The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-03-13 00:00:00

THE NORTHERN TIMES.---LIVERPOOL, 14111 DAY.

Mr. COBDEN'S resolution. Whilst approving of
Lord PAk.ZIERSTON'S vigour in carrying on war,
and his moderation in making peace, we can see
no justification for wanton and unnecessary
h3stilities, nor does' he consider we have any
right to go to war without a justifiable cause,
and he cannot reckon as a vindication the desire
to keep his friends in office. A calm and un-
prejudiced consideration of his address on these
topics will do much to exonerate Lord JOHN from
much of the obloquy which the ardent admirers
of the Premier have heaped upon him. Peace,
he tells us, can be best secured by a just regard
to the rights of other nations, and a course at
once firm and conciliatory.

Passing from the foreign policy of the Minis-
try, we are glad to perceive that he attaches
more importance to what should be the main
principles for advocacy in the coming Parlia-
ment. These are Peace, Economy, and Reform ;
and he declares with a manly vigour that,
although these terms have for the moment lost
their charm to the present generation, the elec-
tors of London must not expect from him an
abjuration of his old creed, as, whatever may be
their determination, it is his purpose to adhere
to them for the remainder of his life. This
is an encouraging and satisfactory declaration.
Lord JOHN totally discards the doctrine of
expediency, if by its adoption he must
sacrifice the principles of morality and political
honesty. He looks upon an extension of the
suffrage, the promotion and improvement of
education, and strict economy in the national
expenditure, as matters which should occupy
early and prominent consideration. Taken as a
whole, the address is that of an eminent and pro-
found statesman, one who has long and anxiously
laboured in his country's cause, and at all times
given his support to every measure calculated to
effect, however slightly, the amelioration of the
masses. His allusion to Lord PALMERSTON'S
charge of combination and conspiracy is terse
and somewhat bitter. He characterises it as the
falsehood of a day, which a few hours' reflection
must dispel.
By the address in question, Lord JOHN Rus-
SELL has given a new phase to the approaching
election. He shows the China question is but a
small portion of the political programme which
the electors will have to arrange. They must
now determine whether Reform in both Church
and State shall be any longer shelved, and give
instruction by their votes, to their future repre-
sentatives, what is their will upon the great
and multifarious subjects—Legal, Social, Eccle-
siastical and Political Reform. Like his
famous Durham Letter, the address of the
noble Lord places Lord PALMERSTON in re-
newed difficulties. He must outbid his rival,
and produce a political budget, equally as liberal
but more extensive in range, if he intends to keep
his position as Premier of England. Judging,
however, from certain ministerial addresses, those
of !qr. LowE and Mr. F. PEEL, which have made
their appearance, there is little disposition on the
part of the Cabinet to promise much in the way
of reform. Probably Lord PALMERSTON wants
to take the nation by surprise. As it is, the
declaration of his intentions is awaited with
anxiety.

WE can scarce restrain our indignation on
re-perusing the shameful disclosures of the
Necropolis. They are worse than " too bad'', and
we hope the people of Liverpool will join with
us in demanding that a speedy end may be put
to these scandalous transactions, and security
taken that they shall not be repeated. We fear
that no reparation is possible to the outraged
feelings of the living, for violating the ashes of
the dead. The practice, it seems, has prevailed,
in contravention to order, of burying several
bodies in the same grave. The witness, RICHARD
SMITH, testifies that four bodies were deposited
in a single grave. That testimony is allowed by
the sexton to be correct. After the body was
placed in the sepulchre with the solemnity of
reading the funeral service over it, it was
quietly unearthed [next morning, between seven
and eight o'clock, and consigned to a common
.receptacle to rot, amid cholera and fever cases,
as if no golden sovereign had been paid for the
use of a solitary grave, and no consecrated words
had been uttered over it. Relatives might come
to visit the sleeping place of the departed, but
they were not shown, of course, to the common
receptacle ; they were not told that the remains
of the dead had been transferred, for convenience
of those who rule the Necropolis, to a cheaper,
fouler, uncovenanted resting-place. Perhaps
this was done to save the feelings of survivors;
yet it has an ugly look about it, and unfortu-
nately the practice, while it desecrated the
graves, saved also the labour and filled the
pockets of certain other parties. The custom
was, it seems, to deposit a coffin, cover it with a
few inches of earth, throw some planks over the
top of the grave, then speculate on the arrival of
another body, to be treated in like manner, till
the grave was tolerably well packed with wooden
chests. And all this in the teeth of an order in
Council, requiring only a single interment in a
single grave. True, the Rev. Mr. KIRKUS, chap-
lain of the cemetery, calls next morning on Mr
WC; °wax, Deputy Town Clerk, to say and to
explain that this suspicious appearance had no
improper motive ; it was all right, though appear-
ances looked the other way. " The clergyman
" who superintended the establishment called at
" the Cornwallis-street offices, and informed Mr.
" M`GrowAN and other persons present, that the
" grave was not filled up, not from any improper
" motive, but from a disinclination on the part
" of himself and the trustees, to have any unne-
" cessary work done on the Sabbath." We wish
we could believe the statement of motive. We
are unwilling to impute fibbing to one of the
sacred order, though we do recollect that there
is the poetical authority of ROBERT BURNS for
saying, that "Even ministers hae been kenned at
" times a sousing whid (Anglice fib) to vend and
" nail 't wi' Scripture."
But in thiscase, the " whid," fib, or fabrication

