rouiurial.
The Liberal Members for the city and county of Hereford were entertained by their constituents in the Shire-Hall on the 29d April ; the Chancellor, of the Exchequer presiding. In the course of the evening, Colonel Bicidulph M.P. proposed "Lord Palmerston the representative of a progressive system of political reform in Church and State" ; and to this toast Sir George Cornewall Lewis replied. After referring to the success of the Liberal party at the elections, Sir George said, that although the appeal to the country has been productive, as far as could be ascertained from the returns made, of a majority in support of Lord Palmerston, it must not be forgotten that Lord I'olmerston's Administration is composed of only one portion of the Liberal party ; and that, if they should fail to command the support and confidence of the country, there would undoubtedly be other portions of the Liberal party who would be prepared to offer their services as candidates for public confidence. Lord Palmerston's Administration will hold office, therefore, only if they receive public support. Lord Palmerston's object is peace not war, but peace with honour.
The Government is accused of being wasteful and lavish. One thing the nation may rest assured of, that all possible retrenchment, consistently with the safety of our own shores and the security of our colonial possessions, will be made ; and founding their actions upon the principle of progressive reform, the Government will seek to introduce all practical ameliorations in our domestic institutions, without disturbing the foundations of our national prosperity. Ile meant to say, that esehewing organie changes, the Government of Lord Palmerston will endeavour to meet the necessities of existing circumstances, without disturbing the fundamental principles of order and society. It is by these means alone, he confessed, that the Administration of Lord Palmerston can retain possession of office.
The Liberals of Great Yarmouth celebrated their victory over the Tories by holding a meeting in the open air, on Tuesday. Both Members were to have been present, but the death of the father of one—Mr. Torrens M'Cullagh—prevented his attendance. The other, Mr. Watkin, thus had all the speaking to himself. He thinks that, as there ie so much business in arrear, the Parliament will do very little this session.
"As far as I am concerned, knowing the difficulties which Lord Palmerston may have to contend with, I am not prepared to urge him too far • but I say this on one condition—that he declares, when Parliament meets this year, with what horse he intends to win. We were returned to Parliament to give a general support to Lord Palmerston, provided Lord Palmerston thought fit to pass those wise and liberal measures without which no Liberal
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Government n this country can deserve tho title. The first of these measures, and one which to my mind lies at the root of every Governmental and Parliamentary change, is the important question of the wise and proper extension of the suffrage. Next to that comes the important question of the protection of the voter in the exercise of the franchise with which he is to be endowed ,• and then, again, comes the very important question of a redistribution of the voting-power and the allocation of Members to a certain number of constituents, without which an extension of the suffrage would leave things where they are." Mr. Watkin also advocated an extension of popular education, administrative reform, and a "bold change in the system of taxation" [direction not specified.] Lord Palmerston "is a Minister on his trial." If he wisely improves his opportunity, his name will rank high in the list of great patriots ; if he forgets where he gained his power, his name will be added to the long list of splendid failures of men who could not take advantage of great opportunities.
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, now of the Common Pleas, formerly Recorder and afterwards Member of Parliament for Southampton, was entertained at dinner on Saturday last by the Southampton Chamber of Commerce. His old colleague, Mr. Willcox, was also invited, and was present, with a crowd of Members, and two Judges, Mr. Justice Williams and Baron Bramwell. There was a good deal of speaking, but the chief guest bore away the palm. His theme was the bitterness that alloys all lanman things—Chief Justice Cockburn has been rudely severed from his beloved Southampton, and still more from political life. His "political sun has set" ; "the clouds of evening are gathering round him as a public man" ; the honour of representing Southampton "can never be mine again," he said; and the conviction of that gave him an inexpressible pang of pain. "To be, as I have said, your representative in Parliament, and to fill the high office of Attorney-General of England, was to me the summit of ambition. I desired nothing further; and, if I could have had my will and way, that was the position I should have filled to this hour, and never have desired to part with it while I had strength and energy to fulfil its duties. But, alas ! man cannot frame his own destiny, as he will, and I became conscious that many years of active life, and five of the combined efforts of official and Parliamentary labour, had produced a certain amount of bodily wear and tear. I was told that certain warnings were not to be neglected, and that I should do wrong, and perhaps destroy my capacity for public usefulness altogether, if I did not swept the highly honourable office which I now fill, and which is far beyond anything I could have laid claim to. Had I followed my own will, I should still be Attorney-General, and—may I add ?—still Representative of Southampton : but wise and anxious Mends counselled me, and to their sober wisdom I have yielded. I should have preferred still to toss on the stormy sea of political life, rather than to be navigating the smooth and tranquil waters in which I now float ; and I can assure you from the bottom of my heart, that one of the greatest of my pangs is the severance of that connexion with you which formed my greatest happiness."
