The Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard

UNITED TO ENGLAND. VERY few people believed that Mr WILLIAM O'BRIEN, when he walked out of the court house at Carrick-on-Suir on Thursday week, would keep his engagement to address a Man- chester audience on Tuesday night. But Mr O'BRIEN was as good as his word, and the power of Mr BALFOUR has been shown once more to be utterly ineffective when exerted against this poor Editor of an Irish newspaper. He can obtain suits of clothes in prison. The depositions are abstracted from official custody when he is being tried. He can go through Ireland with all the police of the country search- ing for him, and, if he chooses he can go out of the prisons in which he is immured. Mr WILLIAM O'BRIEN is as much at home on this side of the Channel as on the other and what- ever may happen in the future there can be no question that a union of the two peoples has been effected stronger than any that legal en- actments can secure. Mr O'BRIEN'S is the policy that will serve the cause of Ireland and bring BALFOURISM to a close. We commend the speech of Mr O'BRIEN to our readers, and ask them whether it is not humiliating that a great nation like England should in these days continue the miserable policy of injustice and wrong which has been applied to Ireland for hundreds of years. Who are these men Mr BALFOUR is imprisoning 1 What have they done ? At Manchester on Tuesday night Mr O'BRIEN was the hero of the hour. The people see in him their ideal leader. V He is brave to recklessness. He is true beyond possibility of doubt. He has no care of him- self, and meets danger like one who has ceased to take count of his life. He is disinterested, and beyond the unbounded love and devotion of his countrymen has no possessions, and yet he has everything that man in his wildest flights of imagination could wish for. There is a tendency amongst the public to believe that men who go willingly to any suffering, or deny themselves any gratification, do not feel the suffering, and do not appreciate the gratification. Imprisonment is torture, especially to a man like Mr O'BRIEN, and there is one passage in his Manchester Speech which reveals how his whole nature recoils from the experiences he must undergo. He said This night as soon as this meeting is over I shall be dragged through the midst of your great city—(" No, 1 no "-but I say yes—(" No, no ")- and from the heart of this great free land I shall be handed over to Mr BALFOUR—(groans)—to be subjected to the miserable little torments and .c all sorts of defilements with which it seems to be his delight to pollute the IC men whom he cannot conquer." Think of those defilements. Think of those indignities and torments, and remember that they are heaped upon a man of pure life, of stainless character, of lofty spirit, of wide and general culture. Think of this leader for whom his countrymen and countrywomen would will- ingly die, dragged through the streets and sub- jected to official gibes and insults. It is a marvel that the Irish people do not rise up as one man and put an end to the whole hideous mockery of government and justice. Mr O'BRIEN has been sentenced to four months' imprisonment. His voice will be silenced, but his influence will not cease to be felt in every part of the world where Ireland is known. Only one incident is necessary to complete Mr O'BRIEN'S wonderful adventures, namely that he should walk out of prison in his prison clothes and appear in them in the House of Commons some night when Mr BALFOUR is ex- patiating on his success in dealing with the Irish patriots. We firmly believe he could do it.

