Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-07-21 00:00:00

startled and perplexed some of our metropolitan
and many of our provincial contemporaries

No one

can be in so hopeless a dream as to imagine that he
still sees before him any of the old landmarks of party
indicating the same whereabouts, lending the same
guidance to the path-seeker on the watery waste of
politics. Amid the convulsions, the confusions, the
breakings-up of, the last dozen years, the whole

relations of things are changed, and are being
gradually replaced ; the tide has advanced on some
quarters, and left bare others, and there can scarcely
be a more melancholy spectacle than that of an old-
world spirit, whether Whig or Tory, standing still
on his narrow strip of desolation, and wailing forth
his laments after those break-waters and pretentious
sign-posts of his, which he now fruitlessly gazes at
as the shattered and useless playthings of an ocean
risen in its strength. It has become, therefore, difficult

to define a man'sprinciples from his personal partizan-

ship, or to convict him of deserting a

because he has voted for this man or that. This may

involve a practical inconvenience, but we are not

prepared to say that it shows an unhealthy state of
the public mind. If, as Mr. Carlyle says, the people
are still without a leader of the true heroic stamp, then
are our premiers, our " leaders of the House," " leaders
of the Opposition," and other eminent spokesmen,

mere incarnations of a Shibboleth, ?nisleaders if
trusted to, and serving, at the test, to crystallise the
prejudices of an hour. The collapse of such " repre-

sentative men" may be nothing but the wearing out

of prejudices, and a' result of the levelling and assimi-

lating power of great principles on their victorious
emergence from the strifes of faction. Is it necessary

that one's notions and beliefs, the convictions of one's

understanding or one's heart, should be strung
together with so much nice regularity, such a frigid
evenness, that they can be labelled with a name or
an epithet, and that, forsooth, often not the name of
an abstract quality or system, but of an individual,

whose opinions are as independent, whose mind is as
free and changeable as one's own ? We are not

arguing against " party." In the general idea of it
we defend it as salutary, just as in any case .we must
recognise it as inevitable. That " idea" is, that

is a necessary and inevitable expedient—an
instrument which elaborates itself, and that in the

natural course of things, for the corporate expression
of principles which in their idiosyncracies do not
conflict. Error is but the undue development of one
side of a truth, and the use of party is to bring both
sides to the light, and to temper the partialities of
individual minds. But then, can it be otherwise
than salutary that there should be a breathing
time in which men may be led perforce to

discern that common ground of sympathy
which does really exist between the high-minded
and the sincere ? In the narrow and slavish a dher-

ence to a name or a colour, what scope can even the

virtuous mind secure for a manly development of its
faculties ? What courage for a falling back on
sterling' principle, a steady and unflinching gaze
-into the severe face of truth ? Every

honest man

must have found it necessary to watch against an

innate tendency to palliate the aberrations of his
favoured leaders, to allow his partisanship to sway
him as thoug it were 'a prinCiple, and thus
insensibly degenerate into faction. To him, there-

fore, it must come as a relief, should the whirl of

faction for a moment cease, and he for a time escape

from its bewildering vortex

Now, such a movement we take to be the present

Every now and then we need a fresh start, and,

preparatory _to it, a pause, that the body-politic may
feel its way. Principles are not losing their empire,
because parties are less compact,. and .whippers-in,

with the most alert management, cannot alway

count upon their men. Neither are the signs of a
healthy and well-defined Opposition dying out ; nor
is there any reason to fear that in the absence of a
worthier motive, there will be nothing left to
prompt political activity, but the desire of pelf or
power. It is well that the ties of allegiance
to what may have become barren formulas
should be relaxerl, and that we should gain
_vantage ground, from which to east a broader view
over the whole field of politics. The hidden, but

cumulative process Of change which has been work-
ing for the last few years, is coming to a head, and
will perhaps bring with it a surer basis for future
movements. The age has probably outgrown the
two-parties of Whig and Tory, which, in their day,
have done us much, good by their opposition and
mutual •friction against each other. We are in a

itLY 21, 1859.

cannot, it is to be apprehended, be of much avail for good'
and yet they must be preached to, thtfyl dre Chris';'
tianised. But they ought to be induced to zo to where au
things can be done " decently and in orth