To Southampton, he said, he owed all ; and he praieed both friends and foes. With a brief glance at the late war and the Chinese quarrel, and with the display of an irrepressible hankering to talk polities, he closed his speech with a repetition of his gratitude.
The Bishop of Exeter, unable to deliver in person his triennial charge to the clergy, has caused it to be printed and distributed.' The charge deals with the subjects recently under litigation in the ecclesiastical e'enete, and with other questions. On the decision in the case of Westorten vane Liddell the Bishop remarks, that it "sets at rest questions of a very disquieting character in a manner which seems to have given general satisfaction." But he earnestly hopes, "that in the matter of
ornaments there will be no attempt to exceed the measure of sacred solemnity, still less unnecessarily to annoy the feelings of any numerous portion of those who would wish to attend upon your ministry." Referring to the old Gorham dispute, the Bishop contends that the judgment of the Judicial Committee of Privy Council did not leave the question of baptismal regeneration an open question to be decided by each minister according to his private opinion. Since the judgment was delivered, he has refused to institute more than one clergyman because he was unsound in that great article of faith. To nothing but an act of Parliament would he yield on this question. He is at pains to point out that Lord Brougham, in constituting the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, never intended that its operation should extend to causes of heresy and false doctrine.
Lord Brougham "has repeatedly stated, that he did not contemplate such a consequence of the new statute ; and that its effect has been to do injustice, not only to the Church, but also to the distinguished members of the Court itself, who could not be expected to have acquired the theoloOcal learning which was necessary for the proper decision of such causes. Notwithstanding this the bill of 1850, for correcting the evil, was opposed successfully by the Government of that day, on the ground that such a correction would seem to imply an error in the then recent judgment in the Gorham case,—a judgment which, it was asserted, had been received throughout the country with general satisfaction."
A lengthy memorial to the Premier is on foot in Suffolk, praying for a division of the diocese of Norwich. The memorial states that the diocese contains more than 900 parishes, served by upwards of' 1300 clergymen —" a charge numerically greater than that of any other prelate of our Church " ; and that the county of Suffolk, which had a population in 1851 of 337,470, possesses 510 parishes. The memorialists express a hope that the arehdeaconry of Suffolk may become the object of immediate legislation in the first instance, should any difficulty exist with respect to the archdeaconry of Sudbury or Western division of the county on account of the vested rights and interests of the Bishop of Ely.
The Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton Railway Company, have established an institution at their head-quarters at Worcester that has at least one novel feature. A library and reading-room are provided for those employes who subscribe, and allotments of garden-ground are made; there is a school for the children of the subscribers, and in the conduct of this school the novelty is found—the boys not only receive the usual instruction of a common school, but they are "taught the use of the electric telegraph, railway signals, and all branches, mechanical or otherwise, necessary for rearing a superior class of railway servants of all grades." The institution was inaugurated by a dinner last week, which was attended by 400 persons.
The bakery at Aldershot Camp, and some contiguous buildings, were destroyed by fire on Saturday.
A Coroner's Jury have returned as their verdict on the recent fatal boilerexplosion at Wolverhampton, that it arose from the neglect of the engineer, .Tames Mason, who did not supply sufficient water.
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