The Express.
London, England, 1864-11-01 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 1, 1864.

the inordinately high price of cotton. Whenever
the stock of cotton held in the Coohderate States
is thrown upon the market, a sudden and great
fall must ensue ; and for the time all manufac-
turing activity will be suspended. No man can
work • mill when he sees quite plainly that within
a week his raw material may lose five, or ten, or
twenty per cent. of its value ; while the higher
and the more exceptional the price to which that
material may have been forced, the greater is
the manufacturer's risk. Now the effect which
might have been produced, and may still be
produced, by peace in America, has followed upon
the crisis in the money and produce markets.
Cotton has lost something like one-third of its
value. And although the stock in Liverpool is
larger by some 300,000 bales than it was at the
same period of last year ; although the shipments
from India show that the supply up to Christmas
will be abundant ; although • pound of fair
Indian cotton may be bought for about a shilling
—stagnation reigns throughout Lancashire, and
relief committees have re-commenced their pain-
ful, but most necessary work.
It will be observed, however, that the very
nature of the crisis encourages us to hope that it
will be but temporary. It has been a necessary
evil, and one long predicted, even if looked for
from another quarter. No serious reverse has
been before experienced by the cotton speculators,
and it need excite no surprise that when a loss of
millions was in question they should hold on with
despairing energy, and so make the period of de.
dining prices, during which manufacturers have
no choice but to wait, as long as possible. The
failures both among merchants and manufacturers,
inevitable at such a time, as well as the general
feverishness of commercial life, have operated in
the same way. With such sudden and violent
squalls bursting upon the ship from every region of
the heavens, there has been nothing for it but to
run for harbour with close-reefed sails. But there
are already indications that, for the present, the
price of cotton has reached its lowest level ; and
if these should prove to be trustworthy, we may
confidently prophesy a quick and effectual re-
sumption of work. The public may rest assured
that both masters and men are heartily tired of
doing nothing. It may almost be affirmed as a
general fact that those manufacturers who have
worked least during the last three years have lost
most. And no one who knows the Lancashire
working man can doubt that all his earthly aspira-
tions are at present summed up in one—sixty
hours' work a week, and a fair clay's wages for a
fair days work.

At the same time it must be remembered that
if such crises as these are transitory, it is a part
of their nature to recur. They are the necessary
accompaniments of the close of such a time of
stagnation as Lancashire has passed through.
Whatever be the average price at which cotton,
under the world's altered circumstances, will finally
settle, there must be many fluctu,tions, arising
from very different causes, before it can settle so
as to be a firm basis for manufacturing prosperity.
Whenever a sudden fall of price takes place, a tem-
porary cessation of production, such as that which
we now see, is the necessary consequence. And
therefore the Manchester Central C minittee acts
with commendable forethought in husbanding, for
future emergencies, the balance which still stands
t 3 its credit.

WITHIN a year of the death of THACKERAY,
JoHN LEE.'II has followed him. We have lost the
greatest of our pictorial satirists, and by a blow
so speedy and sudden that it inevitably recalls the
shock that went through the nation when the
greatest of our literary satirists was taken. In
their visible fate there is much that makes the
coincidence more striking. Both were long fellow-
labourers in Poach, both died in harness, and both
sank too early, worn out by the overstrain of
mental work. A deeper resemblance, indeed,
may be traced beneath the surface events of their
live*. The genius of both was essentially the
product of the age in which they lived, and suited
to it ; their comedy was mixed with pathos, their
tragedy dashed with self-ridicule, the genuine
outbursts of nature mingled with the sneer of civi-
lization. Neither probably would have been as
great had he bitten on any other time ;
nor is it easy to say what either of them might
have been had his inclination been less fettered by
the exigencies of surrounding circumstances.
LEECH, it is true, did not give, like THACHIRAY,
any public indication of desire to break away into
other paths. And indeed, whether we esteem it
lower or higher, his was the more original line.
No caricaturist before him habitually employed
beauty as the instrument of his lessons. No
satirist of mere folly has ever indulged leas in
exaggeration. His success was achieved by the
absolute truth of his representations ; the satiric
moral lay simply in their selection. He seized the
moment at which folly was self-convicted, and held
it up as it was to inextinguishable ridicule. Vice,
as such, he scarcely professed to attack. But as
folly when rampant grows into vice, he is not to be
refused the honour due to a teacher becaumi he
limited himself to dealing with incipient and
nascent evils. Society has been the wholesomer
and the purer for his pencil, and therefore let him
not be classed merely as one of those who tickle it
into amusement by the exhibition of absurdity.
But if his life and works were the outgrowth
and reflection of his age, his death has, in a
sadder sense, been a sacrifice to its peculiarities.
Living, as we all do now, at ten times the rate of
our forefathers, those who supply our intellectual
food must tax themselves to meet our demands.
We read ten times as much, and, therefore, we
must have ten times as much written and painted
for us ; we pay ten times as much, and, therefore,
artists and authors are tempted to ten times the
exertion. For, unhappily, we do not pay in pro-
portion for the great work to which the care and
labour of a lifetime has been given—the perfect
work which will live through all time, like the
Iliad or the Apollo. But what we are eager for
16 the shallow novelty, the sharp comment on
daily life, the work that fatigues not the under-
standing, but strikes in a moment, and may at
once be dismissed. So the lima labur et 11w/A
does not pay, and, as a consequence,
it is not given. Perhaps, but for this
fatal temptation, Leei-ir might have added some
enduring work of art to the galleries of his
country. Our consolation is that he reached, if
not so high, at least a wider public. He met the
popular hunger, and supplied it with light and
evanescent but healthy food. Only in doing this
he lost his own life, as so many another artist and
man of letters has done of late years. For it
seems as if the creative faculty were that which
kills the fastest. The lawyer lives long, though
be works as hard as the poet, for many more hours
a day. But the men of imagination, such as all
artists and all literary men must he more or less,
fall soon and fast. Would they but spend some
of that time which is now spent in inventing new
characters, new scenes, new stories, new argu-
ments, in the dull plodding routine of revising,
recasting, and polishing, their works might live
beyond the year, and many a useful year would

