Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-07-20 00:00:00

tration, and Lord Palmerston declares that the I
thing can't be done.' Meanwhile Lord John
Russell brings on a motion immediately, the pur-
port of which is to have it found and declared that
either House of Parliament shall have power to seat
its members on whatever oaths and terms it pleases,
and the House seems inclined to say Pam,' give
us this, or a resolution, or out you go. Others
look to the new Reform Bill for a solution of the
maim. We shall see."

Office, decide, in ay., same way, that it sounds very
like a crime. On the strength of that amusing
chapter, entitled "The whole Art of Go-
vernment," they solemnly denounle the author
as hostile to the institutions of the county, and
as the great corrupter of youth within the realm.
The only parallel we know to such a solemn farce
is Lord Donoughmorets motion in the peers to
bring the publisher of the Examiner before their
lordships' bar for breach of privilege. We don't
know whether his lordship belongs to the staff of
our cotemporary, but from the speech he delivered
we strongly suspect he must. Surely none but a
Saturday reviewer would hlve thought a pleasant
ironical sketch on a living peer a fit subject for
parliamentary interference.—Leader.

and this again, furnishes another proof of the
considerably imprfeved during the present week :
advantage wbfteh the public would derive from
an earlier publication of the accounts. After
the experience of last year, it would however.be•
somewhat premature to conclude that the reduction
which the present state of the market appears to
justify, wili be permanent. At the corresponding
period in 1856 to that when we are now writing, the
bullion in the Bank was £12,331,000 and the
reserve of notes £5,321,000, while the rate of dis-
count was 4 per cent. The continued drain of
silver to the East, and the consequent drain of
gold from this country to the continent in ex-
change for silver throughout the autumn, led in
the month of October to a reduction of the
amount of bullion to £9,638,000, and to a rise
in the rate of discount to 6 and 7 per cent. In the
present year that drain has continued, and in a
greatly aggravated
form ; and the most important
question at this moment, is whether it will con-
tinue for the remainder of the year. It it does,
there is no reason why a similar result should not
happen as was experienced in 1850. The other
great cause for increased demand for capital appear
equally strong now as then. Speculation may be
temporarily checked in France, but the trade of this
country requiring a constantly increasing capital
seems to be progressing as fast as it did a year ago.
What, then, is the probable course of events mind IR
and China which is likely to affect this question?
In India the demand for British goods is said to
have received a serious check iu consequence of
the disturbances in Bengal and the demand for
the moment is suspended. But the demand for
the products of India, the stocks of which are very
small, will continue as large as ever in this
country, while the feeling of insecurity which pre-
Kale,, .iaprasiLthe an xie ty2 f
ithe
our exports to India are checked while onr im-
ports receive a new impulse, it is certain that the
state of the exchanges must be still more adverse
to England, and that larger shipments of silver
will take place. Again, it may be necessary for the
East India Company to send out remittances, or to
suspend their drafts upon their Indian treasuries,
which will be the same thing, in order to furnish
ample means to conduct the extensive opera-
tions which have become necessary at the
present crisis. In this way, threfore, the ship-
ment of silver will be further promoted. In
China matters are in much the same condi-
tion. The unsettled state of our relations must
tend to diminish the demand for our goods. But
the high price of tea and silk, and the large sup-
plies coming down to some of the Chinese ports must
tend to increase our imports, and to add to thequan-
tity of silver required to adjust the balance of trade.
There does not, therefore, appear to be any ground
for believing that the demand for silver for the
East will be less in the autumn of 1837 than it was
in the autumn of 1856. The main considerations
which may tend to modify the position of the money
market in the latter part of the present year, as
compared with 1856, are, first, that we may fairly
look for some influence from the returns for the ex-
tensive exports of last year, and next, and chiefly,
the effects of a most promising harvest throughout
Europe as well as in the United States. From all
the accounts that reach us, we believe that a better
prospect has not existed for many years, as far as
this important element of general prosperity is
concerned.—Economist,

THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" AND MR
CHARLES DICKENS.

