Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-08-20 00:00:00

AT:GIT'ST 20, 1859.

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le suspicion of the

secret and

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Austri

much the

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progres

s floe in question

t is not so

t will cou

s the European future which

see ; but

What it will involve, how

.t, many pretend even now

.emains to be seen with certainty

Only 'when it is upon t

The way to pfevent a

_
disastrous issue is to be prepared for any

eventuality

And one way

to be prepared is

•
clearly to keep out of the present pretended

settlement

The presence of England at a Con-
ference, would be like that of the simple-hearted

victim between two gamesters, who have loaded

the dice, and arranged the code of signals. Let

England keep her simplicity out of the Council
Chamber of despots. The " goose" cannot afford
to be plucked of any more feathers.

We have been led into this line of remark, not

more from the circumstances of the miment

than from a pleasing surprise that Mr. COBDEN
has returned from the new world without any

increased enthusiasm for those panaceas, with
which his political ally, Mr. BRIGHT, vainly eX-

pests to regenerate the old. We feel especially
called to it at the present time, when England is

Just recovering from the sounding phantasies and
false philosophies of that dangerous and shallow-
minded empiric. Unless Mr. COBDEN takes some

nal constitutional lessons as these, for the true
commentary on his dictum, that " the white
"an in the United States had a theory in their
Government which, if the human instrument be

equal to the political machine, went to deal justly
with every one," he is able to read neither
Philosophy nor history,—he has failed to correct
the grave difficulties of that education which

°nee allowed him to elevate the newspaper above

all the literature of ancient or of modern times

or, to put it in his own more particular and expres-
sive way, above "all the works of (the single-
booked) Thucydides." The chance is before him
of getting once for all out of the narrow circle of
l'igiatean crudities, prejudices, and animosities,
or of remaining the political tinker to the end.

-0-

ANY question connected with India has now

become one of Imperial interest, being, as
an integral part of Her MASESTY'S dominions
80 long as that vast country was a monopoly in
the hands of a Company, it could not hold so
universally a place in the public mind, as now it
does, by its absorption into the British Govern-
ment

It has long been moving towards that
consummation—sooner completed by the recent
outbreak, and indeed precipitated, than would
have otherwise been the case. We do not pro-

Peso to examine whether, under the centenary
rule of the Hon. East India Company, it was
be sail'
or justly governed; although much might
sail' upon the point. It was in itself a suffi-
'ent anomaly, that this rule should exist as an
i'ilPeriunt in imperio. The finances of that

eat:Entry now engage most anxiously the attention
of the Executive of this Empire, and it will re-

Quire great wisdom, great economy, great exac-
titude, in the financial arrangements of India, to
bring matters right, and to keep them •straight.
There must be a moderate, just, and impar-
tial system of taxation to support the great

military European force which must hence-

forth be there stationed; to preserve what

we have had to reconquer, after a comparatively

peaceable occupation of one hundred years.
We are well acquainted with the ability

and zeal of Mr. J. WiLsoN, as a statician, politi-
cal economist, and financier,—an ability and zeal
which, by the force of his own genius, has over-
come those difficulties that talent, suffering under
the pressure of the res angusta domi, ever has to

straggle against, and under which it Often faints

and grows weary.
Almost simultaneously, we might say, with the
expiration of the East India Company's Charter,
the old and tedious route via the Cape of Good
Rope terminated, and the Overland Route was
'substituted over the Mediterranean and Red Sea
through the Isthmus of Suez. Thus once again

we visit India by the same way by which trade

with it was carried on in ages long gone by, the
recollection of which alone lives in the pages of
history. It was some time before the OverlanA

Route was adopted, and many and great were
the discouragements which Lieutenant WAGHORN
had to contend against,—the old defunct Com-

Pany preferring the longer Cape voyage, lest the
re-opening of the Suez line, while it shortened
the distance between London and Calcutta, should
divert the commerce of Europe into its old
channel, and the French and Italian ports of the
Mediterranean should flourish to the ruin of our

In consequence of the facility of com-
munication, the traffic of the East has augmented
rapidly, and various means of crossing the Isth-
mus have been propounded. A railway was
talked of ; and the opening up and clearing
out the bed of the ancient canal, dating
not only as far back as the Moslem conquerors
and Alexander the Great, but remoter still,

"en to the age of the Pharoahs, as an inter-
oceanic communication. None of these schemes

took any consistency, until Mr. DE LESSEES
Startled Europe by the grandeur of his schemes,
Which met with the opposition of Lord STRATFORD

