NEWS OF THE WEEK.
A SEMBLANCE of reviving activity is given to the season by a few imblic meetings, which tell for much in these quiet times—like the loud voice of some casual intruder into the reading-room of the British Museum. The Conservatives of Newcastle meet to celebrate the return of Mr. George Henry Liddell, hereditary candidate for .a Northern constituency ; and the Liberals of Newcastle counter- meet to celebrate the many returns of Mr. Ord, for fifty years, but no longer, Member for that horough. The Greys, theHowards, the Bonham Carters, mustered strong, and exulted largely in their old victories ; Lord Carlisle went so far in his bookish fervour as to fancy his past still going on—a posthumous present. The Liddells mustered strong at the Conservative gathering ; and Mr. Henry Thomas Liddell, the dowager Member, proclaimed for his country confidence in Lord Derby's Administration, collectively and indi- vidually, especially in its departments of Navy, Chancery, and-Ex- chequer. At Bury another statue of Peel has been erected ; and verily that is an incident that does belong. ;note to the present than the Whig jubilee for Mr. Ord or the Protectionist repro-e.dviume- ment of the Liddells.
The Irish are doing something—mustering to support Mr. Shar- man Crawford's ” Tenant-Right," at least as against Ministers. We sdppose, indeed, that the pledge goes no further, because the meeting distinctly abstained from binding. itself .to the measure ; and Irishmen are seldom scrupulous in niceties about individual freedom. But at all events, the Irish do retain the power, dor- mant just now among the English, of mustering forty men and one, and agreeing to do er to, undo something. The formal memento from--the-Metropolitan-Commissioners of Sewers follows up the caution of the Board of Health to the same effect—that Government should " take steps" against cholera : but we do not yet hear that the actual authority and influence of Minis- .ters are moving to the work. On the contrary, the effective stir is 'going on without the real Ministers,—as in the instance of Tot- tenham, where a parish is achieving that which the whole metro- polis can only sigh for. The enrolment of the Militia too, pro- ceeds, amid a half-conscious public, like an act of national som- nambulism under the mesmeric influence of an unseen operator.
One sign which is not encouraging as to any vigorous action in the higher "powers," we discover in the columns of an archreolo- gical publication devoted to the service of the Asian Mystery : the Morning _Herald persists in declaring that there is a conspiracy against the Ministry of lord Derby—a Russell-Cobden-Graham- Newcastle conspiracy Now, when people who have been wholly unassailed, and are expected to begin some much-preluded feat, talk of a conspiracy to frustrate them, it generally implies that they ex- pect to fail—that they are conscious of imbecility. Most public men have been haunted at one time or other by some " shabby genteel" person eloquent on his own wrongs and disabled con- dition through a conspiracy that dogged his steps : Lord Derby is painted by his friends as waiting on Britannia with that plaint.