is not a sousing" one, not even a whitelie ; but
it is what men of the world would call a merce-
nary one. For, look what' follows, We copy
from the evidence, 'as given in our paper of
Wednesday ;—" The explanation was satisfac-
" tory, arid the officer made no more -visits to
" the place; but, if the information which they
" latterly learned was correct, then the grave
" was left open for a very different object indeed.
" In short, each common grave was opened, not
" for the interment of one body, but of as many
" bodies as it would contain." So much for the
testimony of the pious chaplain, who would not,
by even a superfluous spadeful of earth, dese-
crate the Sabbath, but only the remains of the
dead, and the sorrows of the living.
Perhaps it may be thought that some apology
for these very scandalous proceedings may be
found in other circumstances of the case. Per-
haps burying ground was deficient, and nothing
else was possible than this unseemly handling
and bandying of corpses. Unfortunately, how-
ever, again Mr. LACE states " that one-half of
" the ground has never been touched ; no inter-
" ments of any kind have taken place in it."
Are these things to be tolerated ?—this sporting
with the feelings of the living, and violation of
the remains of the dead—and all for filthy lucre.
What have the trustees of the Necropolis to say
for themselves, if they knew of it; and if they
did not know of it, what are we to think of their
attention to their duties ? Surely there is
" something rotten in the state of Denmark,"
which, if any one doubts, let him read the
following from the same evidence of witnesses :
—" Mr. W. K. TYRER : I am a solicitor ; I
" reside about half-a-mile from the Necropolis,
" and I have passed this place for the last ten
" years. I have avoided passing lately as much
" as I can, there being very offensive odours
" when the wind has been a little to the east or
" south. The odour was a very sickening odour,
" and I say it is the smell of putrid flesh. Along
" the street leading to the workhouse it is very
" bad. Since 1854 the offensive smell has be-
" come worse." Enough, and more than enough.
This is not to be borne ; the thing ought to be
closed up and ended as a nuisance to public
health, decency, and morality. It would be
enough to say that it poisons the air, making the
south wind breathe, not of a bed of violets, but
of putrid human flesh. It is a public sham, a
training to falsehood, a tempting of chaplains to
prevaricate, and a prostitution of the sacred
offices of religion. When the words of
hope and faith have died away upon the
air, means are immediately taken to make
more money out of the concern. One fee
for one grave is not enough ; the twenty
shillings must be augmented into four or five
score, What matters it—the dead know not
anything ! The body will sleep as soundly amid
cholera and fever cases as in an unviolated grave.
A working man pays his twenty shillings, and
fondly dreams that he has secured a resting-
place that will be respected to the remnants of
those he has loved and lost. Simple man, he
knows not the methods of the Necropolis, and
the ingenious means that some people, take to
add to their store. He marks the spot, intending
to pay a pious visit to the grave on some quiet
Sabbath morning, perhaps to deck it with flowers
and make it for himself a sort of Bethel, where
he may renew the remembrances of the past, and
gain strength and trust for the future, It is all
a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. For observe
another portion of the evidence produced before
Dr. HOLLAND, the Government Commissioner
sent down to inquire into this affair. "He put a
" mark on a tombstone near. He did it because
" his wife asked him to mark it in order that she
'‘‘ might bring the widow and her children to see
" their father's grave. The mother and the
" children afterwards went to the Necropolis and
" looked at the grave where they thought their
" father was buried. They were not then aware
" of the removal of the body to another grave."
Who does not feel indignant at the recital of
such proceedings ? The widow and the orphan
children go look on the grave where they thought
their father was buried. They are poorer than
they thought. Bereft by the hand of nature of
the loving parent, they fondly dream at least
that they can point to the spot that holds his
cold remains. Even of this poor consolation
they are deprived. The unconscious body may
not be resting under the green hillock which they
bought and paid for, and where they now stand
with softened hearts, but it may be festering in a
putrid grave, among cholera cases and fever
deaths. And all this happens in the midst of
Liverpool, with nearly half a million of inhabit
ants ! There can be only one sentiment and one
judgment—sternly and righteously to demand
that the desecrators shall be marked and branded,
and the atrocity, the scandal, and the shame
ended at once and for ever.

It was considered that the red,:ctian of the Stamp and
Advertisement Duty, and the ultimate abolition of the
latter would have been a great boon to the daily Press; but
the result bas proved that even with such boons, the
journals have not been able to make head against the
gradual declension which has attended their &I-edition as
mere party newspapers. The fact is patent before us,
that all the journals which have fought the battles Of
party, as thick-and-thin partisans, have gradually
diminished in circulation, until it has ceased to be remunera-
tive ; and it is difficult to say how many establishments
have been maintained by such enormous sacrifices as have
transpired in the case of the Herald. The Times, on
the contrary, which has followed since its es-
tablishment in 1788, a very independent course,
is at present the only paper that remains in the
family of its f 'under. To all the accusations of corruption,
and trash of that kind, which have been lavished by envy,
and jealousy, and political ascerbity, against that journal,
the best answer is the position it now occupies—a position
which could never have been attained, and could never be
maintained, except by the most undeviating integrity and
independence. Two leading principles of action have always
guided the Times—first, to spare no expense in obtaining
news; and second, to judge political measures according to
their adaptability to the spirit and requirements of the
day. Hence ;that journal has given a consistent support
to various Ministers with antagonistic policies,
while thorough paced partisans have bellowed against such
a course as unprincipled and corrupt. But any one who has