Free. mission

chapels should be provided for them, and their attendant
therein should be secured by kind persuaSion and affection-
Ilre would fain hope, with our benevolent

ate entreaty

correspondent, that the matter may be earnestly taken up
by the Established Church in Liverpool, as it has been, With
such decidedly good effect, in different parts of the metropo.
A Conservative Citizen, whose letter appears in another
column, suggests, it will be seen, that our hint; should be
acted upon, of 'a Liverpool banquet to Lord Derby. We
believe that such a compliment, in Liverpool, would be veil
acceptable to the great bulk of its mercantile community!
whose interests the late Prime Minister had very much at
heart ; and we cannot but think it would be very grateful
to Lord Derby himself, at such a moment as the present,
the indication of a

rous appreciation
a. community, of the services he has

, on the part of such
tendered, not only tD

commerce, but to all the great general interests, more or
less, of the country at large. ' As a neighbour, too, Lord
Derby could not fail to feel it warmly. Every thing, is
would seem to sanction such a proceeding at the
present juncture. Let us hope, then, that the subject
be seriously considered. Parliament will probably rise before
the close of next month, when the Noble Lord and bie
parliamentary friends in this district of the country will be
at liberty to attend a banquet, which would be sure to
advance the great Conititutional cause, whilst it did honour
to one who has shewn himself so eminently deserving of
public esteem.

The Morning Post affects to be facetious about a part'
euler expression used by Lord Harthvicke, at the Conger'
vative -BangUet, at Merchant Taylors' Hall, the other
evening. That banquet, he declared, cc
to cement the Conservative cause, to fox

s not only intend,

a federal-:bond

attachment between Conservatives, but to be a tribute of
respect and confidence towards the leaders
.of that cause,
and of approbation' of .the manner in . which they had con'
ducted the affairs of the country." It is the word cenzeo
which our critical contemporary stickles at. He does not
know, he says, " how a dinner can cement a cause ;"' and
this, because he seems to understand the word cement s)
meaning plaster. In Belgravia, for instance, he says, "s
cause—the cause of Mr. Cubitt—has been cemented, i.e•i
the new houses have been, and said cement is peeling off
and showing that, after all, these imposing houses are not
built of the stone they look like, but of a spurion!
imitation that only , cox

Al this

interior of unsentl.
would be

mental coarse
very applicable to the Whigs, and especially
those of the present. Ministry, whci have cemented,
plastered, their Cabinet'over with a sort of Radical. Coinf,
which, certainly, is already beginning to peel off, to the
indignation, if not the astonishment, of their" Advancel'
Liberal friends. But the cement of Which Lord HardwieW
speaks, is a very different thing, indeed ; for it is what DP
Johnson calls, "that bond of union in the
Lord Hardwicke expressed it,

soul ;!' or,

federative bond ©f attaelr
g those who, like tbe

ment," which can only be found amo:

Conservatives, are united, as a party, upon some grest
fixed, fundamental principle.
The Times contends that there are now no longer, to!

parties of antagonistic principles in the country,
"the country is liberal; and whoever governs .the country,
must govern it upon principles of progress:" And this i°
the sort of stuff with which a plausible political paper life
the. Times tries so hard to impose upon the common sens&,
the people. We believe there never was a time when there
were two parties of more decidedly antagonistfc principle
in the country than at the present moment. In fact, the;:e
are really but two political parties now ; and they are °°
antagonistic, that the one seeks to strengthen and console/

the other to impair and destroy, our monarchical institutions'
It is quite true that whoever governs the country must
govern it upon principles. of progress." And Lord Derbl
did this.. But he did it constitutionally, 'whielf it is impo6'
Bible Lord Palmerston can do with his' democratic supporter!'

THE LATEST- 'NEWS

-0---

THE ZURICH CONFERENCE,

PARIS, WEDNESDAY EVENIO

The Plenipotentiaries of the Conference to be hell
at Zurich are M. Bourquers for France, and Collo'
Collexedo for Austria. -

The representative for Sardinia is;nOt yet kno'
Prince Esterhazy has been sent to Paris on a Or
cial mission.

AUSTRIA

TRIESTE, JULY 20.—",
Two steamers belonging to the Freneh fleet hal
arrived to-day from Antipari. At Lasson Piccoa
there are a hundred vessels. collected, including guir:
boats And transports; a division of which 'WU tO leave
this day.