GROUNDLESS ALARMS.
To judge by the tone of a portion of the soi-disant Liberal press for the last week, it is labouring under an exaggerated apprehension that Ministers are about to adopt a more liberal commercial policy, and their supporters to permit them. Every speech that a Minis- terial M.P. has ever made against a fixed duty on corn, or a reduc- tion and equalization of the sugar-duties, is carefully raked up and thrown in his teeth, with a view, apparently, to taunt him into con- sistency in wrong. The writers in question appear to be dread- fully alarmed lest the dominant party should act with too much wisdom. The country gentlemen would do well to remember the trick of the lapwing, with which their sporting experience must have rendered them familiar—its anxiety to lead them in the direc- tion they ought not to take if they wish to find its nest. The at- tempts of" the Liberal press" to warn them off the ground of Free Trade, may well render them suspicious that the warm nest of popularity and lasting political power is to be found there. Much, however, do we fear that these vociferous political plovers, now wheeling and screaming so anxiously around the heads of the Tory Members, have really no immediate cause for their apprehensions : that "the powers which be" are not about to shelve for ever the claims of their adversaries to public notice, by bold and judicious measures. The straws thrown up to show which way the wind blows do not as yet indicate the strong gales required to blow cautious Sir ROBERT in the direction of his own inclinations.
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