PRINCIPLE AND EXPEDIENCY. THERE is a certain class of people who are great advocates of principle as long as principle pays, but as soon as the balance of profit or advantage is on the side of expediency then principle is calmly put on one side. The selection of alder- meh in the County Councils- has dent onstrti ted beyond possibility of cavil, that Liberals are not i whit better than Conservatives in their ] exercise of power, and that when in office they are prepared to do with alacrity those things which they protested against most vehemently when in Opposition. If one thing more than another has been firmly believed by Liberals it is, first, that every member of local governing bodies should be elected by the ratepayers, and, second, that unsuccessful candidates should not be pitchforked into those bodies by electing them as aldermen. It was long the custom of the Liverpool Town Council to select unsuccess- ful Conservative candidates as aldermen, and much indignation has from time to time been expressed in Wales at what was called the in- sult offered to the ratepayers by this method of procedure. If in Wales Conservatives had been as successful as Liberals have been at the County Council elections, and had proposed, as the Liberals have proposed, not only to select aldermen from outsiders who have not been elected by the ratepayers,bu t to select defeated Liberal and Conservative candidates, the cry of indigation would have continued to go up. We are told that if fresh elections had been forced upon the constituencies the ratepayers would j have resented the trouble and expense is not this the Tory reason for avoiding election-, q We are told that if aldermen had been chosen from the inside the other party would have been successful at the polls and much ill-will would have beeu created is not this just what Conser- vatives say about all elections We are told that some very good men have failed to secure election and that it is for the good of the rate- payers that these individuals should become members is not all this just what Conservatives say, and have not Liberals made it their boast that they appeal to the electors and do not ignore their verdict or act in opposition to it. Liberals can offer no defence in times to come when Conservatives act as Liberals are now acting They must then take the bitter conse- quences of their policy of expediency and put up with the deserved taunts of their opponents We admit fully and frankly that if the alder- men had been selected from the inside there would here and there have been a little local irritation, and it is possible one or two Liberal seats would have been sacrificed, but the people would have admitted the wisdom of the course adopted, and good instead of evil would have been the ultimate result. That Welsh Liberals should sacrifice principle, to secure tem- porary success is very humiliating, and shows how little there is, after all, in loudly vaunted Liberal principles. The curse of political parties is that they act on the principle that the end justifies the means. Hitherto we believed that Liberals were in earnest and were not prepared to crawl through any dirty avenue to place and power. We thought their denunciations of Con- servative tricks and dodges were genuine and that they were honestly prepared to suffer loss and inconvenience, and even exclusion from office and power, for the sake of their principles. We have been mistaken. We have claimed for Welsh Liberalism virtues which it evidently does not possess. There are occasions when Town Councils and County Councils might elect an outsider as alderman as a mark of special honour. We do not for a moment say that in no case whatsoever should a mayor, county chairman, or borough or county aldermen be elected from the outside. What we contend is that to elect county aldermen outside for mere expediency's sake is to degrade County Councils and to degrade the men to whom the so-called honour is offered. In future good men will not offer themselves for election. There is another way than the people's suffrages that leads to the County Council Chamber. We profoundly regret the decision to select outsiders as aldermen where- ever that decision has been reached, and believe that a blow has been struck at the new bodies from which they will never recover until that decision is reversed.

PROTECTION IN FRANCE. THE difficulties under which French agri- culture is labouring are of a most formidable kind. Agricultural depression is extreme and is increasing at an embarrassing rate. Protection has been adopted and food has been made ruin- ously dear or cheap just as the home harvests have been abundant or scanty. When the harvests are abundant in France farmers have a glut of produce which they cannot sell because the French export trade has been killed by protection. When the harvests are scanty the poor people in cities starve because food cannot be imported at cheap rates. The Protectionists say the whole difficulty has arisen by not making the protective duties high enough, but manufacturers say that protection has caused all the trouble, and that the duties on food, and on all sorts of raw material should be abolished. Eng- land is not going to send empty ships to France to buy French commodities, and so France has to keep her products and make the best use she can of them. Italy and Germany are in the same plight, and it is now suggested that France, Germany, Austria, and Italy should sink all political antipathies and jealousies and form a customs union, to exclude all food products from Russia, India, Australia, and America. This is a very nice scheme and has only one defect, namely, that it is utterly impracticable. India, Australia, and America are buyers as well as sellers, and the nations that refuse to buy are not allowed the opportunity of selling. England has every cause to be satisfied with the present arrangement. Europe is agreed upon protec- tion, but is startled to find that the evils protection was to cure are aggravated in all sorts of ways and fresh evils are springing up in every direction. Unnatural industries may die when subjected to the unrestricted com- petition of free trade; but the unnatural industry sooner or later withers under protec- tion, and the free trade competitor forces his way in and beats the protected manufacturer. The great desire of those who seek protection is to save the agricultural interest. Now, if one thing is more certain than another, it is that protection does not confer benefits upon the agricultural interest. Periods of famine prices are followed quickly and suddenly by low pricps, and the industrial population suffers with every violent change. The agriculturist clamours for duties on food. The manufacturer demands duties on manufactured goods. In a short time the people fiercely ask for cheap food, and the manufacturer wants all duties to be abolished on raw material. Then comes the battle of raw material. Almost every manufactured article is raw material to somebody. Yarn is raw material to the manufacturer who wants it for cloth. Cloth is raw material to the tailor who wants to make it into garments. The flooring board is a manufactured article, but to the builder it is raw material. Lead is a manufactured article, but in scores of manufactures lead is raw material. The same is true of salt, sugar, cotton, chemicals, and scores of other commodities. Whatever a manu- facturer turns out is to him a manufactured article, and he wants duties placed on that article if imported. Whoever uses that article in making other commodities calls it raw material and wants to have it free of duty. This is one of the difficulties that in the end kills protection wherever it is adopted. Another difficulty is that wherever protection is adopted import duties are put upon food, and as the effect of duties upon food is to make the prices fluctuate violently, the urban population is subjected to great suffering in times of scarcity. The bssons now being learnt by France, America, Germany, Italy, and other countries will not be thrown away upon the inhabitants of this country who benefit by the folly of the nations. With what is called the demon of cheapness we do not deal in this article, because the desire for cheapness and the efforts to gratify it are not necessarily connected with protection.

