Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-11-02 00:00:00

that it has been determined we believe, to hold a
meeting at the London Tavern, this day. It is
expected that a gentleman in high office in the
City will take the chair, and the intention is to
memorialise the Secretary of State to obtain a
remission of the sentence. We do not wonder that
suoh a demonstration should take place, for, cer-
tainly, as the matter now stands, the poor culprits
have been very harshly treated.
Of local or domestic news, there is very

little of interest this morning. On Saturcht;,
Mr. Ouselev, the proprietor and editor of the
Liverpool Herald was committed for trial for a libel
on Mr. Robertson Gladstone, published in the
Herall of the 17. h ult. The article in question
holds up Mr. Robertson Gladstone to redicuie and
contempt as a public man. Bail was accepted.
Two surities of £lOO each. On Saturday, Robert
T. Davis, who murdered his wife a few weeks
since at Bali's Pond, London, was convicted at the
Central Criminal Court, and sentenced to death,
without hope or mercy.
There is a variety of intelligence from the Conti-
nent. From Paris we learn that the deceased
French General Cavaignac is to receive the honours
of a public funeral, on account of his services to

the Sate. This has been granted by the Go /ern-
naent at the request of the late General's family.
As Cavaignac had repeatedly refused to take the
owk of allegiance to the present head of the State,
this concession is somewhat remarkable. The
financial report of the Minister of Finance, an-
nouncing that the sinking fund would be found
again in 1859 with a sum of 40 millions of francs,
and that dispositions would be taken by the Go-
vernment with the Bank of France.and the railway
companies to limit the issues of debentures (obli-
gations) has had a favourable effect.

A-counts from Brussels state that the present
Catholic ministry will not resign in cons?quenee

of the decisive vi2tory of the liberals in the muni-
cip-21 elections, nor are they, indeed, coLsitu-
tionally bound to do so. But they have sent for
the Kirg to advise them, as the report observes
with unconscious irony. His Majesty's advice,
always conciliatory, will probably lead, in the end,
to a reconciliation between the people and the
Glvernment, whoever the men may be who form
the latter.

Constantinople adviceF, of the 24e.h ult., mention
that the new loan is intended to liquidate the debts
of the civil list, to withdraw from circulation a part
of the paper money, and to bring back the finances
to a normal state. In the Wallachian assemUly
three-fourths of the mej trity belong to the ultra
party, to whom the commissioners of the great
powers have counselled prudence and the observ-
ance of treaties. The Divan hes requested those
engaged in commercial pursuits at Constantinople
not to export munitions of war; Russia, on the
contrary, sends great quantities to the Caucasus.
Dehreu Bey has just loft for Brussels. In Asia
.the Kurds have committed numerous cutrages
ag,inst the Christians; two American priests were
put to death by them.
Advices from Berlin inform us that the repre-
sentatives of Prussia and Austria at the Frankfort
Diet are engaged in comparing their instructions
with regard to the united action in the Diet in the
Holstein question. In the meantime, the Frank-
fort journals announce that the complaint made
directly by the States of Lauenbourg, relative to
the constitution and rights snd situation of the
duchies, was presented to the Germanic Diet by
M. Goldschmidt, an advocate in Frankfort, on the
29.11 inst. Of course the States of Lauenbourg
could not in this case avail themselves of their
legal representative at the Diet, the Danish Minister,
and have therefore applied to that body, as to a
legal forum, by counsel.

receive more produce for gold when at a pre-
mium abroad—the circulation of our legal
tender money is contracted, and the increased
supplies we have on hand of all the other riches
of tht earth, are inconvertible into cash, and a
panic ensues.

THE Municipal polling day has arrived ! The
warmth of discussion must now give place to a
manly determination to fulfil those promises
which have been given tc the Liberal candidates.
We scorn to ask, with the crozier in one hand,
and the bludgeon in the other, any enlightened
and independent Burgess for his vote. We

of Liverpool, the return of men to the Corpora-
tion who will show to the Imperial Parliament,
and the country at large, that the second town,
and the " greatest seaport in the Empire," can
appreciate ssise, economic, and, we may add, hon-
est, local self-government. That we despise
toadyism, abhor bare-faced jobbery and will, by
every constitutional means, resist unnecessary,
and, therefore, extortionate local taxation. We
would blush to make battle about straws. We
would rather pension Aldermen on turtle, and
Dock Committee-men on outelons and cham-
pagne—give them a perpetual feast, regardless
of all bodily consequences, sooner than they
should be employed about affairs which time has
shown they do not understand, or the Ratepayers
pestered with men whom they cannot make
understand the firA principles of commercial
success, or the simplest rudiment of Corporate
•
economy.

