The Express.
London, England, 1852-10-12 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 12, 1852.

regimental bead will Mao bola attendeam. Her Majeaty,
the Prince-Comort, and the royal children will mama' of
lamb, ia a mono adjacent to the drat-clam refreshment
mem—the sum apartment which waft Kited ap Mr the to-
minim of the Duchess of Kent when she poised through
Preston about two years ago. The Karl et Derby (who la
new at Knowsley) will probably mate to greet her Majesty
on her arrival here. The royal party, on leaving Preemie,
proceed by way of Crewe to Wales. A epeeist *aging with
the soya train, which ineleded the Queen's Mate carrime,
four other carriages, and two vans, passed through the
statism en Friday attarmen as rook manillas:de.

MARKET.

(item the Deily New.)
Tax most good-natured man in the world will ad-
mit that there is nothing so humiliating as (to mean
expressive not darned) to be " done." He may join
in the laugh led by his victimiser and °bonnie(' by
bystanders to whom he appeals for sympathy, but
his is a hollow laugh; a comic mask momentarily
clapped upon a sorry countenance ; the gilding of a
bitter pill, at which his gorge rises. It is the laugh
of the horse-ehaunter, who, while showing offs" the
sweetest tempered 'os in the county," was favoured
by the amiable quadruped with a tremendous kick in
the diaphragm. It is the laugh that commits
cachinuatory suicide; laughing, not with the others,
but at one's self, and is generally strangled with a
This is the sort of laugh with which a deluded
London public will echo the hilarity that resounded in
the Court of Common Council at its last meeting, when
the removal of the cattle market from Smithfield was
mentioned. The City Markets Improvement Commit-
tee, cheerfully aided by the Secretary of State for the
Home Department, are might and main endeavouring
to defeat the i n tent ions ol the legislature and the wishes
of the public ; and, thinking they have succeeded,
enjoy the fun amazingly. Mr. Deputy Lore,
or any other independent anti-Smithfield member of
the Common Council, has only to mention the sub-
ject in his place in the Guildhall House of Commons
to provoke a smile; but. when he adverts to the die-
satisfaction of the public at the choice by his col-
leagues of the populous site in Copeohagerefields, as
a lure to win the market back to dear rotten old
Smithfield, their playful natures explode in roars of
laughter. It is such a capital joke. After all the
fatal accidents that have been occasioned in the
crowded streets by the horns of infuriated bullocks ;
after all the lives that have been sacrificed by the
pestilential air of Smithfield; after all the investiga-
tions of sanitary commissioners, of select commis-
sioners, and of royal commissioners; after innumera-
ble petitions and memorials front all sorts and con-
ditions of sufferers—some of them even from butchers ;

after innumerable debates in both Rousts of Par:
liament, ending in the sign-manual to en
act of the legislature to abolish a live cattle
I market in the heart of the City, it is a capital
joke to succeed in defeating every one of these efforts;
and, in spite of everythingand everybody, to keep the
nuisance where t stands. It is a municipal point of
humour, a stroke of City wit, which is, to City intel-
lects, perfectly irresistible : hence it is that when the
subject is mentioned in either of the estates of
the City parliament the Markets' Improvement
Committee laugh, the Court of Common Council
laugh, the Court of Aldermen laugh, and the
public would laugh too (on that wrong side of
its mouth always playfully mentioned when an
honest man is dexterously " done " by a sharper)
had the great stroke of City policy beensconsammatcd,
and were Smithfield allowed to remain an immutable
fixture. Happily, however, that clever feat has not
yet been quite accomplished ; but it inevitably will
be performed if the metropolitan public do not once
I more bestir itself. _ _ _

