Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-07-14 00:00:00

THE DAY'S NEWS.

The main topic of discussion, in general and
political circles, relates to the present aspect of
affairs in India. Further telegraphic accounts
have come to hand, but they do not contain much,
if anything new, respecting the progress of the
etniute. Enough, however, is known to satisfy every
one that the gravity of the occurences which have
already taken place cannot be over estimated. It
appears that fully 30,000 native troops have either
actually turned out in open revolt , or abandoned
the British colours. Hopes were entertained in
the latest despatches from Bombay, that the
crisis was at its worst, acd that as soon as
reinforcements of European troops would reach
Upper India, the rebellious designs of the
mutineers would be completely put down.
From Delhi NN a hear that the insurgents had
been attacked, and that the heights around the
town were in possession of the Government forces.
The mutineers were driven dispirited within the
walls, with the loss of 26 guns. Let us hope that
the confident tone in which ministers spoke of the
matter last night, that the affair will not turn out
such a serious matter as many parties have con-
jectured.

From the Continent the news is more hopeful.
We have to record a pleasing fact—namely, the
granting of an amnesty by the Grand' Duke of
Baden, including the political offences committed
in 1848 and 1840. Though the country is small,
hardly any of the amnesties recently granted will
have a greater practical effect, from the extremely
great number of persons whom it includes.
A telegraph from Naples of the 9th announces
the capture of the remnants of the insurgents. The
whole kingdom was tranquil, and the flimsiness
of the pretext for interference with the kingdom,
which the Muratist interest in France is so eager
for, is now evident. In Sat dinia the Minister of
the Interior, accused of negligence respecting the
plot, has declared part of the statements in the
press to be exaggerations, and has denied that he
had any previous reliable information of the con-
spiracy. The rumour was current that Mazzini
1-Ltd effected his escape.
Accounts from St. Petersburg, and other places
on the eastern frontier of Europe, indicate consi-
derable activity in the Russian empire in clearing
away the obstacles to the extension of trade, and
in creating facilities for internal communication,
which is, of course, a prime necessity of commerce.
Great schemes are sketched out, and, it is affirmed,
partly put into execution even, for connecting
Eastern and Central Siberia with the Caspian to the
south and the Baltic to the north, by a system of
water and land communication. The Russian corps
in the Caucasus are carrying on the war vigorously
against the mountain tribes, and apparently with
success.

From Turin we learn that the Minister of the
Interior has declared to the Senate that there had
been seized in Genoa only 300 muskets, 20 pistols,
and 240 poniards. What had been said of the
plans of the insurgents which had been known be-
forehand, and likewise that the public establish-
ments had been undermined, is not true. No
mine had been discovered under these establish-
ments, nor in the town. The squadron under the
command of Admiral Lord Lyons, which is at La
Sp ezzia, consists of three ships of the line, two cor-
vettes, and three steamers. Lord Lyons arrived at
Genoa on the 10th.
The proceedings in both Houses of Parliament
last night were not of much moment. It will be
perceived that questions were put to ministers, in
both houses, and that ministers did not seem to
take that gloomy view of matters as was supposed.
The Lords went through a good deal of business,
a perfect heap of bills having passed the second
reading connected with the business of the
House of Commons. We observe that the corn-
mi tteeappointed to investigate the petition against
Mr. 0, Flagherty, the member for Galway, have
made a report that he was unduly elected, and also
presented a special report on the subject of the
last election in the City of the Tribes.
The several Election Committees continue their
sittings daily. Yesterday the investigation of the
Mayo petition was concluded by Mr. O'Malley reply-
ing to
the evidence produced in de fence of the sitting
member. In the course of his speech Fathers
Ryan, Conway, and others, came in for a pretty large
-share of stinging comments as well as the encourage-
ment which had been given to their violent proceed-
ings by their ecclesiastical superior, Archbishop
Mac Hale. The petition against Mr. Roupell, one
of the sitting members for that aristocratic con-
stituency, Lambeth, is still prosecuted with much
energy. The scenes which these election com-.
mittees are dragging to light are a sufficient proof
that no matter how stringent we make our laws,
purity of election cannot be expected unless we
adopt the ballot.
Prince Frederick of Prussia was lionising at the
Guildhall of London yesterday, on the occasion of

his being presented with the freedom of the city.
No doubt the compliment was paid merely to
please the Queen and gratify her intended son-in-
law. Certainly there is no public act of his life
that we are aware of which warrants the Lord
Mayor and Corporation of the City of London
dipping their hands into the treasury of the
citizens of the metropolis, and expending, in a
useless gew-gaw " some £5OO. We have given a
pretty copious report of the proceedings on the
occasion.

