Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-06-25 00:00:00

THE DAY'S NEWS.

No business of importance was transacted in the
House of Commons last night, if we except that
relating to the Rochdale election—ihe report of
the Select Committee to inquire into the allegations
made against one Peter Johnston, of offering £5O
to a witness on the election petition. The Committee
are of opinion that £5O was offered to Rothwell
for the purpose of inducing him to keep out of the
way, and not give evidence on the petition coming
before the committee appointed to inquire into the
election. Still, the Select Committee state that
the testimony of the witnesses was so unsatisfatory,
that they were unable to state that that inference
has been the clear result of their investigation.
Nothing came before them to connect the sitting
member with the transaction. Peter Johnston
did not appear before the Committee. though every
exertion had been taken to find him, both in
London and in Rochdale. The Judgments'
Execution Bill was passed through Committee as
far as the seventh clause.

The Educational Conference concluded yester-
day. The final meeting was presided over by
Earl Granville ; and the reports of the various
sections having been read, several resolutions were
passed, the most important of which was, that the
greater number of the children of the working
'lasses were taken from school too soon.
The final examination of the Directors of the
British Bank at the London Court of Bankruptcy
was appointed for yesterday, and Mr. Commissioner
Holyroyd ordered that the directors should file
their balance sheets on or before the Ist Sept.
It will be seen that a man has been arrested on
the charge of murdering the late Mr. Little, of the
Irish Midland Great Western Railway. His name
is Spollen, and he had been engaged in painting
Mr. Little's room a few days before the murder.
His arrest was in consequence of information given
by his wife.

The inhabitants of Leicester have not endorsed
the electors' rejection of Sir Joshua Walmsley. A
handsome piece of plate was presented to him on
Wednesday, together with an address, signed by
nearly 7,000 of the ladies of Leicester ; and another,
signed by 6,000 men, electors and non-electors of
the borough, by way of a practical protest against
the result of the last election. A full report of the
proceedings will be found in another column.
In local matters there is not much to mention.
At the Police court, yesterday, a collector of
Messrs. Mirner and Co., the safe manufacturers,
was committed for trial at the Assizes, for
embezzling some £l,OOO.
The usual meeting of the West Derby Guardians
was held yesterday, being the first meeting since
the actual separation of the Toxteth from the
West Derby Union. There was, consequently,
a slender attendance. Notwithstanding the pro-
mise of Mr. Wilson, that the arrears due by
i'oxteth Park should be paid by Tuesday, no such
payment had been made, and the clerk was in-
structed to take out a summons against the over-
seers for the amount—some £5OO.

The inquest in the case of wife murder in Essex
has ended in a verdict of wilful murder against the
prisoner.

Yesterday a very large and influential assemblage
of the commercial gentlemen of London met at the
London Tavern to hear the case in favour of the
Suez Canal, and to pronounce an opinion on it.
So far as our report informs us of the proceedings,
there is no doubt but that the metropolis will add
its approbation to that already expressed by the
great mercantile bodies in-the provinces.
Another Irish grievance has been started by our
friends across the channel. They have not received
their quota of the trophies so lavishly distributed
to towns in England, who had little or no participa-
tion in the late war, and they justly complain.
" We speak not of Scotland," says a Dublin con-
temporary, " whatever shattered fragments are sent
to her, she earned them well. Who has not been
lately vividly reminded of " that long thin line of
red," the curling volume of white smoke, the thud
the cheer, the charge, and the pride of Russia's
cavalry in front and confusion? No, we envy
not her trophies to Scotland; she woa and she
deserves them, and in obtaining her share she has
but asked and received her right. But were there
no Irish in the Crimea? Is the soil enriched by
the hurried sculpture of no men from this metro
polis ? Or is it the case that here, as in all else
where the prize of honour is concerned, no Irish
need apply ? We can all call to mind that cold and
snowy morning in March when through our streets
proceeded cheerfully 900 men of one of our Dub-
lin regiments, and the cheers of our sympathising

people drowned the sound of those household airs
by which they were accompanied. Of that 900
full 560 lie in trenches hastily covered in, in pits
crowded together, or on the bleak mountain side.
No mimic artillery knelled their funeral service.
Did not these earn some trifling prize ? We know
that when men are needed, when a dangerous
service is to be performed, then the valour and
spirit of the Irish are lauded, and the youth and
sinewof our land hear with ready ears the stories of
olden prowess; but when honours are to be distri-
buted, some tokens of appreciation for the past, as
well as incitement for the future, all bravo deeds
are forgotten, and the survivor of the fiercest fight
looks in vain for some public, lasting, and tangible
memento of his services. Is not this true? Is
it not the fact, that in vain throughout the Irish
metropolis, or Irish land, you will look for any
memorials of Waterloo, Burmah, China, Scinde, or
Sebastonol ? Everything sacred by its memories,
suggestive by its inspiration, is sent to grace
old churches or new promenades in obscure loca-
lities throughout England. We ask not now for
equal justice ; we require not an amount of trophies
proportionate to the brave soldiers we sent forth,
or the gallant sons we have lost; but we do ask
for some share in this indiscriminate distribution,
and that here, in the heart of Ireland, some few
out of many relics may be placed to stir the pulse
of the young blood of our country. Our Celtic
brethren have doubtless reason to complain, but is
the grievance here worth mentioning ? We think
not.

