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Lord Palmerston was reelected for Tiverton on Monday, by acclama- tion. He was proposed by Mr. John Heatheoat Amory, and seconded by Major Hole. The speakers expressed the utmost confidence.-and pride in their representative.

Mr. Sidney Herbert's return for the Southern Division of Wiltshire passed, on Thursday, without opposition. The new Secretary for the Colonies was proposed by Mr. A. Powell, and seconded by Mr. J. H. Jacob. Mr. Herbert, in mentioning his acceptance of office, said he had felt that Lord Palmerston was entitled to ask from him, and that he was bound to give, whatever service it was in his power to render. Of the army in the Crimea be said, that it has met with "an enemy more fell and more dangerous to it than the actual foe,—that is, disease—by which it has been crippled to a fearful extent, and has had to undergo privations and hardships which have been -borne with a heroism almost unexampled, but which may be and must be attributed to -causes that require searching 'investigation in order that the proper remedy may be applied, and that the blame, if blame there be, should fall upon the right shoulders. This inquiry it behoves the Government to lose no time in instituting." Of Lord John Russell's mission to Vienna—" I think that the Government of Lord Pal-

merston has done wisely in sending a statesman of the character, the ante- cedents, the reputation, and known ability of Lord John Russell, to ascertain whether or not the time has arrived when we can have peace made upon those conditions which we consider to be necessary and indispensable to se- cure a durable as well as an honourable pacification." Though the election was unanimous, Mr. Herbert was assailed by showers of questions—such as "Who starved the soldiers ?" "What about the green coffee-berries served to the soldiers?" "Where is our army ? " "Why did 'he' spare Odessa ? "

The Windsor election, to fill the seat resigned by Lord Charles Wellesley, took place on Wednesday. Up to the preceding evening there were two candidates,—Mr. Hope, Tory, and Mr. .Samson Ricardo, Liberal. But Mr. Hope withdrew ; and Mr. Ricardo, proposed by Mr. Bedborough, and seconded by Mr. Minton, was declaxed duly elected. In a brief address, Mr. Iticardo promised to support any measures tend- ing to provide education for the people and to improve their condition. :relieving the present Government to be the best that could be formed for carrying the war to an honourable peace, he said he should give it his support.

The annual meeting of the Manchester 'Chamber ofiCommerce, on the 9th instant, was distinguished by two speeches bearing upon the state of public affairs ; one from the Chairman Mr. Bosley, and one from Mr. John Bright. In his survey of the state of commerce, Mr. Bazley pointed to the revival of an old evil, a scarcity of food. The last year has in con- sequence been more disastrous to commerce than any year for a consider- able length of time. More money has been expended for food, and there- fore less in clothing ; and until food be increased at a cheaper rate—until less attention be paid to the mechanical and more to the agricultural ele- ment in this and every other country—we cannot have a sound state of things. Looking to the state of our foreign trade, he found the Ameri- cans embarrassed in their commercial arrangements, yet overlooking the fact that they pay 30,000,000/. a year for their protective system. In France 50,000,000/. a year is paid through the system of protection. In the course of recent investigations, in which he bad been assisted by a collection of facts from the Board of Trade, Mr. Bazley had been enabled to ascertain to what country every parcel of our cotton manu- factures was sent.

To the British dominions in the East Indies, where we had 150,000,000 of people, the value of our exports in 1853 was 5,680,0001., or 9d. per head for every person in India. If we referred to Russia, with 67,000,000 of peo- ple, our exports amounted only to 180,0001., or six-tenths of Id. per head ; but to Russia within the waste of the Black Sea, with a population of 3,000,0001., the exports were 13,0901., which gave lid. per head. To France, with 36,000,000 of population, he found we exported goods to the value of 155,7101., or ld. per head per annum. To British North America we ex- ported 749,0001. worth of cotton manufactures, or to the amount of 6s. lid. per head ; and to the United States, with a population of 27,000,000, we ex- ported 4,182,109/. worth, or at the rate of 3s. ld. per head. By the assist- ance.of his friend Mr. John Leisler, a foreign merchant, he had been able to approximate as nearly as possible, perhaps, to the value of the cotton manu- factures consumed in Great Britain and Ireland ; and he found that, while our exports amounted to 32,712,0001., we had retained at home not leas than 21,224,0001. worth of cotton manufactures ; showing that the people of Great Britain consume of our staple manufacture of cotton at the rate of 15s. 5d. per head per annum. The result of the whole was, that to the 850,000,000 inhabitants in the world, Great Britain supplied nearly 54,000,0001. ster- ling worth of cotton manufactures, being about an average to each person of is, 34d. per head. Now, according to this table, the cotton industry of Great Britain and Ireland was 54,000,0001. in 1853; and this might be considered half the cotton industry of the world : but foreign countries, besides taking half the raw cotton sent to the market, received large quantities of cotton yarn from this country ; and in Asia and Africa cotton was still largely span by hand. Hence the world's cotton industry might be reckoned at 120,000,0001. ; which would be to every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth, equal to about 2g. id., or 14 yards each per annum of excellent calico.