There is not much interest in the general news
this morning. Yesterday a coroner's jury was
engaged in investigating the death of Richard
Empson, aged 70, an official connected with the
St. Martin's Workhouse, when a verdict of wilful
murder was returned against a young man an
inmate of the workhouse, who, without any provo-
cation, inflicted a series of wounds on the deceased,
which caused almost instantaneous death. From
the evidence produced at the inquest, be must have
been labouring under temporary insanity. The
late catastrophe on the South Kent Railway still
engages the consideration of a coroner's jury.
Our police reports this morning possess features
of interest which will repay an attentive perusal.
A meeting of the members of the Army and
Navy Club has been called for the 27th instant, to
take into consideration a communication from his
Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, the
patron of the institution. It appears, says the
United Service Gazette, that his Boyal Highness
has become aware that gambling has been for
some time carried on at the Club to a fearful
extent. The Master of the Rolls in Ireland has
refused to make an order to wind up this com-
pany's affairs on the ground that the petition for
that purpose was presented by a person under no
obligation to pay his debts, and also on the ground
that the only substantial debt was one in which
there was only an interlocutory judgment.

CONTRARY to what many politicians expected,
the new House of Commons is not as subservient
to the will of Lord PALMERSTON and his more
distinguished colleagues as was anticipated it
would be at the termination of the ,General
Election. During the last ten days there have
been several Ministerial defeats. Now, the fact
of Government being left in a minority on any
question of importance, is an evidence of the
independent character of the House, and clearly
shows that, although the new members are not
much inclined to indulge in prosaic debates, they
have the power of catching an argument, and
retaining it until they have detected, by mental
analysis, whether it i 6 pure or fallacious. The
first session of the new Parliament has not been
of long duration ; still, sufficient has passed to
convince the Premier and his Attorney-General
that the House has made up its mind to resist
the bidding of the Government, and that unless
there is a semblance of reason and justice in the
motion, the Treasury Whip will have little effect
upon members when the division bell rings.

There was an apt illustration of these remarks
in the House of Commons on Friday. On that
evening, the consideration of the Wills Bill, in
committee, was among the orders of the day, and
Ministers sustained no less than two defeats
upon some of the more important provisions of
the measure, and would have been beaten a
third time had they not had the prudence to
offer to the opponents of the bill, as it there
stood, a compromise. That compromise was the
abandonment of the principle which the
Attorney-General, as the mouthpiece of the
Administration, stated was vital to the success of
the bill. But let us glance at the object of the
measure, and the tenour of the opposition which
it encountered.

We do not dispute that the present law of
wills is far from being satisfactory. Nevertheless,
there is not much difficulty in proving their
validity, in consequence of the several district
courts which are in existence throughout the
country for that purpose. Whilst the new law
proposed to render such proof not only easier but
less expensive, it has recourse to the abominable
principle of centralisation and Governmental
control—a system, by the way, which shows
that the longer it is tried the more objectionable
it becomes. Knowing that the adoption of this
principle of " centralisation" would be a great
grievance on the country at large, the Government
were induced to relax a little of their primary
intentions, and agreed that all wills, where the
amount of annual property was below 1,5001.
a-year, might continue to be administered in the
district courts already in existence. This, how-
ever, was a point which the House was not in
the flood to concede. The proposed modification
of SIR RICHARD BETHEL was unsatisfactory, and
honourable members insisted, and successfully,
that the district courts should be empowered to
deal with all sorts of wills that bequeathed
personal property, without any limit to the
amount. After an attempt to coax and
wheedle the House, a vote on the amendment
was carried, leaving Government in a minority
of thirty. This result induced the Attorney-
General to change his tactics ; and, quite
Palmerstonian-like, he threatened that, if that vote
was not rescinded—in fact, if the House did not
at once repudiate its own deliberate act and vote,
he would throw up the Bill. It was of no avail.
The first law officer of the Crown was obliged to
behold a firmness and independence of spirit on
the part of the House, and observe that all his
threats, bullying, and uncalled-for bluster were
heeded as the idle wind, and treated with
supreme contempt and scorn.
These scenes—ministerial disasters would be
a more apt and significant term to use—took
place on Thursday. On Friday, the adjourned
discussion was resumed. From what had tran-
spired on the previous evening, expectation
was on the tiptoe to learn how the Government
would act. Hence, there was a crowded house
on both sides, eager to learn what decision the
Government had 'come to. The Attorney-
General, in a very quiet and bland manner, by
way of disarming opposition to his pet project,
regrets the " misunderstanding" of the previous
evening ; and by way of satisfying the opponents
of his scheme of centralisation, proposes that

