The Express.
London, England, 1855-08-09 00:00:00

LOYDOII. UIII2BDAY, AUGUST .9:

.- • '
Tile statement regarding Indian Pitmen; bub-
mit ted by Mr. VERICON SMITH to the Hones of Com-
mons on Tuesday, ie of a nature to awaken grave
apprehensions. It presents to our view a declining
revenue and an increasing expenditure. The esti-
mated rev( nue for 1854-63 is less than the lineal
revenue of 1882-69 by 228,2451. The odium's! ex-
penditure for 1864-63 is greater than the actual expen-
diture of 183253 by 2,868,6231. Nor is this the
worst. In 183263 there was an excess of income
over expentltture of 424,2671.; but according to the
estimat a there will be in 1864.53 an excess of expen-
diture over income of 2,670,3181. It ought also to
be r shied that the documents presented to the
Hot ,se of Commons, along with the financial state-
me at, warrant a suspicion that the prospects of the
re .venue for 1854-53 have been represented as more
f avourable than they are, anti that the estimated
expenditure may hereafter be considerably aug-
leen'ted by " supplementary estimates."
11Ir. lixasom SIITTH would fain have persuaded
the House of Commons that the increased and in-
greasing expenditure of lodic has mainly been
caused by the sums laid out in promoting public
works. There is one circumstanos which is calcu-
lated to sug;est a doubt of the correctness of this
view. In the tabular statement of the estimated
expenditure for 18344-66, the following items occur :
Charpo of enllntlnn—Nagpore £2o6 098
Cbarg,s of cAlection—Pegs
Pegu and Nagpore are our moat recent territorial
acquisition,. They have increased the expense of
collecting the revenue by 409,8361. per annum; but
the total revenue of India has declined, notwithstand-
ing their qiiota has been added to its amount. It
will be M the re collection of such of our readers as are
in the h,bit of paying attention to the affairs of
India that a similar financial phenomenon was pre-
sented when &jade and the Punjaub were added to
the British dominions in India. We are warranted,
then, in inferring that our recent acquisitions of terra
tory, by adding to the annual expenditure without aug-
menting the annual revenue, threaten to derange the
fiascoes of British India seriously and permanently.
Nor is this the only danger that threatens us from
the systematic policy by which the Anglo-Indian
Government keeps adding, year after year, to our
overgrown empire in the East. By the annexation of
&Mile a. d the Purjsub we exchanged an easily de-
fensible frontier—of which only the small portion
between the Sutlej sod the Himalaya was practi-
cable fur large armies—for a vague and ill-defined
frontier which is everywhere assailable. The conse-
quences of a or extension of territory towards the
East cannot yet be foreseen; but this very uncer-
tainty as to the future is pregnant with me-
nace. Again, the annexation of Nagpore is
another step in the process of annexing all these
iodependen• States whose territories lie intermingled
with the British possessions. It is a fact that, with
the exception of Oude and the dominions of the
NIZAM—in which the rulers are made, de facto, irre-
sponsible by the presence of British troops—the inha-
bitants of States ruled by native princes are generally
found to be more prosperous and contented than the
Company's subjects. The centralising process, by
which the whole of India is being made subject to
the Company's Government, is found to promote ir-
responsibility and misconduct in local officials. It
has also a tendency to degrade and demoralise
the native races, by depressing the superior
castes who alone can assert anything like equality
with European,. The continual extension of our
Indian possessions therefore threatens us obviously
with two dangers—discontent among our subjects,
and derangement in our finances; and both of these
are calculated to place in peril our power in India.
These considerations suffice of themselves to show
the danger and folly of allowing the state of our In-
dian affairs to be kept from the keowledge of Perlis-
Mani till a period of the session when it is ludicrous
to talk of its being adequately investigated. For
each procrastination there is now no excuse. Steam
and electric telegraphs ate placing all parts of India
coastaat cad immediate communication with each
other, and bringing our Indian seemlier government
late close proximity to England. The public accounts
d India for the past year (up to October), and the
estimates for the current year could easily be laid
upon the table of the House of Commons at the
opening of every session. The Legislature would
thus be enabled to exercise an efficient control over
the local administration in India. The tesolutions
moved and carried by Mr. BRIGHT, on Tuesday, are
so far valuable as they indicate a consciousness
on the part of Government that such a reason-
able demand cannot long be resisted. But'
a vigorous effort most be made next ses-
sion or Ministers and their colleagues in Leaden-
hall-street, will endeavour to wriggle out of their half-
promise. The honour and interest of Britain alike I
demand that the affairs of India shoull be more
closely watched by the home Legislature. Having
assumed the paramount authority in India, our
honour as a nation requires that we should show our
ability to exercise it for the benefit of the natives.
And unless care is taken to arrest the systematic ex-
tension of our Indian territories, and to keep our
Indian finances in a sound and prosperous condition,
our Eastern empire will ere long crumble away in
our grasp.

