THE QUEEN'S BIRTHDAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2413, 31 May 1900, Page 62

THE QUEEN'S BIRTHDAY.

By P.W. F.

She was not 'born yesterday. We must put back' the hands on the dial of history till we again get ""nineteen " in the date. In 1819 George III — in whose time Britain had lost an Empire in America, and gained - another in India, fought' every' nation of the earth, and spent a thousand millions of treasure for the freedom of the world; in whose time Mungo Park had explored Africa, Captain Cook the ocean, and Sir William Herschell the universe ; in whose time Pitt and ~Fox debated, Johnson and Goldsmith - wrote, and Wellington and Nelson fought — was" near the close of what was then the record reign. Yes, this dull old King, who. like lead set in gold and diamonds, has occupied the most splendid throne of the world for nearly 60 years, consistently loving mutton and cabbage and hating Catholics, is confronting the grim ferryman who offers one seat to pauper and king. The mightiest fear him, the proudest kneel to him, millions pray for him, and yet, bereft of reason, sight, rearing, and decent; Tespeet, from his children, i he groped about his palace in a snuff-bedabbled ; -purple gown, addressing imaginary parlia- j znents, reviewing phantom troop's, and holding ghostly courts.- ' ■Sighs are yet heard for Princess Charlotte, the only child of the Regent; with 'whom the i Royal line seems to be cut off; for though j at her death the younger pons of the King' rushed into belated matrimony, they are — in the eye of the law — childless. But on the 24th- of May, 1819, there is joy at Kensington Palace, for the Duchess ol Kent, wife of the fourth son of the King, has presented the j world with what is always acceptable — but then most 6o — a daughter, in due time to be christened Victoria Alexandrina. Britain has just emerged 'from the greatest war the world ever saw, -in .which she has j fought and paid for all. The hard times that ' followed the peace, when armies and navies., were disbanded, and the public expenditure of 100 millions a year came suddenly to an i end, are still -acutely felt. The memory of the war is still fresh. Widows still wear weeds for the heroes of AVaterloo, and orphans still eat the bread of charity because their fathers fertilise the fields they won. The wooden leg industry has had a boom. Its products stump along every street, and everybody knows somebody who - Sits by the fire and talks the night away, Weeps o'er his wounds, and tales of sorrow ; ' done, | Shcnalders his crutch, and shows how fields were won. , I The oaken walls-. that won "the "Spoils of , Trafalgar," and throw 32-pound shots from | smoothbore castiron guns, arc still the pride pf Old England. No one imagines that the little Princess will reign over a Britain guarded by monsters of sleel that would shake off Nelson's' broadsides like hailstones, and hurl their own half-tons of metal through as many of his good ships as happened to be in the line of fire. The arts of peace are waking up. It is in ' this year that Humphry ~Davy receives ' £20,000 and a baronetcy for his safety lamp, i Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, and Bristol are j experimenting in gas lighting for the streets, ! and the prophecies of failure are loud. The i old watchman still trudges his beat with his - smoky lantern, crying " Twelve o'clock, and all's well." B.ut soon liis lamp shall pale its ineffectual fire in the light of a new era; and the " sons of Belial, flushed with insolence and wine," will be more careful how they rob and maltreat in the streets. Even the watchman will have to move on, for Robert Peel, who is to lend both his names to a new force, has already been ten years in Parliament. Men cannot yet travel faster than the Pharaohs could. The speed of horseflesh is their limit. They boast that, with 200 blood horses and drivers that can flick a fly off the ear of the near-side leader, they can haul a stage coach from London to Exeter in 30 hours. Little dream these Jehus that our Princess will do the trip in five hours. The principle of the railway is known, but the engineers are confident that it would be impossible to climb any incline without cogs on wheel and rail. They have not yet thought of blowing the steam up the flue to make a draught either, so they imagined they must needs stop at short intervals to get up eteani ! At sea a steamer has already crawled from' Glasgow to London, but nex E t year there •will be a regular service from Holyhead to Dublin. Not till the little Princess has been a year a .Queen shall the s.s. Sirius cross the Atlantic, from Cork to New York— in 19 days. A little later will come the first telegram, and a little later still will be heard the popular 4"hyme : „ Prom John o'G-roata to England's end, JFrorn Norfolk to Kilkenny, A letter now may reach a friend =-> And only cost a penny. No Jew can sit in Parliament unless he will swear by his faith as a Christian. No Catholic or Nonconformist can be a postmaster or hold any public office unless he will first receive the sacrament in the Church of England. For many a year the people of Britain shall have no voice in their Government. Nearly half the House of Commons— 300 members — are appointed by 160 persons. The Duke of Norfolk appoints 11! Old Sarum, with no inhabitants,. lias two members,while Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham have none. . But the people are agitating. In this very year, 1819, the Regent thanks the magistrates of 'Manchester for the massacre of Peterloo, in which the cavalry were cent to charge through a peaceable throng of 60,000, met in St. Peter's fields to pass resolutions. The Government are considering a law to forbid assemblies of more than 50 people. The criminal law is savage, and has two hundred and odd reasons for hanging a man. The suicide, is punished by being buried in cross roads " with a stake in tv& inside." The ,

