are sometimes
startling, and they come out in visible relief, because, in spite of its
size, gossip flourishes as intensely as in a village. During one of the
cotton manias a young gentleman, barely of age, in possession of an income of
some two thousand a-year from land, and ready money to the extent of one
hundred and fifty thousand pounds, joined an ingenious penniless gentleman in
speculating in cotton, and found himself in less than twelve months a
bankrupt; thus sacrificing, without the least enjoyment, a fortune sufficient
for the enjoyment of every rational pleasure, or for the support of the
highest honours in the State.

Such instances are not uncommon, although on a less magnificent scale;
indeed, it is well to be cautious in inquiring after a Liverpool merchant or
broker after an absence of a few years; a very few years are sufficient to
render the poor rich and the rich poor, an eighth of a penny in the pound of
cotton will do it.

The Municipal Corporation of Liverpool is the wealthiest in England after
London, and virtually richer than London, inasmuch as the expenses are
trifling, the property is improving, and the Liverpool aldermen and common-
councillors have no vested claims to costly entertainments.

The majority is in the hands of the Conservative party, the Liberal party
having only enjoyed the sweets of power for a brief period after the passing
of the Financial Reform Bill; but the principle of representation keeps down
any inclination toward the inevitable jobberies of a close self-elected body,
and pushes local legislators on, quite up to the mark of the public opinion
of the locality they govern.

A stranger, who has no interest in party squabbles, must confess that the
funds of this wealthy estate are on the whole fairly and wisely distributed.

The Irish population, amounting to many thousands of the poorest and most
ignorant class, who find a refuge from the miseries of their own country in
the first port from Dublin, and employment in the vast demand for unskilled
labour caused by the perpetual movement in imports and exports, impose a
heavy tax on the poor-rates and police-rates of this borough.

In the education of this part of the community, the Liberal Corporation made
provision in the extensive Corporation schools, by adopting the Irish
Government scheme of instruction, permitting the Roman Catholics to make use
of their own translation of the Bible, and to absent themselves fro