Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-04-02 00:00:00

MINISTERIAL CRISIS.

The Daily News remarks that the Pertinacity with which
the Chancellor of the Exchequer defended the bill would
countenance the expectation that either a dissolution of
Parliament or a resignation of Ministers more likely than
the introduction of a new bill by the present Government.
For two hours he employed his great abilities in defence of
a measure which had been condemned with an unanimity
rarely seen in a large deliberative assembly ; and when he
declared that the maintenance of the borough franchise at
the present qualification was one of the three principles of
the bill, every true friend of reform felt that he had received
a political challenge. In the absence of any pledge to carry
out the wishes of the House of Commons by the speedy
reproduction of an adequate Reform Bill, the House will, as
a matter of course, insist upon the Ministers giving place to
wiser men. Whatever else happens, the Commons House
Parliament must not be set at defiance.

The Times observes that when, last night, Mr. Disraeli
assigned as the third principle of his bill the general
maintenance of the present borough system, he betrayed
that his measnre is not so much a reform as a resistance to
reform. As it is, government has been outbid by tender:
so moderate that Lord Derby znimht have made them him-
sod without frightening his trio/2as more than he has by the
present bill.
The Post remarks that the speech of Mr. Disraeli,
carefully prepared, painfully elaorated, and purposely
impractical,. affords no guide to the future intentions of her
Majesty's ministers.
The Star says the Government Bill is not merely
defeated, it is destroyed. There is, from this moment, no
Reform Bill before the House of Commons.

The Herald states that on taking office last year,
Ministers were aware that whenever parties thought fit to
combine, they must be outnumbered. Under these circum-
stances the defeat can scarcely be considered important
Ministers possess the confidence both of Parliament and the
country. In a similar manner the Conservative Government
was defeated in 1852, and a European war was the result..

SECRET SOCIETY—PROSECUTIONS.
From the Northern Whig.
BELFAST, Friday Evening.—The trial of the prisoners
charged with being members of a secret and illegal society
at Beltast, was resumed this morning. The jury ail
answered to their names. The traversers had been
detained in custody all night. The counsel for the crow*
proceeded to examine the remainder of the officials of the
gaol, with a view to prove that no communications had bee*
allowed to pass between the two approvers while in gaol_
Mr. Forbes, the governor of the gaol was produced by the
Crown for examination, relative to a note which had been
sent by one of the Kellys to his brother, the approver. The
witness said that it contained a statement to the effect that the
Traversers were ignorant of the existence of any illegal
society, and that the note had been destroyed by him the
Governor. Several other witnesses were examined, and the
case for the Crown having closed, Mr. Samuel spoke is
defence of the prisoner, Mr. Hammill on behalf of the
brothers Kelly to one of the approvers, followed by 91
same side. Mr. Robinson, Q.C., replied for the pr.oose_c!auf_a
from the time of their arrest, agreeing in their cleett ytei;
Baron Fitzgerald then charged the jury. 4. F
the jury announced that there was no
agreeing to a verdict. They were acco d 1 1
prr 0_ putagb,
yi 1 tlyo
locked
(It
until nine o'clock on Saturday morning.

COLLEGIATE JNSTITUTIo~r.
relies,/ Arthur, who ob—
tained first-class college honours at Trinity College, Cm..
brid,?;e, in each of his three academical years, has recTritty
obtained second-class university honours both in classic,
mathematics.