Mr. Bright's speech came at the close of the routine business of the meeting. The Chairnian had said that the whole cotton industry of the country amounted to 54,000,000L; and Mr. Bright had been struck with the fact that it came to just the amount of the ordinary taxes. - Taking half of,that sum as the value of the labour bestowed on the cotton indus- try, it follows that it requires double the number of persons employed in the cotton trade to provide _for the ordinary taxation. But this year it will require three times that labour to produce the amount expended by the Government ; and that man must be blind who does not see that this absorption of the products of industry tends to create a vast amount of suffering and pauperism. Look at the condition of the food-market. In December 1854, after a most abundant harvest, the price of wheat (738. Id.) is higher than the price of wheat in December 1853 (72s. 2d.) after the most deficient harvest we have had since 1817. The exports of wheat from Russia in 1853 were 6,000,600 quarters ; and it is not sur- prising that the stoppage of this supply should produce the present high range of prices. If the harvest of 1854 had been no better than that of 1853, with the supplies from Russia stopped, it would have been impos- sible to preserve the peace of the country. At the present rate of con- sumption, 80,000,000 quarters annually, our expenditure is 105,000,0001. for wheat. But had the imports been free, the price would have been 50s. instead of 70s. a quarter, and the expenditure 75,000,0001., or a difference of 30,000,0001. in the cost of wheat. The extra expenditure comes to Si. per annum for every family ; there are 6,000,000 families who live in houses of above 51. yearly rent ; that gives 30,000,000/. as the extra sum they pay for food. But this is not all—there is 20,000,000/- of extra expenditure on the part of the Government ; giving a tribute of 50,000,000/. to "an idea of supposed benefit and gain of some kind," which it is :doubtful whether we shall get. That 50,000,000/. is with- drawn from capital ; uncertainty prevails in the minds of capitalists ; there are loans in France, in Austria, in Prussia ; Russia is raising money in some way; and we are balancing between a loan and extra taxation. To this prodigious expenditure on every side he traced the crash in the United States ; the suffering of trade at home ; cotton manufacturing carried on at a loss ; fierce competition on all sides ; a large increase of expenditure for paupers—in one union from 400/. to 7001.—in some Lon- don unions an absolutely frightful increase ; beggars now where there were none three years ago.

"If you have the supplies of food in this country for any long period at 70s. per quarter, it is not in changes of Cabinets and Prime Ministers—it is not in dreams of glory in foreign wars—it is not in any contrivances of hu-

man statesmanship or human imposture that that population can be pre- vented from sinking deeper and deeper into suffering, and if into suffering then into discontent, and if into discontent then at length into insubordi- nation. My solemn belief is, that if these 6,000,000 quarters of corn are to be, by the effects of our foreign policy, kept out of this country, before two years are over you will shoot your own fellow citizens in your own stxeets. . . . . I am persuaded that we are standing on the threshold of difficulties such as many of those who are now loudest in favour of the causes that are bringing those difficulties upon us little apprehend ; and when those diffi- culties come, in all probability they will be just as terrified as I have seen some of them on former occasions when these disasters have overtaken the country. These facts only need to be put before the intelligent people of this district to bring them seriously to consider the future—not the distant but the almost immediate future ; because, now, don't we perceive every week that there is a closer grip upon the means of life, and that a branch of business that was not very much injured last week is less strong this week, becomes feeble next, and in a month or two sinks down into that state of lassitude and depression which has overtaken so many other branches of trade ? I could point out towns—the towns of Kidderminster, and of Bradford, and many others in the country—in which business is in a state which has not been paralleled for very many years ; and I see no reason in the world why that state of things should not gradually oreop on until it presses with extreme severity upon every branch of trade, upon all those

persons whose capital is not superabundant for everything they have to do, and especially upon all that class of woikmen who are those soonest discharged—

soonest plunged into suffering and ruin from any disasters of this kind. All I ask is this, that we should endeavour to introduce to the minds of all with whom we come in contact a sense of the vast evils which are treading close upon us—for their very footsteps you may hear now, if you will only hearken ; and that we should, whenever there be any opportunity, put no obstacle in the course of any Minister who shall endeavour by any rational and moderate policy to put an end to what, I believe, is about to be, if not soon ended, one of the most disastrous conditions we have seen in this country during our lifetime."

