OUR LONDON LETTER.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1773, 25 October 1879, Page 2

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[WBITTHK B7BCUXLY 708 THE GLOBB.] LONDON, September 11. Happening to {visit Brighton a few days ago (on business by the way, and not on pleasure, for there has not been much enjoyment found at the watering places of England this inclement summer), and being, as many of my readers will doubtless recollect, in the midst of some of the finest corn growing land in this country, I was as much surprised as pleased to see exhibited in a shop window a magnificent specimen of wheat that had been sent Home from New Zealand. I am sorry that I do not remember the name and address of the grower, which was duly set forth on the card which gave me this information, but owing to the storm of wind and rain which was doing its best to empty the Queen of Watering Places of all its visitors, I was compelled to hold on like grim death to my umbrella, and hasten on without being able make a memorandum of the particulars. However, I compliment the farmers of New Zealand generally on the excellence of this production. I beg them to be encouraged by the faot which I hare observed with much interest, that New Zealand wheat is now selling in this country at the very highest price of the best Home grown article. True, the money that both fetch is not such a price as either the English or the New Zealand farmer might desire, but I think that the days of high priced corn have for ever passed, and that agriculturists must look rather to the weight o£ their produce itself than to the money it produces for ensuring them a profitable remuneration. For this is a time of wide-spread agricultural depression at Home, and in spite of the notorious fact that on many of the corn-fields throughout Europe this yoar is one of unusually light crops, yet our supplies are now drawn from so many different sources that the partial failure of any of them has but a very slight effect on the market at Home. Therefore, let not the farmers of New Zealand be discouraged if the remittance is not equal to their expectations, but let them endeavor to grow more corn per acre, and then tho result will be so much the better for them. The specimen I saw at Brighton was a thoroughly good one ; the color was good, and the weight first-rate. Such an article will be especially welcome this season, whea our own wheat is light, and cannot arrive at market in anything like good condition, owing to the stormy harvesting time we are passing through. For the harvest this year in England is at least six or seven weeks late, and we have not seen in the cornfields this past August the reaper wiping the perspiration from his sunburned face. What few reapers have been seen in tho fields at all have been suffering rather from influenza than from sunstroke. Away on the moors in Yorkshire and in Scotland, where some ardent sportsmen went a month ago to shoot the grouse, they found a scene which more resembled the fens of Lincolnshire than the land of the breeze and the heather. Later on, when the great festival of St. Partridge arrived on the first day of this month, those who were hardy enough to venture out into the sodden fields found few birds to shoot, and they were weak and poor, and difficult to get at on account of so much of the corn crops being still standing. Indeed, game of all descriptions will this year bo almost as great a luxury as oysters became a few years ago, and up to the present time a little partridge has fetched in London about as much money as a good-sized leg of mutton. And this leads me to remark that one of the causes of the present depression amongst English farmers is that meat is not fetching the high prices that ruled a few years ago, and just after the cattle plague devastated many herds. Again, in this respect, I note a fact which will be interesting to some of my readers, viz., that at a recent sale of stock in this country some of our best pedigree short-horn cattle were bought up for exportation to your islands, where, if they arrive in good oondition, as I have no doubt will be the case, they will produce you some first-rate stock. But at home the agricultural interest is under a very dark cloud, and while instances of land-owners voluntarily offering remissions of rent are being continually recorded in the newspapers, still some variations have of late been made in this old theme. One landed proprietor has told his tenants that as long as wheat remains at a price not exceeding fifty shillings a quarter, they shall only pay him a reduced rent—a generous offer, which should be accepted with thankfulness, and find many imitators. Another it will not be so easy to copy, for Lord Oombermere, with a view to meeting the exigencies of the time, talks of reducing bis personal expenditure by one-half, though it may be difficult to see how this will relieve any existing distress. Anyhow, so great has been the outcry by both owners and tenants of farms, that as soon as the present harvest and holiday time is over, the recently appointed Royal Commissioners will commence their inquiry into the present condition of agrijulture in England. They are a thoroughly practical body of men, and iE plenty of sound advice can help the British farmer to a more prosperous future, he may be sure of getting it. Not that Royal Commissioners can change the state of the weather, which has had a good deal to do with the present state of affairs, in other branches of trade besides that of corn-growing and cattle-producing. Indeed, something seems to have gone wrong altogether with the atmosphere, and tho sudden changes that we experience set at nought the forecasts with which it has become tho fashion for the newspapers to provide the public of late. We have a meteorological department in London, supported by the publio money and under the charge of experienced observers of the weather. The weather bureau of the " New York Herald" is kind enough to telegraph to us, about twice a week on the average, notico of a storm which is to play havoo on the ooasts of England and France. But, somehow or othrr, the weather not unfrequentiy contrives to dodge both the one and the other. For instance itj has beea a.