AT present the price of bread and meat are high
relatively to the price in the years 1849.53; and
although the crops seem as fine on the ground as last
year, the continued rains and the deficiency of sun
begin to inspire some fears for the harvest. In this
subject the public always take—and have a right to
take—a deep interest. The town people cannot Ml-
sonably pretend—though they sometimes do—to be
critics of agriculture, and to teach the farmer his art.
How individuals employ their capital, their time, and
their faculties—whether farmers, factory owner,, or
authors—interests the public far less than how the
soil is occupied. This is truly a public or national
concern. The land belongs to the whole people, as
is evidenced by the use made of the public power to
guarantee individuals in the full possession of por-
tions of the soil. The agriculture of England is in
many districts—particularly where carried on as men
carry on other business, to get a living or a fortune by
it—far superior to the general agriculture of Europe.
Foreigners, in fast, import our farmers, to teach them
our arts of cultivation. But though individual farmers
do their duty, it cannot be said that the soil of Eng.
land is fully modem, of oroceopied as it ought to her
and as the public haves right to insist that it shall he.
On the continent may be found large tracts of

Iliad still bearing primeval forest., whole provinces
lot marsh undrained, and becoming every year less

usable and more deleterious, for want of the cornet-
leg hand of industrious and skilful men— marshes that
might bloom like the polderss Holland, bit which
like those of Hungary ars than -
—torrents untamed and rivers an d;b. w
the land has been brought u tio i.
al! cultivated. You may tier or miles in its
of France, Germany, ant 111[!3• pot w• •
encumbered by a airless hedgerow or lift unfilled.
In a paper on continental farming in the last number
e the Jestresoi of the Royal Agricultural
Mr. PETER Iforz, a Northamptonshire farmer, says,
Ipesking of n tart of Belgium, "the whole is raciest d
with hedges, with timber growing therein, to the
damage of the crops, but there is no was'Ab
land ; there are occasional forests, which lip.
pear to be well managed." "About Cologne is a
beautiful district well farmed, with no waste land
about fence sides, or corners of fields grow'..ng nth.
blab." Again, speaking of a district whic'a extends
from a little beyond Brunswick to many miles after
passing Magdeburg, on the way to Ber fin, he says
" Nearly the whole of the crops are drir.ted and horse-
hoed in the district, and a weed on & square yard of
waste land is a rare thing to meet with." Our own

experience accords with what i, said by Mr. Love.
In the cultivated districts on the Rhine, and through-
out a large part of Germany, every inch of ground is
pot to use, leaving barely space for roads and com-
munication. For miles and miles there evety part
of the surface is cultivated as it is by the market gar-
deners of Deptford or Battersea.
But pus only a few miles beyond the regions of