Our intelligence from the Continent continues
interesting. The results of the French elections,
although more favourable to the Government than
we anticipated, ought not to be construed as a
decision by the French people in favour of arbitrary
rule against liberty. It the elections themselves
had been free the decision might have been the
other way. According to the Russian paper Le
Nord, Louis Napoleon an his wife are to pay
another visit to the Queen here—as a sort of cele-
bration we suppose of his triumph over the repub-
licans. That paper also admits that the rumours
of an interview between the French potentate and
the Emperor of Russia are not without foundation.

THE Select Committee of the House of Com-
mons are still engaged with the consideration of
the Mersey Conservancy Bill. In yesterday's
publication of the NORTHERN TIMES, we gave
the address of Mr. Hops SlOT?, Q.C., in
opposition to the bill, and on behalf of the
Corporation and inhabitants of Liverpool. The
principles laid down at the outset of his address
were perfectly convincing, namely—whether the
people of Liverpool were to be disfranchised and
practically superseded in resoect to the manage-
ment of docks which they themselves have
erected, and which now produce a revenue of
326,0001. The people of Manchester, or rather
the promoters of this Mersey Conservancy Bill,
have taken a stand quite the reverse, and have
been contending that the docks of Liverpool are
public property ; and that being so, that all who
contribute to the dock rates should have a voice
as to their expenditure. This is the very point
which we have over and over again refuted.
The history of the Liverpool Docks shows that
private enterprise, and not national funds, have
reared them ; and that whilst the aid of the public
purse has been given for years and years to
Kingston and Holyhead, and several other
places, to construct harbours of refuge, Liverpool
has not had the advantage of a single Parlia-
mentary grant ; so that the cry for considering
them public property is nothing less than an
attempt to obtain other men's property without
giving any equivalent in return. Indeed the
preamble of the bill is a perfect exemplification
of these remarks, and fully justified Mr. HOPE
SCOTT, not only in stigmatising Miss HARRIET
MARTINEAU'S book upon the subject, and that
the extraordinary efforts of Mr. HERON to procure
the passage of the bill was nothing less than a
mercantile theory, which waged war against the
principles of honesty and common sense, and in
the advocacy of which the manifestations of
absurdities, contradictions, mis-statements, and
alternations between meanness and extravagance
are the main and distinguishing features. Truly
might he at the outset declare that this combined
attack upon the rights and immunities of the
people of Liverpool was not only unjust and
unreasonable, but perfectly ludicrous. The
history of the attack, as given in Mr. SCOTT'S
speech, shows the cool determination of this
union of parties, (railway proprietors and manu-
facturers,) to attain an object which would give
hardly the smallest relief to individual interest.
Nor are the efforts of the promoters of the
bill less remarkable and prejudicial to
Liverpool than the studied and constant
schemes suggested by the Board of Trade, for a
purpose similar in result to that propounded
by the Town Clerk of Manchester, and his
adherents. For years, both the Board of Trade
and the promoters of the Mersey Conservancy
Bill have been rowing in the same boat. Their
proposals have been alike detrimental to the
interests of the port of Liverpool ; and the
elevation of Birkenhead, at the expense of '
Liverpool, has shown itself at every step taken
during the last ten or twelve years. The posi-
tion assumed by the Mersey Conservancy Bill
is not improved. On the contrary, the evidence
of our efficient Town Clerk has completely
demolished the pretensions to right, or even
expediency, put forward by Mr. HERON, and
Messrs. BANCROFT, BAZLEY, &c., &c. Any one
who has perused Mr. SEIUTTLEWORTH'S evidence
must have been struck with the clear, succinct,
and telling facts, which he arranged and laid
before the Committee, for the purpose of
upsetting the gross and gloomy misstatements
of the promoters of the Bill ; and if the
Committee desire any satisfactory argument to
convince them of the inutility of the scheme,
and of the suspcious manner in which the
measure proposes to deal with the Liverpool
Docks and the Town Dues, Mr. SCOTT'S
narrative of the union of the Railway
interests with the Lancashire and Yorkshire
manufacturers, completely establishes the fact.
Besides, the cry about Dock warehouses is
nothing more than clap-trap to divert the
Committee's attention from the broad fact, that