The Wingham Times, 1888-06-29, Page 2STATISTICS.
s sea,
More than one million inee are emplaced
by the 'mita railway Imes of the United
urates.
A few Silures .--During the Democratic
Convention 2,151, 791 words were sent from
St. Lents over the ,Western Union wire.
The Hebrews aro returning to Jerusalem,
The recent Russia persecutions have led
thousands to take up their residence iu the
aneientoity, the Hebrew population of which
has increased from 5,000 to 30,000 since
1888.
The greatest feat of baptism in, the his
tory of the Baptist Church in modern times
was that performed in July, 1878, by J. C.
Clough, a missionary, who, with the assia
taco of five native preachers, immersed
2,222 persons within six hours,
The largest ocean steamer is the City cf
Rome, which consumes about 270 tad oz
coal a a and Etruria of the
Cunard line, althou h The each about 100 tons
smaller than the City of ,Romte,in actual ton -
age, nevertheless consume from 325 to 350
tonms of coal daily.
The total ottt-put of goal from all mines
in the United Statea, in 1857 was 129,925,-
557 short tons, valued at $182,491,837, an
increase of 14,129,403 tons over the previ-
ous year. It will be seen that the value is.
set down at $1 50 per ton, but it is almost
certain that some «consumers have paid
more than that. •
Not content with ;the Transeaspian rail-
way, the Czar's Government has determined
to build a transcoptinental road aoroas
Siberia, with ' a terminus on the Paoifia
'.ocean. The whole I gth,of the road will be
about 5,000 miles, a d it is estimated that
it will coat 400,000,0 0 roubles. The firat
sect/on will beabout.,t2,800 miles long, and
will soon be begun..
I nacy in Englan is still an increasing
oThere: were ito fewer than 82 643
factor. ,
lunatics registered 4 the beginning of the
year. 01 these only V7,601 were men and
45,042 were women. 14,171 are supported
in pauper asylums. hough there are more
female than male luh tics, there are fewer
supported out of prix to fund s,the figures
being 3,974 to 3,821.
Since the last Presidential election there
has been an increaser of 7,000,000 in the
population of the United States. This will
give at least an additional million of voters,
making 11,000,000 votes to be east. Over
4O,Q00 of these new votes are in New York
State, where the Democratic- majority last
election was only 1,200. It will be seen
that there is a good deal of margin to play
upon, but there is no reason to suppose that
the united Democracy has not made as
many friends among, the young voters as
have been made by the distracted Re-
publicans.
The important roles which cavalry and
artillery play in the girt of modern warfare
make it interesting to know the total num•
ber of animals which the leading countries
of the world can throw into the field of
battle. Here, according to the latest statis.
tics, is the list : Rust}sia, 21,570,010 horses;
America, 9,500,000 ; ithe Argentine Repub-
lio, 4,000,000 ; Auttria, 3,500,000 ; Ger.
many, 3,350,000 ; France, 2,800,000 horses
and 300,000 mules; England 2,790,000
horses; Canada, 2,624,000; Spain, 680,000
horses and 2,300,000 mules ; Italy, 2,000,-
000 horses; Belgium, 383,000; Denmark,
316,000; Australia, 301,000; Holland, 125,-
000, and Portugal, 88,000 horses and 50,000
mules. It will be. remarked that Russia
heads the list by an enormous majority.
Lnhappy Mediums.