be added to their own lives. But it is fruitless to
preach prudence, or a noble ambition. when the
lope of sudden wealth is the lure. We call for
so much of literature and art that we cannot have
it so good as it might be, and we pay so highly for
novelty that we kill our authors and artists when
their years are still green.
It is a sad and lingering death, too. The no-
blest part is the first to suffer and perish, and
mental failure precedes, *as it causes, the bodily
decay. In the works of poor LEECH this process
has been visible for some years past. The power
and skill of hand still kept improving, and the
grace and vigour of drawing grew ever more re•
markable. But the wit of the piece was less. The
scenes or the sayings selected for illustration were
less intrinsically humorous, the fun was more forced,
the characters and the situations partook more of
mere repetition. The explanation of it all comes
now. The cause, beyond a doubt, was that which
hurried WALTER SCOTT and DAVID WILKIE
to an early grave. The mind was over-
wrought, and the brain gave way. It is idle and
foolish to suggest, as has been done, that the
mischief had its origin in the "organ-grinding
" nuisance." No doubt the sick and suf-
fering artist was half maddened by the
noise, but it was because he was already sick. The
morbidly excited brain felt acutely an irritation
which in a healthy state it would have thrown off
as a passing annoyance. It might as well be said
that riding on horseback was the cause of his
malady, because there came a stage at which riding
increased it. The argument is a good one in favour
of giving to the worn brain the perfect rest which
may enable it to recover its tone. We have urged
it ourselves, when seeking to retain the solitude
and quiet of Kensington Gardens and other open
spaces, as means of refreshing the weary minds of
brain-workers. But the illness which has cut
LEECH off in his prime was his own doing. He is
but one more of the men of high talent who have
failed to do what they might, because they strove
to do too much and too fast. Some time or other,
when the laws which bind the soul to the body are
better known and better kept, we shall cease to
be harrowed by these recurring moral suicides.
Meanwhile, let us take warning, and at least learn
by our heavy losses.

LATEST INTELLWENUE.

THE PEACE BETWEEN GERMANY AND
DENMARK.

The Berlingeke Tidende, of Copenhagen, of the
26th ult., referring to the conclusion of peace,
observes that the conditions are far more rigorous
than those which were stipulated after the battle
of Novara, when Austria found herself in a
position to dictate peace to Piedmont. " Apart,"
it continues, "from the amicable intervention
of the European powers which took place at that
period in favour of the vanquished, and which has
been entirely wanting in our case, it seems that
other considerations should have led the conquerors
Ito manifest towards Denmark more generosity than
was shown in regard to Piedmont ; for Piedmont,
even when beaten, remained a formidable adver-
sary to Austria, which Denmark will never be to
Germany, and yet the first demands of Austria,
which rose as high as 280 millions of lires,
wore reduced to 75 millions, whilst the
financial sacrifices which Lave been imposed upon
us have not undergone any diminution, and have
even been rather augmented. But, however hard
may be the conditions to which we shall have to
submit, we must desire that a war which has been
so disastrous for Denmark may be at length
terminated. We have already alluded many
times to the misfortunes which have over-
whelmed Jutland, and our readers know Low
cruelly that province has been afflicted
by the decree which prohibits the exportation of
agricultural products. But if the inhabitants
are not to be completely ruined, it is necessary that
these rigours should end before wiuter crones to
prevent exportation by sea. We hope, then, that
when once peace is signed the evacuation will take
place without delay ; but if, contrary to our ex-
pectation, thin should not occur till after
the exchange of the ratifications, we do
not think it would be very exacting to ask that, at
all events, all restrictions which fetter commerce
may be immediately removed, especially as this de-
mand is iu perfect accord with the text of the preli•
roinaries. After a lung and laborious campaign, iu
which our navy has worthily sustained its ancient
reputation, and has signalised itself by brilliant ser-
vices, our ships are beginning to return by degrees
to Copenhagen to be disarmed there, and everything
seems to indicate that the other vessels of the fleet
will swim be recalled. This confirms the order of
the day which Admiral Van Duckum has lately
published ou giving up the command of the Baltic
squadron, as well the following proclamatiou which
the King has addressed to the navy :
Events have now entered upon a more pacific path, and
most of you are now going to return to your hearths. I
have followed you with joy in the course of your brilliant
campaign. Whether you have had to combat the entailed
of Danmark, or to struggle in the depth of winter against
the posse of the elements, you have always diiiplayeal the
same courage and the isms perseverance. Preserve in the
midst of peami your love for your king, your country, sod
the flag under which you have fought, and if
you should be summoned again to take up arms for the
defence of the land, be always reedy to come and range your.
selves beneath the folds of the old Ilianebrog. Officers,
sub-officers, and sailors of the navy, I send to you all my
royal education, and thank you for the task you have so
bravely accomplished.
(Signe.i) CHRISTIAN R.
(Corm tersigued) 0. LUTKEN.
Copenhagen, Oct. 17, IStii.