TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9789, 27 July 1897, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Earlt in Jane Mr. Gladstone A made another of those inCentury's teresting speeches for which Progress, he is justly renowned, and! which, coming from one who is nearing his eighty-eighth birthday must be regarded as veritable tours de force. The occasion was the opening of & new bridge for vehicular traffic which had been built over the Dee at Queen's Ferry by the Cheshire and Flintshire County Councils. Mr Gladstone's speech was foil of comparisons and reminiscences of the far-off days of his boyhood. His wife, who was not present, had, he said, a personal interest in the function of opening the new bridge, became

about seventy years ago the boat which had. hitherto very deliberately performed the duties of ferrying people backwards and forwards on the river was named after Mrs Gladstone and her sister, Tho Catherine and Mary, and his wife very cheerfully and generously surrendered her interest— (laughter)—and rejoiced to contemplate the now bridge as a "great sooial influence. It was his opinion that when the history of the present century was told the historian would "always record it as among the most promineut features of the period that it was busied with an extraordinary success in studying and improving the communications between the different portions of the country and the different races of niankiud." As he was born ia the year 1809, he might, without vanity, consider himsslf as in some sonso a man of the nineteenth century, and he assured his hearers it was hardly possible to desoribe the changes that had taken place within his recollection so far as regarded the facilities of communication between man and man all over the country. Having referred to the boon conferred by the penny post and to the benefits conferred upon the public by Mr John Cook's system of excursion toutS, Mr Gladstone went on to speak of other changes that had occurred during his lifetime. In his boyhood everything that had to be sent between Liverpool and London every day "was comprised within.the limits of a single mail-coach, and that mail-coach not more thau a fourth or fifth part of the size of one of the railway carriages of which now— not in one mail train, but in several—there were probably four ov five stuffed and crammed with letters and newspapers. In his boyhood goods were sent to London by road in covered waggons drawn by horses at the rate of abcnit two miles an hour." To-day there were swift, cheap railways, besides the telegraph to convey their messages, and the telephone for their voices, and it might be that those who were now young might see in their time further developments no less astonishing. It was probable, he added, that "not less than a twelfth or tenth part of the whole property of the country was represented by the railways that carried them and thenchildren and their goods backwards and forwards from one part of the country to another," All these facilities of locomotion were not merely of great material benefit. It was to the moral advantage of the people that they should be in close communication with each other, for the better they knew one another ."the more they would know how to comprehend the great business and the great science of life." Oct of the wealth of hia A .recollections of past times Lugubrious Mr Gladstone drew a story Prophecy, referring to the period when

the railway system of England was in its infancy. Many people viewed the new system of communication with anything but favour. Among these was a very clever lawyer who asked " What will be the consequence of this scheme of railways ?" He himself knew if no one else did. The common people, he declared, would travel by them but the rich people would never do so, "and tho consequence would be that the people going by the high road would become exceedingly small, and highwaymen would spring up over the high road, and people would have their throats cut." Turning to the subject of the new bridge Mr Gladstone referred to the fact that 693 bicycles had crossed it on Ea9ter Monday. That, he said, was a very singular development of their times and he "supposed," .upon the whole a very valuable one. It must be remembered that the story that Mr Gladstone had taken to a bicycle has been authoritatively contradicted, or else we should hardly have had that expression, of doubt as to the benefits of cycling. Again going back to his boyhood Mr Gladstone said he remembered when a youth, and living on the north shore of the Mersey, that he used to look aaross the Mersey upon Cheshire and the Welsh hills as if they had been a foreign country. Mr Gladstone then performed the ceremony of opening the bridge, naming it as he did kg " Victoria Jubilee bridge,' 0 which is about awkward a title as could be imagined. During the speeches which followed the High Sheriff of the county raraarked that Mr Gladstone had never qualified as a Magistrate of the county,-though he had been on the list for many years. Mr Gladstone's reply is well worth recording. He had never liked, he said, to undertake a duty unless he thought he could perform it efficiently, and considering the number of fish he had had to fry,in other parte of the world, he had great doubts about his being a good magistrate, aud he did not want to be put on record as being a bad one. If only a large number of individuals had been subject to the same restraining doubt as to their fitness for the magistracy there would be a lot less said about "Justices'justice."

Ma Westlsy Richards, the A ' news of whose death was Famous cabled some .weeks ago. had Gunmaker. done a great deal in his - time

to bring the rifle and the i sporting gun to their present state of perfection. As an inventive gunmaker he took high rank. Forty-five years ago he gave the War Office such valuable assistance in perfecting the arm which subsequently took shape as the Enfield rifle that the Government awarded him the sum of £1000 for his services. Some years later he brought out the capping breech-loading rifle and the cartridge to be used therewith, this being the first breech-loading weapon adopted by the Government. The Birmingham workshops of the firm supplied the Government with a large number of these rifles,, which were, rifled on the. Whitworth system invented by Isambard Brunei, the great engineer. Mr Richards, in the following year, 1859, invented a top-lever breechloading gun, the first of its kind ever made, and ten years later the falling-block rifle, with metallic cartridge. This invention, it is stated, anticipated the Martini rifle, and Mr Richards was paid a royalty by the, owners of the Martini patents. Mr Richards retired from the management of his business twenty yearß ago, though still retaining a large number of shares in it. Since that date the firm has kept up its character for; inventiveness. It has introduced many valuable patents, including the first successful hammerless gun, and a bolt head.for magazine rifles, which was adopted by the Government for the Lee-Metford rifle, its _aflue being recognised by a grant to the firm Fof £3000.