matter of quite common remark that only a few days ago, when New York assured us that within two days we should experience thunder, lightning, and heavy rain, two days when the authorities at home warned us to expect it squally and rainy, we really enjoyed two days of the best weather we have had this year-weather when we might have fancied ourselves in the South Pacific rather than on the eastern side of the stormladen Atlantic. Oa account of this, fewer people than usual havo made holidays at the seaside, and thoso who have ventured to go there for their nsual retreat from worldly cares and anxieties have mo'.tly returned in a spirit of resigned disappointment. This is a time of tho year, howover, when those who ara kept indoors by the bad woather have the consolation of being able to find in the daily newspapers something more readable than the flood of dreary politics with which the journal* fill themselves during the sitting of Parliament. No wis the time when, in consequence of the Lyndon season being over, the quantity of advertisements begins to fall off, and many other columns are relieved of the pressure that was put upon them during the earlier months of the yeir. Still the conductors of morning and evening newspapers, whether in Londonor in Obristchurch, mußt contrive to fill a certain quantity, and this is how we are doing it in London. Eich newspaper starts a" holiday subject" assoonas Parliament is prorogu d and a leading artiole or a long letter on a selected topic is sure, like the bell wether to find many followers. Thus tho " Times " ban two holiday subjects, one the well worn grievance of our domestic servants, and what dreadful wretches " good plain " cooks ard •' single " housemaids turn out iu spite of the excellent characters given them by the mistresses from whom they are parting ; the other the rnoro interesting topic of how boys and girls, av« fed at the'schools from which thoy now mostly return during July or August, for thoir long vacation. On this subject many ingenious theories have been broached, but to my mind it all come 3 to this—that when a boy or a girl is released from the thraldom of school (I like that word "thraldom;" it is mostly used by Eadical srouters to describe the condition of the voters for the Conservative candidate, and children always believe their schoolmasters and mistresses are of a Bovere Eadical type)— when the youngsters, I Bay, como home and find themselves at liberty to get up when they like, and the loving mother allows them complete freedom from bookß and complete liberty at the table, it is astonishing how rapidly they improve in looks. The " Standard " has also printed many interesting letters on th's subject, though its more favored topic has been bur other, but dumb, domestic pets, concerning which various writers have contributed a large fund of interesting anecdote. The "Telegraph," which, I say it without any spirit of detriment, enjoys a very large circulation amongst a very much lower class of the population, is also finding space for considerable numbers of letters on two holiday subjects, viz., the brutal ways and bad language of a_ large number of men, women and children in our metropolis and large towns, and the best method of executing criminals, a Bubject on which there has been of late much public excitement since the Home Secretary refused to allow reporters to be present at the hanging of any convict who was sentenced to death. The only other paper that is largely read by the masses, the " Daily News," does not care to descend to tho trivialities, but continues to grind out denunciations of Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry and soul-stirring appeals to the electors to let us have a change of Government. But all these things will not fill several large pages, and therefore editors are now obliged to have recourse to entertaining articles written by professional literary men and to their foreign correspondence. This sort of reading is for the most part very entertaining, and a wearied man or woman may therein find some amusement when they are confined within the four corners of those seaside lodgings for which they have to pay so heavily during August and September, and of which, should the weather be fine, they generally make such little use. But one of our newspapers, in endeavoring to be entertaining has been unlucky enough to run into a criminal prosecution for libel, though that has come to nothing owing to the good sense of the lawyers whe were engaged to reconcile affairs. Them is an Irish nobleman named Lord Lisle, and he, like too many of his fellow countrymen of noble rank, appears not to be blcsßed with too many English sovereigns, while the Home Eulers have not yet conceived the notion of setting up a mint of their own. It seems that some time ago Lord Lisle patronised a West-end tradesman to the extent of two tons of eoal, for which, when the bill was sent in, the requisite forty-eight shillings were not forthcoming, and consequently the coal-mer-chant had recourse to the county courts. The soble defendant at first took no notice of the proceedings, and allowed judgment to go by default; but when it was sought to bring him to book by means of a judgment summonshe E leaded his privilege as a peer as removing im from the jurisdiction of