The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-12-24 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES.---LIVERPOOL, WEDNESDAY

rejoicings. Be mindful of our poor neighbours,
and leave the rich to their glory. They both
have their burdens to carry, and stand equally
in need of compassion. It is vain, then, to be
quarrelling about things which only differ in
in sound. Let us all be merry and thankful.
The myriads of mortals who are to come after
us, will not have the laugh at the comparative
few who have gone before them. They will not
fit in the number of houses we possess. They
must bring their bricks and mortar and hodmen
with them. The land will not give them bread.
They must emigrate—risk their lives on the
ocean —and squat in the wilderness. All man-
kind would not be rich, if they could. There
must be paupers and poorhouses after we are
all gone. The Church may regain its dominion
over the State, and reduce all Constitutional
order to a mockery. Time and Christianity
make men wise, just, and merciful. Why be
miserable ? By comparison we find the Past,
Present, and Future balanced to a nicety.
Human woes and joys are equally divided by
the Guardian of all, if men would only believe
it. The poorest man has the advantage of us
In the length of the road. Let the poor,
then, feel exalted and merry ; the rich, hum-
ble and jolly. The wings of pleasure and pain
bear us all away in one direction. We are
here to-day, we are gone to-morrow. But
before we go we owe a duty to posterity. To
show them how to regard and enjoy a Christmas
Day !

The popularity of roast beef and plum-pudding
is worth preserving. They play important parts
in the material world. The farmer feels as much
delight in heaping up fat on an ox as we do in
carving a sirloin of beef. What would become
of the vitality of modern Greece, if it were not
for the mountain of fruit swallowed on this annual

festival? Abolish your pudding bags, and there
would be no independence in the Levant. We
were going to say that no reasons could be shown
to justify the large sum we expend yearly
on a. protectorate of currants. If we dis-
pensed with prime roast beef on this single day
our farmers would die young, and their herds
would be left to pine away and die of old age.
Our Christmas dishes are never-failing institu-
tions. They fear no innovators. The farmer's
safety is placed beyond peril by the diameter of
the national waist-belt. The Greek has made a
lodgment in the deepest recesses of our affections,
and feels that he is entitled to large privileges,
so long as plum-pudding and mince-pies remain
the patriotic attendants of our esteemed roast
beef. May no change take place in British cus-
toms or taste to disturb the remarkable compla-
cency of his feelings. We have a duty to per-
form towards our children. They must have
their plum-pudding. Who will venture to stand
between them and their rights as Britons ? They
wait patiently, from one year's end to another,
for their merry-making. The feast of their fore-
fathers is their birthright. Deny it not to imi-
tative youth. Let them be merry, and share
with the aged many returns of those plea-
sures of the season, which we wish to all men.
The sincerity of this wish will, we trust, be
proved by the humble effort we have made to
convince friends and foes, that there is nothing
worth quarrelling about, and that the better we
understand each other, the greater amount of
contentment and peace there will be in the
world.

THE world has been led to believe that the
discovery of gold in California and Australia was
the type of Divine thoughtfulness, and the har-
binger of a brighter era for the millions of penni-

less paupers on the earth. We were among
those who viewed it as the precursor of greater
social amelioration and political equality. We
indulged in the hope also that the cause of
Christianity would have been advanced by the
possession of ample means to, push onward the
great work. We have been deceived, however;
and it has been left to American statists to give
us a better insight into the use which may pro-
bably be made of the merciful munificence of the
DEITY. 100,000,0001. of gold has been added
to the treasury of civilisation. This immense
store is to be increased tenfold within the next
ten years. Providence has fulfilled one portion
of this promise, and it only remains for man to do
his part, and the gold worshipper shall have
enough, and to spare. That some evil genius
should seek to prosper by diverting the precious
store from its natural channels, is not to be won-
dered at. The prime workers in these perversions
of Godly gifts have, however, lost themselves in
the magnitude of their designs. They propose
to invest the spare bullion of Europe and Ame-
rica in human flesh. To grow cotton to clothe
the naked savages of Asia and America, they
would steal from Africa her finest children.

United States' slavery is not as prolific as their
gold fields. The yellow metal can be increased
at pleasure, but the black man cannot be propa-
gated with equal rapidity. The latter can only
be increased at the rate of three per cent. per
annum. This is too slow an affair for those who
will have cotton. The power of consumption
of slave-grown cotton in the old and new world,
is to be equal to 6,000,000 bales within ten
years, and as the States can only produce
one bale a year from each slave, and as
they had only about 3,000,000 negroes in
1850, it s will be necessary to import
no less than 3,000,000 more slaves from Africa
within the next ten years, in order to give us the
6,000,000 bales of cotton it is said we shall
require, and cannot procure from free labour !
To obtain this ocean of human blood from
Africa, would require —allowing for the waste of
life in internal wars, mortality in the barracoons,
and the " horrors of the middle passage"--fully
10,000,000 negroes to supply the growing demand
for slaves. What portion of the African conti-
nent would be capable of furnishiug this number
of unhappy victims, those who write on the sub-
ject in the American papers have not informed
their readers. If there be a shadow of truth in