting is ant to grow, , enel it may be that under the wise decrees ,t een inscrutable Providence the murderer( wel fall out among themselves and become le. e own executioners. At present at see de hen e in the tragedy, or arising out of ••. to Mee cause ter apprending a disturbofthe peace of Eastern Europe. These semis r-• in the East cf Europe send a thrill •,.trifi flee Continent. just as a murder in Eet t•'.n-I sends a thrill through the whole wort-polls. but without causing any public eeemotion or rioting.  --:o:- Besides, there is another way of looking at it. Nothing kills AO soon as ridicule. And how ridiculous is this movement! The Resisters are not going to go to prison. When the rate is demanded they will just refuse to pay the portion which they declare goes to denominational teaching. A piece of their furniture will then be seized to make up the deficiency. • They will stand by and allow this to be done. The net result will be a little bit of extra notoriety for those who like it, a deal of extra trouble to the rate collector, and a brisk business for the bailiff and the furniture broker. There will be no going to prison —no procession of pious pilgrims to the Castle gates. no exhortations to be strong and faithful, no weeping farewells as the ponderous gates clang behind the departing figures of our modern martyrs; neither will there be any- ecstatic welcome out again when the sentence has been worked and tlio martyrs re-appear in a halo of added sanctity and are taken round the town in a hired 'bus with a band in front and a crowd behind. If there was to ba anything of this we could understand it, and even appreciate it, but the spectacle of Mr. Smith sadly peering through the window from behind his curtains as the broker carries off his writing table—or Mr. Rowness laugh- , ing in his sleeve as his clocks are heaped ! upon a dray - is not one which moves us ! to any appreciable extent.  --:0:- The extremely interesting article we print on another page on the state, of the "Passive Resistance" movement, in Lancaster will come as a revelation to our readers. Nobody had imagited that the movement had any foothold in Lancaster. Singularly enough it was in our town, though. that the first Free Church anathemas: were ever delivered against the Bill. The Rev. T. Law. tho secretary of the National Free Church Councils, was sreaking in Lancaster the night the Bill was introduced into the House of Commons, and as the s-unimarised proposals were read to the meeting his anger blazed out in hot and torrential denimelation. That very night, he declared. he would return to London, and the phrase in which he said he would do his best to "kill the Bill' has almost paiscd into a Free Church Froverb. But what happened after Ins departure I While the Free Church party organised a strong policy of resistance all over the country. Lancaster. where it had really been given its birth, was so distracted by divided counsels that the whole matter was allowed to die out in an inglorious fizzle.