Is it not time that the ascendency of mere faction should be brought to a close? Is it consistent with the honour and dignity of Great Britain, and with the welfare of the many millions of men who owe allegiance to the British Crown, that the government of the nation should be scrambled for, on account of the perquisites of office, as ignobly as a prize exposed for competition at a village fair? Is it seemly that the interests of the Empire should be put up to auction, to be knocked down to the largest bidder for popular support, with the most expansive conscience?--or that compacts for a prospective division of the spoil should be entered into by the leaders of factions hitherto irreconcilable on principle? Why is it that Mr Cobden, since the Whigs resigned, has become the confidant of Lord John Russell? He has not, we are well assured, abandoned one iota of his opinions. He is of the same mind as when he proposed the reduction of the army and navy, and the abandonment of national defences. He is the same Cobden who threatened the aristocracy with overthrow if they dared to oppose his will in a fiscal question. He is the identical senator who at Covent Garden, in December 1845, talked of "the Noodles and Doodles of the aristocracy," and stated that, "before we have done with them, they shall be as insignificant and more contemptible than the round-frocked peasantry on his Grace's estate." He remains the unvarnished democrat. And yet this is the man from whom the ex-Premier of Britain craves counsel in preference to all others, within a fortnight of his abdication of office! What new tie was between them? None. Why should this scion of the house of Bedford have condescended to court so extraordinary an alliance, which Whigs of other and better days would have shunned with instinctive shuddering? What imaginable reason can be assigned, except that frightful craving for office, which sometimes is a positive disease?