Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1872-05-04 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THE HERALD.  13ATURDAY, MAY 4, 1872.  IVz ate sure that it will be a matter for universal satisfaction to the ratepayers to find that the tintal amount of rates required by the Cot.potation to meet the general expenses of the borough during the last half of the municipal sear is only tenpence in the pound. As compared with neighbourisg boroughs, Stockton has long been jealously admired; and so long as the public work continues to be done with efficiency, the Corporation may rest assured that the large body of its constituents will not be disposed to complain of their burdens.  "Who was the cause of a long ten years war, And laid at last old Troy in ashes!'" ASKS a dramatist of the seventeenth century, in one of his finest plays, and he furnishes for answer, the expressive word, " Woman 1" And as the Trojan war, with all its results, was produced by the fool-hardiness of Alexander in carrying off the spouse of the Spartan King, so it seems that three thousand years later, the newly-created district of Portrack is destined to furnish the antithesis of Homer's great poem. An hasty 'word from a fiery-tempered woman suffices to set all the population by the ears; straightway the Callaghans and the Fitzgeralds, the Reddons and the O'Brians, the Davis's and the Williams's, are up in arms; the shopkeepers put up their shutters ; and the police prepare for the coining encounters. Shillelaghs and brick-bats come into requisition, and with the cowardice which distinguishes all thorough rafians, the kicking propensities of a section of the community grow beyond control; and even those who have no desire to join in the war of nationality are attacked and abused in a most murderous fashion. If the rival factions could enact the role of the Kilkenny cats, perhaps no one would complain; but as this is no practical part of their programme, it becomes necessary for another method to be adopted. As our elate chief-magistrate said on Thursday, they are in England now, and as good as each other, and the English law will not permit outrages to be committed with impunity. That the Stockton magistrates are determined vigorously to enforce the law, we think their decisions prove. Already a visitor from the Principality is most righteously sentenced to two months' hard labour for knocking down and kicking an Irishwoman who had sought to escape from him; a pair of opponents are relegated to fourteen days' meditation under similar restrictions ; a couple of talkative, and we fear, not very temperate, old women, are fined, and Margaret Reddon, who seems to be a sort of feminine Hector in the locality, pays nearly two pounds for the privilege of beginning the disturbances. Half-a-dozen others are to appear before the magistrates on Monday, and may reasonably expect a course of remedies suitable to their peculiar cases. "Justice with mercy" is misplaced in such matters as these; forbearance would beget an impression of fear; and the reign of terror would at once commence; therefore, the sharpest treatment, as tending to prevent any resumption of the quarrels, is most beneficial to all concerned.