The Express.
London, England, 1852-11-05 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 5.

THE Autumnal Session promised by Lord DEeur
has begun. It cannot have been forgotten how re-
luctantly that promise was made, or bow many eve-
/dons, and twisting', and shuftlings were resorted to
in order to escape from the pledge. For the pledge
was not only that the new Parliament should be
summoned to meet during the autumn, bat that it
should be called together for a opecific purpose—no
less a purpose than that of deciding finally and for
ever whether Protection was right ur wrong in prin-
ciple—just or unjust in practice—a wise and honest
thing, or a folly and a fraud. It was doubtless a bitter
cup for Lord beeliy and his followers to contemplate
their having to swallow.; but the hand of the Oppeattion ,
however wavering on other occasions, was firm on
this, and the pledge was gulped with the desperate
courage that belongs to reckless men when no re-
source is left them but to do what they are called
upon to perform.
And now at length in the fulness of time the
great council of the nation has assembled for the
despatch of business; and on all hands it is agreed
that the business they are specially met to undertake
and to perform is the funeral—not of an illustrious
soldier who in ripe old ago has quietly descended to
the tomb—but of an obsolete and hated system
of monopoly, condemned and executed for its sins
long ago, but which the fatuity of its minions has
insisted upon embalming and parading about the
less frequented and intelligent portions of the
country for the meanest and most mischievous of pur-
poses. The outraged sense of the whole country
demands that this miserable and mercenary
masquerade should be brought to en end. The de-
-I,unciation by Mr. MACAULAY of socialism, commu-
nism. and every other dke ism' as being in plain
English "robbery," is equally applicable to the
landlord variety of the same pestilent doctrine which
would attempt to settle the rate of profits by law.
Protectionism is in plain English "robbery," or it is
nothing. Hence the indefinite postponement of its
obeequies by those who lived and throve by it when
iu vigour, and their credulous or cunning prophecies
of its miraculous resurrection. They live traded on
this vexatious deception for six long years. They
have, under thin false pretence, exacted higher rents
than by their own confession could reasonably be
demanded from the tillers of the soil under a system
of free imports. The swindle has been tolerated long
enough,—or rather, indeed, considerably too long.
But common decency and public honesty require
that it should at last come to an end, and that forth-
with and for ever.

It will not be endured that new terms of surrender
should be entered into. If anybody ventures, said Mr.
COBDEN at Manchester, to talk about "compensation,"
we shall meet him by insisting upon the claim of
the people for reimbursement of all they were robbed
of from 1813 to 1845. That is the first demand for
"compensation" which the landed aristocracy may be
fairly called upon to meet. They forced a law
through a rotten-borough Parliament at the close of
the war for the avowed purpose of raising their own
rents, and because a wiser Parliament repealed
that iniquitous law thirty years afterwards, they
have the effrontery to set up claims to what they
term " compensation r Why, the compeneation-.-
the only compensation—is due by them, not to them ;
and they ought to consider themselves only too for-
tunate that they have hitherto escaped being called
upon to make restitution in some form or other.
But this is not all. There is, as c c have already
hinted, a peculiar class to whom compensation might I
with more then ordinary show of justice be voted as
dac from the owners of the soil. We mean the
tenant farmers, who have been compelled to pay
during tho last six years the old corn law rent for
their land. When Lord GRANBY announced in 1818
that with wheat at 405., the occupiers of the soil
could not be honestly asked to pay the rents they-
covenanted to pay when acts of parliament professed
to guarantee 60s. to 70s. • quaeter—he told
an awkward truth, which not all the sophistry
of Mr. DISRAELI, nor all the bullying of Major
BERESTORD can obliterate from the agricultural
mind. Either the rent under Protection was enor-
mously too high, or the price of wheat under Free
Trade was too low to enable the grower to continue
the same rate of payment. In either case compensa-
tion is therefore plainly due by Lord GRANBY'S own
confession on the part of every landlord who has
helped to keep up the plundering cry of a possible
return to Protection during. the last six years.
Hat as for compensation in any new form of taxes
upon industry in exoneration of property, the notion
is too impudent and too palpably dishonest to be lis.
tend to for an hour. Cheap food—food as cheap as we
'could anywhere buy it with the produce of our
toil—was • right withheld which wo reclaimed in
1846. Are we now to be told that we are to payl
six or seven shillings in the pound compensation for
the reluctant and tardy restitution of what was
rightfully our own? If any such proposition or any
reservation of the power to make such a proposition li
hereafter in any juggle of taxation be made by the
government, issue must beloined at once thereupon,
and the question brought to a trial. For it is self-
evident that all we have gained by the triumph of the
Anti-Corn Law agitation, and the legislation of recent
years, is in jeopardy if the impudent condition is to
be reesignised in any shape or form, that we are liable
to the payment of pecuniary penalties to an indefinite
amount for the attainment of tbo blessings we so
dearly prize. If compensation be just, then Sir
ROBERT PEEL was only unjust in repealing the
Corn Law unconditionally, but his noble sacrifice of
himself and his personal friends to the public good
was worse than vain. Let Lord DERBY and his
colleagues assert this boldly, if any spark of politi-
cal manhood :casein, in them ; and let the Parlia-
ment they have themselves called together decide
the matter. Packed and paid for, as a certain sec-
tion of that assembly is, we hesitate not in exprese_i
ing our readiness to abide by its decision, provided
the question be only fairly stated, and be "in plain
English " put before it—ls the great settlement of
1816 to stand, or is is to be unsettled and upset at
the instance of the landlords ?

