The Times represented the dinner given last week by the
Mayor of Leeds to the Members of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and a select reasty of Reformers, as a " grand dinner to the Liberal Members of the Riding," and inferred the insignificance of the Reformers of York- shire from the fact, that out of a population of 976,465, only 123 could be got to dine together on the occasion. The misrepresentation was exposed by the Liberal papers ; and then the Times asserted that an attempt to get up a public dinner in Leeds had been made and failed, and therefore the Whig-Radicals "begged, borrowed, and crimped 123, that were collected with so much difficulty out of a population of 976,415, to a feed in honour of Lord Morpeth and his master at Leeds." Here again, however, the lying journal was cornered by the Leeds Mercury of Saturday ; who says, in reference to the second assertion of the Times- " Now this is pure invention, without the shadow of truth,—a mere brazen falsehood, coined to cover the previous falsehood of that paper. A public dinner had not even been talked of, still less attempted. We know that Lord Morpeth arid other Members of Parliament received an invitation to the Mayor's private table on the Friday before the dinner, and that it was only on the Saturday evening that the Mayor resolved to give the dinner on an exten- sive scale in a public room, and to invite a great number of guests to meet them. It was purely his own act. But this lie of the Times is characteristic of the paper. Having cast aside all virtue and all shame at once, when it veered right round in its politics on a base calculation of interest, there is nothing the Times will now stick at. Having no character to lose, it says that which answers its immediate purpose, and has become, by its want of principle, the greatest dis• grace of the press of England."
Some instances of retaliation on the Bank for the indiscriminate way in which bills of the first class of credit have been thrown out, are in current circulation, and a sample of them may be given for the edification of the Court of Proprietors, who are to assemble to- morrow for the declaration of a dividend. A banker in the North, of undoubted character for great resources, was placed in the predicament above described. On hearing from his clerks what had occurred, he proceeded to the branch of the Batik of England established in the same town, and, placing on the counter its notes to the amount of 140,0001., demanded sovereigns for them. The manager demurred, and, after some parley, confessed that he was not prepared to furnish so large a sum in gold. " Be so good, then," said the indignant banker, " when you write to your masters, as to ask them how they dare to throw out my acceptances when ;hey cannot pay their own? If there is to be an exchange of paper against paper, mine is as good or better than theirs." Content, however, with bringing on this scene of humiliation, the banker withdrew his notes, and had the forbearance not to press his just and undoubted claim. This proves how vulnerable the parent establishment has made itself by too great an extension of its branches.—Times, Thursday. I The Mornick Chronicle of yester- day asserts that this story is a " pure fabrication, without even the shadow of a basis to rest upon."] We pity a man for being a Tory in these times : he is a poor creature that the march of events has left behind, a duck-legged drummer-boy, who cannot keep up with his regiment ; be is a being of a bygone age, sinning an old song, telling a forgotten tale ; his mind is hung with cobwebs ; he is the preterpluperfect tense of politics ; an extract from the lumber-room, where we have long since thrown our ghosts, witches, and alchemists.—From the Times of the :29th of March 183'2.
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