The spirit mediums are having an awful
hard time of it lately. A large number are
]anguishing in jails throughout the country,
charged with being No. 1 all -wool -and -a -yard -
wide frauds, and, sad to relate, the spirits
that condescended to bob around at their
beck and call seemedto have retained enough
of their human characteristics to desert the
mediums just when the latter needed them
most. But the strong hand of the law is not
all ,that mediums have to fear. Judging
from the reports that are coming in from dis-
tricts where mediums most abound even the
spirits themselves are having troublous
times,
At Chicago, a few evenings since, a medi-
um had succeeded in bringing enough spirits
out of a cabinet, that if formed into a pro-
cession might have taken twenty minutes in
pagsing a given point. The lower jaws of
the audience were resting in their laps with
are, and all went well until the spirit of
Joan of Arc appeared, and a fresh young
man fractured the icy stillness by blurting
out in a hoarse whisper : "There's a rat just
run under the spirit's drapery ?" Then the
spirit of the valorous and heroic Joan of Are
suddenly grabbed for the bottom of her
skirts with all the hands she had, and Bathe
ering her feet together, jumped fully four
feet in the air with a shriek that startled the
audience out of their seats. The girlish
spirit stilt further surprised the audience by
making a break for the interior of the
cabi-
net with o muck enthusiasm asto
kick. it
clean over, and when the lights were sud-
denly turned up the unfgrtunate materalized
spirit of Joan of Aro !was seen sprawled
out on the floor and groaning dismally with
the weight of the cabinet across the small of
her hack. One of the spirits playing a
week's engagement with a western medium
also came to grief a few days ago. The
medium had won considerable fame and
dollars by owning spirits to come at of
her cabinet and float lin the air above the
heads of the audience. , One evening when
a particularly big epitit, which a young
lady in the audience declared to be that of
her grandmother, was sailing gracefully
about in mid air, the wire suddenly broke
and the heavy weight spirit fell down into
the pale upturned faces of twelve old gentle-
men of stropnahareeterfatica
butweak
and knocked them ether. The heel
of the motherly old spirit also struok her
aelf•eonfeased grandchild in the mouth and
knocked out four of her front teeth. The
old eentlernen were pulled from under the
spirit and seat home in carriages, in a more
or lea dilapidated etate, while the spirit
atilt lies in a hospital auffering from three
Invitee ribs and a badly skinned shin.
Spirits oatieot be too careful nowadays how
they oome back and cavort about on this
mundane sphere. They will be fooling
sound until some one of them breaks a Ieg
if they keep on.
400
Thla ie about the shinnied dinner I
ever sat down to," he said as he surveyed
the tattlert "batt I s'peee I ought to make
adroit allewiueee." " Yeas, John," replied
big nit, "if vox would Inane otrfa r allow
The War of 1812.
Seeentysix years ago .- one the 19th
of June, 1812—the Congress of tee United
States declared war against England. At
Cyst sight it might seem a plucky, almost a
chivalrous thins for a people numbering
eight million souls tobeard the Britieh lion
to dare to attack the only power that was
able to hold ire own against the military
genius and all -mastering ambition of the
great Napoleon. But a closer scrutiny dis-
pels all the illusions of the ohivalrio char-
acter of the deed, removes the glamour of
romance and heroiem from all concerned in
oarrying the measure, and reveals the trans-
aetioan a the declaration of one of the most
wicked, wanton wars of aggression that.have
ever been forced on annfant community by
a powerful neighboring nation in its mad
lust of conquest and of unrighteous territor-
ial aggrandieeneut..
From the days of the War of Indepen-
dence there has existed in the United States
a turbulent party, composed of the meaner
and less reputable class,of American citizens,
and augmented from time by considerable
accessions of immigrants of the baser sort--
Socialistic propagandists from the elunzsof
German cities, red republicans who had be-
come discredited in France, the sans culottses
and in short, the rif4•raff, scum and off-
acourirg of the European continent in gen-
eral—and this party, steadily increasing
in numerical strength from these more
than questionable sources, had constantly
held to one idem in its political
creed, namely, that Canada should have
been cajoled or wrested' from the British
Crown, so that no foothold should be left
for British Ioyalty on the continent of
North America. The party was forever on
the look -out for opportunities of attacking
England; it had adopted a motto by an
unconscious plagiarism from Demosthenes,
"and Englaud's difficulty is the United
" States' opportunity," became the unwrit-
ten law by which their policy was guided.
The leaders of the party thought that the
opportunity had now come. England was
engaged in a Titanic struggle in behalf of
the liberties of Europe, and these professors
of the doctrines of liberty were not ashamed
to countenance and aid to the utmost of
their power the efforts of the great despot
of the OId World to crush the only Cham-
pions of liberty who were now able to oppose
him. The infamous Berlin and Milan
decrees of the Corsican usurper were
replied to by the `Orders -in -Council" of
the British Government ; . the French
and English marine polity alike told
with disastrous effect on the commerce
of neutral States, but the blame was fairly
chargeable on the Imperial decrees in which
the commercial troubles began. Napoleon
was the prime cause, and on him alone should
have been laid the blame of all the disasters
that befell the mercantile marine of the
United States in consequence of the restric-
tions imposed upon the shipping trade of
neutrals by the English as well as the French,
But this view did not suit the anti-British
party of the States. Mr. Jefferson hoped to
fan the mean spite of a small faction into a
blaze of national hostility ; he refused to
ratify the treaty of amity, commerce and
navigation that hail been agreed upon by
the American Minister to the Court of St.
