The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette. — 1876-10-10 (Dorchester, Dorset, England)

NOTES OF THE WEEK.  From a party point of view, the position taken by the Government in shrinking the difficulties of the Eastern Question, is most sagacious. If peace is maintained, all the credit will be given to the firmness of their attitude. If Rusin& persists in going to war it is open for them to say that such a calamity would never have happened but for the ungoverned language of Mr. Gladstone.  , open would  The accounts of that unfortunate speculation the Hour have been made public, and it appears that upwards of £70,000 was sunk in the vain attempt to float it. This ill success has had a deterrent effect, for—though we have had one or two new weeklies—no one has dared to start a new daily.  Of late the public mind has been much exercised touching the sale of poisons. The Pharmacy Act undoubtedly gives us a certain amount of protection, but of course it does not and cannot enable us to trace to the hands of a poisoner illegitimate possession of a deadly drug if he happen to be a doctor, a chemist, or a photographer, or, indeed, anybody in whose business chemical agents arc daily employed, and who has, therefore the means of privately procuring or making them. But it would seem that the Pharmacy Act fails in a still more important way to prevent poisonous materials from being wrongfully used. We are not going to discuss whether an old-fashioned and little known drug like laurel water, for example, is a poison deadly enough to render its unrestricted sale a matter of suspicion, though it is described by the old school of physicians as a convenient sedative vehicle in which to administer any nauseating poison, such as tartar emetic, which, if taken in a large dose would be promptly ejected by the stomach. Confining our attention to less obscure drugs, we are somewhat struck with the strangeness of a fact which the Lancet briz4olight, that opium bought can be at any druggists shop with the utmost ease. " Its sale,' we are told, "is practically unrestricted." If a man wants to buy it he needs no introduction to the druggist. The seller of the poison need make no entry et the purchase—all he is bound to do by the law is to mark the bottle " poison " and hays printed or written on the label his name and address. Now we begin to understand why so many cases of suicide are returned as being due to opium-poisoning. With the exception of phosphorous which can always be got from the ends of lucifer matches, there is no deadly drug that can be bought with more freedom from inquisitive suspicion or more apparent facility. Morecver, there is no pleasanter way of shuffling off this mortal coil than by taking "an overdose" of opium. Of course, in its most common form—laudanum—it requires a pretty large dose to make its use fatal, and many people drink it as a stimulant, just as others take brandy or beer. But any change in the Pharmacy Act which prevented the sale of this deadly drug, save on the same terms as those in accordance with which arsenic is vended, would, at the most, embarrass no innocent person save the habitual opium-eater. Why should his interest be any longer allowed to stand in the way of our making the traffic in this bane subject to the same restrictions as are dealings in all other poisons I  The ward-room officers of H.M.S. Sultan are beginning to find that the honour of serving under a Royal Duke in a crack ironclad is a somewhat costly luxury. A great part of their time is spent in harbour, and wherever they go they are expected to exercise a liberal hospitality. To such an extent this has been carried that even the patience of the ward-room has given way, and strenuous representations have been made at the Admiralty. As a matter of of course the officials there do not recognise the liability of the Crown, but a "contribution" to the mess-funds has been promised, sufficient in amount to save the officers from the unpleasant discovery which would probably have awaited them at the end of their cruise, that their caterer's bills had swallowed up all the pay due to them. So much for Royalty playing at sailors!  Why does every Englishman who visits the United States think it necessary to extol that country at tho expense of his own, They all do; and even Professor Huxley has fallen into the unpatriotic blunder. We see by the Chicago papers that he haa been addressing the American counterpart of the Brandt Association ; and that, in order to flatter his hosts, ho was good enough to enure them that American liberality in the endowment of science and in affording provision for the wants and comforts of the poor made him ashamed for his fellow-countrymen's meanness. After all, however, it can hardly be said that Englishmen have much to blush for in this matter. If the question is one of the endowment of science Sir Joseph Whitworth's gift of 2250,000—a million and a quarter of dollars—may safely be compared with anything that has been done in the ;Mates. Or take the magnificent endowments recently raised in Manchester, the Grammar School and the Owens College; the gift of Mr. Mark Firth to Sheffield • the two parks given to the town of Birmingham by • lady of the place, or Sir Josiah Mason's splendid charities in the *me town. The list might be extended indefinitely; but those half-dozen instances of British liberality are sufficient to prove that the Professor's reproach was wholly undeserved.