SCRAPS.

Press, Volume XII, Issue 1580, 29 November 1867, Page 3

SCRAPS.

[From the English papers.]

An English working-man—one of the many enabled by Mr Hodgson Pratt's thoughtful and benevolent plan to see the manufactures of the Paris Exhibition critically,—sends to the " Times " a report, which seems to us more able and lucid iv description than all the wearisome special correspondences with which the various daily papers have nauseated us. He is very strong in favour oi a higher scientific education for working men, and says that- there is far less of a chasm between the French designer and executor—the artist and artizan —than between the Eng'ish ; and that they much oftoner meet in the same person. Madame Frigard, the murderess, has confessed her crime, but states that it was committed with prussic acid. The elaborate evidence given to prove that she could have strangled Madame Mertens was, therefore, unfounded, and her bitter jest on the subject is explained. A doctor stated that he had tried the experiment on a sheep, and Madame Frigard bade her counsel ask him if his sheep had on steel stays.

The Organized Trades of Sheffield have, we are happy to perceive, excommunicated the Sawgrinders' Union. The recent resolution of that body refusing to desert Broadhead has proved too much for the workmen's patience,and the organized trades decline to have anything further to do with them until Crookes and his employer are expelled. A similar resolution was passed at a large public meeting called by Mr Stainton, aud the workmen everywhere seem aware of the extreme injury Sheffield has inflicted upon Hieir cause. The local magistrates have withdrawn Broadhead's license as a publican.

Mr Bright has recommended the .Reform League to keep in existence, in order to help new electors to register, and to commence an agitation for the ballot as a protection for electors against bribery and intimidation. It would be no protection against either, as Americans very well knov, though it might diminish rioting at elections; but supposing the remedy to be as perfect as its advocates believe, it would surely be polite, not to say discreet, to wait and see whether the new Parliament is utterly blind to its perfection. We doubt if that body will be greatly conciliated either by advice or threats from an outside House of Commons, not supported by " the masses/ They, for the future, elect the members, and are very likely, therefore, to support them, a fact Mr Beales appears disposed to forget.

A letter from Dr. Henri Blanc, one of the prisoners confined by Theodore of Abyssinia, suggests a possible explanation of his conduct. lie is possessed, the writer says, with hatred of white men. He hoped by their aid and his immense army, numbering at one time 750,000 men, to re-establish the old glories of Ethiopia, and reign from Magdala to Alexandria, like Sesostris. Foiled in this, he became bitter, and now finds apparently pleasure in any insult offered to Europeans. He chained the French Consul, for instance ; and M. Blanc—evidently a cool-headed, light-hearted person — thinks anything short of actual compulsion would be lost on him. We may add, that the fear of the execution of the prisoners generally entertained in England may be taken as unfounded. They might be murdered five minutes before the King was killed, but up to that time he would keep them as other scoundrels keep valuable papers, to make terms with in extremity. Even Tippoo did that, and this man is to Tippoo what Tippoo was to his conqueror.

The gas stokers of London say they are oppressed, and Beem to have a very good case indeed. They allege that they are compelled to work twelve hours a day, for seven days in the week, before huge fires, under a temperature which often rises to 180 degrees. They are constantly taken away fainting, and lately, "at the Ful ham Works, so many men were taken away exhausted that there were not enough left to make up the gang necessary to carry on the work." The meu ask for a reduction to eight hours a day, but will probably get ten hours ; and exemption from Sunday labour, which will be done by a separate relay. With great good sense they propose, instead of striking, to appeal to the directors, and then to the shareholders, for more merciful treatment, a display of moderation none the less meritorious because striking would be of- no use. The directors could fill their places in three hours from the dock alone, but that does not give them a right to use up Englishmen like Cuban planters. No liver can stand twelve hours a day of hard work in a temperature of 100 degrees.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has promised that the primary report of the Commission upon Ritualism shall be published at once. It is understood that it condemns excess in ecclesiastical millinery very severely, and advises that it should be prohibited. That is, doubtless, proper, when the parish feels its conscience offended by the clergyman's dress, but how about the doctrines of which those dresses are only the intimation ? Is belief in trans-substantiation to be allowed and the elevation of the bread forbidden, sacerdotalism to be taught and the wearing of sacerdotal garments made penal ? It would be very like an English Archbishop to recommend that course, but it will scarcely, we suspect, satisfy a Householder Parliament. If that consents to act at all, it will pass something a little more to the purpose than a sumptuary law.

