The English House of Lords has obtained a great victory. After a summer of agitation in the form of great meetings, monster processions and burning eloquence, the Ministry has compromised with the Lords on the Franchise bill, on terms dictated by the Lords. The Radicals are very angry; but Mr. Gladstone has secured the extension of the ballot to some millions of Englishmen, and is believed to regard this success as a fitting crown of his public career. He will leave the “reform of the Lords” to his successors.
The immigration of ten months of this year brought us 414,000 new citizens; in the same period last year 501,000 came to us. The reduction is less than was expected; but the depression in trade is now acting as a check on immigration, though matters are even worse in Europe. This is, however, a stream which will not dry up in this century, perhaps not in the next.
A French chemist has thought of a useful device to prevent accidents in the handling of poisons. A large number of persons are killed every year by mistakes of apothecaries, of their friends, or of themselves. The French chemist suggests that white cylindrical bottles be used for medicines to be taken internally, and colored square bottles for medicines to be used externally. The suggestion can be improved by additional devices to prevent mistakes, but half the errors would be cut off by the proposed plan.
A great many Republicans are unhappy because their party has not settled the Mormon question. Probably the Senate will resist the admission of Utah as a state; but the evil is only postponed. Some vigorous measures must be taken, or plural marriage will become one of the established modes of regulating the American family. If polygamy becomes a state institution, it will be as strongly entrenched as slavery was; and it may be held that a plural marriage in one state is good in all the states; this is the rule for monogamous marriage.
In New York City, in 1884, eleven thousand and fifty girls under fourteen years of age were arrested by the police; the number of boys of like age was only two thousand two hundred and forty-eight. The disproportion has its melancholy lesson.