We mentioned in a former article that the policy
of the City Markets Committee appeared to be to
prove practically—by evading the general intention
of the act of parliament, and ct oosing another site in
the suburbs equally objectionable—that Smithfield
is the best possible situation for a live cattle market.
Instead of banishing the indispensable nuisance to a
distance of seven miles from St. Paul's, the approba-
tion of a Derbyite Secretary of State was obtained
to bring it to a spot not two miles from St. Paul's
Cathedral, in a locality so manifestly unsuited that
the market can never be erected iu it. " You see!"
they jocularly. exclaim, " the people of the neigh-
bourhood are in arms against us. They arc driving
es away from Copenhagen-fields, as they will drive
u away from every other euburb we may fix upon.
There is nothing for it (another laugh) but Smith-
field." " It has been said," propounded Mr. Alderman
LAWRENCE on Thursday last, in other words, but
with nearly the above meaning, " that if the market
were removed, it would be an evil to the neighbour-
hood [of Copenhagen-fields). Nit was an evil at all
there could be not the slightest doubt about that.
Indeed, he would say more : he believed that the
evils arising from the removal to any. suburban place
would be far greater than its retention in the City."
Alderman LAWRENCE is one of those gentlemen who
believe a cattle market with its offal. and odours is
a benefit, and cannot think of removing a benefit
further away from London than its suburbs; but
thinks it best of all to keep it where it is. He, there-
fore, was a true exponent of City sentiments, of City
subtlety, and City intentions, when he added,
"After all. he was of opinion that the better
way would be to permit the market to remain
where it is, and improve it as prop:teed."
This is the key-note of the laughing-chorus
which is set up when tho subject comes be-
fore the City courts. What a brilliant jest it will be
if they can only juggle the public and " improve?'
Smithfield !
This joke must, however, not be played ofThe
City authorities must be driven with their market to
the distance from the City contemplated, but, unfor-
tunately, not clearly expressed in the Smithfield
Removal Act. A new, strong, and unexpected
reason for this necessity was furnished at the meet-
ing of the Common Council we have before adverted
to. On that occasion there appeared at their worship/
bar a deputation with a memorial adopted at a pee.
vitals public meeting of fourteen or twenty indivi-
duals (the number, it seems, could not be correctly
counted), whose anxious desire it is that the
market should stand in Copenhagen-fields. These
gentlemen agree with Mr. Alderman LAWRENCE,
Mr. Deputy Him. and others, that such an institu-
tion is a real local blessing. They declare, that they
represent property in the neighbourhood amounting
in value to ‘OO,OOOl. This tremendous statement
could not, however be verified under the acute cross-
examination of Mr. Deputy Lon. The deputation
from the great meeting of fourteen or twenty
were obliged to own themselves to be chiefly
speculating builders, who bad taken ground
close round the edges of the proposed mar-
ket, which it was their sanguine determination
to cover, at some future time, with buildings. They
have not got the property they set themselves down
as actually possessing, but they intend to have it—
capital not ailing. And what class of property will
it be? Necessarily such as is intended for the
accommodation and resort of the frequenters of
the projected market. That speculators in that
ekes of property should see the advantages of a
eekb market close to the ground they hues
lOW, is not at all wonderful. But in proving
Mlle ems, they have, like most eager and
inlmasms=rtants, proved too much. They have
that they are willing to complete
the &guide Indiana the City Markets Committee
ere Mike a feint to commence, by amoremodatiug
the mikes unwholesome trades, as' sot very eli-
gible neighbours, inseparable from s eattk market,
with hanee tion. Ttipeeleeemn, bone-
boilers, killemigks,sermzers of sumbeekkg intes-
tines, drown, berimessilise, knackers,
slaughterousy imseany dr not, it is clear, re-
gain Ist *a ips sad wait kikkdom built in the
iMlNlMatidie24e of architecture which prevails
close to the spot in question.
Adohli=es. the enormous property boasted
d the memorialists is only us poses--as
Ike Wes which are to make it in eue have yet to
le biked—it is natural that it will be composed (if
it stir come into existence), of such houses as the
preens we have enumerated require for their tem-
porary accommodation, or for the pursuit of their
unsavory avocations. There can be no doubt that
these capitalists, who have their possessions yet to
realise, intend to reproduce amongst the villas
and mansions of the Camden estate, the Cow-
crosses, the Long-lanes, and Sharpe's-alleys which
already hang, like a filthy fringe, round the
blackest spot on the map of London. They, in
fact, unwittingly admit the inference, while
advocatinx their own cause and vaunting I
themselves us holden of seven hundred thousand
pound. worth of assets which they have not begun
to create—that they are quite anxious to erect such
houses as will be bonefittcd by their contiguity to
an animal market; and thin bring into existence
a means of concentrating all the mischiefs that arise
from the insalubrious concomitants of a cattle mar-
ket, and of conducting the pestilence to the high
class property already existing In the neighbour-
hood, and by that channel extending it to the rest
of the metropolis.
There can be no question that the City tactics
arc right in one respect, and that the fdarkets

Improvement Committee will be driven, by the
exertions of the respectable, non-speculating in-
habitants, and by the irresistible force of
facts and common sense, from any suburban
district they m_ay pick out to present for
Mr. SECRETARY WALPOLE'S approval and re-consi-
deration when the Copenhagen-fields people have
beaten them out of their bounds. "It was no mat-
ter," said the pro-Smithfield Alderman LAWRENCE,
" where they took the market, some parties would
be injured, while others would not be benefited;
and were they to place it in a plain, far away, as
some had recommended, from the haunts of man,
they would soon find it surrounded by buildings,
and comequently by population."
We may tell the worthy alderman that the expe-
riment of placing the market in a plain at some dis-
tance from the haunts of man must be tried. It has
been tried in almost every civilised city in the world
except the City of London, and has fully succeeded.
Granted that were the removal made to Wanstead-
fiats, or to any other ultra-suburban place, the
market would soon be surrounded with buildings;
but they would solely consist of buildings suitable to
it ; and of no others. We apprehend that if once the
cattle market were opened at • suitable distance
from town, even the warmest advocates of the salu-
brity of Smithfield and of cattle markets in general
would not choose to place their country seats within
eight—and smell—of it. There is all the difference
between going to • nuisance and having a nuisance
brought to any suburb already peopled. If the
market were placed in an isolated spot, it would
remain isolated, except by those whose business
induced them to inhabit its boundaries.

The kind of place, therefore, depicted by the alder-
man is exactly that to which the market must be
removed. The jocose functionaries of Guildhall
must not keep the laugh to themselves. They must
not use their suburban non-success as a cry to hark
back Smithfield. The obvious, and—when honestly
construed—unmistakeable intention of the Smithfield
Removal Act must bo carried out, and the cattle
market must not be allowed to be re-established any-
, where but at a safe distance from the metropolis.