James and the British Government ; and in
an angry message to Congress he furiously
inveighed against the " Orders -in -Council,"
while he had not a word to say against the
Berlin and Milan decrees of the would-be
despot of Europe and the world. Tide was
followed by the suicidal policy of the "em-
bargo;' whereby Mr. Jefferson's friends did
an immense injury, as it was probably in-
tended should be done, to the commerce of
the New England State; then and ever the
most ardent advocates of liberty, and for
thatreason the most strenuously opposed to
a war with England, from which the only
conceivable advantage would accrue to Na-
poleon, thegreatest enemy of liberty then
alive. The " embargo" was withdrawn;
but in the meantime, and all the time,
trouble was arising from the complicated na-
ture of the claims on which England stead-
fastly insisted, namely, that she, as mistress
of the seas, had the " right of search" in
all vessels in which she ,had reason to
believe that deserters from her service were
being concealed. The affair between the
Leopard and the Chesapeake neither re
fleeted credit on the Efiglish captain for
good sense, nor on the American for
personal courage, honor or veraoity ; but
it served to increase the tension of the a1-
ready strained relations between the peoples
of both countries, and the war party in the
States made all the capital that could possi-
bly be made out of the incident. From.
month to month and,,- ern year to year this
party was steadily gaining the ascendancy,
till at length in January, 1812, Congress by
a vote of one hundred and nine to twenty
two, resolved to increase the regular troops
to 25,000 men and to raise an immediate loan
of ten millions of dollars. What this por-
tended required no political Zadkiel to pre-
dict; and accordingly no person nor party
was very much surprised when the same
Congress declared waragainst E 1
n and on
the 19th of June, and deided that he brunt
of the war must be borne by the mere hand-
ful of settlers, only 300,000 all told, who had
then made Canada theirho e
m The obnoxi-
ous Order -in -Council were removed about
the same time, so that no decent pretext for
the war exiated; all the best and most hon-
orable politicians in the United States de-
nounced it as unjust, ungenerous and :im-
politic
im-politic ; Randolph, of'Virginia, opposed it
Congress hi oneof the best apeeehea ever
delivered in that hall of oratory, and'.
a special convention of ,lelegates met in
the fall of the yea! at Albany on pur-
pose to denounce it: But it was all of
no avail ; the war party thought they would
make an easy conquebt of Canada; and that
was all h
they wanted � they,bins
snot un.
y' ,
p r
naturally, supposed that a population of
300,000 would fall an easy prey to a papula•
tion of 8,000,000, and that the 25,000 regu•
lava of the. United States would very speed-
ily;lemoliah the 0,800 men of all arms on
wham the young colony had to depend for
the protaetioe of mare than a thousand wiles
of frontier, The inexorable logic of stern
fade has demonstrated how oonipletely the
war party Wee astray in its calculations ; the
War of 1812' was ono of the mob scatting
rebukes ever administered to a partyaf ava-
rice end aggression.
Bobby (whose uncle has 4iven him a dot -
lar) I wish you would gave me a nickel,
thole Jamee, instead of a dollar," Uncle
Jantii (asbon4ehedj "Bu Bobby, a dollar
fitsbart6e r that In ettekeL" %b !r' t'r
Modern Arnules.
at a meeting of the members of the
Rays, United Service Inatitution held recent
ly in London a paper was read by Col. 11
M, Hazier on the .equipment and transport
of modern armies.
Col, Hozier called attention to the present
attitude of foreign atlas, with largebodies
of cavalry wetehing each other on each side
of frontier linos,n euy future war he be
lieved that there would be an increased
number of engagements between cavalry
and that by their means muck damage
would be done at an early period of any war
to roads and railways. But these cavalry
engagements would never be decisive of the
war, and victory would depend upon which
silo would be able to bring up infantry with
the greateat rapidity. This involved rail
way transportation, There
wherein foreign lands for
ing the lines of railways,
Aere now,every
asses command
nd at the first
openine of war upon the# Continent no
doubt a dash would be made at hese for
tresses to preveut then, being victualed for
any lengthened period. , They must b'@ pre
pared to strike quick blows, and within a
short time, of the outbreak of hostilitiee.
