Before the following pages issue from the press, the contest involved in the Parliamentary Elections will be over. It is useless to speculate, therefore, on what will so soon be determined by a result which, for the time at least, will settle who is to hold the reins of power. Recording our confident hope that the Conservative party will obtain such a majority as may enable them to carry on the Government on those principles which can alone heal the wounds and allay the feuds which the policy of their predecessors have implanted in this country, it is of more importance at this time to inquire into the great and lasting interests of the nation, and the present circumstances in our ever-changing situation which most loudly call for attention, and must ere long force themselves upon the consideration of whatever Government is placed by the people at the head of affairs. The observations we are to offer are chiefly of a practical and remedial kind; for the changes to which they refer are such as are altogether beyond the reach of dispute, and on which all parties, however much divided on other subjects, are agreed. The first of these subjects, in point of importance, beyond all question, both to the present interests and future destinies of the Empire, is the vast increase in the annual supply of gold for the use of the globe, which the late discoveries in California and Australia have made. Here, fortunately, there is no room for dispute; and, in fact, there is no dispute about the facts. It is conceded on all sides that the annual supply of the precious metals, before the new discoveries, was somewhat below £10,000,000 a-year; of which about £6,000,000 was the annual waste by the wearing of coin, or the absorption of the precious metals in objects of luxury; and that before the end of 1851 this annual supply had risen to £30,000,000. There has been very little addition to the annual waste; so that the quantity annually added to the sum total of the precious metals in this world has been multiplied at least _fivefold_ during the last three years. It has risen from £4,000,000 annually to at least £20,000,000. And the recent accounts from Australia leave no room for doubt that this increase in the supply, how great soever, will be largely added to; for it appears that from 9th October to 9th April the yield of the Australian gold mines was above £3,000,000; and there appears to be no limits to the extent of the auriferous regions. It is quite certain, therefore, that the annual addition to the stock of the precious metals in the globe, will this year, and for a long period to come, be at least SIX TIMES what it was before Providence revealed these hidden treasures to a suffering world.