Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-12-12 00:00:00

of his friends both in and out of parliament,
the debate of Thursday night, would have
induced him to tender to Lord PALMERSTON,
his seals of office as President of the Board of
Control. Be this as it may, enough has been
shown to induce the House of Commons to take
such steps as will compel the resignation in
question. It is the duty of the Cabinet either to
exculpate their colleague, or part his company as
a minister of the Crown. Either gross ignorance
of what was going on in India, or a desire to
mislead Parliament, led him to talk of sur-
rounding and capturing Delhi, with what—a
force of two thousand men. Ignorance or
deception, induced him at the very moment the
Cawnpore massacres were being perpetrated, to
declare that the mutiny was suppressed. Accusa-
tions such as these can easily be refuted, but
if on the other hand they be true, surely the
legislature will be lost to all sense of patriotism
and public duty, if it permits a minister to exer-
cise such tremendous power, whose every official
undertaking, stamps him as incJmpetent in the
extreme. It cannot be, that a man so manifestly
unfitted to occupy the virtual throne of our
oriental possessions, shall be permitted, with such
a stigma upon his political character, to retain an
office, which requires the exercise of talents, and
administrative abilities, equal to that possessed
by the foremost statesman of either ancient or
modern times.

But against Lord CANNING the charges are
still more serious and less easily to be disposed
of. llis apologist, Lord GRANVILLE, may de-
claim as much as he pleases and argue with all
imaginable earnestness, but he knows the diplo-
matic Premier will never be able to satisfy the
Country that the Bengal mutiny was not acalamity
which might have been foreseen, and provided
for. The facts are entirely in the face of such a
supposition. Long before the rebellion manifested
itself, it was prophesied, but the Governor-General,
we know beyond dispute, treated the warnings
he got as idle tales. And even after four regi-
ments had abandoned their allegiance and their
loyalty, officers were threatened with dismissal
who gave vent to unpleasant councils, whilst
others were sneered at as: alarmists, Again we
find Lord CANNING remiss in watching the

course of events after the outbreak at Barrackpore
and Meerut, and following every sign of danger
by precaution, in a word to be in advance of
every movement instead of the rear. As we said
before neither Mr. VERNON SMITH, or Lard
CANNING found able or effective advocates. We
have at present said enough to shew that when
the case of the Indian mutiny comes on to be
fully and finally discussed, the government will
have hard work of it to maintain their places
against a hostile vote in both Houses. The in-
competence which the Indian officials both at
home and abroad have manifested during the
contest, shows that Parliament must do some-
thinz, and that soon to rptrenerate the onvprnmpnt
so as to make the people of India happy and
prosperous under British sway and control.

THE currency qnestion has fallen, as it were,
from the hands of those who have made it
their constant study, and written upon it
week after week for years past, into those of
Journalists, who to be in the fashion of a panic
season, rush into it at all hazards. The
borrowed idea differs little more than in
complexion, however, from the mother wit, and
thus we find the great mass which has been writ-
ten on the all important subject, converging to one
point, and settling down into a powerful advocacy
of sound principles of Currency Reform. All are
agreed that PEEL'S laws of 1819 and 1844,
expose the whole Community to systemised
plunder. That the Bank of England should have
retained the unshaken confidence of the nation,
throughout the many periods of mercantile con-
fiscation, which have followed the operations of
those laws, is one of the most remarkable features
in our monetary history ; but so it is, and every
honest Monetary Reformer rejoices in the fact.
On the other hand it is universally admitted, that
the wants of trade have grown far beyond the
limits placed on the creation and use of money
by the legislatule. The popular cry is, "we
have not enough of the circulating medium to
carry on the business of the country." No one
wishes to take from the Bank of England note
its convertible character as long as it retains
it, whether in name, or in fact. It adds so much
to the facilities and main springs of commerce.
Notes, are as useful abroad, as at home. It would
be foolish therefore to discard them. As far as
they go they are admirably adapted to sustain
our mercantile credit in foreign transactions.
Commerce has the first claim on every civil•
ised State. This is not denied by Currency
Reformers. Oa the contrary, they contend that
our metallic money, and its representative, bo it
what it may, ought t ) be wholly set apart
for the support of this bulwark of our national
greatness. But nations have other wants to
supply. Labour, and the cost of government
have to be provided for. These are purely
domestic wants, which can be represented in any
conventional form we please, as a people, to
adopt, nor are they without a natural limit, or
unsurmountable barriers to abuse. Let us take
for a paradigm, a childish desire on the part of
philantrophie statesmen to improve the condition
of the working classes, by having recourse to an
excessively large issue of paper money—legal
tenders—in the form of one pound notes, for, is
any other shape, his first and paramount difficulty
would be to get them into circulation. He
would scarcily resort to giving them away.