They must reduce the weight to be carried
by every soldier and by every horse; they
ought not to handicap the soldiers by make.
ing them carry e ormous=
weights. Next,
they must have efficient railway corpa, able
to repair railways in'advaneing, and to break
them down when they were not wanted.
Thirdly, they must do without camp equip.
anent and tents, because they would not be
able to carry them in the future,
The whole face of the country everywhere
in Europe had changed in =the seventyfive
years which had elapsed since the last great
war ; and there was no longer the necessity
for such rnem:urea to encamp the fighting
men as formerly were alasj?lntely necessary.
He advocated the soldier wearing a gray
dress in time of war. The kit must be re-
duced in weight to about 3$ pounds, instead'
of 52 pounds, whioh it wait at present. Men
should carry not more than 30 rounds of
ammunition at a time favor had been
shown to taking infantry into action on
horseback, but then one man out of every
four would be required to hold the horses,
and he recommended the !substitution of
Irish oars—each car drawn • by four horses,
and marrying fifteen armed men. With
regard to the arms carried by a cavalry
soldier, he recommended that a triangular
sword should be substituted for the present
form, because in fighting a men always did
more damage by thrusting than by eating,
and that a pistol should be substituted for
a carbine. The revolver, he thought, was
not a useful weapon for a soldier to carry.
The weight which the horse ought to carry
should,be lightened as far as possible.
Col. Sir 0. Burn said in the Indian mutiny
they used to put ten men on an elephant,
and in that way go long distances. He
thought the alteration inthe form of the
sword was very desirable, as sometimes men
would ride through the enemy without
doing any damage, whereas thrusts were
very dangerous. He hoped that the au-
thorities would not give up their heavy
transport yet, because he did not think they
would be able, under all circumstances, to
depend upon reilwitym
Col. Hetzler, in reply, said he preferred a
brown to a gray uniform.
Britain After Waterloo.
As soon as the battle of Waterloo was
fairly rought and Napoleon put away at St.
Helena, the Continental Professors, histori-
ans, political students, and journalists all
began with one accord to proahesy the ap•
preaching downfall of Great Britian, which
some affected to deplore, and•others regard-
ed with complaceney. Everything conspir-
ed, it was evident, not only to bring about
this decline, but also to accelerate it. The
paraell of Carthage -England has always
been set up as the, second. Carthage—wan
freely exhibited, especially in those coun-
tries which felt themselvesicalled upon and
qualified to play the part a Rome. It was
pointed out that there Bias the dreadful
deadweight of Ireland, with its incurable
poverty and discontent ;the approaching
decay of trade, which could be only, in the
opinion of thesekeen-sighted philosphers, a
matter of a few years ; the enormous weight
of theNational Debt ; the ruined manufactur-
ere ; the wasteful expenditure ofitheGovern.
ment in every branch; the corrupting influ.
ence of the Poor Laws; the stain of slavery;
the restrictions of commerce; the iutelorance
of the Church; the narrowness and prejudice
of the Universities; the ingorance of the peo-
ple; their driuking habits; the vastness of
the Empire. These causes, together! with
discontent, Chartism, republioauism, ttheiem
—in fact, alI the disagreeableisms—left no
donbt whatever that England was doomed,
Foreigners, in fact, not yet recovered from
the extraordinary spectacle of Great Bri•
tain's long duel with France and its success-
ful termination, prophesied what they partly
hoped out of envy and jealousy, and feared
from aelf-interest. Therefore the politicians
and professors were always
looking
at this
country, writing about it, watching it, visit-
ing it. No, there could be no doubt—node
of these changes and dangers could be de-
nied; the factories were choked with aces.
sive production; poverty stalked through
the country ; the towns were 'filled with
ruined women ; the streets were cumbered
with drunken men; the children were
growing up in ignorance; and neglect incon-
ceivable ; what could come of all this but
ruin? Even—and this was the most wonder-
ful and incredible thing to those who do
not understand how long,a Briton will go
on enduring, wrongs and/suffering anoinalies
--the very House of Commona in this
boated land of freedom tad not represent
halt the people, Fieate were openly bought
and Field, thea were fill with nominees
of the great teen who ow d them. What
au possibly fellow (mulct s l f aw but. thin—swift
1? y
and
hopeless ruin? Whet indeed? Prophets of
disaster always omit one or two important
elernente in their calcul tions, and it is
through thee° gaps that the people basely
wriggle, instead of fulfilling prophcey as
they ought to do.