•
THE SOCIAL EVIL.
The following. address will be read to-morrow in
all the Catholic Chapels in Liverpool :
Alexander, by the Grace of God, and favour of the Apostolic
See, Bishop of Liverpool. To our dearly beloved
Brethren and Children in Jesus Christ, the Clergy,
Secular and Regular, and the faithful of the City of
Liverpool. • Health and Benediction in the Lord.
There is a sin, the scourge of society in every age and
country, which reigns in our city with a savage effrontery
and turbulence unparalled in any other city in the world.
It is a sin so shameful that St. Paul forbids us to name it (1) ;
and in the langu4ge of every people it is branded with the
epithet of degrading. It quenches the light of faith, blinds
the understanding, deadens the affections of the heart;
brutalizes the soul; and kills the body. It effaces in us the
image of God to whose likeness we are created (2) ; it
crucifies anew our Lord Jesus Christ; whose members we
are (3), and it pollutes the temple of the Holy Ghost, who
dwelleta .in us. (4). It is sustained by theft, defended by
perjury, and ended not anfreqnently by suicide. It pours
its polluted stream through every rank of life, poisoning
both old young with its noisome exhalations. It is a
hideous ulcer, disgnsting to the sight, which heats into
society as wealth increases .and population multiplies, with-
out even the veil of decency to conceal it from the public
gaze.
Bat wheresoever and by whemsoever committed, it crieth
to heaven for vengeance (5), and the anger of God is upon
it (6). It made him who is unchangeable repent that he
had made man, and led him, whose mercy-is above his jus-
tice, to destroy all _the substance that was upon the earth,
from man even to beast, and the creeping things, and fowls
of the air, by breaking up the fountains of the great deep,
. and opening the flood-gates of heaven, so that the water
.stood fifteen cubits higher than . the mountains which it
covered(7). It brought down fire and brimstone from heaven
upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and made the ashes rise up
from from the earth as the smoke of a furnace, so that those
cities, and all their inhabitants, and all things that spring,
from the earth-, and all the country round about, once beau-
tiful as the paradise of the Lord (8), ware destroyed (9),
and in their place now lies a dreary, dismal, silent sea,
whose barren shores, redolent of fire and brimstone, asso-
ciate it with unquenChable fire and eternal death.
It brought death,. sudden and terrible, on twenty-four
thousand Israelites, in the land of Moab, the chief of whom
God ordered to be hung on gibbets against the sun, that his '
fury might be turned away, and the scourge cease from
the children of Israel (10). It brought shame, and
abomination, and disgrace, and destruction on Nineveh, a
great city of three days' journey (11). Because of the
multitude of its fornication God laid it waste, and fire
devoured its bars and its chariots even to smoke ; and its
people perished by the sword; and the spoil of silver, and
of gold, and precious furniture was delivered into the hands
of strangers, the most cruel of the nations (12) ; and the
city was destroyed, and rent, and torn, and its name
found a grave in its disgrace, so that the most learned
travellers cannot agree on its site; for
:the indignation of
• God was poured out. like fire, and who shall resist in the
fierceness of his anger ? (13) It brought judgment and
desolation upon the tribes of Israel ; for God had poured
out His wrath upon them like water, and consumed them
like rottenness, because they began to go after filthiness
and committed fornication (14). It brought the strongest
and the wisest "of men to grief; for Samson's love
Zar Dalila, the woman of Sorec, led to his capture
geld death by the Philistines, after he had been
cruelly deprived of sight (15) ; and Solomon's ardent love
for strange women turned his heart away to follow strange
gods, so that God rent his kingdom asunder, and has left
his salvation a matter of doubt (16).
Now, as with God there is no change nor shadow of
alteration, but He is always the self same (17), it follows that
punishment must await the guilty after death, if it does
not overtake them in life. And so we are taught to believe ;
for The Apostle warned the Hebrews (18) that fornicators
and adulterers will be judged by the living God, into
whose hands it is a fearful thing to fall (19). Be not de-
ceived, he also wrote to the Corinthians (20), neither forth-
cetera., nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor
liars with mankind, shall possess the kingdom of God. .He
repeated the same lessons to the Galations (21). The works
of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, unclean-
ness, immodesty, luxury, of the which I foretel you, as I
have foretold you, that they who do such things
shall not obtain .the kingdom of God. And
he bade the Ephesians (22) to know and under-
stand that no fornicator nor unclean person had
any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. St.
Peter (23) warns. all Christians,'that they especially who walk
after the flesh in the lust of uncleaness, will -be reserved
unto the day of judgment, to be tormented. St. John •(24),
in his vision at Patmos, saev the Eternal, the Beginningand
the end of all things, seated on his throne, and heard from
his lips 3 confirmation of this terrible truth, that whore-
. mongers and the aborainablo should have their portion in
the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the
second death.
Such are the punishments denounced against the great