Council, whose rank they hope to swell by the
polling of to-day. But what reply have they
made to our charge ? they call us "Radicals."
They tell us, regardless of the decency of so-
ciety, that we are " liars," they proclaim us
" emissaries of the Pope," (save the mark), and
that we seek to undermine Her Majesty's throne—
kick over the Church, and put, an extinguisher
on the State. These might do very well for Bed-
lam, but we mistake commercial Liverpool if these
ravens of the tap-tub will turn the mercantile
mind from figures. They may be too vulgar for
the enlightened and refined opposition Press, and
too contemptible for the high minded and sot
disant Corruptionists candidates, whose return to
the Council they so ably advocate ; and they
may, therefore, think them wholly un
worthy of notice ; but we again tell the Bur-
gesses, who are about to vote, that if they desire
to raise Liverpool from the swamp of debt and
difficulty into which she has been dragged, they
must sink all fanaticism in religion and politics,
and send representatives into the Council Cham-
ber, who will not vote for men who seek power
for emolument, and make taxation the sole object
of place.
The new race has already commenced. At
the last meeting of the Council, the small point
of the wedge was introduced. The Dock Coln-
mittees having been "snubbed" by Parliament,
and thinking it useless to attempt another Dock
scheme next Session ; and the Corporation having
had the Town Dues and all interference with
the Dock Estate taken out of their hands, serious
apprehensions were entertained with regard to
the fingering of the coming Municipal year.
It was therefore proposed to levy a Borough
Rate of a halfpenny—only a halfpenny !—in the
pound, for town improvements, for which a bill
was to be presented to parliament, and another
v_ssional campaign would follow, at the Bur-
gesses' expense, as a matter of course. This
s enough to show us what is looming in the
We must again, then, invoke the
common sense of the Ratepayers. and exhort
them not to be duped by cant or hypocrisy. If
the Corporate Electors think that the town and
trade of Liverpool can bear a few millions more
of additional debt, they will vote for men who
will support the prodigal majority, in spite of all
that reason can dictate. But if they are convinced
that it is time to check the extravagance of the
Council, and free our port of the injurious im-
posts waste has thrown on our trade, they will
give their suffrages to those candidates who are
pledged to compel the Corporation to furnish
their constituents with a rental of the Borough
Estate, and oppose jobbery in every form which
it may present itself. The Voters who wish to
see these rational objects attained, should be
early at the poll, and devote a few hours of the
day to the service of their friends.

Such gentlemen are in their own way, and
still more in the way of an enlightened com-
munity. The greatest novice at figures, and the
veriest tyro in finance. could scarcely show us a
worse balance-sheet than that of the Liverpool
Corporation at this moment. The existing grand
total of our Municipal debt is startling enough,
but when we add to it the growing liabilities of
the Council and Dock Estate, 20,000,000/, will
be the amount of their joint debts. Now, we see
no insurmountable obstacle to the Vandalism, of
modern pigmy dimensions; which accompanies
the idea of incorporating the territory of
150,000,000 of Pagans, with all their Brahminism,
love of false prophets, cow's tails, and filthy
idolatry, with a Christian Empire ; but we are
puzzled to conceive how this ruunicina.lity can be
tolerated as an integral part of this Free Trade
nation, who are pledged not to suffer any
unnecessary burdens to be thrown upon indus: ry,
trade, and commerce. We are either rational or
headless and irresponsible beings, when we take
upon ourselves to record our votes at public
elections. If we lay claim to be the former, it
behoves us to remember that many millions of the
public money are staked on the part we are
about to play. If
.we seek the unenviable
notoriety of the latter, the only sufferers who
have a right to complain are the few who appear
to see the past folly and impending danger,
and would have it otherwise.

