Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-07-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE WEEKLY PRESS.

"We trust," says the Economist," that in the
debate on Indian affairs which is appointed for
next Monday, considerations of a practical kind
may not altogether be lost sight of, and that what
has to he done in the future may not be forgotten
in the desire to find fault with the past. The
emergency is too pressing to justify loss of time in
generalities on the Double Government' or the
Breach of Treaties.' Tile danger is too serious
to warrant the perversion of the debate into mere
faction fight. Our present duty is exclusively to
consider what measures will be most effectual for
the re-establishment of order and security in
India. -When that object has been secured, it will
he time enough to investigate the cruses which have
led to the present crisis, and to discuss the larger
and less pressing questions of civil and military
administration which are indirectly connected with
the subject."
The Saturday Review also says :—lt is greatly to
be hoped that India will never become the battle-
field of party. Party would be more fatal to our
tenure of India than the mutiny of the three
armies It has often been said that if the govern-
ment of India were to become in any sense the
government of a parliamentary majority, it would
not be worth ten years' purchase. We look,
therefore, with considerable anxiety to the line
which will be taken on Monday night by the
principal parliamentary leaders. If the subjeat
be apuroached temperately and dispassionately,
with no tendency to precipitate condemnation,
but with a due sense of the extreme solemnity
of the occasion, the difficulty of the question, and
the magnitude of the vast interests involved, we
shall have good reason to look hopefully into the
future. What is required at the present time is
that men should ponder and inquire, and suspend
their judgment. Nothing should be assumed.
Nothing should be asserted without proof. But
if the leading members of the House of Commons
make up their minds hastily to follow a particnlar
course, with reference rather to the interests of
their party than to the interests of the nation, we
shall have too much reason to anticipate, not that
out of the present disastrous movement wilt be
evolved much permanent good, hut that we shall
be hurried into rash counsels and precipitate acts
which will be followed by the downfall of our
Indian empire. What can we make out of this
business ?' is the natural inquiry of a feeble oppo-
sition. It is easy to suggest an answer. The best
thing to be made of it is a character for fair=ness.
for honesty, for moderation—for an enlightened
desire to promote, in a great crisis, the interests of
the nation, and to do nothing to embarrass the
movements of those on whom has devolved, in
so momentous a conjuncture, the conduct of public
affairs-'''

The John Bull thinks that if the Marriage and
Divorce Bill, as it stands at present, should pass
the House of Commons, and by the royal assent
become law, there is likely enough to be an open
rupture between Church and State. " Has Lord
Palmerston realised this contingency ? Does he
suppose that the clergy will show less pluck in suf-
fering for conscience sake, than Lord Campbell
volunteered to inform the House of Lords that he
was prepared to display in the event of the House
of Commons entering upon a conflict, with the
Courts of law? It is really quite refreshing to
hear the Lord Chief Justice talk in such a
tone of calm desperation of his committal to the
Tower. To be sure he does not expect to be made
a martyr of in the long run, for lie anticipates that
the people will rise in his defence. But if the
professional honour and rectitude of a lawyer make
him resolve to run all risks rather than lend him-
self to a violation of the law, even for a purpose
with which, apart from the illegality of the means
proposed to be employed, he sympathises, how
much more natural is it to expect that the clergy
will run all risks, rather than lend themselves to
a violation of the Divine law, for a purpose which
they regard with abliorence."

The Press looks forward with interest to the re
sumption of the Civil Service debate on Wednesday
no=t. '°On the uue Baud its a grievance so patent
that not even the government journals can he
I found to defend it—an injustice s') crying that the
most submissive body of men in the country have
become the most obstreperous ; on the other, a
government which takes refuge in the labyrinth of
official details, to avoid the performance of imperial
obligations. Here is a question on which the new
House of Commons has a fair opportunity of
proving its common sense and its candour. How
will they abide the test ? "
" It was hoped, last session," says the Sunday
Times, " that some means would be taken to re-
strain the perennial flux of the legislature within
moderate bounds—that the Speaker would be
empowered to interpose his authority, to prevent
wild and frolicsome members from hurrying away
the imagination of the house to Hong Kong and
Timbuctoo, to the Suez Railway, or to the most
profound depths of metaphysics and theology,
when the subject under consideration, perhaps,
is the affair of the Sound dues or the duty
on paper. But it is quite clear that nothing
has been done: Our legislators are as wild
as ever. There is Mr. Gladstone for example,
who retires for whole months to the cave of
the seven sleepers, and then, when the national
mind has drifted Heaven knows where, rises, like
the witch of Ender, from the floor of parliament,
and invokes the ghost of the forgotten lorcha. He
might as well inquire why King Ethelred gave
orders for massacreing the Danes The whole
affair is entirely out of date. The nation is up to
its eyes in the Chinese war, and it no longer sig-
nifies a jot, whether the Blue Iptt3r was flying on
board a particular vessel, on a particular day. But
Mr. Gladstone is no worse than his neighbours.
Every gentleman has his own lorcha, with which
he pesters parliament to death ; and from this
plague we know not what or who is to deliver us.