The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-02-06 00:00:00

together with the Green-lane works, in round
numbers, the sum of 600,0001., the interest
on which, at four per cent., would just amount
to 24,0001. per annum, This added to the cost
of working and maintenance gives a gross total
of outlay of 46,3411, 19s, 7d. for the year just
ended. The revenue derived from the works
during the same period was 76,737/. 4s. 7d,
thus showing a surplus of no less than
30,3951. ss. on the year. It may well be asked
how has this very large surplus been appro-
priated ? Has it gone to liquidate the bond debt
on 66 wells, or in reduction of the water rates
to the consumers ? for assuredly to one or other
of these objects it ought legitimately to he ap-
applied. But no, to; the Pikeists, finding that
the cost of their scheme was SO notoriously in
excess of their original estimates, hit upon the
extraordinary expedient of quietly applying the
amount year by year in liquidation of the interest
of the money borrowed for the prosecution of th 6
Pike, and this has been done so silently and
stealthily that not a single voice has been raised
against the proceeding. And now for the money
actually, expended on the Pike. We find that
the mortgage debt is now in round numbers
-1,500,000/. If from this the cost of the wells is
deducted, say 600,0001., then we have 900,0001.
as the amount paid already on the Pike account.
Then if to this is added the interest which has
been paid by the wells, say at least 200,0001.,
and all the extra work in the shape of reservoirs,
&c., &c., we shall have at least 50,0001. to add
to this. These several sums will give a gross
total of expenditure of 1,150,0001. already wasted
on the filthy Pike. These are not our figures;
they are those of the water committee, and we
challenge them to dispute the facts as they stand.
how Then much is still owing to contractors for
work already done, and how much more has to be
done, ere these works are completed, are matters
which will only be honestly determined when a
.new Water Committee, composed of fearless and
independent men, shall have displaced the in-
eapables who now encumber the Town Clerk's
office once a week. The Pike Engineer figures

in the account to the tune of 2,0001., for services
rendered for the year. Perhaps the Chairman
of the Committee will be condescending enough
to inform the Council how many thousands he
and his old friends, the Francises, have received

from the Corporation, and the nature of the ser-
vices which they rendered for the same. We
perceive that Mr. Thomas Dunca.n's salary,
6001. per annum, is charged to the wells ; why,
we are at a loss to determine, seeing that during
the last two years he has been constantly en-
gaged on the works at Rivington. There are a
great many other items, to which exception
might justly be taken, in these accounts; but,
contrasted with what we have stated above, they
are comparatively unimportant. We trust that,
on Monday next, plain questions will be put to
the Pikeists, and equally plain answers insisted
upon. The cat is now fairly thrown amongst
the pigeons, and there must be no more Jesuit-
ical dust and sophistry thrown in the eyes of the

members of the Council and the public. We will
have a few more words to say about the surrep-
titious manner in which the Pike water was
smuggled into our pure water reservoirs, and the
part taken by certain well known individuals in
that truly discreditable transaction ; but we must
defer our comments until to-morrow.

• THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE SESSION.—IS the old
rivalry between the two ex-chancellors still in full
force ? There they sit, each in his place -each
uncovered— each watching the mothent. for Sir A.
4new to sit down, in order to catch, if possible,
the Speaker's eye. Disraeli is successful—Mr.
Gladstone resumes his seat and his hat. The
leader of the Opposition opens his sessional work
with renovated power. He draws a picture
of Europe as it stood on the 30th of March
last and describes its tendencies . to settle
down and be quiet. He shows how, one
after another, from that time to this, new
elements of discord have sprang up, just as old
enmities are healed. Ever there is some
mysterious agency at work to divert attention froM
domestic concerns to international disputes. First
America, then Russia, then Naples, afterwards
Switzerland, and now Persia and China, present
difficulties which must be attended to, which
constitute a sufficient pretext for doing nothing
at home, and a convenient excuse for a wasteful
expenditure. Lord Palmerston, he said, creates the
entanglements out of which he afterwards extricates
us. His dese; iption of the noble lord's foreign
policy• Was -caustic, and some of his points were
most happily put. He producedno little sinsation
when he informed the House that a secret treaty
between France and Austria existed, approve al, if
not instigated, by our own Government, in which
France guaranteed to Austria the integrity of her
Italian possessions. Upon the subject of keeping
on foot a large standing army, he was almost
radical, and his denunciation of the Income Tax
was as strong as if ho had prepared his speech fOr a
vestry meeting. On this latter subject lie announced
his intention of taking the sense of the House within
a fortnight, and gave a rough draft of the resolu
tions he meant to propose. We never heard him
speak more reasonably, more seriously, or more
worthy of his position in a deliberative assembly.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer followed in a brief
speech, deprecating of course the coming to any
decision upon ways and means before the estimates
had been agreed upon. Great confusion prevailed
during the few minutes that he was on his legs.
After him we had Mr. Gladstone. Ho touchd
upon our foreign policy, which, plainly enough, is
little to his mind. But his main points were the
necessity, as well as duty, of reducing our military
expenditure to the average which predominated
before the war with Russia, and the obligation
under which the House lay to the country, to
apply the income tax while it lasts to the purposes
for which it was originally imposed—namely, the
complete re-adjustment of our fiscal policy ; and
to let it expire in 1860. A very weighty speech,
which will be read with profound interest, and, we
hope, profitably pondered by the public. Lord
Palmerston then attempted to bring the dis-
cussion to a close. He rallied Mr Disraeli on his
power of imagination, and told him that
his outline of the foreign policy of the go,
vernment was a pure romance. Mr. Disraeli
had spent, he said, a portion of the recess at Paris,
and proved a godsend to these ingenious men who
exercised their inventive powers in mystifying
gobemottehes. As to the secret treaty the hon.
gentleman had discovered, the noble lord said
he knew nothing of it—there was no such treaty
in existence. He announced that Ferouk Khan
had opened negociations with- Lord Cowley,
which would probably put a speedy close to
the Persian war—a war which ho treated
as a very unimportant affair. But although the
noble lord was good humoured and witty, and
although the information he gave on two or three
topics of foreign policy was more satisfactory than
had been looked for, he can hardly be said to have
left upon the house an impression likely to con-
duce to the stability of his Ministry, which, it
seems to us, will be ousted before Easter, unless
large concessions are made —The Nonconformist,

THE CRIMEAN COMMISSIONERS.—We take the following
from the Glasgow Daily Mail, of Wednesday :—The chain
of facts recorded in Sir John M‘Neill's reply to the Liver-
pool address can lead but to one conclusion ; yet, although
every one of these facts were patent, the inference they
warrant could not have been effectively drawn if the inde-
pendence of position and spirit of Sir John M‘Neill had
not enabled him to substantiate them. The question now
demanding public and parliamentary attention, is not as to
the accuracy or inaccuracy of the Commissioners' Report,
but whether it is to bo certified (by the precedent of this
case) to , all public officers that the duty which the