Even tow theoutlookof tho whole world
is truly dark, and the olaude are lowering.
Yet surely the outlook was darker, the
Clouds were bleaker fiftyy i;are ago. head
Carlyle"s "Past and Proaontl" and compare.
There may be other flange before ne of
which we then suspected n thing. But if
we still preserve the ,c lsillies whioh
enabled us to stand up, almost alone,
against the oaloaaal farce of Napoleon,
with Europe at his back, and whioh carried
us through, the terrible troubles whioh
*lima ,IAN „vrar, w!_.._tasty ..tined net
FOREIGN NOTES,
The Amadeu Government has ordered
thirty automatic Maxim guns.
W. G. Grace, the greatest cricketer in
the world, will be 40 years old on the 180.
of July.
The Zuyder Zee may be drained before
long, for the aasooiatlon for that purpose is
about to try it,
A gun for projectiles of 100 pounds has
been completea by Armstrong. It area seven
shells a mutate.
The income of the University of Cam-
bridge of this year will be $180,900 and ea-
penses, $170,000
A French engineer tine conferred a bless-
ing on all players of stifinged instruments by
inventing a peg which/will not slip..
The new wire gun Ott Shoeburyness has
thrown a 500 -pound c• each distance of
twelve miles, the attest distanoe ever
covered by a cannon b> 11.
The Fetit Journal recently appealed to
Bismarck to restore A aaee and Lorraine to
France, to kiss andenalte up, and then both
have a go at England
Admiral Hornby alays that England
would require at least 186 cruisers to pro-
tect her merchant vessels from the enemy's
cruisers, and that elle las but forty.two.
The French are acknowledged to have the
anent guns and projectiles in Europe. Their
Ferminy shell has beet ahot through an ar-
mor plate twenty inelies think, and Dome out
with its steel point *injured.
0
Theren
has been 1 e h for a
a s ar sunken
rock in the Red Sea pon which two Brit-
ish steamers founders , It has at last been
found. It is a very quell coral patch with
only fifteen feet of waiter over it.
A well-known London firm of refreshment
contractors recently advertized for 4,000
additional waiters, and 10,000 applications
were received in response, the whole of the
candidates claiming tp have had experience.
A correspondent of ;the Daily. Telegraph
says that thousands" of Russian peasants
have died of hunger during the past six
weeks. In the distri t of Zvenigoroaka the
peasants seized the oafttle of the rich land-
owners.
Admiral Hewett bf the British Navy,
who was drowned this other day, was a very
successful blockade ;sinner during the Am-
erican war. So were Hobart Pasha and
Capt. Burgoyne, who commanded the ship
Captain, which oarlaized about ten years
ago.
A cause of disagreement between kaiser
Fritz and Biamarek is regarding the restor-
ation of the private 'fortune of the late King
of Hanover,whioh had beenl confiscated by
Prussia. .Bismarck prevented;Kaiser Wit.
liana from restoring it, and now he and the
Emperor have locked horns too,
Major E. C. Browne, an Engishman, writ-
ing about the acquisition of Burmah by the
British, describes the effect upon the natives
of the first exhibition of the electric light.
" A great ray of soft light," he says, " shoots
across the heavens from horizon to horizon.
A. flood of light is oast on a spot in the vil-
lage, but it is off with more than lightning
rapidity to illumine another. It heaps and
bobs and bounces about the earth in most
uncanny fashion. The village is illumined.
It visits every portion of it and seems to
enter/at the doors and windows. At first
the people rush away, but finding that in
many eases the light follows they throw
themselves down idith their faces to the
earth. In a few minutes the village and
river banks are cleared, and the terrifi-
ed people take refuge in the bush or at
the backs of the ,rouses. But this only
lasts a very shott time. Curiosity is
stronger than prudence. So far the light
has struck no one dead. Perhaps it may be
harmless; ao the ch"Idren, clinging to each
other", venture into the glare, then run to
their mothers' area screaming half with fear
and half with delight. Some of the big
boys then rush out, have a good stare, and
having dared so much once more disappear.
