The Potteries Examiner : — 1876-07-29 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

THE NEW.  The moral of an old and popular fable tells us that we should not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The life of an individual is valuable beffiuse, once lost, lost for ever. Death and the grave, however culpable on the score of pitilessness, inexorableness, greedinees, and a stealthy but murderous and fatal rush on their victims, cannot be charged with the soft impeachment of bribe-taking and favouring the rich more than the poor. "There is DO discharge in that warfare." A substitute cannot be admitted to take ffir place and stand in our stead in the deadly imminent breach, where the sure shot of inevitable doom breaks the golden pitcher, and spills the crimson liquid of sentient life. sc that it cannot be gathered up again. There is no Army Par. chase Bill whose clauses permit the wealthy and aristocratic officer to buy exemption from proceed. ing to.—.  That undiscovered country, from whose bourne No traveller returns. The Monarch of the grassy mound and the mou:dering heap grimly says, "Time's up!" "March !" and the solemnly subdued and disembodied spirit steps across the shady border of departed time to learn the unimagined tweets of 1" The dim, pensive, spirit laud." Death says to each of his subjects, "Go, and he goete," from the Imperial Throne and Palace of a Cesar down to the hovel of the boor, or the teat of the gipsy. Life, therefore, being an irrecoverable commodity, it should be jealously guarded, vigilantly protected, and not wantonly jeopardised, or recklessly exposed to danger and injury. And even so oar personal existence is a sacred trust, to be watch. fully defended, and a priceless deposit to Is sacredly and sedulously screened from harm and peril, in like manner should our aggregated life be deemed in our eyes an inviolable charge and an inestimable gem which, if once forfeited, we may never be able to retrieve. There are t hose who would instinctively shrink at the hare idea of personal self-slaughter, and to whom "the suicide's grave" is a fate which they never would tempt on any consideration; and yet they can risk the social life of the commonwealth with heedless impunity, and expose the protection of their organised existence and safety to any threatened danger or jeopardising neglect. Tyre and Sidon- Btbylon and Nineveh—ancient Rome—Carteage—Rialbec —and Palmyra—were once mighty cities and thriving, magnificent commonwealths, like the cities and states of Europe to dry. But where are they flow? And echo answers—" Where f" A few scattered columns and tottering walls are all that remain of some of them, whilst the others have not left a alone to record wnere once stood the pride of antiqeity and the gorgeous glory of the times of old. The bosom of ruin and the unI respecting scythe ef the retnoreeless spoiler Time, bath swept them away, like the sere leaves of autumn, or the waifs and strays of the street and the highway, when winter's chilly blasts, "with angry sough," whistles in the comfortless thoroughfares of the city, or roars in the skeleton like and leafless branches of the pine forest. Those naked desolations preach to the citizens and populations of our modern towns and rural districts the stern lesson and the grave homily that we should guard and protect our social life and our national existence by avoiding the causes t tat led to their downfall, and" The deep damnation of their taking off." They were, as peoples, disorganised. There was no cement of good' fellowship and fraternal association of leagued amity amongst them. The people, for the want of cordial union and reciprocal combination, were inert and powerless. They were communities of sheep, under the cruel, rapacious, and remorseless superintendence of wolves, jackals, hyenas, and Other voracious beasts of prey. Of the grand majority of them it might be said in the sad and affecting lime of Dr. Isaac Watts— Like brutes they live—like brutes they die. When we catch a faint glimpse of the toiling multitudes of the ancient world—and we can obtain but a feeble glimmer of the social life of the people on the pages of the historian, for historyie  the fn weethi poten down deorf when  b co decisi and t teeme colutr be tie brace rate under  persol hue L voluu out to "truo ind tiono tram