A crowded meeting, to consider the "deplorable and wretched state of the army in the Crimea," and the causes thereof, was held at Derby on Saturday ; Mr. Councillor Etches in the chair. The chairman advised the Queen to enlarge the circle from which she chooses her Ministers. "Why should not a man like the Right Honourable Edward Strutt be called to office ? Then, again, they had been hunting about for a Minis- ter of War : why not have Sir Be Lacy Evans?" The army must no longer be the plaything of the aristocracy ; succour must be instantly sent to it, Sebastopol taken, and the power of Russia checked in the Black Sea. The other speakers, including some working men, denounced the Government for cruelty to the army, and demanded inquiry with a view to the punishment of the guilty. The resolutions adopted also called for inquiry ; for reorganization of the military departments, under one ruling head ; for an abolition of the sale of commissions ; the dismis- sal of men of an obsolete age and an obsolete practice, and the appoint- ment of men whose genius and mechanical science have added to our power and commercial greatness. A petition to Parliament, embodying those demandk, was unanimously adopted.

In his spea in reply to the congratulatory address presented to him last week by the Corporation of Northampton, the Earl of Cardigan said that had he remained in the Crimea he could not have been usefully em- ployed, as there was so little remaining for him to command.

"This is unfortunately the case ; for, in addition to other special reasons for losses incurred, hundreds of cavalry-horses died through the Commis' ta- rifa failing to provide provisions or forage for them. Before I left the army, .which was early in December, the horses of the brigade which I had the honour to command had been eighteen days without hay, and but a very small portion of barley had been given them to keep them alive. (Cries of "Shame, shame ! ") The consequence was, that the horses died daily in great numbers in the lines. Then there was another strong reason for the great diminution of the numbers of the brigade which I commanded—I mean that charge at Balaklava."

In future, Lord Cardigan, as Inspector-General of Cavalry, will be in- trusted with the preparation of all the cavalry recruits for the army.

The severity of the weather having stopped out-door building operations and traffic on canals, while the Easterly winds have kept back ships from the port, no fewer than 15,000 able-bodied men have been thrown out of work at Liverpool.

The return of the frost has caused an increase in the pressure of Irish

Ipauperism at Birmingham. SO numerous have the applications been that the ordinary officers, though assisted by the Guardians, have been unable to get through the work, and it has been necessary to employ supernumeraries.

An old man unknown has perished in the snow on Glossop Moors, on his way to Sheffield.

Three deaths are reported from the breaking of ice. Mr. Mounsey, a young gentleman, has been drowned in Derwent Lake, the ice having broken while he was skating. Two boys employed in Mr. Scott's stables, Whitewall House, have perished in Welham fish-pond : one disappeared in the water ; the second, a dear companion, was drowned in attempting to rescue his friend.

Salmon, a labourer of Stoke, near Rochester, perished from the cold dur- ing a snow-storm last week. He had been drinking; he went to buy some coals, and failed to regain his home: his body was found next morniug.

Dr. Tristram Whitter, a gentleman who had retired from the medical pro- fession, died lately at Bath through the error or negligence of a druggist i assistant. A medical man had prescribed a composing draught for Dr. Whitter ; one of the ingredients was "six drops of solution of the acetate of morphine " ; Robert Gone, the young man who made up the medicine, put in six grains of the acetate of morphine—that is, an ingredient ten times as strong as that prescribed Dr. Whitter was found next morning in a state of coma, and he never rallied. A Coroner's Jury have returned a verdict of " Manslaughter " against Robert Gone. Two boilermakers and two colliers have perished by a boiler-explosion at a colliery in Darlaston. While one boiler was under repair, a second one burst. The cause is not ascertained.

Mormonism still finds fresh converts in South Wales. In the spring there will be a large emigration of colliers and miners from the hills to Great Salt Lake State; and some people of more substance will accompany- them. It is said that the doctrine of polygamy finds great favour with the colliers.