Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-09-30 00:00:00

TIMES.--LIVERPOOL, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30. 1857.

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' respecting the Ind.ian crisis, and the future policy'
our rulers must adopt should we desire British
rule in Hindoostan; these are, " energy, com-
bined with a deliberate plan ,of action ; entire
religious liberty, a benevolent ruler, and the firm
assertion of power," from which, as he justly
remarks, we can only expect " to preserve to Great
Britain and to civilisation a fairer and a more
secure empire than we have hitherto possessed."
This very sentiment he re echoed when he told
the working men of Shgfiald that " no one will
belleve that we are about to suffer a diminution
of our territory in the East." A declaration such
as this, is proof clear as Holy Writ, that, no matter
who the statesman may be that underrates the
value and importance of the Indian possessions of
Great Britain, they will not find in Lord John
Rugsum. an aider or au abetter.

The next topic of political importance on which
Lord John addressed the men of Sheffield, was
the Parliamentary franchise. Considering the
constant .advocacy of Reform which has at all

times and under every circumstance marked the
people of this important municipality; and also,
that for a long series of years they have sent to
Parliament such representatives as would advocate
with consistency and zeal such political principles
and views, it was to be expected that Lord
John would enunciate his views thereon. From
what he sail we learn that he will be no party to
the postponement of the promised Reform Bill ;
for he emphatically de:lares that the time has
come when the franchise may be further extended,
and " I think, nearly in the words of the Prime
Minister, that large classes who have not hitherto
possessed the Franchise should in future enjoy
and exercise that privilege." We take this as a
good omen, that there will not be wanting men of
:ability and position in the House to oppose the
Government should they prefer delaying the
consideration of Parliamentary Reform, on the
ground that the affairs of India will be quite
enough to settle in the next session. It rests with
the country to back up such r?psesentativea as are
opposed to procrastination, and by innumerable
petitions to both Houses of Parliament, demand
Parliamentary Reform in 1855 as the right of the
country. Lord John, in addressing the Ragged-
School Union of Sheffield, referred to the Education
question, and from all we can gather from what his
L-nAship said we fear that he considers the want
of harmony among the different religious sects
as a great barrier to the settlement of this impor-
tant butmuch vexed question.

TriS FRENCII PRESS 015 INDIAN Arr,tras.—A corres_
pandent writing from Paris says :—"Whoever has been in
the habit of reading the French papers since the outbreak
of the Indian revolt must have been struck by the
extraordinarly conflicting statements and appreciations
they contain. If these amouAted only to differences of
opinion as to the probable result of the struggle, there
would be no cause for wonder, but they also display strange
inattention to facts and to accuracy of detail. Thus, for in_
stance, with respect to the number of European troops we
shall have to oppose to the mutineers when all the
reinforcements now on their way shall have arrived, we
find it variously estimated at from 30,000 to 80,000, while
,one paper said-that the reinforcements sent out would but
fill the gapa created before they reach India. Comm-on
attention to statistics easily obtained, and to the e;act
statements supplied by the English papers as ;to the
number. of 'men embarked, would prevent such strange
discrepancits as these. With regard to the causes of the
insurrection appreciations equally rash have been
hazarded, and the small number of journals habitually
hostile to England have daily shuddered over the newly_
discovered risgovernment which hai driven the Indians

o revolt. With such unfair and unfounded attacks a

these latter it is agreeable to contrast the jester estimate
ofßritish rule inlndia contained in an article in yesterday's
Siecle, entitled, Englan .1 and the Police of the Seas :'—.
o,le must do England: the justice to say that she was
the first to renounce conquest in Europe. She transported
her ambition elsewhere, and has had the immense glory
to give birth to oae of the greatest nations in the world—

to the people free par excellence—to the American nation.
Her conquests have almost all been conquets of commerce
and of civilisation. Russia, Austria, Prussia, have ag -
grandised themselves at the expense of free European
populations, whose nationality they have killed, and
whose development they have stopped. The English
have not committed this crime. Ia this respect they are
like France, and have no restitution to make. They
pursued their unity, and like us, they stopped when that
unity was complete. They have sought the elements of
their expansion beyond the limits of their European
brethren. They have peopled the solitudes of America,
and called into life the new world of Oceania. If, become
masters of India by the hazard of events, they have not
assimilated it to themselves, allowance must be made for
the time and for the immensity of the difficulty. But what
great things they have there done ! How many barbarous
customs abolished! how many towns rendered healthy,
roads constructed, and rivers bridged ! Properly to ap-
preciate English domination i❑
.India—one must know
what India was before that domination, one must remem-
ber the unheard of strug;les of sects and religions, and
the inundations of blood of which it was the periodic tl
prey. Millions of men perished from ; half-century

to half-century in wars, in the establishment and
fall of empire. The massacre that now revolt
Europe, from whatever side they proceed, would have
been mere festivals previously to the Brtiish rule.'
The Siecle then proceeds to set forth the services ren-
dered by England to civilisation, besides that of having
bee❑ the first to teach Europe that there was another
kind of government than despotism, the first to establish
the rights of the nation by the side of the rights of the
throne—the only country where representative and con
stitutional government has been solidly established and
wisely exercised. She has' been the chief agent in purg -
ing the world of piracy and the slave trade, and in
establishing the freelom and security of the ocean If,
by an impossibility, her immense maritime power
were suddenly to vanish, and that no other nation were
ri ely to replace it, the anarchy of the seas would again
burst forth, and centuries of new efforts would be re-
quired to repair the evil. Commerce, then, no more
than philosophy and liberty, should desire the:fall of Eng
land. In like manner that our conquest of Algeira was a
humane act, a benefit for the werld, so is the greatness of
England at this moment one of the conditions of universal
security. It it did not exist is its present form, it would
have to be reconstructed, and it would reconstruct itself
under a different form. It serves not only as the basis of
the European equilibrium, to check enterprises directed
against that equilibrium, but it is one of the elements of
the material life of our political universe. Suppress it
without replacing it, you have a cataclysm that cannot be

estimated ; on a thousand points of the world's surface
barbarism revives and destroys commerce for ages. It
has been said that there are no necessary men, nor do
we believe in necessary powers ; but there are some
eminently useful, whose loss leaves a frightful void. And
England is of those nations and those Powers."

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