Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-12-30 00:00:00

THE SEVERN VALLEY RAILWAY.

A special general meeting of the proprietors of this
company was held in London yesterday, for the purpose of
considering the propriety of applyirg to Parliament for
abandoning the undertaking, or for an extension of the
time for the execution of the whole or such portion of it as
might be deemed advisable. Mr. Parsons, deputy..
chairman of the board of directors, presided. '► he
Chairman explained that in consequence of the whole
capital of the company not having been subscribed,
they were unable to complete the line. The time
for completing the north end of the line would
expire in August next, and there being no prospect of
raising the money this autumn, the directors gave the
necessary notices for two bills—one for abandoning the
undertaking, and the other for extending the time for its
completion. At first the directors were disposed to recom-
mend the shareholders to adopt the first of these bills, but
since the notices were given the state of the money market
ha I materially alterel, and it was possible that hereafter
the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton Company
might be induced to undertake the working of the Severn
Valley Line, and also to guarantee its debentures.
Perhaps the Oxford and Worcester Company might do
even more than that, but wi h the prospect of their doing
ever so much the directors advice to the shareholders was
to authorise them to continue the prosecu ion of both bills
until the next halflearly meeting. He moved a reso-
lution to that effect. Mr. Jackson, M P., seconded the
resolution, which was put and carried unanimously. A
vote of thanks t) the chairman closed the proceedings.

The Times commences a long notice of Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe's career, by stating that his departure from Con-
stantinople, on leave of absence, may possibly follow by
his total relinquishment of diplomatic office.
An action for breach of promise may be maintained,
although the party gu lty thereof remain single, provided
the breach can be otherwise proved, either by actual, re-
fusel, or implied by the conduct of the party. A promise
of marriage, in order to sustain an action for the breach.
must be repeated after the party promising has attained
his majority.
HIGHWAY ROBBERY NEAa BARNSLEY: -On Monday
afternoon, Henry Wrigley, miner, and Joseph Senior, wire
drawer, both living in the neighbourhood of Thurgoland;
were brought up at the Barnsley Courthouse on a charge
of highway robbery. George Hall, slater, stated that he
was going home from the Moorcock Inn, one evening,
about eleven o'clock, when the two prisone-s pounced upon
him, in a lonely part of the road, and demanded his money.
Wrigley seized him round the waist and held him while
Senior robbed him of some copper, the only money he had
in his possession, and a two foot rule, after which they
kicked him and threatened to throw him over a bridge
c!ose by. The prosecutor having sworn positively to the
identity of the prisoners and other evidence having been
adduced, they were committed for trial at the assizes.
GR tTITUDE TO Loan CANNING. —The Calcutta En
glislaman, of November 3rd, contains the following
significant statement : —We hear that the native gentlemen
of Calcutta are preparing an address to the Governor
General, cemplimentine him on his public conduct during
these difficult times. The next thing will be an address of
thanks frtm the Sepoys, If Lord Canning does nut
personally deserve it, he is certainly surrounded by men
who do. We should rather see our local government in
India, at a crisis like the present, in favour with the
independent portion of our own countrymen, than with
either mutineers or " native gentlemen." But what is
the fact ? Lord Canning is thanked and supported by the
Indians of Calcutta, while the English inhabitants (all but
the members of the civil service) have unanimously
petitioned for his reenll.—Exarniner.
THE CABINET A D THE COU TRY.-Into whatever
society a man may go, we cannot avoid perceiving that the
present government is connection %Hi Reform is usually
a subject of derision, and in connection with Jodie of grave
end anxious distrust. , The one, in fact, is the result of the
other. Government feels itself in a false position, as the
'representative of Liberalism; and the little masculine
energy it might otherwise have displayed is par lysed by
this fatal consciousness. Literals believe Lord Palmer
stun to be a Tory. Tories suspect him. to be nothing. All
his colleagues are of the Same nondeac ipt character. The
ministry is now beginning to excite in the nation at large
that unenviable sentiment which people are apt to display
towards those by whOm their generosity has been abused.
The tale of distress with whic Lord Palmerston imposed
upon the nation ten months ago has now been thorough'y
exposed, and the indignation of his dupes is commensurate.
By his conduct both on Chica and the Reform Bill he has
been convicted of political insincerity„ and, has forfeited
the coAdence of every class which
.does rot believe that
political virtue is a fable.—Press.
Tint GOYS RNMENT or I NDIA.--ReSPORS ible Govern.
meat ! The Indian Reformers know as 'well as we do
thatethey have had it ever sines they have had a Board of
Control. There it sits, in the hour of danger, throwing
the reins on the neck of the. Directors "--shifting its
blunders on their shoulders, too, if it can manage to do so
without being detected. If it has been practically
irresponsible hitherto, the reason is that, in and out of
Parliament, India has been a bore which the enlightened
ten pounders and their incorruptible Roebuck's were
contemn° leave to a service admirable i,u the eyes of candid
fort igners for its integrity and ability, though, in the eyes
of candid Englishmen, the vilest of the vile. So little
attention has been
,wasted on the suhj. et, that it can safely
be asserted, in a resolution passed at a public meeting
that the Company, not the Parliamentary Ministers and
Governor General, is the great author of the aggressions
on native States and Princes—of the conquest of Scinde,
the invasion of Affghanistan, and the annexation of Oude.
Apathetic for half a century, and mad for an hour—such,
judging from the past and present, would be a direct
ParliamenTary government of India.—Saturday Review.
SHORTCOMINGS OP THE CIVILISING RA CZ. —The more
prominently the Anglo Saxons on both sides of the
Atlantic prove themselves the dominant and civilising race
—the pattern after which all other races are aiming to
shape themselves—th more lamentable it is that a spirit
of reckless rambling should mote and more prevail in the
higher branches of trade, and that too many of the merchant
princes, that were the pride of Old England and the boast
of the New, should be made and unmade by transactions
incompatible with either honour or honesty. Without
a'tributing any exaggerated morality to previous genera-
tions, we cannot avoid the coecnsion, that the mere
changesin the mpdes of doing business, unaccompanied by
proportionate safeguards in legislation and watchfulness of
public opinion, have a tendency to generate an ever
increasing 1 xness of commercial morality and deadness of
commercial honour. This generation is growing sadly in
need of a new chivalry to uplift and purify our freebooters
of the counting house and the banker's parlour—plunderers
sometimes not less daring, dexterous, and unscrupulous
than the Barons of old. Here, likewise, our imperial
responsibilities ought to stand us in good stead, if once we
could be brought to keep them present to use—Spectator.
THE EDUCATIONAL FRANCHISE.—The Reforms of Par-
liament and the Executive have been, of popular, not of
learned origin ; for all that the bishops, the army, the
universities, and the illuminati have done, we might still
hare been the subjects of a Georgian rule. Not eo, they
argue. They have spread knowledge ; to them is attribut-
able the explosion of vulgar fallacies; they, the educated,
have shown the people the way out of Egyptian darkness.
Then they did all this without the educational suffrage,
let them continue to do it, for i is their office, and their
influence will not be the less because we refuse to render
their importance a monstrosity. The principle of speeial
suffrages could not stop, if once introduced into the con-
standee, circle within circle, class within class we should
be the Chinese of the West within a century, unless, as is
probable, we repealed our fanciful new law within five
years from its enactment, and resolved, in future, to
remember what self-government means, and the true
nature of 'a suffrage. The difficulty is to treat the proposal
with seriousness. It is a sickly conceit of dilettantism.
It is scarcely an expression of opinion, but a hesitating
hint, that certain people would be willing to make an
experiment upon the constitution. The constitution,
however, is not a dog, or a dead body, for emperical or
anatomical treatment.. The .reform to come must be a
concession of solid power to the nation nationally.—
Leader.