The ladies seem tot gain confidence next to -
the children. Their curiosity cannot be re-
strained any longer; so they get together in
groups and hide thetir faces and scream and
giggle. Some of the more cheeky ones
actually put out their tongues at us and
begin dancing and. gyrating about. The
men, last of all, moodily emerge from their
cover, and still net half liking it walk
cautiously about, ai1cl gradually the village
is gay."
A Lonk Flight.
An extremely intiresting experiment bas
been made by Mr, . Wagner, of Boston,
Mass. He sent nin4 carrier pigeons to Lon
don bymail steatn0' on October 9,1880
Shortlafter heir arrival they comenced
their long flight holm across the Atlantic
Ocean, Up to Jancry 10, 1887, three of
these birds had ret rned ; one arrived in
Boston o direot root from pluton; d the second was
recovered near No ]
York
w' ork C.
try, and the
third was found in the Alleghany Mountains
in Pennsylvania, T e owner's address was
painted on the bird's ings, and, when they
were found,the bird
were returned d to the
owner. The other six birds were not re-
covered. i
x•
Alt doubt in regard; to the disease to which
Emperor Frederick succumbed after long
months of patient suffering has been set at
teat by the post-mortem examination. The
fatal malady was cans f er of the larynx, The
larynx, indeed was nehhrly deatroyed ; it was
found to contain a large cavity, and its car-
lilaginous character had almost 'wholly die.
appeared. t is marvellous pp d. I ry Mous that the Emperor
survived so Iong. Nothing but the beet
medical skill postponed the evil day and
permitted the brief reign whioh will be
memorable in the history of Germany. To
Sir Morell Mackenzie the German people
owe a lastfug,debt of gratitude. But for his
skillful treatment, in apite of opposition and
abuse even, in all probability Frederick
would never have ascended the throne,
The American Brewers' Association has
been enquiring into the relation of liquor to
crime, It reports that "of 859 murders te•
ported in the New York papers, only 98
were due to liquor, and of 554 euicidee,
liquor was responsible for 08." Exactly 14
per cent, of the live* thus lost were. there-
fore taken through liquor. The report does
not mean that beer was the source of all this
crime, but that liquors in general, spirits no
i teis . a.1,h-naa **AVIA V170160ii w.A..,.,»..,t-, ma
Th - African Vtrul.1auy.
An ann meat, whioh seems to have
awakened a singularly small amount at in-
terest in comparison with ittt intrinela lm-
portauce, is that concerning the powers and
prerogatives granted by the earnisb Govern-
ment to the East African Gompar y. We.
had supposed that the days in whioh civil
and htary rule over immense traote of
cou nd millions of people could be en.
true a private companies were ab an end.
If t agre gable reports can be relied
on, s is far from being the oase.
roy t charter based on the lines of that of
the old East India Company is said to have
been granted to an association of English
capitalists, incorporated under the title
above mentioned. The boundaries of the
vast domain handed over to this company
extend, it is said, fr m Zanzibar northward
as far se Abyssinia, ith a seaboard of over
seventeen hundred ilea in length, while
woatward it reaches beyond the 'Victoria
Nyanza and the othbr !great lakes about
the sources of theIdle, thus including
the finest lands and xi hest markets of Cen-
tral Africa, As if to leave the way
open for indefinite exteinaion in the future,
the charter, it is said, dater; that the extent
of the territory westward of the great Cen-
tral African lakes, "h not es yet been ex-
actly delimited." Mot wonderful of all,
this now empire time h nded over to a priv-
as
ate1 some
company is aid a "peopled b
seventymillionsof i d trioua and relative-
ly
el Live-
ly prosperous inhab- ants." The . East
African Company is of only authorized
to take possession of this vast area but
to exercise justice, o coiled revenue,
to 'deal with refra ory subjects " by
force of arms "; in bort, to wield all
the powers of semi- ndependent govern-
ment. In the absence f fuller information
in regard to the necesstrty for this movement
and the end in view, extended criticism
would be out of place. ' It is perhaps aoaree-
ly possible in these dayta that the deapotio
sway and unjust extortions for which such
companies made themselves badly famous in
earlier days ahould be repeated. But if
reasons, either State or of philanthropy,
rendered annexation, ou a scale alnioat con-
tinential, desirable or 'accessary, moat per.
sons will be inclined} to regret that the
British Government dia not at once, in its
own name, assume the responsibilities rather
than hand over the peciple and all their in-
terests, presumably without consent asked
or given, to the tender mercies of a trading
company.
