The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, June 25, 1889. A HALF YEAR OF HORRORS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 316, 25 June 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, June 25, 1889. A HALF YEAR OF HORRORS.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Another awful disaster has to be added to the terrible list of calamities that has been compiled since the beginning of the year. By a dreadful fire in a town in China the lives of twelve hundred people were lost in the flames and ten thousand people were rendered homeless. It is a custom with many journalists, at the end of every year, to recount all the important events, good or bad, that have taken place during the year, and then to moralise on the result that is obtained. Half the year has not yet transpired, and though we look back at this period we must acknowledge that the year 1889 will give a fearful record of horrors. The Czar’s life was attempted on New Year’s Day, and in the first week of January there was an epidemic of suicides all over the world. Then came news of a revolution in Hayti, of guerilla invasion of Spain, of an earthquake in Costa Rica, of the massacre of missionaries in East Africa, and of 200 people frozen to death in Russia. An epidemic set in of collisions on the sea. There were five collisions in the English Channel in a month, with a loss of over a hundred and twenty lives. The steamer Priam was lost off the coast of Spain, and many lives were lost; the Hohenstaufen was disabled, the steamer Cotopaxi was sunk in the Straits of Magellan, the barque’ Enchantress was wrecked, another vessel went to pieces on the coast of the West Indies, a French torpedo boat foundered, the emigrant ship Danmark was lost on the Atlantic, the Sir Walter Raleigh went down with a fatality of five lives, and last, but not least, there fell upon us the news of the awful hurricane at Samoa, and the loss of five men-of-war of the German and United States navies. This is a part of the awful record of disaster by water brought to a horrible climax by the floods in America the otherday, through which 15,000 people have lost their lives, and 40,000,000 dollars worth of. property has been destroyed. Yesterday we received word of the sinking, through collision with the ship lolanthe, of the ship Cape Verde. Then, while water makes much havoc, what are the other elements doing? Fire plays a dreadful part. In Quebec 500 houses were destroyed, in Northamptonshire a great fire occurred, at which many lives were lost; New York had a conflagration at which 3,000,000 dollars worth of property was swallowed up; Smithfield in the United States was visited by a scourge of flame, and London was severely visited; and lately the dreadful fire in China takes its place on the list. But there remains the record of earthquakes in Central America, the eruption of lava from Vesuvius, a terrible colliery explosion at Halford, Connecticut, at which there was a sacrifice of fifty lives, while at Manchester thirty miners were destroyed through the same cause, and loss of life has occurred through the subsidence of a coal mine at

Newcastle. The other day, too, at Armagh, Ireland, 150 children lost their lives through a railway collision. War, pestilence, and famine have also played their part. Yellow fever in Rio de Janeiro carried off 125 lives daily for a time ; and in China such a famine is devastating the population as has never been known before in the history of the country. There has been war in Abyssinia, in Sikkim, in Samoa, in Hayti, in Borneo, and in Armenia, and war clouds are still looming over the Great Powers. But outside of war itself there have been social upheavals, anarchy in Spain, socialist troubles in Germany and Austria, while in Russia, there have been four demoniac attempts made upon the life of the Czar. The King of Servia set aside his right of royalty and fled the troubles of a troublous country, and the King of Abyssinia was killed in battle. But chief among such events there stands out in horrible distinctiveness the suicide of Rudolph of Austria, the heir to the Crown of Austria and Hungary. An American journal states that in the first four months of the year there were 700 suicides in the United States, and even throughout the colonies the disease, or whatever it may be, which impels men to destroy themselves has been raging in a more virulent form than usual. When one ponders over the half-year of horrors it almost induces a feeling of superstition. There have been no comets, or anything of that nature that would cause superstitious people to point them out as the cause of the trouble, but it is no cause for wonder if men indulge in theories as to the strange conjunction of disasters. One writer on the subject says : —Scientists and sociologists have pointed out that

in France, Italy, and Russia particularly there passes over the people a wave of suicide, and men madly throw their lives away as they madly rush to the stock-market to invest in fanciful shares, or to draw funds from a failing bank, The influence of association is very great. It is stated that Prince Rudolph was strangely affected by the suicide of Leopold of Bavaria, that he constantly dwelt upon it, and thus was moved to follow the example of the unhappy monarch, It would seem also that on steamers and railway lines, when one officer or employee fails in his duty, or is the cause of a catastrophe through accident, the contagion of mishap or neglect spreads, and we have such a succession of railway accidents as convulsed America early in the year, and of terrible collisions and disasters at sea. The accidents in the Channel were due to some extent to fog,' but no one can account for the unusually large number that occurred save by this intricate yet deadly law of association. It was not as if there rose everywhere on the seas storms to wreck vessels, yet ships all over the world, from small trading crafts to men of war, foundered and collided. There is a law working somewhere, but we are no nearer understanding it than were the ancients-—'than was Euripides or Brutus.

THE COLONIES AND HOME RULE. A convincing proof of the ultimate success of the Home Rule agitation is the desperation with which self-dubbed unionists fight against it. Desperation is always a sign of weakness, and cer-. tainly the Tories and their journals display it in an eminent degree. To this hopelessness may be ascribed their attempt to raise a storm about the heads of the Irish delegates to the colonies— Sir H. Esmonde and Messrs Dillon and Deasy. Delegates from the Irish National party have visited the colonies before. They have said what they had to say, and have gone on their way, whether successful or not is not beside the question. Suffice it to say they created no dissension in the internal government of the colonies, and from their visits no ills resulted. There is no doubt that had the present mission been allowed to carry out its programme undisturbed, beyond passing interest in the visitors, colonists would have taken little notice of it. Irishmen would subscribe liberally to relieve their distressed countrymen, express their sympathies with the National movement, and, on the departure of the delegates, resume their ordinary state of living. But at the very outset of the movement it was met with opposition which has raised the mission into something of much more importance than it would otherwise have been. Instead of the mere passing interest, every colony and every town will now exhibit a state of expectancy directly a visit of the delegates is announced. It may be that in some places it will raise up strife, renew old feuds, or unsettle the minds of the people. Had the delegates come with the avowed purpose of introducing old world factions into these colonies we should protest against their visit. They make no such pretence, and their sole aim, so far as we can see, is to raise money to aid in that great contest to which Gladstone and other eminent men have given their approval. If they misuse the money, surely there are laws to punish them, but we do not know of any law which prevents a man from giving them money if ho thinks it advisable to do so.

It is, however, not the policy of the Tories to allow the Irish delegates to pursue their way through the colonies without interference, and we are now informed that an emissary has been sent to the colonies ot a cost of Z5OO. What his duties are, and whether he is to be an avowed or secret enemy do not appear, but the fact of the appointment now revealed, is evidence of the rapid progress that the Home Rule question has made during the last few years. It goes further than this, and shows that, unless sooner terminated, the question will shortly be exalted into an Imperial one, in the speedy settlement of which the colonies, as well as the mother country, will have a large interest. The colonies having long and happy experiences of self-Government, and the benefits derived from it, can only hold one opinion on the matter. We, however, hope to see Ireland placed in the position she ought to hold, without dragging the colonies into the dispute, and events all portend to this happy conclusion, unless the opponents of Home Rule, in their blind desperation, will persist in carrying strife and dissension into the Australasian Colonies.