The Press. — London, England, 1857-06-27 00:00:00

JUNE 27, 1857. climate not unhealthy, though hot, abundance of capital to its people, and an equal abundance of labour to turn that capital to use. If, therefore, the Manchester men had none but Jupiter and the natives of the country to deal with, they would be quite content ; for Jupiter has endowed those natives with all the sense that is necessary to induce them, when not prevented by the Company, to supply the English market of their own accord with all that the English market wants. Jupiter leaves the soil free to man to make what use of it he likes; and the tenure he grants is not year•to-year one, but as long as this world lasts. If man sets to work to make roads, he does not send down a flight of Memories to stop the proceeding, on the ground that road. making is an attribute of the Sovereign of the Gods. If man digs canals, or makes bridges, or sinks wells, or lays out large sums in ren dering the soil available for the richer kind of crops, Jupiter does not appropriate the fruits of such outlay and labour to himself. If Man chester, we repeat, had only Jupiter to deal with, it would not complain ; but, unhappily, it has to combat human folly, not to repine at eternal fate. It is with Midas, in short, instead of Jupiter, that it has to do. The true solution of the present state of India was summed up in a sentence by Lord STANLEY, when he called to mind the fact that while the Company were the landlords in India, they made none of that outlay which in every country was looked for from the lords of the soil. If the Company would or could do this, there could of course be no objection whatever, we imagine, to their retaining the possession of the soil in their own hands. If they would make roads and cross-roads, and farmhouses and farm-build ings, and pay for fences and irrigation and drainage, where required—if, in short, they would find money as in England for every thing connected with agriculture beyond the mere tillage of the soil, then, of course, there could be nothing to urge against their insist ing on retaining their tenures as they now stand. But, if they neither will, nor by any possibility can, find a tentk part of the hundreds of' millions sterling which such a system would require, there is, of course, no alternative for them but to make way for private capitalists both able and willing to make this outlay, without which it is utterly impossible to develop the resources of the land. It would be as absurd to expect the cotton manufacturer to build his mill on a piece of ground which he held only as tenant at will, as to expect the cotton-grower to invest in land, under a similar tenure, the money necessary to bring into proper working order a cotton-growing estate. Does any one in his senses suppose that the agricultural develop ment of England would have been a bit better than that is of India, if the only land tenure in England were a year-to-year tenancy at a mekrent from the Crown? It has been said that the Indian Govern ment has done, or is doing, all it can do in the promotion of railroads and other public works. But supposing these to be of ten times, or even of a hundred times, the extent they are, or are ever likely to be, they will still leave the question regarding the development of the soil's resources where it stood, unless an alteration be made in the tenure of the land. We do not mean to say that railroads and canals are not good things, but they will confer a very partial benefit unless accom panied by the sale or long leasing of the land. If, for instance, there were ten great roads, such as that from Calcutta to Lahore, and ten great canals, like that of the Ganges canal, in tersecting India instead of one, how could they be made available by the land occupiers in the country without opening up communications in the shape of cross-roads and smaller canals leading to the respective estates ? We had an admirable sea route to Balaklava during the war, but the six miles of mud to the camp made it of no effect. In England, what would be the use to the agriculturists of the different roads lying between the different leading cities, if it were not for the country cross roads as well ? But these all cost money, and money far exceeding in the aggregate the cost of the great trunk roads; and who, we THE PRESS. repeat, is to make them if the Company does not, and, at the same time, will give no in ducement to capitalists to invest their money in the soil? To the farmer in England a road running ten miles off would be practically useless unless some communication between it and his farm could be opened up. And what would the trunk roads be in India, where the distances from the communications would in most cases be so vast? To travellers and the people generally such roads would certainly be a boon, but it is a mistake to suppose that any number of such roads will ever supply the want caused by the dissever ance of capitalists from all connection with the soil. Turn the question as you will, there is but one solution► of it. If the resources of India are ever to be developed—nay, more, if our Government is ever to obtain a guarantee for its permanence, there is but one way of pro. ceeding, which is to afford facilities to the native capitalists of India to invest their sur plus millions in the purchase and cultivation of the land. This is the plan propounded by the great Lord METCALFE, and it is the only plan that ever will succeed ; for, whatever the differences of creed or colour, the principles of human action, and the causes that lead to national wealth or national poverty, are the same in every country and in every clime. THE STATUTE LAW COMMISSION. Mn. LOCKE KING gave notice of a motion the other day, the object of which was the im mediate abolition of the Statute Law Com mission. We regret that he changed his mind, as his proposal would have led to a full and clear explanation on the part of those engage d in this great work as to what they have already done, and as to the prospects of their ultimate success. That explanation, had it been called forth, would have satisfied both the House of Commons and the country ; and it was in all probability a conviction of this fact that in duced that impetuous law reformer to post pone his threatened attack. Mr. LOCKE KING has forgotten that Rome was not built in a day. Jt is an oversight peculiar to politicians of a