♦a
Social Refolrm:Before Ilonim Rule
A Bombay paper recently cited two herd.
ble incidents as proof that much remains to
be done in the direction of sooial reform be-
fore it will be possible to give the natives the
franchise. In one case a tenant farmer, in
the presence of the =nimble(' villages and
amid the beating of drums and the singing
of songs, deliberately gouged out the eyea of
his young wife, who had been bound by the
neighbors, because he had been told by a
demon that tbey wound be replaced by
golden eyes. The whole neighbourhood
shared injthe superstition, even including
the polios, who assorted that the victim had
perished by cholera. The scene of the
other inoi;lent was the temple of a Hindoo,
goddess. A crowd of natives had hacked to
pieces three buffaloes, in whose blood some
dated about; while others, gesticulating
furiously, whirledabove their headathedrip-
pinglinibsofthe slaughtered beasta, Another
animal, which was also being horribly lacer-
ated, was still alive and its awful bellowings
were added to the din: At a short distance
several men, with their bodies naked and
painted, held a goat by the legs while they
tore away with their teeth mouthfuls of
bleeding flesh from 'the still living and
quivering body. Other animals were wait-
ing their turn, and around them a crowd of
women smeared with,blood, apparently in-
toxicated with drugs, were dancing and
shrieking wildly. TIM purpose of these re-
volting orgies was to -appease the wrath of
the goddess, who is supposed to hold in her
hand the scourge of smallpox. The Bombay
paper, commenting on these horrid scenes,
says:
" We venture to lay that no cannibal
feast amen,, he most. brutalized South;Sea
savages ever exceedet in horrible details the
two scenes just dere /bed. If such things
are possible in the India of to -day, we may
readily picture what the country was before
it came into contact !with Western civilize.
tion. A century of !British rule has over a
large area of the peninsula all but extermi-
nated suttee, iu€antidide, the brutal rites of
superstition and other unspeakable horrors.
But that a herculean task is still before us
is proved by the taips set forth above. A
few natives of India are men of the highest
intellectual endowments. A considerable
proportion of the population possess at least
a veneer of education/ But the vast majority
away from the town's and centres of thought
are steeped in barbaric ignorance and super-
stition. Yet we hear the babas of Bengal,
who constitute an insignificant, or rather
infinitesimal fraction of the population,
prating K 0 f India as a nation, and demand-
ing deli -governments' for the country, and
eleotoral privileges - for the mosso. Are
the men who stance by while a wretched
woman's eyea aro gouged out, or a living,
quivering dumb bate is torn to pieces
mouthful by mouthful by human devils—
barbarities committed, too, in the shored
name of religion—are these the men to ex-
ercise a vote, or take any part whatsoever
in guiding the destinies of the Empire?"
If it be true that'auch incidents as t rose
referred to are common among the masses
of India outside the pities and towns, it is
quite evident'that the time has not yet come
for the adoption of'the scheme of the Na-
tional Congress, The first endeavour of the
reformers should berto secure the abolition
of degrading n
Fiociai
g g customs, to erixsh cut
brutalizing superatition, an to hatch the
spread of enlighteement, education and
Christianity generally, When a fair arena
of progress has been made in this work, it
will be time enough to give the natives poli-
tical privileges which they do not at present
desire, and which they could not nae pro-
perly if they had them.
A Paris costermonger quarrelled with hie
mother, and to get agitarehong h)niaelf fain
a nail oh the wall, He Milled his hat down
over his eyea and held hisipe in his mouth,
so that she would think tact he was *barn-
bensearnedlat f ding up him, Nid s°awould
ohemeeee
worked perfectly, and the mother nearly
hada fit.
A South Carolina girt married five tartan