The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-12-30 00:00:00

AUSTRALIA.

ARRIVAL OF TIIE REI) JACKET.

Yesterday afternoon the Australian clipper ship
Red Jacket, Captain O'Halloran, entered the
Mersey, bringing the Australian mails of Septem-
ber 29, gold to the extent of £520,000, and 155
passengers. The Melbourne Herald of September
29, alluding to the departure of the Red Jacket,
says :

The R.M.S Red Jacket received her passengers and gold
on Saturday, and was perfectly ready for sea, and cleared at
an early hour yesterday morning. The wins was adverse
and the service of steam was engaged. The gale, however,
increased with very heavy spans, to such an extent that it
was impossible to get her under weigh until 4 p.m., when
it moderated. We must state, however, that the agents
were untiring in their exertions to procure extra steamers,
but in consequence of the principal tugs being laid up for
repairs, they were unable to procure them. The Red
Jacket takes 153 passengers, and 134,000 ozs. gold. We
have before recorded with pleasure the beautiful order in
which the vessel has always been kept, which speaks highly
for the ability and attention of Captain O'Halloran and his
officers. •

Among the arrivals out at Melbourne—the
Tornado, Almone, Beethah, Saldanha, and Morning
Light (the latter vessel in 72 days) from Liver-
pool; the Victoria, Admiral, Moses Davenport,
Athletae, and Zoboab, from London ; and Czar,
from Greenock. _ _

We take from the Melbourne papers the follow•
ing summary :

POLITICAL AFFAIRS•

At the date of the Red Jacket's departure, the
people of Victoria were in the midst of the elections.
Those for the Upper House had been completed ;
and of the members for the Lower House about
one third. were elected. The remaining elections
would extend over the month of October. The
Melbourne Age says :
The public interest exhibited in the Tipper House
elections has been as nothing in comparison with that felt
in those for the Lower ; and the members returned for it
are, with few exceptions, men of very little perional weight
in the oountry. Most of them, indeed, although old
colonists, are quite new to political life; and the very
names of some of those returned for the remoter districts,
are unknown in the metropolis. In point of fact, the main
qualification of the majority seems to be the possession of
the £5,000 required by the Constitution. There is not one
man of striking superior ability amongst the entire thirty.
The same paper, alluding to the composition of
the upper house, remarks :
There was much apprehension before the elections that
the squatters would st ain every nerve to gain a majority in
the upper house, with a view to securing a favaurable set-
tlement of the question relating to their future occupancy of
the waste lands, and also of " compensation"• for alleged
losses, to which they have been laying claim. The result,
however, has dissipated every idea of that kind, for of the
thirty members, only four are actually squatters, and only
three or four others are directly connected with the
squatting interest. About one half of the whole
number are merchants or traders, and about
one fourth are landowners. As to their political
principles, the majority are in favour of a reform of
the new constitution; about a third of the whole are
declared opponents of state aid to religion, and most of
them profess to be supporters of liberal and popular mea-
sures. There is nothing positive in the appearance of the
new council, and certainly nothing aggressive in its
character. The only distinct characteristics it p'ssesses are
respectable mediocrity, and a kind of dignified neutrality of
political sentiment, which is not unbefitting a house de-
signed for the passive duties of supervision and check, rather
than for active duties of constructive legislation. It will be
a very quiet, very grave, but exceedingly dull body, as
nearly approaching total insignificance in its political
influence as a senate can possibly be.

