THE BRITISH JUBILEE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2379, 8 October 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE BRITISH JUBILEE.

Half a century is little in the life of the world, but there are some epochs that always loom large in history, seeming never to -shrink with the lapse of time into the insignificance that is tiie fate of common eras. The fifty years of Victoria, like the forty-four of Elizabeth and the five of Cromwell, have stamped themselves upon England’s records with a distinctness that will never fade. Already the Victorian age has taken its place as one of the classical periods in the story of the race. In science, industry, literature, exploration, conquest and political advancement, England in the jubilee epoch, has combined the achievements of a dozen reigns. When Victoria Alexandria a, an inexperienced girl nf eighteen, suddenly found herself the head of (he tinman rare, the England she ruled was a very different one from the England of to day. With little more than half its present population, it was overcrowded and wretched to an extent that can hardly be realised now. There were more paupers and more criminals—not relatively, but absolutely —than there are at this time. The coni laws kept the mass of the p ople on the verge of starvation. Popular education was unknown, and properly and brutal ignorance went side b.- side. Politically, the nation was just struggling towards a semblance of popular rule. The fir.-t Reform Bill had been passed not long before, but many of the old abuses remained, and, even in the reformed constituencies, the influence of the great aristocratic families was dominant. The Chartists were jn-t about to shock the public nerves with their incendiary “ .Six Points ” demands which were then considered no better than insane Jacobini-m, but. of which part have since been granted, and the rest have sunk to the rank of harmless questions of detail. The mass of the empire was in political darkness. The old Canadian provinces were destitute of responsible government; the Northwest territory was the fur preserve of the Hudson’s Bay Company ; Australia was a penal -settlement; New Zealand was under the misrule of native chiefs : India was despotically administered by the East India Company ; an 1 South Africa noi only lacked a constitutional government, but was yet to fight out the question whether it -should b? devoted to freemen or convicts.

The wealth of Engine! in ISH7 has thought to be enormous, but it was increased beyond all proportion with the population. The corn laws then kept agriculture in unnatural prominence, and commerce and m mafic: arcs were comparatively depressed. In the o -can carrying trade America was gaining rapidly on Britain. The cotton, wojlen andiron industries had reached only the merest fraction of their present dimensions. Free trade and free slaps have turned England from an agricultural country, with subsidiary manufactures and com merco into a huge workshop and port with a vegetable garden attached. In literature the \ ictorian nge continued, without a break, the brilliant record which has placed the nineteenth century above any other period in English letters except the ago of Shakespeare. At the beginning of the reign, M icau'ay, Do Quincy, Southey ami Wordsworth were at the height of (heir fain”. The very year of Victoria's accession was a memorable date in literature. It saw the birth of two great reputations when Dickens and Carlyle published “ I’ickwick ■’ and ‘•The French Revolution.’’ In the same year a few curious Londoners went to see the first production of a singular tragedy by an obscure young poet—a Mr ’Drowning, Miss Uarrutt, whom Mr Drowning was afterward to marry, had published some verses that had not attracted much attention. \oung Mr Tennyson was favourably known to a select circle of literary connoisseurs by’ a mod 'st volume of “ Diems, chiefly lyrical.’’ Nobody had heird of Thackeray, nor Ruskin, nor (teorge Eliot, nor Charlotte Dronte, nor .Swinburne—the last, indeed, came into the world less than three months before the Queen came to the throne.

The last fifty, years have contractu! the unknown regions of the world to a few insignificant spots, and in the work of discovery the subjects of Victoria have done their full share. From B i-s in the south to Nares in the north Biili.-h pioneers have covered .almost the whole field of exploration. They have pierced Africa from cve.-y side, solved the mystery of Central Australia, and worked their way, with patient and fearless industry, through the suspicious tribes of the Asiatic deserts. They have carried British trade to the wilderness, and where trale went the 11 ig ha. generally followed. The boundaries of the Empire have extended in every direction. The .South African colonic, have crept towards the Etpiator, ami English seltlemtuls have fringed the cu.i to The government lias taken up the work of thEast India Company, and mm native kingdom after another has fallen from Unhands of its nerveless princes into the grasp of the British Rij. China has been despoiled of Hongkong, Turk-y hj is glv<-n up Cyprus an 1 the islands of th ■ Tariff; have been gathered with monotonous frequency into the English fold. But great as the progress of the half c utury has been in other directions, it, is in science that the age has wm its c!ii--f distinction. In literature the Victotian era ranks second to that of Elizabeth ; in science it stands alone. Two of the four greatest scientific ; discoveries of nil time—the laws of evolution and the correlation of forces—were developel under Victoria, and both by Englishmen. Darwin, Wallace and Joule deserve the credit of placing our conceptions of nature on an eniinly new fonndaiion. In the se; a -ite branches of investigithni the advance has been cquilly marked. Geology, chemistry and biology arc practically the cr-ationsjof the la~t titty years. Even astronomy, once thought to he substantially complete, has leap-d forward and now finds daily new worlds to discover. In npjili- 1 science the onward rush has been simp’y bewildering. Steam and electricity arc racing to see which will do the woik of the world. When \ ictoria c mi- to the throne England was in its stag**-coach days, and the rest of the earth was behind it. The Manchester and Liverpool railroad was a success, hut London still had to do its travelling with horses, and it was predicted that the general use of steam would ruin the country. That momentous year, ISJ7, was the very one in which Morse was exhibiting his new telegraph in New York. The Queen lus lived to see the whole world webbed with wires.

Through a 1! the long development of England from a close oligarchy to an unrestrained democracy, Queen Victoria his nobly filled her trying place. She has seen her country sometimes in straits, but, on the whole, growing constantly richer, stronger, better and more intelligent. Fifteen American President-- hivsent their ministers to her court; she Ins: outlived every monarch who occupied a European throne when she was crowned, and through all she has remained the same spotless representative of a nation’s honour. No wonder the English people arc rejoicing at her jubilee. ~ Any reign of fifty years is a remarkable event, but fifty years of a sovereign like Victoiia

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