Glasgow Courier. — 1859-04-26 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

HINTS FOR THE HUSTINGS.  What is wanted is less a defined party policrand far more an inspiring principle. The demarcations of party may change every year; the motive force of all political action ought to be a fixed element. Inconsistency lies, not in a change of outer policy, but in an abnegation of vital principle. It is not, in short, uniformity of outward action that best defines and determines a political career, but unity and in. tegrity of inward and vital inspiration. We do not shrink from asserting that the only inspiration of all political virtue, patriotism, and national progress is Christianity. It alone generates a persistent and a successful policy. It gives the single eye, and the simple purpose, and the earnest energy. It is the spring of patriotism that is never exhausted and can never be corrupted. One of the fatal errors of the day is the notion that the religion of truth and the politics of Parliament ought to be dissociated. With the believers in this theory religion is regarded as a nun, visible on Sundays, but of necessity shut up in cloistral sequestration during the week. They think Christianity an outer garment, most becoming at church, but of far too delicate and ethereal a fabric to be worn in the traffic, turmoil, and contentions of every day work. In these notions there is a fatal misapprehension it is necessary to erpose. At the same time, it is essential for us to say we are no advocates of a pretentious and pharasaie Christianity. We suspect the piety that cannot write an invitation to dinner without interspersing it with texts, or converse on the weather without dragging in reflections, precious in themselves, but insulted and injured by such treatment. This is not what we mean. Religion, as the inspiration of politics, is neither heard nor seen, but felt. It is not the electric element in the jar, sparkling and crackling, but the same element pervading the earth, warming and fertilising, and discoverable only in the golden harvests of autumn. True religion should regulate national policy, rule the market, preside at the exchange, decide the vote of the citizen, and inspire the speech of the candidate. It should reign everywhere. In truth, all space is temple ground, all acts worship, and all hours divine; and everywhere, and in every relation of social life, man is to be--not talk or pretend, but be—the Christian. We ought to carry into all life's individual eddies and national cataracts—into its hidden nooks and public places, its bypath and common roads—the whole force and splendour of a celestial presence, evermore striving to raise the temperature of earth to that of heaven, and to mould the policy of nations after that of the "kingdom that cannot be moved." Robespierre voted down the existence of a God in his day, and tried to work the world without God. But he found that the expulsion of Deity from man's soul was the signal for legions of fallen spirits to rush in and begin a carnival of wickedness and crime without a parallel on this side of pandemonium. The atheistic experimentalist, horrified at the fruits of his attempt, declared at length that if there was no God it was absolutely necessary to create one to rescue society from universal suicide. A policy,not sustained by the highest and holiest elements, must be shaped and directed by lower and more sensuous ends and motives--by mere party, selfish interests, mercenary desires, or other base and sordid aims. That candidate is most to be relied on who is hamcirtsed by the fewest pledges, and inspired by the ' best principle. If the moral nature be right, the de ihs of conduct never can be far wrong. If the beat of the heart be true, the pulse orthe wrist must be all one can want or the interests of country PM require. We do not mean to affirm that this is all the imblie should require in candidates. It should be supreme, not exclusive. Other considerations hive a place, but this has, and ought to have, the place. Such a man may err in judgment, but he never will err in conscience. He will rise in the estimadras cif friend and foe while sometimes compelled to dissent from the policy of both. He will leave inipressions, where least suspected, dee p and indelible, and create a power that no faction eau extinguish, and 110 good man will lament. Such men are thiwant of the age of Parliament and the country—men whose wordiest, few,wbose votes are weighty--men of ripe and deep conviotions, of earnest zeal, and manysided toleration. Such men arc to be found. They are apt to keep in the background and to remain silent, culpably silent. But let a crisis, such as the 1111111iiillg election is, reach their knowledge or stir their sympathise, and the representatives who deserve to be the trustees and depositaries of England's power and character will start up in every county. A great struggle has been provoked by the extreme avowals of a transatlantic policy. The conflict is not between fteform and no Reform, but between a wise and constitutional correction of what is wrong, and expansion of what tire growth of years has made too tight on the one hand; and a revolutionary policy, inaugurated by a tleyi;r:sie Quaker, on the other; a policy which, if un litthe bindings, must sooner or later leave Engle 'Without a Church, a counts'', and a Crown.—Press.