7 NOVEMBER 1840, Page 13

A PUZZLE.

T II E MRCS is a Conservative journal. On Thursday the 7'iniers demonstrated, to its own satisfaction, that the necessary tendency of the Municipal Reform Bill is to throw power into the hands of the Conservatives. " It organized, and drew up and banded to- gether in hostile array, the two great parties, Liberal' and Con- servative,' in every borough town, and kept them thus embodied and opposed in constantly-recurring warfiire. Now, this is a state of things which must prove in the long run the ruin of the ' Libe- ral' party, simply because it wants the main elements of patient, and persevering, and continuous exertion." And yet, at the con- elusion of its demonstration, the Times remarks—" As to the graver question, of whether the new Corporations, in themselves, are likely to prove beneficial to the inhabitants of these towns, or otherwise, that is a matter the decision of which must necessarily be postponed until honest and respectable men shall have had a sufficient trial of the working of the system."—Whence this hesi- tation ? Does the Times mistrust its 'Conservative friends ? or its own arguments ?