any petty tribunal. This was an unheard-of step to take, but the able lawyer who presides over the Court in which the proceedings were taken held it to be a good plea, and told the plaintiff that he could not proceed any further with his action. To this subject the " Standard" devoted a leading article, but misled by the error of the reporter who furnished the statement of the proceedings in ths county court, he made out the defendant to be, not the Irish peer Lord Lisle, but an English nobleman, Lord de Lisle, who, as a fine specimen of tho rich peerage, felt it to be a double affront that he Bhould he held capable first of ordering coals in Buch a small quantity as two tons, and next that he should be Buch a disgrace to his order as to pleade his privelege instead of breaking his exchequer to the extent of two pounds eight shillings. However, the newspaper found out its mistake soon after the publication of this erroneous article, and before the lawyers in whose hands Lord de Lisle placed the matter could take out a summons against the printer. The latter had to appear before an alderman of the City of London, but Mr Sergeant Parry, who was counsel for the newspaper, repeated the apology in the suavest possible manner, and satisfied the noble complainant, who was too ill to appear personally in Court, and very possibly thought quite little of the matter. In another case whioh has served to amuse the public during this holiday season, a newspaper—or rather one London journal and several provincial daily papers—were concerned but they were tho complainants and Mr Ahmed John Kenealy, the eldest son of the tentleman who became bo notorious by his efence of the claimant to the Tichborne estates, was the defendant in a prosecution before one of the stipendiary magistrates in the potteries district of Staffordshire, in the very neighborhood of the borough whioh returned the doctor himself to Parliament. You may know that of late years the doctor and several of his family have engaged in journalism, and one of their projects was to_ start a newspaper for the Potteties, but this was not successful. It enabled Mr Ahmed Kenealy however to gain an insight into the way in which newspapers were managed, and an acquaintance with tho men who were connected with them. About ten months ago, the public were amazed to read in the " Daily Telgraph" one morning that Mr Ahmed Kenealy had committed suicide at Etruria, in Staffordshire, and tho paragraph which announced this intelligence contained a circumstantial acoount of how the deceased had shot himself, the when, the where and the wherefore, and every particular which was necessary. The same news appeared in one of the Birmingham papers, and in others at Manchester and Liverpool. The first person to give a contradiction to the report was Dr. Kenealy himself, who set ono of his younger sons at once to work to find out who was the perpetrator of this hoax. It was soon ascertained that Mr Ahmed Kenealy had himself written the telegram, which had been sent to the various newspapers in tho name of their local correspondent. This latter gentleman summoned Mr Kenealy before the magistrate to answer a charge of fraud, but the learned gentleman held that no particular person had been defrauded by this hoax, and dismissed the complaiit). Love of an absurd notoriety seems to be inherent in this family. I think it is very greatly to tho credit of those of her Majesty's inspectors who are charged with putting the Factory Acts in operation that they have during their holiday time been actively looking after tho interests of the defenceless persons who are placed under their protection. Many prosecutions have taken place within the past four weeks, and in all caseß in which it was shown that employers were systematically violating the law by keeping their people at work for unduly long hours they have been heavily fined. But one case stands out from the rest as being one of peculiar hardship, and has become notorious from the remark volunteered by the

prosecuting inspector that it showed that slavery was not yet extinot in London. The defendants were three Jews who lived in the district o£ Spitalfields, and contracted to do the "slop work" for the tailors who do at the Easi-end a large trade in choap goods. They mostly employ foreign Jews and Jewesses, mmy of whom are brought to this country when very young, knowing nothing of the English language, and, it need scarcely be added, in utter ignorance that our law does not permit young people to be worked the long hours, they are systematically kept at work in all the large towns on the Continent. When once tbey come to London and get into the toils of this system they find it very difficult to escape from it, and only during the recent session of Parliament it was_ found necessary to amend the law with a view to ameliorate their condition. In one caso it was shown tlat all the persons employed in the place were f onnd hard at work after eleven o'clock at night. However, when the parties came up at the Police Court the magistrate took a very lenient view of the matter in consequence of the very recent alteration of the law, but while ho thought the general good would result from the prosecutisn, he gave a publio warning that in any future case the slave-driver would be heavily fined.