nix Ivan SFPOYB.—Tha Irish Sepoy gazettes are
reduced to the lowest depths of despair by t'ie harrowing
intelligence of the safety of the garrison of Lucknow.
There is, h,wever, come "halm in Gilead," and one of
those f, ithful exponents of public feeling (the Kilkenny
Journal) consoles itself with the reflection that though
‘• the white plumes are now dancing over many a home-
stead in England and Ireland," yet " but a little while,
and we shall see the hearse and the corpse, and hear the
groans of bfilen hearts." "As for the atuggle itself,"
devoutly adds the sympathetic organ, " may God defend
the right!" In connexion with the affairs (f India, the
Bev. De. Cahill, in one of his weekly epistles to the
Premier, states that he (Dr. Cahill) has been favoured
with the correspondence of a nobleman, Lord Palmersten's
"equal in station and talent," who has assured the
doctor that the Cabinet will immediately redress the
grievances of the Catholics in tha East, and that the
Queen's Government meant to put an end to the
sectarianism which in that country maligns the faith,
insults the soldiery, punishes the children, persecutes the
?fiesta, and robs the aspirant to military promotion of his
just msrit of his hard-earned rewards." I. is but only fair
to mention t';at Dr. Cahill, whatever pray be his politics
and religious failings, has at all times fearlessly denounced
the atrocities of the Sepoys as placing them beyond the
pale of human sympathy.