This is precisely what we are suffering from
at this hour. The movements of gold do not
carry away our lands, houses, stores, railways,
ships, or the many millions' worth of home,
foreign, and colonial produce with which the
United Kingdom is always teeming. It does
not shake the stability of the State, or endanger
the dividends of the fundholder. It only depre-
ciates every description of transferable or saleable
property; and as soon as that depreciation brings
the whole of the nation's substances down to the
level at which it can be converted into money,
within the limit of our currency as sanctioned
by Parliament, the lost balance is again re.
covered, and we are allowed to carry on a
commercial existence in comparative ease. We
have unfortunately been overtaken in one of
these political whirlwinds which devastate the
whole commercial world in something like
periodical order. But why such occurrences
should cause any wide-spread alarm we are at a
loss to conceive. As long as Parliament will
persist in allowing seasons of depreciation being
forced on the country, -panics, which are always
followed, as experience has shown us, by excessive
activity and high prices, we must submit
patiently to the Lombard blindness of the Legis-
lature, and by our own commercial foresight and
prudence prevent Liverpoor.s becoming another
Venice in the hands of maritime destroyers.
To-day legal tender may be scarce, and all
that belongs to ships, colonies, and commerce
may be depreciated in value—the Shylocks of
the Stock Exchange may have their "pound of
flesh"—the gold worshippers in Parliament may
be prostrated at the shrine of Mammon—our
Overstones may swagger in select committees,
and our Bullionists may stand by with their nets
to fish in the flowing fragments of their country's
substance, shipwrecked by panic ; but if the
Merchants, Traders, and Bankers of Liverpool
stand by each other in the fulness and integrity
of a true commercial spirit, they will not be
fleeced by the wrecker, nor be sacrificed by a
want of recriprocal confidence. Few men
aspiring to the rank of a merchant, or an
intelligent tradesman, can be ignorant of the
evil working of our Monetary laws ; and as they
must be aware of the difficulties they bring upon
all classes of the community periodically, they
should adopt universal accommodation and
leniency towards all persons in trade, and show
her Majesty's Ministers and Parliament that, bad
as our money laws are, the commercial property
of England is safe in the hands of those whose
integrity, enterprise, and industry has called it

distance.

THE Monetary panic has lost much of its
momentary intensity. Serious alarm has given
place to that cool reflection which we have at all
times a right to expect from a commercial peo-
ple. The Liverpool public begin to see that the
evils with which they have to contend are organic;
and, while they cautiously refrain from all rash-
ness which could in any way give intensity to the
crisis, they submit their fortunes to that disas-
trous phase of our social organisation which time
and sober discussion alone can repair, or alter
with safety. We fear, however, that there are
many narrow-minded and selfish men even in the
commercial world, who forget that Banks are the
depositories of the national wealth, the hus-
banders of the merchant's integrity, and the
industry of the people, and that one of these
institutions cannot be tampered with or stopped
without doing a grievous injustice and injury to
the country at large. Any precipitancy that the
public may show in their conluct towards our
Banks, must, therefore, arise from forgetfulness
or ignorance of the heavy debt of gratitude they
owe to those institutions, and their almost ina-
lienable connection with the best interests of
society. Banks are, in fact, so essential to the
Success of our present artificial state of existence,
that it becomes the duty of every good citizen to
hurry to their assistance in moments of trial and
danger, instead of hastening to exhaust their cof-
fers regardless of the consequences to himself and
the wh >le of the community.
True it is, that there are few situations in
which the multitude can be placed,where so many
difficulties and dangers rush at once upon the
mind, as in moments of monetary derangements.
Many persons use banking hougeg without
waiting to inquire what their functions really
are, or what they really profess to do. The law
pretends to regulate the former, while long
established usage directs the latter. For exam-
ple—the legislature measures the wants of trade,
guarantees sufficient money to keep the springs
of industry in action, and to supply the incidental
requirements of the realm at all times, and under
all circumstances. But, unfortunately for all
classes of its subjects, they have failed in their
attempt at measuring the quantity of money
required ; and have so far lost their way in de-
ciding the quality of our currency, that it be-
comes utterly impossible for our banks, though
positively suffering from a repletion of wealth,
to discharge their functions and fulfil the 'obli-
gations for which they were originally designed.
The quality of money being confined to gold of
a standard fineness and price, leaves us, like all
other commodities when dear, and returns to us
when cheap. Our paper, or legal tender money, is
regulated in quantity by the stock we possess of
this ever moving metal, notwithstanding that we

The Prodigals—men who never consider what
debt is, or how it is to be paid, many of whom
are this day seeking the Burgesses suffrages—
have had ample time and opportunity since this
election contest commenced to rebut our assertion,
that the trade of the port has been plunged into
irredeemable debt, and that a Borough rate must
be levied on the inhabitants to meet the extra-
vagance and waste of the majority of the Town

THE NORTHERN TIMES. LIVERPOOL, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1857