certain class, who rush to conclusions and grasp at results without taking any account of obstacles or even im possibilities. Mr. LOCKE KING is so profoundly ignorant of the nature of the work which is now being performed by the Statute Law Commission that he thinks they ought to have finished their labours long ago. Let us see what these really are. The work which the Commission have under- 1 taken is to consolidate the Statute Law of the 1 empire from the days of King JOHN to those of VICTORIA. At present this is embraced in some forty or fifty large and closely-printed tomes. When the work is completed their number will be reduced to four or five At present no one, except a practising lawyer, thinks of purchasing the statutes at large, the lex seripta of the empire; when the work is finished it will be found in every well-furnished private library. At present the statute book is a sealed volume to all except professional eyes. Woe be to the adventurous layman who ventures to consult it for himself. No doubt he will find Acts of Parliament in plenty upon every conceivable subject, but thrown together in such strange de fiance of order or arrangement as will quickly drive him to despair. He may proba bly find at first the enactment he is in search of ; then he finds, to his dismay, that it has been repealed by a subsequent one ; on search ing further, he may discover that it is revived by a third act, and totally altered by a fourth. Bewildered and disgusted, he finally gives up the hopeless task, and, if he happens to be a reformer of the LOCKE KING school, he will insist that the statute-book should be forth with reduced to the size of a pocket almanack, which everybody shall be able both to buy and to understand. Another class of law re formers, represented by Mr. JOHN GEORGE PHILLIMORE, take a different view of the matter. They insist that, instead of our 619 attempting to consolidate the statutes only, we should codify, after the manner of JUSTIN lAN and of NarorEos, the entire law of England. both written and unwritten. As we pointed out on a former occasion, there is hut one objection to this project, but it is a fatal one. It is simply impracticable, and for this reason, that we du not believe the British Legislature, as at present constituted, would ever agree to adopt any code that human ingenuity could devise. It is easy to codify under a despotism, but to what endless controversies would any attempt of the kind lead in this free country ? We cannot even frame a code for India—where public opinion, in the European sense, cannot be said to exist—although we have been working at it for thirty years. We may learn from this instructive fact how hopeless a task it would be at the present day to codify the laws of England. But the work of the Statute Law Commis sion, although difficult and laborious in the extreme, has been proved by experience to be perfectly practicable. That work consists in purging the statute-book of a mass of super fluous and obselete matter with which it is now encumbered, and in preserving, arranging and consolidating the thousands of statutes which are now in force. It is the duty of those en gaged in this herculean task to add nothing to the existing law and to take nothing from it. It is a work which every law reformer since th• days of BACON has pronounced to be necessary and which it is satisfactory to know has now been commenced in earnest. The whole of the criminal law has been completed, consolidated under eight different bills whiell are now before the House of Lords. We understand that a variety of other bills will be presented to Parliament before the recess, including those relating to commercial law and the law of real property. There is, indeed, now no doubt but that this great na tional undertaking may be successfully com pleted in the course of a few years, provided the Legislature continues to supply the neces sary funds. To abolish the Commission just as we are beginning to reap the fruits of their labours would be an act of folly, in favour of which Mr. LOCKE KING may declaim in vain. A DARING MURDER was recently committed at Bujukdere, Constantinople. A relative of Prince Daniel of Montenegro was shot in broad dsylight. He was a young man of twenty-five or twenty-six, and had been for some time in the Austrian army. He had dined at the Hotel Lapierre, situate at one end of the village, and was walking back, arm•in-arm with M. Noviiiotf, a secretary of the Russian Em bassy, when, on passing the country house of the Spanish Minister, a man rushed out from a by-street and fired two shots at him from behind, one of which entered the hip, and the other passed through the side. He survived only a few hours. The murderer escaped, and has not been found. The feud reign ing between the two branches of the princely family of Montenegro is said to be the cause of this atro cious murder. MEsots, the most celebrated and the most suc cessful charlatan of I'aris, the itinerant pencil seller, and immortalised by Albert Smith, is just dead, and has left behind him a fortune of 400,000 fr. No one can have passed many days in Paris within the last ten years without having observed on the Place de la Bourse, the Place du-Chatelet, the Place de Madeleine, or some other open space, the conspicuous figure of a tall handsome man, with a brass helmet and plumes, and a beard—the very model of that of Hudibras, "in shape and hue most like a tile" —standing on the box of a light cart, and haranguing a crowd. He wore a costly mantle of green velvet embroidered with gold, and on the fingers of his white hands were many rings of great price. Behind him was a squire who from time to time blew a trumpet to attract public attention, and whose garments were only less splendid than that of his master. The only end and aim of all this pomp and circum stance was the sale of lead pencils at two sons apiece. " Why," he would say, " do I fig myself up in this ludicrous costume? I will tell you candidly ; because going about in this dress I sell a great many pencils, and if I stayed at home in a warehouse coat I should sell very few. I am a quack, I admit, but I am an honest one, for I sell a good article ; and if you want a pencil I doubt whether you will get as good a one anywhere else for the money." He was a remark ably healthy-looking man, and could not have been more than forty years old, but he was carried off by a fit of apoplexy.