FIVE MILLIONS A TEAR.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 285, 17 July 1873, Page 7

FIVE MILLIONS A TEAR.

{From the " Australasian.'") What can an ordinary mortal do with an income of fue millions a year ? He cannot spend it, and it is accumulating a frightful responsibility if he saves it. Using it v.i out of the question, and the alternative advice of the Roman Emperor to the man who found a treasure, "abuse it," is equally difficult to follow when applied to such enormous sums. These considerations arise from a calculation gievn by a London correspondent, that Lord Dudley's forty coal-pits yield 16,000 tons of coal daily, and returning a "grand total profit of LJ.,992,000 per annum," leaving a margin for small coal, &<*., that would divide into a good nany respectable incomes. Without adverting to the particular circum stances that especially point the irony of fortune in placing this vast wealth at the disposal of the present Lord Dudley, we can well understand the truth or this remark, that " facts of this kind set the common people thinking." There is, indeed, material for thought in a state of affairs that gives one man a profit of five million pounds a year when many millions of his fellow-countrymen are undergoing discomfort, and even wretchedness, from the high price of coal which yields him this fabulous wealth. We can well appreciate the statement that discontent is simmering, that strange and novel questions are being discussed, going to the very foundation of the rights of property, and that revolutionary feelings are growing in the minds of men in a country presenting such exaggerated extremes of wealth and poverty. As one of our London correspondents says, "It is the facts not the theories, which set people talking on these matters." Wheu these questions are being canvassed with such freedom of speculation, and such a spirit of indignation to sharpen speculation, and when the conservative influences are daily losing in power, patriotic Englishmen may indeed feel uneasiness as to what is to be the issue.

Thers is, perhaps, no mob in the world that can be graver or more orderly, when it so pleases, than a Madrid mob. When, in the revolution of 18G8, some 80,000 rifle 3 were showered down at random out of the Arsenal windows to anybody and everybody who,' in the general scramble, could get hold of one (not a few receiveing severe injuries from the points of the falling bayonets, the first thing this extempore army of ragamuffins did was to form itself into detachments and marjh on to post sentries over the public buildings — notably «-he Palace and the Bank. Barefooted loafers, from the worst <c back slnms" of Madrid, who, if they had owned a cuario, would probably have not a sound pocket to keep it in, shouldered arms with hyper-military solemnity outside the doors of the Bank, allowing no one to enter without a formal order from the recognised authorities. Imagine the feelings of the Governor of the Bank of England if, on driving down, he found himself bound to prove his right of entry to the satisfaction of an armed picket of Whifechapel roughs, or imagine — an easier task — the state of the Bank coffers next day ! But here, in Madrid, not a coin was missing, not an ornament tilchuil even from the P;il;ice — -the concrete symbol of the Government the peopln had just overthrown — or a a window smashed. The mob whs quite content with haviug achieved its object, in getting rid of Queen Isabella ; and its worst exces was the lynching, not wholly unmerited, of a few police spies. — " Times" Correspondent.