RURAL SCHOOLS. A deputation of elementary school teachers waited upon Sir W. HART-DYKE the other day to call liis attention to the difficulties of rural elementary schools. One member of the deputa- tion, Mr JENKINS, of Swindon, hit one great blot of the whole system of elementary education when he said it was based on distrust of the teachers. It is impos- sible to say how many of the evils and ditii-1 culties of the elementary educational system would quickly vanish if teachers were trusted and made to feel that they were themselves responsible for the children under their charge. In many districts elementary schools are in the hands of ignorant boards who are too mean to keep the schools clean and in good repair, and never think of providing them with apparatus and making them comfortable. It ought- to be the work of the Inspectors to report when schools are dirty and badly found, and censure and loss of grant should be the fate 0: those boards and managers. It is difficult to make it understood what cheerless dens of filth some of the elementary schools are, almost as difficult as to make my lords" understand the hopeless sense of weariness that ill-fed little children feel, who have to walk hungry over miles of bleak road after school hours. One of the most awful memories of grown men and grown women is of those hungry, dismal walks when stomach and brain were exhausted, and every step was a torture. The poverty of the poor is often indescribably keen, and yet the inelastic Education Acts, administered by stupid Boards, 1 must be carried out. Teachers are helpless, and Inspectors go by the code. The whole system of elementary education has been reduced to a method of torture, and there will be no relief until teachers are left more at liberty to classify the children, and to meet the local conditions in whatever way seems best calculated to secure for the children a fair amount of education. I Teachers are tormented by dread of the Inspectors, whose power is despotic and excessive. They are also at the mercy of y the Boards, and have in addition to keep on the right side of the parents. The teacher should be secure in his place as long as he does his duty, and it should be impossible to dismiss him without an inquiry ,by the Education Department and unless some real offence or deficiency is proved. At present a teacher' may be dismissed because he insists upon regular attendance, or because he gives offence to some officious member of a Board, or because a member of a Board has a relative who would like his position, or for a score of other equally insufficient reasons. Teachers are not at present in a sufficiently independent and secure position to act. They have to win this position, and this can only be done by united action, and by risking something. They must work together and they must speak out, even at the risk of individual loss. What teachers in elementary schools require is a powerful voice in the House of Commons. Take, for instance the question of night schools, a most important department of elementary educational work. Mr. WILLIAMS, > of Swindon, dealing with this subject of night schools, said that their number had greatly j decreased since the year 1870, and they were almost non-existent in the country districts, where they were most needed. If night schools were to be revived, more liberty in the choice of subjects would have to be allowed, the age limit of twenty-one would have to be abolished, and the scholars must not, as at present, be discouraged by an impossible amount of work. We have frequently pleaded for night schools. We be- lieve, that in rural districts through the long winter nights, evening classes would be a bless ing, but it is impossible that teachers can work both night and day, and children in rural 'districts should not be compelled to attend school all day. The real difficulty in the way of improved elementary education is ignorance on the part of those who have the matter in hand as to what is required. In his answer to the deputation, Sir W. HART-DYKE showed that he knew nothing whatever about the subject, and unless Elementary Teachers can force their views upon the official mind they will have to be content with platitudes about agricultural depression, and official sympathy with a deserving body of men. The great aim of my lords is to avoid trouble and to smooth down all manifestations of uneasiness and disturbance. Teachers know what they want. They are in real contact and sympathy with the poor. They have a pro- fessional reputation to maintain, and it is their own fault entirely if they do not quickly make themselves felt in quarters where there is power to meet all their reasonable requirements. The great problem of elementary education is not by any means settled, and the only men who can settle it, because they are the only men who really know what is wanted, are the teachers. They must be united, however, and must have powerful advocates in Parliament, where there is much need of greater knowledge of what the country requires in the matter of elementary education:

