Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-10-21 00:00:00

change has already checked the shipment of specie,
and will at last produce an importation."

At the Police Court, yesterday, one or two cases
of public interest came before the magistrates.
Mr. John De,Gosta, an American sailors shipping
master, was summoned for defrauding. a person
named Connor. This man and a comrade had paid
to the 'Clerkof De Costa, the sum of £l5 or £2O as
passage money to Australia. Thelfwere to go out
as passengers stewards. When they went on
board the vessel they were treated as sailors,
and Connor afterwards remonstrated with Da Costa,
who said ho would make it all right. He, how-
ever, did not make it all right, and Connor left
the ship, but on application to De Costa for the
money which he had paid him, he was treated with
contempt. Lieut. Boucher, emigration agent at
this port, took the matter up, and the result was,
that De Costa was fined £25 and •costs for
this disgraceful transaction. A very serious
charge' was made against the day and
night watchmen of the public offices, ''Cornwallis
street. For some time past money has been
missed out of the drawer of Mr. Crosby, one of
the clerks, and the deficiencies at length became
. so serious that that gentleman consulted Mr .
Clough on the matter. Mr. Clough marked a
quantity of notes, and' gold, silver and copper coin,
these were placed in the drawer on .Saturday
evoning, On Monday it was found that the
drawer had been forced open, and three sovereigns,
and a quantity of silver and copper ware missing.
A portion of the marked money was found on one
of the prisoners, and some on the wife of the
other. The watchmen were the only persons who
had access to the drawers; they were committed
'for trial.

The meeting of the Select Vestry yesterday was
of an unimportant character; a full report of the
procaedings will be formed in another column.
The Liverpool Quarter Sessions were opened
yesterday, by Reorder Gilbert Henderson, Esq
That gentleman in his charge to the grand jury,
deplored the number of prisoners that were to be
tried, approaching 200—but he was glad t•) say
many of them were for trifling offenecs. He
alluded at some length to the licensing system,
and eulogised the magistrates for their recent
determination • not to increase the number of
public houses except in very rare cases.
A boiler explosion occurred in the Regent corn
mills, Great Howard-street, last night. resulting in
the instant death of the engineer, and the wound-
ing of several others.
Mr. Charles Cotesworth, a well known and ros-
pected merchant of this town, was yesterday seized
with an apoplectic fit, and although three physi-
cians were in immediate attendance, he died in
the course of a few hou,.s. He was engaged in his
office at the time.
Full reports of the various Ward Meetings in
connection with the approaching municipal election,
will be found elsewhere.

Our last accounts from Naples state that
General Guyon, the commander of the French
army at Rome, was at Naples incoy. The Paris
correspondent of the Times supplies him with an
obj,,ct. He is charged, it is said, with a private
misston, to examine and report on the military
force of the various states of Italy.
The health of the King of Prussia, though
rather bt tier, is not so far re-established as to give
strong hopes of eventual recovery. At the best,
tho progress of the malady causes it to be seen
that for a long time his Majesty cannot attend-to
public affairs.
It is reported from Vienna that in a day or two
it will be officially announced to the public that no
more railroad shares will be brought into the
market before 1859. The state of monetary affairs
in that city is deplorable. A letter, dated the 15th
inst., says :—Ten houses suspended payment in
the course of yesterday. The chief of one of them,
who, having gained last winter a lottery of 40,000
florins (100,000 francs), had built a magnificent
warehouse at Nuremburg, has committed suicide:
It is said that the failure. of Boscowitz had led to
kis embarrassment. . This is the fifth suicide
within a few days from a similar cause. • .

'EUROPE IS at a los.s to discover the cause of

~t;nr,.l
United States. The solution of the problem is
at hand. National depravity, inflamed by
popular ignorance and a reckless disregard of
the sacred interests of civilised society., have
produced the collapse of commercial credit in
America.. A nation must have advanced far,
indeed, in intellectual culture, high moral
training, _and pure patriotic feeling, before it.
can appreciate the real worth of those compacts
which form the bases of the institutions which
hold society together, and give greatness and
power to a people. These compacts may
embody the :most fallacious and dangerous
principles, yet, when they forced themselves into
active life, and have become the vital elements
by which a country exists, they should be dealt
with with the utmost caution, not because they are
manifestly oppoEed to the first principles which
govern those branches of the social sciences to
which they belong, but because the worst failures
in practice ire those -which attend the innocent
pursuit of false theories.

Now, banking is one of those- elements of
modern exi.3tenee which should be regarded as
the saost sacred of national interests. It is too
mighty an engine to be left to the government of
individuals, and too destructive to be free for
a-nation to turn upon itself. The Jnost virtuous
monarchs have shown unmistakeable signs of
weakness when entrusted with the creation and
direction of money, and the most high,.rninded
sovereign peoples have failed to lay up a treasure
of unimpeachable disinterestedness and honesty
to their memory in thin particular branch of
economic government. In a word, the history
of the world's banking and finance supplies us
with one unbroken chain of questionable and
foul deeds.

Individual cases might be cited where extenua-
tion would be impossible. Nations have also
acted with the utmost indiscretion and reckless-
ness in the management of their monetary affairs ;
but it hilts certainly been reserved for the United
States to show the world the super-electric
road to self-demolition. Her imitative genius
and natural love of
_every thing British led
her .`' hard-money detnnerats'! into the adoption
of that glaring absurdity called " cash payments."
Lacking in her people that drowsy honesty of
disposition which leads to a rigid path in the
stability of all. things, she launched her fortunes
on an ocean of errors, which only required to be
pointed at to insure the capsising, of the crazy
craft which floated so majestically on its bosom.
And, now, what do we behold ? A great people,
blessed with every species of material wealth in
an inestimable degree, prostrate, and exposed
to the most deplorable suffering and impoverish-
ment, in pursuit of a crotchet which all their
intelligent citizens and statesmen know to be