the district Courts should take cognizance of
wills when the personal property was 3,0001.
Indeed, to avoid further dispute, he would not
stand in the way of another thousand or so.
At the same time, he must have a limit beyond
which the will should be reserved for the adjudi-
cation of the Metropolitan Court. Moreover,
he insisted that the District Courts should not
deal with money in the Funds and railway
shares. Notwithstanding the mild and gracious
spirit in which he spoke his desire to make a
compromise, he was met by a stern refusal of
his proposal from the Oppositionists ; and, as on
Thursday, they again settled that the clause
should not contain the limits he proposed. In
no measure of any consequence have we known
the first law officer of the Crown to be so
severely handled as on Thursday and Friday.
Besides that, the Lords, on the latter evening,
threw out the Jew Bill—a measure which Lord
PALMERSTON tried to modify so as to insure its
acceptance with the Peers.
It is not our desire to rejoice at a series of
ministerial defeats in the present juncture. At
the same time, we confess, that as regards the
Wills Bill, we are glad to know that the House
of Commons has been firm, and scouted such an
extension of the principles of centralisation as
that measure contains. Nothing could justify
the practice of compelling the people of Liver •
pool, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, &c., &c.,
going up to London to prove their wills, when
the task: can be accomplished equally. as well,
with much less loss of time, and infinitely less
expense in the district courts. Altogether, the
contest between the House and the Government
was important in a social point of view, and the
development of the principle by which that
contest was sustained, must ultimately do much
to promote all questions of political progress.

THE " Oaths Bill'' has been rejected by the
House of Lords, and Baron ROTHSCHILD is once
more denied the privilege of taking his seat in tho
House of Commons, although elected a member
by the first constituency in the Empire. Lord
DERBY led the opposition, and, as usual, dis-
played the narrow-minded bigotry, which is his
wont on this great question, of civil and religious
liberty. There was little, if anything at all, new
in the debate. The most remarkable feature in it
was, that it elicited the opinions of several Peers
who carefully abstain from plunging into politi-
cal warfare ; for we find among the names of the
speakers those of Lords ST. VINCENT and DE
`reset. In moving the second reading of the
bill, Earl GRANVILLE delivered a graceful oration,
the matter of which was a repetition of the argu-
ments and facts so frequently laid before the
other house by Lord JOHN RUSSELL, in his
numerous attempts at Jewish Emancipation. He
pointed out the absurdity of countenancing a law
to act in one direction which was devised to ope-
rate in anothpr, and of oroating a. cii.3ablcd and
excluded class merely by a legal accident or over-
sight ; the objectionable and unforeseen effects
of which, the authors of the undesirable enact-
ment would have been the first to deplore. Lord
DERBY met this with the old song of alarm, set
to the old tune, and kept harping upon certain
provisions connected with the Act of 1627, which
he argued was a Protestant statute framed for
the express purpose of guarding and protecting
the interests of Christianity. It might have struck
Lord DERBY that Christianity is neither promoted
or strengthened by fanaticism or persecution ; on
the contrary, these annual displays of litiguous
theology, the factions of a great faith, and the
deplorable tremblings of superanuated legisla-
tures at the prospect of an innovation which has
been delayed too long, and may be granted too
late, have confirmed the masses in their jealousy
of an heriditary peerage ; and, although there are
occasions when their lordships, by the cool and
deliberate manner in which they conduct their
debates and decide for the advantage of the
country, their general line of policy on all ques-
tions affecting their own order, or aiming at the
extension of Civil and Religious Liberty has been
at variance with the expressed opinions and
wishes of the country. It was in a spirit akin to
these remarks that Lord LYNDHURST told the
House that it did not represent the nation—and
why ? Because when the nation has condemned
an abuse th.e Peers band together for its con-
tinuance and protection. When the sure shadow
of prejudice has departed from the light of public
opinion it takes up its quarters in the House of
Lords, and bellows forth bigoted fallaciesfrom the
mouths of earls and right reverend prelates.
When one branch of the legislature aids the pro-
gress of Civil and Religious Liberty, the other
opposes it, and the Tory chief is heard uttering
the most transparent sophisms and the veriest
rigmarole that has ever been employed to forward
the cause of illiterate bigotry. Lord DERBY
thought he had made a capital hit, when, waxing
eloquent with his subject, he inquired , If Jews
" were to be admitted to Parliament, what was
" to prevent them from holding the highest offices
" in the State ?" The question betrayed his igno-
rance of the provisions of the Bill he was so
strongly denouncing, inasmuch as one of the
clauses of the Act distinctly stipulates that such
offices shall not be held by Jews. And here, we
must say, that we consider Lord PALMERSTON was
by no means as firm in this particular point as he
might have been, considering the commanding
majority with which he carried his bill through
the House of Commons. If the Jews are fit to
be lawmakers they are also fitted to be lawgivers,
and to hold the highest office which the crown
can bestow. The restrictive clause takes away,
in a great measure, the wholesome and salutary