LOCAL AND GENERAL NOTES. At the first meeting of the Surrey County Council, Lord TaRING said that in choosing aldermen they should be careful not to interfere with decisions already given by the electoral divisions. It is to be feared that Liberals are going into the pitchforking" business, that is converting unsuccessful candidates into aldermen. « One of the unsuccessful candidates for a seat on the Cardiganshire County Council received about twenty- seven votes. He has already received about sixty- eight condolences from electors who solemnly assure him that they voted for him. This candidate does not know whether his professed friends are liars or whether there have been strange doings with the ballot papers. He inclines to the theory of lying. The Manchester Guardian in discussing the transfer of the Manchester Examiner and Times to the Paper Unionists says :—" A newspaper is not merely an organ of political opinion it is also a business like "any other business, and subject to the accidents and the reverses to which all businesses are exposed. It is needless to look further than this for the cause of "the event which has now occurred." How much worry and ill-will proprietors of newspapers would be saved if their exacting critics could only be induced to remember that a newspaper is a business like any "other business, and must succeed as a business before "it renders any real service as a vehicle of political "opinion." This is a truth that Liberal, organizations must learn. Feeble newspapers are first feeble in money and than in brains. There is a constant stream of migration from Canada f to the United States. The Toronto Mail views with concern this exodus of young men from the Dominion to engage in every variety of employment in the United States. It remarks that Canada can ill afford to lose such a class, and attributes the cause to the blighting influence of the Dominion's protective tariff upon productive industry, and call on the Government to reduce the burdensome duties. The disastrous effects of protection are far more reaching. Let the people of this country study the effects of protection in the countries where it has been adopted, and see if they are free from the evils that beset these nations where free trade prevails. The two Liberal Welsh Federations have already met with financial difficulties. The difficulty we have had from the beginning was to know what two federations were to do in a small country like Wales. We know they require two sets of officials, and that it is impossible for them not to overlap each other's work, but why two federations ? When the federations have been amalgamated the pecuniary difficulty will probably disappear. Liberal federations that do badly, work which county and borough associations could do well, and that leave undone the work which federations ought to do have much to learn. There is just one federation two many in Wales, and the sooner that fact is recognized the better. The weather continues mild and open. Farmers have not yet been called upon to make inroads on their fodder, and stock are doing well in the open. Prices for stock are fairly well maintained and now that foreign produce is not subsidized by the railway companies home farmers will have a better chance than formerly in the markets. Landowners have met tenants on reasonable terms, and if farmers could restock their holdings they might once more hold their own. Free trade has been a great blessing to the agricultural interest by teaching farmers what it is that the foreigner cannot produce at a lower rate than it can be produced at home. The London School Board is face to face with the difficulty of teaching children who come hungry to school. There is a scheme for supplying free meals but women like Miss DAVENPORT HILL and Mrs ASIITO DILKE -Are opposed to giving free meals on the ground that the more you give the more yon will have to give, and in the end you must grapple with the cause and not with the effect. The children of the poor ought not to require gratuitous food, and the causes which have made gratuitous food necessary need to be removed. School Boards cannot feed all the children, it is certain, but how enormous is the good of the School Board system that has brought the misery and suffering of the poor to the surface, so that it cannot be ignored. There seems to be no end to the disappointments prepared by Mr CHAMBERLAIN: for those who still put their trust in that broken political