THE working lan of Birmingham seem to be
settling the question of progress, in one direction, at
least. Whether the world in general has or has not
got on in wisdom and social virtue, it is clear that'
the woelcing men of Birmingham have. Sixty-ono
years are a short time in the history of progression.
It is sixty-one years since the Birmingham workers
in iron and brass, attended by a screaming rabble of
dirty children, and reinforced by strong-armed female
nailmakers from the neighbourhood, plunged along
the streets of the town to burn and destroy.'
They were told that certain citizens, at a po-
litical dinner, had cut the king's head off,
and put it on their table; and the simpletons be-
lieved it. Then they broke, not only tavern win-
dows, but Dr. PRIESTLEY'S philosophical apparatus.
Not only did they demolish tables and chairs, but
they tore up manuscripts to such an extent that the
fragments lay inches thick upon the ground. They
carried a spit, on which they wanted, they said, to
roast the doctor. Some of them died by drinking
themselves stupid in the cellars of houses which they
had set on tire, and which, of course, fell in upon
them. Others lived to grow wiser; and, again,
others did not grow wiser, but died, as they hod
lived, the slaves of High Tory and High Church
masters. Forty years brought about a great
ehange. By that time- the great Newhall street
meeting had taken place, which looked like
an assemblage of the whole nation, to declare
its will in favour of Parliamentary Reform. The
Duke of WELLIN(iTON bad taken care to have the
Scotch Oreys ready in their barracks to take this

multitude in hand, on the first appearance of violence;
but this multitude was no mob. A hundred thousand
men sang their Union hymn, pledged their faith in
an oath taken with united voices, and went home,
where the news canto to them in due course that
Reform of Parliament was obtained.

We now, after twenty years more, find these men
of Birmingham again at work upon reform ; but this
time they do not want to reform the Reformers, as
they did sixty years since, nor to reform the Tories as
they did twenty years since. This time they want to
reform themselves. They want to add to their know-
kir, to improve their health, to elevate their homes
an households, by obtaining a little leisure. This is
just the time for the effort, and we are glad that they
arc awake to the opportunity. The workmen of Mr.
J. FREAMON, of Gas-street, Birmingham, have agreed
with their employer that they shall work half an
hour extra on five days of the week, in order to
obtain the Saturday afternoon for their own pur-
poses. The mon so heartily enjoy this change, that
they have chosen a committee front among them-
selves, who are charged to address the employers
and employed of their town on behalf of an extension
of the scheme. We have no doubt the thing will be
done. There is diflieulty, especially iu large esta-
blishments, in changing old habits and practices;
and some of the Birmingham manutactures arc of a
kind which cannot be brought to a stand at dinner
time on Saturday; but, in the face of so much
obvious good, there will doubtless be on effort to
extend the arrangements of Sunday Luck, so as to
include another !.elf day, which we should imagine
must be as welcome to the manufacturer as to his
men.