British flag flies over hundreds of thousands of slaves — but Olarkson and Wilberforce are in the House _of Commons. Many of the slaves are in South Africa,' and their emancipation will be the beginning of troubles. Wheat is 11s a bushel, and salt is taxed to 4-0 times its value. News]3apcrs, besides a tax on paper, pay a duty of 4d a copy. Bricklayers are busy blocking up windows to save ' the tnx on- sunlight. Truly, it is a Merrie England. Whalers and the bravest missionaries already know of a place called New Zealand, whose savages out-cannibalise Crusoe's. There is p convict settlement at Botany Bay, and a newer one in Van Diemen's Land — which has recently been proved to be an island. But cities ! civilisation ! wealth ! commerce ! Don't mention them or you will bo laughed at. The people of Sydney -have not found a way over the Blue Mountains, and the Murray and the Darling are unknown. The Sydney ■wharves might easily bo cleaned in 1819. Tho blackfellows spear the kangaroo ..on the sits of Melbourne. The Yarra is not I crammed with steamers and stenchful -with the refu&s of factories, but is a shallow, weedy ' stream, where the wildfowl splashes and screams. The ships of the Waitemata- are dug-out canoes ; a cannibal fea^t is going on in Welling ton ; Maoris are fi thing for eels in the Avon, and the weka is> wandering among the flax and fern of the Octagon. There are some remarkable men alive in 1819.^ On a lonely rock, innocent as yet of Cronje, lives Napoleon, quarrelling with the Governor because he is treated as a general only. He has had- kingdoms and empires ab his feet. He has been a puller down and setter up of kings. But now he stands oh that little island, not monarch even there, and gazes upon the ocean, that never was hi-s, thinking of that nation of shopkeepers whose gold he could not exhaust. There were other men much talked of — the clubfooted Byron, who has just finished ''Childe Harold " ; and his friend, the dangerous Radical, Shelley, who has -just completed " Prometheus Unbound." There also is Scott, with his dog at his feet, hard at work on " Ivanhoe." We note al?o a rugged Scottish youth of 24-, Thomas Carlyle, guiltless 'y^ of torturing human speech. There is a set-off to that torture, 'however, in a youth of 19, who is reciting Scott's latest novel to his' companions — Thomas Babington Macaulay. There are some boys of much promise and potency at school. See that lad of 14 with Jewish features and black, curly hair. They call him Ben. Little recks he 'that a Princess is born to-day. Yet it is written in the book" of fate that he shall make her an Empress. Over in ' Germany there is a younger lad, a young Hercules, fated also to give an Imperial crown. These two shall be at cross purposes one day, and "Punch" shall ask : Bizzy or Dizzy, , The deeper which i& he? Observe also thai, handsome boy of ten whom his fellows call Sadstone, though Gladstone is the name of him. Observe him, ye Irish churchmen, ye officers with purchased rank, ye profiters by monopolies and abiises, ye tyrant's of Italy and the Balkans, for he phall smite you hip and thigh. Look also, ye scientists, and ye theologians too, at that boy of ten with frogs and beetles in his pockets. He will play havoc with your systems — it is Charlie Darwin. That shy boy of nine loves . to hear tales of the Good King Arthur and his table round. He shall be marked as* ''Miss Alfred" in his time, but will wear the undisputed crown of song ere he has crossed the bar. That boy of seven who is learning to earn a ciust by pasting labels on blacking bottles will look at you with wondering eyes if you ask, "Is Barkis willin', Charlie?" All these boys have filled their niches in the temple of fame, and are gone from us., but the-little Pftncess -is still spared to see her birthday return in the last year of the century for ever identified with her name. Loxg Mat She Reign.