reed, Last week Mr CHAMBERLAIN presided over a meeting at which Lord WOLSELEY expressed a hope that the day was not far distant when every young man should be taken from his unhealthy home and brought up as young men were brought up in foreign armies, and educated j "at the public expense, trained physically and "morally for at least two years of his life." Lord WOLSELEY does not appear to have used the word "conscription," but it is that hated thing he wishes t) see forced upon the men of his country. Let him try it and our only general and the Government that enacts conscription will be wiped out. The inhabitants of this country are indolent enough and servile enough, but they are not slaves and are not going to allow themselves to be enslaved. «- Farmers might easily combine to supply food direct, and thus obtain several profits now pocketed by middlemen. Last week in London a crnferen-je was held on the distribution of food. Mr D. TALLER- MEX read a paper dealing chiefly with the distribution of meat. He thought, and this is the great end to be achieved, "that by an organized system, the pro- duce of the agricultural districts might be brought within reach, even to the doors of the consumers, "in towns." If this could be done more problems than one would be solved, for it is the distribution and not the production of food that is costly. Farmers rear, grow, and make many kinds of food, but before it reaches the consumer several dealers have to be paid a profit. The results of this system we know. Railways, to start with, often demand more for the carriage of food than it will fetch in the market. Associations of farmers might not only make good profits, but might find an outlet for themselves by combining the work of distribution with that of pro- duction. It is in carrying out schemes of this kind that intelligent landlords might render enormous benefits to tenants. England is so given up to gambling in one way or another that utter consternation has been caused by the decision of Baron HUDDLESTONE that the game of skittle pool is a game of chance and even ordinary billiards if played for money. A writer in one of the papeis says this decision will close all those rooms in hotels and cigar shops which announce Billiards "and Pool" over their doors. It affects club life. Every club has a rule against gambling. If the dicta "of Mr Baron HUDDLESTONE be upheld, billiards when played for money in a club, will be illegal. It will be illegal, I should imagine, to pay even for the price of the table and certainly it would be illegal to pay for drinks. Wider still goes the net of this remark- able judgment. You may play whist for money in any West-end club, but not Napoleon. By Mr Baron HUDDLESTONE whist and Napoleon are put on the same footing. Not only will exhibitions of great "skill in billiards become illegal, but wider still sweeps the net. Chess when played for money stands on the same level as billiards. The judgment of the court, if upheld, will ruin the professional chess "player, shut up the chess divans, and force th« chess clubs to revise their constitutions. I do not see how this conclusion can be avoided. So sudden and wide a decision is so inconvenient that the case is certain to be carried to appeal, and will probably be argued by counsel paid from public subscription." So disastrous in this decision against gambling deemed to be that no effort will be spared to get it reversed. The Western Mail says that Mr T. E. ELLIS, M.P., has just sent a somewhat remarkable letter to a friend at Cardiff in which, amongst other results of the County Council elections he anticipates "that Wales will, with as much expedition as possible, form a general "council for the thirteen Welsh counties, so as to "realize the national unity of Wales and utilize it for "the national good." The Western Mail says:— "What the formation of a general council for the "thirteen Welsh counties has to do with the work of the County Council we are at a loss to conceive. Perhaps Mr ELLIS will be good enough to point out to us what section of the Act authorises the Council "to do anything of the kind." The 81st clause of the Local Government Act says:—"Any county council or councils, and any court or courts of quarter sessions, may from time to time join in appoiatiog out of their respective bodies a joint committee for any purpose in respect of which they are jointly interested." These words are wide, and our daily contemporary will, we are sure, admit that Wales is interested in tithes, intermediate education, the drink question, a Welsh University, disestablishment, the fishing question, home rule, reform in the administra- tion of justice, and many other questions. Why should not a grand joint committee of this kind, representing all Wales