The Saturday Reviewers attack Mr. Dickens,
not because he is a popular writer, but because,
being so, he makes himself, as they say, a legisla-
tor " and philosopher," and thinks himself at
liberty to speak on the most important subjects.
This, they consider, " little less than a crime_" It
may well be asked, Why ? Why is Mr. Dickens,
or any other distinguished writer to be pro-
hibited from speaking seriously on the public
questions of the day ? That because a man writes
interesting books, he should forfeit the common
rights of a citizen is a dogma of the Saturday
Reviewers, which very aptly illustrates the way in
which they strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
" We do not think," they say, in grave censure, on
our having written a distinguished name without
the usual prefix, " that a man forfeits the rights of
society by writing books;" but it appears that he
does forfeit the ordinary privileges of a citizen
and a patriot, if he is unhappily guilty of writing
interesting ones. But, in reality, the charge is
altogether unfounded. Mr. Dickins has not come
forward as a public man, or offered himself in the
character of a legislator and political philosopher at
all. With the exception of one or two speeches the last
of which was delivere some years ago, he has taken
n) active part in public affairs,and steadily declined
repeated invitations to do so. Had he offered
himself, like :Mr. Thackeray, as a candidate for a
seat in Parliament, there would have been at least
some colourable ground for the charge of the Satur-
day reviewers. We are far from saying that he is
not at perfect liberty to do this without violating
any law except the capricious one framed by the
reviewers; but, as the case stands, their charge is
utterly baseless. Mr. Dickens has strictly
confined himself within the limits of his art, in
pleasantly satirising some of the admitted
shortcomings of government officials. The Satur-
day Reviewers, however, seeing much deeper into
a millstone than their neighbours, discover crime
and treason, a deep-laid conspiracy to undermine
the constitution, and destroy the country, in these
humourous sketches. They altogether deny the
right of a popular author to touch upon such sub-
jects, which are, it would appear, sacred to Satur-
day Reviewers. This is another of the critical
canons elaborated by the painful industry of our
cotemporary. Fortunately, it is as novel as
it is irrational and unjust. From the days
of Aristophanes till now, the follies and vices
of men in authority have been recognised as
the legitimate objects of satire for the poet,
wit, or humourist of the day. With us such
sketches have been specially popular, and our
literature contains an amusing gallery of official
incapables, from Justice Shallow and honest Dog-
berry downwards. But our cotemporary decides
that such sketches are no longer tolerable, and
having laid down the law, proceeds to make an
example of Mr. Dickens as a notorious offender.
Notwithstanding, however, the hard words, the
weak, prolix reasoning, and " damnable iteration,"
with which the new doctrine is enforced, we con-
tinue to believe that a humourist is at perfect
liberty tq satirise, in a pleasant spirit, the weak
points of existing institutions. He may do it well
or ill, and that is a proper question for criticism ;
but he is not to be condemned as a criminal for
doing it at all. And our indignant cotemporary
may rest assured that justice will be done by the
critics and the public, without the assistance of the
policeman, which it seems disposed to recommend.
But the most amusing part of our cotemporary's
assault on Mr. Dickens is the point at which it is
chiefly made. His pleasant fiction of the Circum-
locution Office is, in the eyes of the Saturday
Reviewers, the head and front of his offending.
It is here that the true Dogberry spirit comes
out—the amusing official gravity, the stolid
official zeal, the utter inability to perceive a joke.
They look upon the Circumlocution Office not only
as a complete failure in point of art, but as a moral
and political offence of the gravest magnitude. They
smell treason in that " How not to do it," and
think it flat perjury to call a prince's brother a
barnacle. Can it be that they have a latent
sympathy with honest Dogberry ? The evidence
for such a supposition is purely internal; but the
zeal with which they insist, by implication, that
they are not only wise men, but " what is more,
officers," who know the law, and wish to be correctly
written down in the record, seems almost to justify
such a surmise. Supposing this to be the case,
it may, perhaps, explain the total absence of
humour they evince. During the French Revolu-
tion the Girondists were accused of federalism,
the signification of which the judges themselves
did not well understand, and one of them, on being
asked what it meant, replied, "He was no gram-
, marian, but it sounded like a very heinous crime."
So the Saturday Reviewers being no humorist, and
not exactly understanding the Circumlocution

THE NORTHERN TIMES. LIVERPOOL, MOlci DAY, JULY 20, 1857

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.-SATURDAY.