The Weekly Journal. — 1904-11-18 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

VEMBER 14. 1904._  held at Cardiff on Monday to consider the formal demand made by the coalowners on November 4th for a reduction of 5 per cent, in the present wage rate. At present the wage rate is 431 per cent. above the standard of 1879. The coalowners claim that it should be reduced by 5 per cent., bringing it down to 381. In support of their demand they submitted the result of an audit just taken by Mr Kirk, formerly auditor under the sliding-scale agreement, which shows an average selling ' price of coal for the last three months of 124 4d per ton f.o.b. - -  Quoit, eras said to have been one of the chief causes of offence. Now, when we find ait through a nation's history that each and every social and national disorder is laid at the door of a woman, we cannot but doubt tho accuracy of the historian. This freak of French history is all the more surprising when we remember the national traditions of gallantry and of chivalrous conduct towards women which still colour the sentiments of the best type of Frenchman, and which are indeed a marked French characteristic. Ilibtory is never more cruel towards anyone than it is towards women. If once by some unfortunate chum a queen or noble dame should have given cause of offence. the whole machinery of scandal and pulp is set to work to weave a burial robe for her character. Take, for example, the patheti: figure of Mary Queen of Scots. If were to believe all the ill words which are spoken of her, she would stand forth as one of the most monstrous of criminals. There is something very tad to me in the solitary figure of the gizl-Queen as she presents herself upon tho stage of the past. Despite all the crimes which have been attributed to her, including the murder of her husband, the attempted assassivation of Elizabeth of England, and her supposed jealousy of her own son, her name still wakes a chord of sympathy. There is no subject over which a Fkotsman will wax more eloquent than that of Queen Mary; whilst in France the very location of her name serves u an introduction, and takes the place of the most formal testimonial. The controversial historian has done his best from time to time either to sink her to the deepest pit of infamy, or to raise her to the martyr'slieight, but all in vain: she still smiles on with A 41Wellt, sad, sphynz-like smila. sad keeps her secret 'fast locked within her own broast.  • • • " The thingl shrll be most anxious to harm when I get into heaven." said a Pope, is whether ttavonarola was a righteous man or not." There is in this saying of an unheroic Pope, living in a degenerate age, something in common with our own way of regarding the great statuesque figures of the past. We do not meet them on even our own level; we wing our way to a lofty position, and then talk down to then', and afterwards complain that their answers were indistinct. The Pope who spoke these words was convinced of his cwn right to enter heaven, and we, in judging the past, take up the same self-righteous attitude. If we would understand the villains of bygone ages we mnat treat them as warm, pamionate human creatures, and not as bogeys of an unreal fairy world. We must make up our minds that, if they were not altogether white, yet at the same time they were not altogether black, sad on the whole were not so very different from the majority of ourselves in the general trend of their impulses and affections.