The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-03-22 00:00:00

public men to think about besides who is to be in
or out of office, and the means by which the tran
sition is to be brought about. Existing parties
have adopted certain theories as the cardinal
points of their official compass ; and should any
one of them prove to be false and delusive, it is
not until the State has been wrecked that their
fatal mistakes, will be found out. Their present
stock-in-trade is the subversion of the rights
of property—they have a Select Committee
at this moment sitting to consider how spoliation
can be " made easy"—a princely contempt for local
self-government, as witnessed in the Boroughs
and Counties Police Bill, which is to take the
ancient control of the civil force out of the hands
of local authorities—Centralisation, on a most com-
prehensive scale in all other matters for which
local communities are taxed, as instanced iu the
increasing desire to create Government boards
with inquisitorial functions—a determined
opposition to inquiry into the workings of great
economic institutions, as shown in the case of Mr.
MuNTz's motion for a committee to inquire only,
into our banking and currency laws, to see whether
they were susceptible of amendment or improve-
ment—a marked recklessness about the education
of the people, as proved by their leaving bills for
that purpose to be brought iu by abjured friends,
and strenuous oppositionists—a fixed desire to
be at peace, or continue war, j ust as Russia pleases,
as indicated in the proceedings of the Conference.
We could go further with the miscellaneous
cargo of what the world will call " prudential
" and enlightened Government." But we regard
the patience of the reader. The blanks
we have left may be filled up by going to the
Dissenting Chapel, where church rates are talked
of—to our prisons and hulks where the
blighted fruit of protracted neglect may be
seen hanging from the tree of life, and bearing
down all its branches to the dust—and by walking
through our courts and alleys where the
unemployed industry of the land is pining under
the agonies of usury. Such a stock of mourning,
bought at so high a price, must make bankrupts of
its owners, and pass, like all other unprofitable and
perishable wares, under the hammer " at an awful
" sacrifice"—in addition to which we shall hear
the well known exclamation coming from every
man's lips, " sold for an old song," very shortly.
There is nothing else for it, unless, indeed, the
Ministerial tree—the " used up" stumps of every
imaginable party—bend to the voice of the nation,
or the public yield to the blasts of legislative
self-will. Should neither one or the other
bow in good time, what a glorious oppor-
tunity for the " coming man" to make
his debut. The thoughts of such things
must be to Lord DERBY like the cry of
hounds to an old hunter, after a feed of dry corn.
Had the opening presented itself when the noble
earl first ran for the Downing-street plate, or the
Ministerial cup. we should have felt disposed to
have backed him; but, as it is, the odds are too
long, by at least a thousand to one. Who then is
to form and lead a great and purely Constitutional,
Moral, and National party ? This problem, the
North must solve. Here we have the population
who suffer most by political weakness and
obstinacy, and the wealth which is most to be
cared for—industry and trade without which,
England would be a loathsome waste.

THE COURT