do what Mr RAIKES hopes they will do. At Machynlleth Mr RAIKES said "I hope that by means of the County Councils popular senti- ment in Wales 'will be gauged on the education question and on similar questions." We have a strong desire to see this grand joint committee for Wales, and we hope to see similar committees formed for great areas in England. We have not seen Mr T. E. ELLESS letter but Wales is tolerably familiar with the idea of a grand joint committee for Wales and Monmouthshire, The Muswell-Hill burglary, in which Mr ATKIN who pursued the burglars was shot twice, entered upon a startling phase on Moudav. CLARKE, one of the men inplicated, has made a full confession. A bullet has been extracted from the chest of Mr ATKIN, who is now recovering. Copper has fallen four or five pounds per ton. and it is believed will fall still further as the Copper Syndicate is believed to have collapsed. Other rimours are to the effect that the Syndicate has only temporarily ceased to buy copper in order to punish' sellers who will not enter the corner. From Kemp's Mercantile Gazette it appears that for the first four weeks of the year there were 438 failures, Last year the numbers were 485, and in 1887 some- what fewer, namely, 467. These figures do not prove that trade is much better than it was, but they afford j evidence that the weaker sorts have been weeded out and that business is sounder than a year or two ago. » *• Some people do learn from the experience of others. Speaking at Abingdon on Monday, Mr CHAPLIN ex- plained that he had recently modified his views in regard to Protection—first, because Protection had not benefited agriculturists in France and Germany and, secondly, because of the uselessness in the present state of political parties of proposing a return to the system. There is a general outcry against protection in the countries now receiving its blessings." It was fifty-six years last Tuesday, the 29th of January, since the first Reformed Parliament met. More than half a century has passed since the Reform Bill of 1832, and yet even Liberals have not learnt to trust the people They pitchfork rejected candidates into the County Councils and have no better excuses than that Conservatives do the same and that the cost and inconvenience of elections are great Principle seems } to be a good stalking horse, but a peor rule of life The SANITARY INSPECTOR for the Lampeter Rural District, at the last meeting, admonished farmers and landowners in a paternal sort of way and with tears in his voice seemed to intimate that unless they mended their ways he would have to resort to com- pulsion. Compulsion ought to have been tried long ago, and would have been tried long ago in a right- minded community. Dr RICE WILLIAMS accepted the position of Medical Officer for the Aberystwyth District at a very low salary. Dr RICE WILLIAMS now wants an increase of salary. Mr DAVID JONES, Rest, put the matter in a sentence when he said that Dr RICE WILLIAMS knew all tho circumstances of the appointment before he took it, and if he was not satisfied he ought to give the appointment up and not keep on bothering the Board. The remuneration given is ridiculously inadequate, but if higher remuneration is to be given there should be a fresh appointment.

ICcreal intb district The Rev D. Silvan Evans, rector of Llanwrin, Mont- gomeryshire, has been instituted to the canon's stall in Bangor Cathedral as a canon-non-residentiary. THE ILLNESS OF MR W. R. H. POWELL, M.P.—The report as to the illness of Mr W, R. H. Powell, M.P.. for West Carmarthenshire, is considerably exaggerated. Mr Powell, who has always been delicate, is very unwell, and is confined to bed, but his condition is now no worse than it has been for some weeks past. He is not in a critical condition, nor is such a contingency anticipated. THE SPRIXG CIRCUITS OF TIIR JUDGES.—The follow- ing is a list of the commission days fixed by the judges for holding the coming Spring Ass ZES :-South Wales Circuit (Mr Justice Grantham and Mr Justice Cave) H n-eifor i.est, Tuesday, February 19th; Lampeter, Thursday, Febimry 21st; Carmartnen, Saturday, February 23rd; Brecon, Thursday, February 28th; Cardiff. Wednesday, March 13th. Both civil aud Cardiff. Wednesday, March 13th. Both civil and criminal business will be taken at these assizes which are timed to tinish about March 20ih. EL;,(, • ION OF Bisiiop or CHESTER.—The Dean and Chapter of Chester met oi Saturday to receive the Queen's mandate to elect a bishop of Cnescer, and re commended Dr Jayne, vicar of Leeds, to the office. There were present the Dean of Chester, the Vener- able the Archdeacon, Cation Hilliard, Canon Blencowe, and Canon Filden. The Dean (Dr Darby) read the conge d'elire, and Dr Jayne was elected, it being ordered that a certificate of the fact should be sent to her Majesty, and a declaration of the election was made at the ordinary service, CAMBRIAN RAILWAYS.