The Sun.
London, England, 1858-10-01 00:00:00

£1,000,000, and that of the quarter to nearly
£750,000, from other sources.
In the minor branches the accounts arc very
satisfactory. The Post-office is steadily improving.
The increase on the year is £95,000, ( n the half-
year £105,000, and on the quarter £ • 5,000. These
are proofs of the efficiency of the administration
in this important department.
In the Crown Lands there are trifling alterations
scarcely worthy of notice, inasmuch as they have
not in any of the periods amounted to £715.
In the Miscellaneous the improvement is very
considerable : on the year, £791,496 ; on the half-
year, £341,840 ; and, on the quarter, £262,252.
This is, however, an exceptional item ; and, as the
sale of old stores forms an important element in the
calculation, it is one that cannot be taken into ac-
count as in any way representing the welfare or
prosperity of the nation.
On the whole, we have every reason to be
pleased with the national balance-sheet, which
furnishes another powerful proof of the elasticity
of the national resources.

What an extremely terrible thing for Ministers !
The British Quarterly Review is actually against
her MAJESTY'S Government. A long, cynical
diatribe against the present Cabinet in the num-
ber of this contemporary just issuedufrom the press,
is prefaced with the remark, that " Never was
there an epoch in which it was so necessary for
the Liberal Party to unite their energies, to con-
centrate their efforts, and make a move in the right
direction?' Meaning, of course, obviously, that
even now the poor turned-out Whigs, like the poor
frozen-out gardeners at Christmas-time, are begin-
ning already to experience rather distressingly
the pangs of hunger, hunger after the loaves and
fishes of office, after the fleshpots of the Egypt
of power, and are consequently prepared,
with a brazen effrontery, to make their old,
old appeal ad miserieordiam. Thereupon, having
blown the rallying bugle note for the benefit of the
discomfited and scattered Opposition, the British
begins in real earnest its laboured onslaught upon
the various members of the present Administration.
After this, of course, the next announcement to
be looked for in the journals of the day will be the
intimation that the Earl of DERBY has frankly ten-
dered to his SOVEREIGN the collective resignation
of the present Government. Surely there is no
alternotive before Ministers! The British Quarterly
is against them, calls them piebald, kaleidoscopic,
and all sorts of other odd little adjectives of the like
complimentary description. Therefore, as an
obvious and unavoidable necessity, Ministers have
no other course before them but that, literally, of
being—resigned.
It is sufficiently amusing to remember, "at
the same time, that this heterogeneous Cabinet,
this Ministry composed of the mere odds and ends
of party, this incongruous Administration, repre-
senting " every shade of opinion within the limits
of the constitution"—that is to say, at least, as it is
described to be by the British Quarterly—is really
and truly, is notoriously, glaringly, undeniably,
formed from and supported by the one only com-
pact, united, and considerable party within the
walls of the Imperial Legislature.

It is if possible still more entertaining to the
mere unimpassioned observer of events to note that

the disingenuous publicist who can so very
flagrantly distort the facts of the case to suit party
purposes, and to rekindle, if possible, the extin-
guished hopes of the Whig opposition—rather pre-
posterously follows up its recommendation of reunion
and reconcentration among the Liberals generally
•by directing, on behalf of the ex-Ministers, the
grossest taunts against the most important of all
the sections of true reformers in the House of Com-
mons—in other words, by personally insulting the
chief of that notable little phalanx, seated upon
the back benches to the left of Mr. SPEAKER,
immediately below the gangway. "We would
suggest," says the British Quarterly (so concilia-
tory, this !) "we would suggest to the democratic
section of this body (i.e., of the Liberal party gene-
rally) the expediency of not requiring too much
condescension at the hands of their great Whig
colleagues, as the price of their adhesion." Too
much condescension, forsooth !—surely, than this,
nothing could well be more singularly im-
pertinent. Mr. GIBsoN and Mr. BRIGHT
are coolly informed, as though they were
lacqueys in the vestibule of the drawing-rooms at
Cambridge House, that they really must not look
for " too much condescension at the hands of their
Great Whig colleagues"—those high and mighty
Don Magnificos ! And as if the impertinence was
not sufficiently explicit, the Whig reviewer con-
tinues—becoming pertly humorous under the ex-
hilarating influence of the following agreeable
little hypothesis :—" Becanse the right honourable
member for Ashton-under-Lyne, when he chooses
to head a deputation, is not ushered by the under-
secretary with obsequious bowings into the cham-
ber of the principal; or because the Honourable
Member for Birmingham is not occasionally feted
at Cambridge House ; or because couriers are not
continually kept running between his town resi-
dence and the Foreign-office with copies of im-
portant despaches, we see no reason why the Whigs
should be publicly lectured on the want of proper
decorum and refined manners." What a brilliant
prospect does not this open up to the Liberal party
of a general and permanent reconciliation.

The next thing after Lord DERBY'S resignation
—which will of course be given in not later than
to-morrow—will be (equally of course) the forma-
tion of a sort of political Happy Family Cabinet, com-
posed harmoniously 9f `Whigs, and Manchedernp.s.

What is become .of all the ghosts ? We used to
hear much talk about such things in the days of our
childhood. Churchyards had not then quite lost
their reputation as domiciles of shadowy forms of
the departed, and certain rooms in old houses, and
now and then a whole house itself, were believed
to be haunted, much, sometimes, to the prejudice
of the landlords' pockets. JOHN WESLEY saw, or
his disciples saw, ghosts by the score, and most of
the old ladies of our acquaintance,and sexagenarians
of the other sex, too, know of persons who had seen
some form'of a deceased person, or had received some
audible message from him; but really, now, we
do not know where to find a ghost-seer, or a per-
son who indubitably knows of one. In this scepti-
cal age, this material age, this age which imprisons
and enslaves steam itself to its service, and even
binds the lightning by its wires, • and compels it
to be a messenger of sordid and earthly things—in
such an age as this no ghost can live. Only a day
or two ago we read of a poor woman driven from
her house by a ghost which could play all
sorts of pranks with the chairs in her
bed-room, and even untie the sailor's knots
which bound them ; yet, forsooth, the police are
set to work to find out the ghost ! and, we are
gravely told, "it is hoped they will succeed!"
Police succeed in pouncing on a ghost ! detectives
detect a sprite ! We wish them joy of their task.
Indeed, all the invisible world, the spirit world,
which so often, to the undoubting, clothed itself in
white, and became visible to our optics; now seems
to have taken a nobler cue—they " rap it into us"
now; and rap it into the believing pretty well too;