Respecting the elections for the House of Assem•
bly, we are told that the public interest felt in those
had been most intensely excited by that for the
city of Melbourne. There were five seats to' be
contested, and for these ten candidates appeared.
They were, Messrs O'Shanassy, Greeves, Stawell,
M ichie, Langlands, M'Culloch, Moore, Heales,
Ebden, and J. T. Smith, Mayor of the city. There
was a special interest pertaining to every ono of
these candidates. Thus, 1111.. O'Shanassy was
the acknowledged leader of the popular party for
the past five years ; and it was interesting to watch
how the people would testify their sense of the
value of those services by which the political
rights they were about to put in exercise
had been mainly won for them. In a
lesser degree, Mr. Greeves had claims of a
similar kind on the electors Messrs. 111•Culloch
and Moore were the representatives of the mer
cantile interest. Messrs. Langlands and Heales
were the favourites of the working classes. Mr.
Michie was a leading member of the bar, with
strong popular sympathies and superior abilities.
Mr. Stilwell, the Attorney General was the repre-
sentative of the present Government and of the
Downing street regime. In his person was to be
tried, or rather, should have been tried, the grand
question, whether the people accepted or rejected
the present Ministry, who had constituted them-
selves " responsible," and against whom lies a
heavy charge of political delinquency. Mr. Smith,
the Mayor, had been rejected by the electors of
the Central Province, and he was seeking consola-
tion in an appeal to the citizens. His personal
character had been very severely handled by
the press in the course, of the previous con-
test, and not without good grounds ; and in
order to re-establish his social position the gaining
of a seat in the Assembly was absolutely essential.
Hence the eagerness of himself and Ws partisans
to attain the object was excessive and even painful.
It was social life or death to Mr. John Thomas
Smith. As to the other candidate, Mr. Ebden,
the personal interest lay in his being an old
colonist of good standing, and an officer of the
Government in former days, with some reputation
for administrative ability, and a leaning towards
popular principles. We have stated these particu
tars because the result of the election has shown
that the special personal interest felt in the candi-
dates individually, and not their respective political
principles, was the thing that really determined
the election. The vote was by ballot, and the
Melbourne Age in its issue of Sept. 27, remarks :
It must be confessed that the first experiment of the
extended franchise and the ballot in Victoria, has not been
so very decisively in favour of those great principles which
the people ought to uphold, and which they have spent
years in the struggle to establish, as it should have been.
But neither can it be said that this first experiment is a
conclusive attestation of the unsoundness of the popular
principles of extended suffrage and the ballot. To think
so would be a very hasty and rash conclusion. The real
fact of the case is that the election proves nothing but
the extent of exertion made by each of the candidates,
or by their friends. Tbere was no pitched battle on
the ground of principle. The only question specifically
raised was that of State-aid to religion ; but it seems to
have been discarded on both aides. Many Anti-State-aid
men voted for Mr. Stawell, and thereby left Messrs.
Langlands, Heales, and others, in the lurch. Phimpers
seem to have been given very extensively ; and it is believed
that it was by their aid that Messrs. Smith, Stawell, and
O'Shanassy got in at all. The only two whd have gone in
on general grounds are Me,srs. Michie and Moore ; and
their success, as was very candidly admitted by Mr. Moore,
is due less to their positive than their negative merits.
They had no enemies as the others had. What the ultimate
effect of this election on the future political career of the
colony may be, it would be premature to speculate upon.
With regard to the other elections in Victoria we
copy the following from the papers just quoted :
The government party have certainly been, so far as the
elections have gone, successful in getting in their candidates.
Thus, at South Melbourne, Capt. Clarke, the surveyor general,
won the election against Mr. Blair, a Melbourne journalist
of popular principles, although the majority of the electors
there • were avowedly
_in favour of those principles and
opposed to Captain Clark's. The issue raised was not one
of principles at all any more than it was in the case of
Melbourne. So again, Mr. Fellows, the solicitor general,
gained his election against Mr. H. S. Chapman, a tried and
trusted, and most valuable popular representalive.—
At Geelong, Mr. Sladen, the Colonial Treasurer, has got
the second place on the poll. Three other members of the
Government have the contest still before them ; if
contest it may be called. Mr. lTaimes, the colonial secre-
tary, is canvassing South Grant. He meets with no serious
opposition. Mr. Childers, collector of customs, is unop-
posed at Portland. Captain Pasley, the colonial engineer,
has several competitors for South Bourke ; but the probabi-
lity is that he will be returned. Mr. Foster, the ex-colonial
secretary, was returned for Williamstown without a contest.
In Collingwood and in Richmond, two suburban constitu-
encies, the contest seems to have been mach more one of