—Approximate return of traffic receipts for the week ending Jan. 29th 1SS9 Miles open, 237. Passengers, parcels, &c., £1,411; merchandise, minerals, and live stock, £1,66:2; total for the week, £3,073. Aggregate from commencement of half-year to this date, 911,421. Actual traffic re- ceipts for the corresponding week last year :—Miles open. 237. Passengers, parcels, &c., t £ 1,399 merchandise, minerals, and live stock, £1,706; total for the week 93.105 aggregate from commencement of half-year to this date. £11,339. Increase Passengers parcels, &c., 212 merchandise, minerals, and live stock, £- total for the week. £ —; aggregate from commencement of half-year to this date, £82 Decrease Passengers, parcels,*&c:, £- merchandise, minerals, and live stock, £ 44 total for the week, 32 aggregate from commencement of half-year to this date, 12,2S5. A REMARKABLE CURE.—Many of our readers will doubtless recollect an extraordinary accident which, early in the present year befel a youth named Jesse Lambert, who lives at Conter. In jumping from a loft fifteen feet high, Lambert became impaled on the handle of a pitchfork, which penetrated the abdomen, inflicting such frightful injuries that it was generally considered impossible that the lad could recover. Dr Bonsall, however, took the case in hand, and after the most skilful and unremitting care, under circumstances of great difficulty, for several months succeeded in effecting a complete restoration of health to the patient, who is now at his usual work and as well as ever he was. So nnique was the Cdose, and so extraordinary the recovery, that The Lancet, in its issue of the 15th January, has inserted an article detailing Dr Bonsall's method of treatment. It aeems to us nothing less than a calamity that the neighbourhood is &o soon to lose the valuable services of such a talented and careful practi- tioner.

ABERYSTWYTH. MISS MAGGIE MORTON'S COMPANY. During the past week Miss Maggie Morton's Comedy Anglaise Company have been performing high. class comedies with satisfaction to large audiences in St. James's Hail in Terrace-road. The hall, which was designed for a market place, has been con- verted into a comfortable, safe, and well-ventilated room, and Mr James kas been to considerable expense in relaying the floor with wood and in decoration. Miss Morton's Company, which is one of the best com- panies on tour, and certainly the best of those which visits Mid Wales, opened on Friday evening last with Mamma," the prominent features of which are said to have been founded on facts 16 duly reported in the newspapers at the time of their occurrence." The facts, indeed, are quite possible. Pontifex, in order to get rid of a mother-in-law, goes through'the divorce court, marries the second time, and ultimately discovers that his father-in-law has married his (Pontifex's) divorced wife, by which meana he geta two mothers-in-law instead of one. Mr George E. Bellamy took the part of Pontifex, the husband, Miss Barlee of the wife, Miss Maggie Morton of the mother-in-law, Mr H. G. May of Pontifex's nncle, Miss Madge Merry- weather of the second wife, and Mr Ernest Wintour of the father-in-law, and the other partd were taken by Mr H. E. Bailey, Miss Rapsy, and Miss Cunard. The comedy was performed quietly and effectively, the costume and accessories suit- able, and the actors were frequently rewarded with applause and laughter. Perhaps the overthrow of the mother-in law, who is the villain of the peice," could be placed a little more pronounced than the author has designed it, by depriving her of the £ 3,000 which her scheming has earned and by making the discarding of her and her daughter by the amateur photographer more apparent. At it stands, the play has a somewhat lame and impotent conclusion and those among the the audience on Friday night who had net seen the comedy before, expected the curtain to rise for the denouement after it had descended at the end of the third act. On subsequent evenings Caste Ours School," Mystery of a handsome cab Romeo and Juliet were given with much success. Each evening a farce was played, and the interval occupied by capital singing. This afternoon a pantomine is given for the entertainment of children. From an advertisement in another part of the paper it will be seen that the company have prolonged their stay till next Wednes- day night. On Monday night "Called Back" will be produced as played by the company for 500 nights i v this will be the first time this piece has been properly put before an Aberyatwyth audience. On Tuesday night The Prime Minister or the Dawn of "Freedom will be given and on Wednesday Mamma."