Nantwich, Sandbach & Crewe Star — 1888-10-06 ()

CREWE, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1888.  STAR TWINKLINGS.  -----:o:---- The delegates of the Liberal Association for the Crewe Division of Cheshire passed a unanimous resolution on Saturday night, expressing their continued confidence in Mr. McLaren. In another column we give a summary of the speech delivered by the member for Crowe on the occasion, but as our reporter received no invitation to attend, we are unable to supply a longer report.  -:0: We thoroughly agree with Mr. McLaren, that the voting for members for the County Council should be on political lines, not because the best men will therefore always be inevitably sent, but because, on the whole, the political spirit will evoke most interest in the working of county councils. Certainly the independent candidate in Crewe municipal affairs means the Tory candidate, and so it would in county affairs.  ------:o:----- It is said that a proposal has been launched from an important coal centre that a dozen or twenty great companies should be formed, with an aggregate capital of £80,000,000, to become possessors of all the collieries in the Kingdom.  - —:o:--- There is one wretched thought about the Whitechapel murders, and that is the ease with which murder may be done when it is contrived with an average amount of skill and forethought. It is the appalling clumsiness of most murders which puts authority on the trail. Murders done in passion or from greed or by a robber caught out in theft usually leave a broad track behind them. Here there are not only murders, but a murder plan thought out and executed by that most dangerous of assassius, a cunning maniac.  -:o: Moreover, the assassin has chosen the easiest form of crime by picking on victims who become his accomplipes. The murdered women have been as anxicius to avoid the eye of the constable as the murderer. Both have conspired together to watch him out of sight and hearing, and so diminish the chances both of interruption or rescue.  The crowned heads of Europe are not just now, as a body, in a very healthy condition. The King of Italy is losing weight from liver complaint ; the Emperor of Germany's ear gives him much trouble, despite of all denials ; the King of Spain is vainly trying to cut his teeth, and has convulsions; the King of Portugal is very mlowly recovering from a bad illness ; the King of Holland verges on senility ; and the Czar of Russia suffers from insomnia ; while the King of Greece is negotiating for retirement in favour of his son, and King Milan is having a contest with his wife.  -:o:- The Crofters' Conamisiioners have issued-4 third batch of decisions. In these cases the old rents amounted to £3,542; they have been reduced to £2,591, or over 30 per cent. Here,' if the Commissioners had been aching .under the Irish Land Acts, the relief would have stopped, and would, therefore, have been no relief where tenants are burdened with arrears. But the Crofters' Act allows the Commissioners to deal with arrears, and 50 per cent. has been knocked off. Thus the Scotch crofter obtains very real relief, while the Irish tenantry, in a majority of cases, remain in the power of the landlords, because Parliament refuses to give them the relief it has given to the Scotch crofters.  _____:•:_.,..  The " Fat Men" Association, which holds its twenty-second anniversary the other day, at New York, has been the subject of much ridicule; but unless corpulence itself is provocation of mirth, there is nothing ridiculous in such an institution. The bond which unites the members of most clubs is far slighter, for amongst the fat there must be a considerable community of tastes. There can be no quarrels about having the fires lit or the windows open; one half of them would not be for suffocation and the other half for "death from exposure," as is too often the case in other societies mis-named social. The association, it seems, is falling off in members, though not in weight. "As many as 101000 lbs. in weight," says the report, "sat down to dinner, but in number they were only forty." This gives the very respectable average of 250 lbsl a man.  ----:o:--- What seems a mistake in the programme of the club is that its members should endeavour