sin of great cities. It is in vain for those who are guilty
of it to say, Who seeth me ? darkness encompasseth me
about, and the walls cover me; and no man seeth rre : for
there is One, whose eyes are brighter: than the sun,
beholding round about all the ways of men, and
the bottom of the deep, and looking into the
hearts of men, into the most secret parts ? (25)
Yet, hateful-in the sight of God and man, as is. this• loath-
some and degrading sin, the compassionate heart turns not
away from the siuner. If Gad, the avenger, has
• threatened it with eternal death, God, our Saviour, has died
• on the cross to atone for it. It is not for us, therefore, to
exercise the prerogative of justice, but of mercy. We must
imitate the compassion of Jesus rather than the zeal of
Phinees ' - for if God promised to the latter the peace cf his
covenant for ever (26), he has also assured us, that it is not
his will that one of his little ones should perish (27) It
was to a woman of Samaria, who had, in all probability,
been divorced • from five husbands, and was then living
with a man who was not her husband, that lie promised
the gift of living waters, and declared the abrogation of
the Jewish sacrifices, and that henceforth God should be
adored not in Jerusalem alone, but in
.every place (28).
When sitting at the table of the Pharisee, he received
Magdalene, who was a sinner in the city, at the risk of his
reputa ion of a prophet, and dismissed her in peace, with
the consoling assurance that her many sins were forgiven
her (29). .When. a woman actnally taken in adultery was
brought before him foiSicondemnation, he declined to con-
demn her, though by the law of Moses her crime 'was
punishable with death, but, that he might not seem to add
a sanction to crime, he bade her sin no more (30).
Our Lord further teaches us, by the parable of the lost
sheep and the prodigal son, that the penitent must not only
be forgiven, but be received with joy. He tells us that, if
a man have a hundred sheep, and one should go astray, he
wall leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go in quest
of the one that is astray, and if he find it, will rejoice more
for its recovery than for the safety of- the others ; for. the
Son of Han is come to save that which was lost (31). When
the prodigal, a wild and- dissipated spendthrift, was driven
home by hunger, after having spent the portion of his in-
heritance with harlots, his father not only received him,
but fell upon his neck, and kissed him, and clothed him
with his best robes, and placed a ring on his finger, and
shoes on his feet, and ordered the fatted calf to be sorrel
up, and the household' to make merry with music and
dancing, because his lost son had been found (32). •
In imitation of her divine spouse, the chereh has adopted
a similar spirit of lenity and charity with regard to her
children. However grievous their sin, she belolds them
with the eye of a tender mother ; she invites, and ( ntreats,
and stands with open arms to receive and absolve the peni-
tent on the first token of sincere repentance; and if st:e is
instant in season and out of season, she repi oyes as a mother.
or a sister in all charity, with patience and doctrine. (33).
When her children, moved with indiscreet zeal, would, like
the Sons of Zebedee, call down fire from heaven on &Ten-
ders, she reminds them that the Son of Man came not-
to destroy souls, but to save ; (34) or, after the example
.a .our Lord, she invites him that is without sin amongst
them to cast the first stern; at her that is guilty (35). She
reminds the. guiltless too, that they are-as much indebted to,
God for their innocence as the wie:ed for their pardon. If
one who bath sinned mnch, as St. Aue•ustine observes,
stands indebted for the gracious pard.m. of exceeding great
debts, another who hatti sinned less, owes to God the bene-
fit that he hath not defiled himself with grievous sins. If
no tempter ev.r enticed you, 'was the effe3t of God's
special care ran 1 providence in your faVour., You are
indebted to him for preservation from all the crimes which
you did not commit ; for there is no sin w'ich, one Cam-
, mitteth, which another might not commit, if he were not
preserved by Him who made him.
There are other reasons- why we should look with more of
compassion than of indignation on the unhappy women of
the town. Pew of them fall thr.mgh the silly vanity of
luxury and show, though the taste for amusernent and the
inordinate hive of dress that has sprung up even in the
abodes of misery, aid the arts of seduclon,. particularly'
with the young, and lead some to barter chastity and repu-
tation for fine dresses, the et3.3yrosualphoncl, and the excitement of
think. Fewer still fall
though many, flattered by the'attent
tiorosr uonfrtuhloy desires,b
tae easily surrender- their- affections.
the them ia
an: to the caresses
.of the heartless seducer,inarriiag'l:oll ~ctinn• an adv.,.
the vain hope of conti, „ oatageous

(1) Ephes. v. 3. 12. (2) Gen. i. 27. • (3) Eel). vi. -
))(4 1 Cor. Pi. (5) Gen. xvii. 20.•—xix. 13. (6) )5
(7 Gen. vii. 11. 20. (8) Gen. xiii. 10. 5) Gen. xis. 24, 25v:2,61*.
(10) Num. xxv. (11) Jonas 3. (12) nob. xxxi. 12. 13)
Nahum. (14) Osee V. (15) Jutlges xvi. (16) 3 Kings xi. 17
• J6llllB (.17. Ps. ei. 23. (13) Geb. xiii. 4. (19) Heb. x. 31. 20
I Cor. vi. 9. (21) Gal. v. (22) E-•1:es. V. 5. (23) 2 Pet. ii. 24
Apoc. (25) Pcel•Js. xxiii. (21) Nun?. xxv. 12. (27) Mat. ki
14.. (28) John iv. (:-:o) Luke vii. (33) John rill. (31) Mat,
xri i• (32) Luke xv. (33) 2 Tim. iv.— I im. v. (34) Luke
ia. sj. (35) John viii. 7.