The first picture presented by the committee, and
by the reader's imagination, is of decent men, Amen
and washed, taking a long walk with their families
through the Moseley fields and the Handsworth
lanes, or basking in the Botanic Garden; or else
poring elven book in some library or reading-room.
We hope those things will be; but there are other
things to be done on Saturday afterpains, perhaps as
important, and less likely to be thought of Some,
at least, of the men, now go home very late on Satur-
day nights,—dirty and acury from their toil,—with
their pockets pretty full of money. The children
have lung been asleep; indeed, 'their father has',
hardly seen them an alto since last Sunday.
The wife is waiting eagerly for the money,
with which she rushes out to—the only mar-
ket she ever goes to —the huckster's shop. There, in
a crowd of women like herself, in the flare of a
dancing gaslight, and in haste, /rho buys all that she
wants, of every sort. There is every variety of
article, but no choice about any one article • and
there is the huckster's profit to pay, and his indemoi-
fication for bad debts, over and above the market
price of the article. When she comes home, she may
probably find that her husbaud is out. If not, ho
cannot have had a very comfortable evening in her
absence. The ease is worse if she, too, has been at
the factory, and came home late; and it is worse
still if, to meet the necessities from had housekeep-
ing, the Sunday clothes have been in pawn
since Monday morning, and have to be re-
deemed to-night—under another flare of gas, and
emitted a still less agreeable crowd than at
the huckster's. Hero is nothing ready for Sun-
day's comfort, and the leisure of Sunday must begin
late in the day. plow different, if the wages are
laid on the dinner table ut uoou ! The wife has the
range of the markets, and by daylight. This
method of purchasing—which is that of the em-
ployers of the town—must bo a saving of some
pounds in the year. There arc some hours over for
sewing and cleaning on the wife's part ; and many
arc the small repairs and important comforts which
a handy man may bless his home with by means of
half a day in the week. leaving still some time for
reading and sport. We hope that matter of sport is
what these men will next tarn to. There is nothing
that they want more, and nothing about
which we are more clumsy, in this very
serious atre in which we live. Heading is
noble mid charming when the frame is fit to enjoy it,
but it is a mere anxiety to one whew eyes and brain
are jaded, whose lungs need fresh air, and whose
social faculties crave their miter:A gratification.
While those who are tired in muscle by muscular I,
labour sit in a charmed state over their books, we
should like to see the sedentary chasers and mo-
dellers, and all who habitually sit poring over blind-
ing processes, emulatin4 each other in gymnastic
or military exercises, in riding, in cricket, leaping,
wrestling, or whet exercise they will that will
quicken their blood Ind exhilarate their spirits. One
probable result of the ex'ension of the change of
working hours is the introduction of new inventions
and mechanical improvements. Tho most prolific'
cause hitherto of mechanical invention has been
workmen's strikes, and the next has been workmen's
leisure. The immediate effect of a strike is
to stimulate the empleyer's party to contrive
substitutes tar human labour; and no one can tell
the value of leisure so well as the poor man who has
an idea that he wants to bring to maturity. In-
stances abound in the history of the last hundred
years of men xho have given up their employment
and lived in a garret on bread and water, or little
more, in order to work out their conception of some
great invention. Some such men doubtless exist
among the multitude who are now likely to call six
good fresh week day hours their own ; and such
may themselves
now shut themsees up with their tools and
devices without fear of reproach from wife or child
for trilling with their chance of bread. The em-
ployers may gain in this way ; and we are strongly
of opinion that they will luau in no other. They will
find the quality of the work done compensate for
the shortening of the time. In America, where men
work as long as they please and no longer, there
are heavy days' works done by mechanics and
operatives.. A stranger, who saw them asleep for a
couple of hours in the heat of a July day, might
take them to be as lazy as Neapolitans; but they arc
only avoiding a coup dc sukil : and they go home to
supper, has lag turned off an amount of work that
any Englishman might bo proud of.
The movement seems to be a very extensive one at
present, and to be still spreading. The well-known
Mayor of Southampton, Mr. ANDREWS, has won the
hearts of his men by a generous and considerate re-
arrangement of the hourspf labour; and Mr. GRANT,
a brother coach-builder, has followed the good
example. Half a dozen railway companies have
agreed to collect and receive no more goods ter
the luggage trains after 7 o'clock in the evening,
in the great towns of Yorkshire. Their servants
will do their fatiguing work all the better for being
sent home at a certain and a reasonable hour ; and
the trains may probably improve in punctuality
under the change. The companies expect and claim
to be served with thorough zeal during the day ;
and no doubt they will immediately observe an in-
creasing energy iu men who aro no longer harassed
with late bourn.

In the large towns the early closing question is
rapidly advancing towards a settlement, from the
movers having at their back the great power of emi-
gration. They aro in the new condition—new to
men • born since the peace—of being individually
and collectively valuable, so as to be worth r .tainiug
by concession. They aro wise in using their new
prerogative of aelf.disposal in contracting for no more
than a reasonable amount of toil. The shopmen
have a right to impose upon purchasers the obliga-
tion tb do their shopping within the compass of the
proper working day ; and clerks are reasonable in
consulting the health of their brains, by closing
their books before they are wholly stupitied with
figures. The evidence of the time shows that there
is reasonableness also among the employers. Days
arc coining on which will be important to the interests
of the employers of labour and skill, sod which will
settle all doubts as to whether masters and men are
friends or foes—in particular firms, and in a general
view. We rejoice in every piece of evidence that
they are friends, ns philosophy and science declare
that they should be; and among the tests of this
friendliness, none can be more certain or more agree-
able than the readiness and grace with which the
party, hitherto the more powerful, finds it possible
t.) agree with the humbler on the hours of labour
which are reasonable for both.

ZuOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. —At the
monthlT general meeting, held yesterday at the Society's
house, in Hanover.squam Dr. J. E. Gray, vice•president,
in the chair, Messrs. H. B. Heath and 11. Whit° were
elected fellows, and B. A. It. Nicholson, Esq., M.D., as a
corresponding member of the society; and his Eacellecey
the Count Colored°, the Countess Coloredo, Hon. Mr.
I'owys, sod /deists. 8. C. Lakemann, J. E. Cole, and 0.
Wheatley, were proposed as candidates for the fellowship.

FRANCE.