Great people seem to have at last hit upon a mode of entertaining each other which is a little picturesque. On the visit of the Emperor Napoleon to the Kaiser, the hills around Salzburg were lighted with beacons; the Untersberg in particular blazing into the night, and the cave where Frederick Bar*

barossa sits waiting the hour of German unity being turned into a " sea of flame." The same thing was attempted on her Majesty's visit to the Border, the old warning beacons, which once told of invasion, being once more heaped up, and Airing all through the night. The attempt was a grand success, the squires bonfires well, and the whole country side turning out to gaze.

The American correspondent of the | ; 'Times" furnishes an account of the taxation levied on the inhabitants of the great cities by the Union, the State, and the Municipality. Every man in New York now pays £6 lCs ; of Philadelphia, £4 17s ; of Boston, £7 17s; of Cincinnati, £5 4s ; of Chicago, £4 ISs ; and of San Francisco, £7 13s. These are enormously high rates, the Londoner not paying on the same plan of reckoning more than £3 a head, two for national and one for local taxes, but they are not higher than he will have to pay if London is to be thoroughly civilized. We want 3s a head more, or say £400,000, for better police alone. The Sultan, as a first consequence of his visit to the West, has ordered his 3linisters to improve the finances, the army, the marine, and the administration of justice, which is extremely satisfactory, as satisfactory as an order to them to double the yield of ever}' acre of land. He is, however, resolved, it is said, on a practical measure, the creation of a new Divan, with ten Mussulmans and ten Christians. If this is carried out, the ten Mussulmans will be of course the heads of all important departments in the State, the ten Christians lesser officials with no real power ; but the appearance of equality will perhaps help to float another loan. The Sultan wishes, no doubt, that he were head of an European organization, but it is hard, if not impossible, to carve upon rotten wood.

Mr W. E. Forster has been speaking to his constituents at Bradford, on occasion of laying the first stone of the Tradesmen's Benevolent Association there. Of course it was not an opportunity for a party speech, and IVlr Foster used it chiefly to congratulate Europe on the rise of a strong Germany, to compliment Lord Stanley on his foreign policy, and to justify Parliament for not havingalteredthelaw of limited liability, in consequence of the many frauds to the advantage of which it had been turned. The chief cause of the suffering was, he said very justly, that " people without a knowledge of business had tried to get the profits of j business," and, of course, had been cheated. "It was impossible for Parliament to supply the want of prudence." He concluded with a sentiment rather more favourable to laissezfaire than is usual with Mrj Forster, —" Parliament could do but j little; they could carry free trade; they could punish crime; they might do something perhaps for the education of the whole country," —but the rest must be all done by individual effort, without organization. That is a great under-statement of the case.

A very amusing letter in the " PallMall," from " A Lady of a Certain Age," describes a new dodge for getting timid women to buy " specifics," for effecting nothing, at an enormous cost. The lady went, according to her own account, to a fashionable hairdresser's at a fashionable wateringplace. While her hair was being combed or cut, the young man in attendance Btarted, asked her if she was aware her hair would be quite gray in three months, applied a magnifying glass, and assured her again that such would be inevitably the result; but, he added kindly, that an immediate application of one of his specifics—specific No. 2—would arrest and prevent this disaster, specific No. 2 costing from 7s 6d to a guinea a bottle. While she was still there a very young lady came in. A " still taller and more dignified person" was appointed to operate upon her hair—and nerves—and she was threatened with speedy baldness if she did not apply specific No. 1, price a guinea. In another fashionable hairdresser's shop of the same town to which, after this experience, our heroine went from laudable curiosity, she and a friend were threatened with precisely similar results, magnifying glasses being as before applied to their hair, and pseudo-scientific nonsense talked about it by the young men. The lady adds that these hairdresser's attendants get a fourth of the price of whatever cosmetics of the kind they sell.