DE REDCLIFFE,' who used all his influence at
Constantinople to thwart it, while the present
Premier pooh-poohed it in the House of Corn-
'nous ; each doing so, no doubt, on political and
national grounds. A more gigantic plan has
lately been put forth, by which the danger to
our Eastern Empire from an inter-oceanic canal
would be removed; but the political objection to
Which is—that it might open India to the fleets
of France and Russia, as well as to our own.
Messrs. BRUNLESS & WEBB, engineers, propose
nothing more or less than a Ship Railway, to
have at end of the hue powerful hydraulic

apable of lifting the largest vessels to the

level of the railway, and of lowering them at the

termination of their-transit, w

economical, and therefore woulC

I would °cc

if only it were passible, shOtAd prefe

freely between Egypt and Syria. The naval and

commercia

marine of France and of Russia, and

of all foreign countries, have been so hig

favoured by

the re

and by possession of our carrying
that it behoves us to be cautious how we faci

itate access to our colonial possessions

ook forward, also, at some future time, perhaps

in our own age, to an inter-oceanic communi-

cation between the strong waters of the great
Atlantic and the calm and tranquil ones of the
Pacific Ocean, across the Isthmus of Panama.
But, even then, we have reason to believe, the
Americans would debar British ships from

trading with San Francisco, reserving to them-

selves what they would call their coasting trade

--.,,,___

NOTES OF THE DAY

Mr. Cobden's essay on Parliamentary Reform, which
he gave to so large a gathering of the manufacturing
class at Rochdale the other evening, contained a great
deal of candour—candour of that very kind, and point-
ing to. those very ends, which ought to put the country
on its guard as to those ulterior objects of Reform which
the Radicals have in view. It was unwise, he main-
tained, in agitating for Parliamentary Reform, to lump

too many matters together ; and he recommended, there-
fore, that they shoidd go, in the first place, for a large
extension of the suffrage, which, when once obtained,
would render the accomplishment of the Ballot, the re-
distribution of seats, and, not improbably, the whole
" ten points of the Charter," quite practicable and easy.
In short, it is only necessary to get in the thin end of
the wedge sufficiently secure, and there will be no diffi-
culty in driving it up to its utmost capacity. Now this
we say is very candid. It tells us pretty plainly what
they are driving at ; and it furnishes, we think, a very
powerful argument why there should be no such whole-
sale enlargement of the franchise as to make the House

of Commons the instrument of so much dangerous
innovation as is evidently contemplated. There must be
a liberal measure of Parliamentary Reform, and it must
include an extension of the suffrage to very many who
are at present most unjustly excluded from its possession..
But it must not be a measure which the Radicals and
Revolutionists can ever make the means to their ulterior
ends. The Constitution of this country, as that of a
limited monarchy, can only be preserved by maintaining
a balance of power in the state : whereas these things
would be the destruction of any such balance, and the
throwing of all political power into the hands of a
democracy.

Mr. Bright is, no doubt, a very knowing person; but
we think he professes to know rather too much, when
he pretends to be familiar with the estimation in which
what he calls " Tory leading articles " are held, by
those who are in the habit of reading them, as the great
bulk of the respectable classes in England undoubtedly
are. The honourable member would have it believed
that he regards them as "not very logical or palatable
in any way "—as having " a sort of mustiness about
them which people do not at all like." Now, it is an
old proverb, that tastes are not to be disputed; and we
are not going to dispute Mr. Bright's taste, whether as
respects " Tory leading articles," or anything else. If
there be one public man who, more than another,
is guilty continually, not to say habitually, of what in
common parlance is called " bad taste," it is Mr. Bright
i wubelf. In thi, reapcot, it ia well known, he presents
a remarkable contrast to his friend and compatriot, Mr.
Cobden. It cannot be surprising, therefore, that the
articles he alludes to should, to him, be " not very
palatable in any way." They are not vulgar enoughifor
suck a man as Mr. Bright ; they are too scholarly, too
gentlemanly, too patriotic, too public-spirited, for one
who is continually grovelling amid the rankness of what
may be called demagoguism. The very burthen of his
speech, on the occasion of his making his philippic
against the "Tony Press,"—violent abuse, that is, of
what he calls " the oligarchy," and the most nauseous
flattery of such 'a mob as he was addressing,—affords
ample proof of this. We consider, therefore, that the
reprobation of such leading articles, by a man like Mr.
Bright, is a very great recommendation to them ; if
only becav their character and their influence must be
the very opposite of his own, as .a politician and an

agitator

The " Liberals' Committee" for Castle-street ward,
in this borough, appear to have made themselves very
happy already, in anticipation of the coming municipal
election. The wicked " Tories," it appears, are now
tied up by act of Parliament from having recourse to
any more of their " disgraceful dodges," on such occa-
sions. By the Municipal Elections Amendment Act,
recently passed, it is imperative that the candidates
shall be nominated two clear days, exclusive of Sunday,
before the day of election—the nomination to be through
the Town-clerk ; and this, they congratulate themselves
with thinking, will enable them to have it all their own
way for the time to come. And so perhaps it would,
if they were really the purists and the patriots they
profess to be. But as such is not the case, we rather
apprehend, that the operation of the act in question will
be found to exercise a check upon that party in muni-
cipal contests, which will, in the end, have no slight
influence in promoting the success of Conservative can-
didates, wherever there is an opportunity of their offer-
ing themselves for election,—an apprehension which is
strengthened, in no slight degree, by the fact, that the
same act also contains some very stringent clauses
against bribery, and imposes a penalty of disqualifica-
tion, for six years, on such electors as may be proved I