If it means adherence to the principles of the Constitution, love of social order, and regard for the welfare of the general body of the people, we fear that we must deny the name to a good many of those who claim it. One miserable feature in the conduct of some of these _soi-disant_ Liberal candidates, especially the new ones, is their extreme avidity to swallow any pledge that may be proposed, provided that, by so doing, they can secure the suffrages of some inconsiderable fraction of the electors. Their addresses are not deliberate expositions of their own formed opinions, but are framed upon another and very liberal principle. They endeavour to ascertain the points of doctrine which are supposed to be the most popular with the constituency whom they are ambitious to represent, and they issue their manifestoes accordingly. If anything has been omitted, or if they have not gone far enough, an opportunity is usually afforded them to make up for that deficiency at the first meeting of the electors—so called by courtesy, for in many cases there are not half-a-dozen electors, besides those on the platform, in the room. Such meetings are invariably attended by the busy-bodies of the place—radical cobblers, church-rate martyrs, philosophical barbers, and perhaps one or two specimens of that most loathsome of all animals, the dirty dandy. Here the candidate is expected to go through his facings, and to answer every question which insolence can suggest, or ignorance render unintelligible. No matter:—as our friend is a member of the “Liberal party,” he can safely expand his conscience to any extent which may be required; and the decisive and prompt manner in which he frequently disposes of the most knotty points of social and political economy, is delightful and edifying. Without ever having read a single page on the subject, he is quite ready to reconstruct the Currency, and pledges himself to bring in a bill to that effect, at the request of a snuffy dealer in gingerbread, who never had credit for five pounds in his life, and who has just made application for a _cessio bonorum_. An individual in fustian, evidently in the last stage of _delirium tremens_, after a hiccupped harangue on ecclesiastical rapacity, demands from him his thoughts upon Church Establishments in general; and the liberal candidate at once undertakes to have them all suppressed. If his opinions on the subject of National Education are somewhat vague, the fault lies with the respectable non-elector, who could not frame his question so as to render it intelligible. To one earnest inquirer—a carrier—he promises an entire and compulsory stoppage of Sunday trains. To another—a publican—he pledges himself to remove the excise duties from British spirits. To a third—a cabman—he indicates his resolution of commencing a violent onslaught on the Customs, so that “the poor man’s tobacco” may be no longer smoked under a sense of injustice. Of course