THE 20TH CENTURY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 15 April 1908, Page 3

THE 20TH CENTURY.

"I would not exchange the twentieth century for any that have gone before it ; my only regret is that Ido not live in the twenty-first." With this statement Bishop Welldon (Dean of Manchester) prefaced a lecture at the Manchester Athenseuin on "Some Changes in the Social Habits of the People of England," reported by the Manchester Guardian. He went on to state, chronologically, some of the reasons for his preference. "If you had lived before the thirteenth century you would have had no sugar," he said. "At the beginning of the fifteenth century you would have had no butter; in the sixteenth century no potatoes and no tobacco; in the seventeenth no tea, coffee or I soap. I am afraid that our ancestors were all dirty. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were no lamps and no umbrellas; at the beginning of the nineteenth ,no trains, matches, gas or chloroform. "William the Conqueror ate with his fingers; Chaucer never saw a printed book ; Queen Elizabeth never heard of tea or a newspaper ; and Queen Vie- i toria was the first sovereign of England not dependent on the wind and weather for opportunity of leaving her island home." Bishop Welldon spoke of the strenuous opposition which every improvement of higher civilisation had had to face. Holinshead, the Elizabethan chronicler, spoke of the newfangled notion which allowed smoke to escape up a given channel instead of through the cracks and crevices of a house's walls." Jolm. "Wesley ascribed most of the evils of a degenerate age to the practice of drinking tea. Matches wgre called lucifers, because they were thought to be connected with the Evil One. Even the use of anaesthetics, one of science' 8 greatest dis-» coveries, was fought against. Sir James Simpson made one of , the finest ' possible answers to the critics who j were' opposed to chloroform by pointing out that in the record of the earliest operation in human history, when God was said to have taken a rib out of Adam's body, He first cast the mam into a deep sleep. "Of gambling, changes in dress, food and drink, Bishop Welldon had much to say. One of the most marked aspects of the progress of civilisation was, he thought, the increase of humanity. The last advertisement of the sale of a slave in England appeared as recently as November 11, 1771, in ' the Birmingham Gazette. In that paper a Walsall auctioneer announced the sale by auction of 'a negro boy from Africa, supposed to be about ten or eleven years of age. He is remarkably straight, well - proportioned, speaks tolerably good English, of a mild disposition, friendly, sound in health, fond of labor, and for color an excellent fine lad.' "The present illegality of bear-bait-ing and cock-fighting he spoke of with satisfaction, but, he added, 'there was still room for the humanising of sports in England,' and if proof of this were needed it was to be found in a report, published in the Times of March 1, 1907, of 'A remarkable scene at a stag hunt,' the hunt being the Berks and Bucks. The report told how a terrified and wounded' stag appeared in the main street of a village and collapsed. There a rope was thrown around its neck, and some men were leading it to a stable when the beast detected the sounds of the approaching hounds, and' in its frantic efforts to g^t free strangled itself.. It was some consolation, Bishop Welldon added, that 'the members of the hunt were the objects. of an uncomplimentary demonstration! 1 ? " l =- .';'-'■