Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/238

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIIL SEPT. 7, 1907.

At p. 178 MB. RUSSELL says : " There is no doubt that the modern restaurant keeper and waiter invariably use the word tart as distinct from pie," &c. The old firm of W. Hill & Son, Bishopsgate Street and other addresses, retain the old use. If a cus- tomer asks for fruit pie, he gets it ; but if perchance he asks for tart, the waiter will bring what the modern pastrycook would call a tartlet, i.e., a tart. This is the only survival of the old use that I know of in any hotel or restaurant. S. P. E. S.

GBEENSTED CHURCH, ONGAR : OAK v. CHESTNUT (10 S. viii. 26, 154). In reference to MR. HARRY HEMS'S reply I should perhaps say that in the year 1849 (and for some years before and after) I happened to live in the next parish, and in my note at the first reference I quoted the opinions of the work- men then engaged on the restoration as to the injury done to their tools.

I should be much interested to know if in recent times any duly qualified person has made a careful survey of the timber in that particular church as regards the vexed question of oak versus chestnut.

Mr. HEMS states :

" It was found that the earliest example of chest- nut so used in this country is to be seen in the fifteenth - century rood - screen at Rodmersham Church, Kent."

How was it found ? Has every church in this country been examined ? There is no reason whatever why, if chestnut was abundant rather than oak in the neighbour- hood of Greensted, Ongar Park Wood, and Epping Forest the builders of Greensted Church should not have used the material ready to their hand. Roads at that period here were virtually non-existent, as Mr. Chalkley Gould has recently shown, and the Roding is not a navigable river. Precedent is overwhelmingly in favour of this view.

Can MR. HEMS spare the time to go to Greensted Church himself, taking with him an experienced timber merchant and some fellow of the Linnean Society who has given tree-growth special attention, and tell us what he thinks. The distinguished late Hon. Secretary of the Linnean Society might per- haps consent to go. Mr. Noble, builder, of Ongar, would probably give useful informa- tion. HENRY TAYLOR.

Rusthall, Kent.

"LOCAL OPTION" (10 S. vi. 467; viii. 50). I am glad thanks to the courteous aid of Mr. J. Nicol Dunn, the editor of The Manchester Courier now to be able to supply the answer to MR. ALBERT MATTHEWS'S

" questions of the first importance " in regard to the original use of the phrase- " local option," these being, What was the- exact date of the letter of Mr. Gladstone of the autumn of 1868, in which the phrase occurred ? and when and where was it first printed ?

Having failed to trace it in The Times, I applied to Mr. Nicol Dunn, seeing that the- head-quarters of the L'nited Kingdom Alliance were at Manchester ; and he has furnished me with the following extract from the report in The Manchester Courier of 14 Oct., 1868, of a conference of the General Council of the United Kingdom Alliance,, held in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester,, on Tuesday, 13 Oct., Sir W. C. Trevelyan, the President, being in the chair :

"Rev. John Jones, Liverpool, supported the resolution [in favour of the principle of the Per- missive Bill], and in doing so he said that as he had a vote for the very important district of South-East Lancashire, he had taken the liberty to write to Mr. Gladstone, as to the question of the liquor traffic, and he had received an answer. Mr. Glad- stone referred him to his votes and speeches during the last session, in order to illustrate the state- ments made in the letter, which was dated from Hawarden Castle, Oct. 9, 1868. Mr. Gladstone said r ' I thank you for your letter and enclosures. It is difficult to explain to you in writing my views on the liquor question in its many branches, and espe- cially in a matter of this kind, I hold it to be my duty to watch the current of opinions in Parliament and in the country with the view of using them for the best.' (Applause.) Mr. Gladstone continued : ' I cannot go oeyond a reference to my votes and speeches in the House of Commons, including the- declarations made in the session lately expired, and from it you will see that my disposition is to let in the principle of local option wherever it is likely to- be satisfactory.' (Applause.) Mr. Gladstone had not told them whether he was a member of the- Alliance movement, but they saw from his letter that he approved of its principles and was dis- posed to let in local option with respect to the regulation of the liquor traffic."

And Sir John Bowring, who followed Mr. Jones, said :

" They must attach great importance to the letter of Mr. Gladstone, and in the declaration which he had made, because he would soon have to deal with; this question."

Now, seeing that no earlier use of the phrase, either in this country or the United States, is shown by MR. MATTHEWS ; that so eminent an English teetotal authority as Dr. F. R. Lees described it in The National Temperance Advocate of New York in November, 1869, specifically as " this well- known phrase of Mr. Gladstone's " ; and that two months earlier the American tee- total advocate, as reported in The Chicago- Tribune of 2 Sept., 1869, had referred to-