our horticulture. Go no further off the.o Barnet or
Hatfield to the north, or Dorking and Reigate
to the south, and walk a dozen or fifteen
miles in any direction you please, and you will
find acre after acre lying waste, till the whole
amounts to many hundreds and even thousands
of acres ; strips by the road sides, in common.,
or in heaths, feeding geese and growing rushes
and weeds. We say nothing of the wide hedgerows
bearing only ornamental trees, and serving chiefly to
nourish thistles, nettles, brambles, weeds, and ver-
min, which at once deteriorate and devour the crops,
though they take up perhaps a twentieth part of the
surface, betzme come atockmasters maintain that the
hedgerows serve as shelter for the cattle, which do
not thrive so well where hedgerows are wanting.
Even for this fancied beneficial purpose, however—
for stock thrive well in great prairies, where they
have little shelter, and the dirty ponds and the hedges

em to breed the inseete that torture the animals—

our wide hedgerows are too numerous and too
large, and are rather preserved for the game and
the rabbits they harbour than for the protection
they afford to stock. But, besides the great waste
occasioned by ornamental timber, wide hedgerows,
and comparatively useless parks, there are through-
. - . _

out the home counties within a few miles of the great
metropolis, where we pay an enormous price for milk,
eggs, and poultry, which are brought from a great dis-
tance, vast strips and portions of land lett wholly tin-
, occupied and unused. The waste is lea, perhaps, in
Essex and Kent—though not unknown there—than
in Middlesex, Herta, and Surrey; but a few pedestrian
excursions into any of these counties will convince
every inquirer that the soil of England, the public
property, the national possession, within even a short
distance of the metropolis, is partly unoccupied, anti
patty misused. If we did not know that the same
fact is true of Northamptonshire and other counties,
as well as the metropolitan counties, we might infer
it from Mr. LOVE'S remarks. He is obviously accus-
tomed to tee waste spots and wide hedges, breeding
the weeds and the vermin that the farmer labours
assiduously to destroy. Against such a misappropria-
tion and misapplication of our soil the public have a
right and are bound to protest.
We are by no means oblivious of the beauty and
•

picturesqueness sometimes imparted to the landscape
by wild woods and wild wastes, but our eye tells us
that a great network of hedges and trees only obscures
the view, and becomes at a short distance little better
than a forest ; and our reason tells us that not only

are the green wastes, that have of late been enclosed
in Surrey and other places, of much greater advantage
to the public now that they are covered with heavy
corn, but that the wheat fields and turnip crops are
more pleasing objects than the muddy ponds and the
rushes of which they have taken the plren When
railroads were first introduced a great outcry was
made by some admirers of nature on account
of their naked uniformity. Gradually, however,
in many places their banks are becoming
cultivated and adorned, and railroads have ceased
to be the unsightly objects they appeared to some
eyes in their original bare utility. That, too,
was a mere uglisese of contrast to the winding and
adorned road to which the traveller was accustomed.
As the straight rail pierced the dreary pine forests
in the United States it destroyed a tiresome uni-
formity, and was itself an element of beauty as well
as of usefulness.

Thcae waste spots and commons, and road-side
stripe, which feed a stray donkey or a few geese, are by
some persona supposed to be necessary to maintain in
existence "a bold peasantry," the country's pride.
Such a peasantry no longer exists, ani patriotism,
as recent events have shown us, is confined to towns.
We will not, however, deny that in an early period
of our history, when land was chiefly valued for its
spontaneous productions, before necessity had taught
us the art of making it produce a thousand fold as
much food as it brought forth in its pristine state—
and when land was monopolised as much for the
chase as for cultivation—that leaving spaces unappro-
priated was useful to the common people. But that
time has passed away, and it is now obvious that these
neglected spots should be appropriated and tilled.
Generally the population around them is not of the
best description, and it is only necessary to see the
undersized, underfed, dirty and ragged peasantry of
the metropolitan counties to be at once convinced
that they now derive no benefit from these waste
spots. If allowed to occupy them they might make
them bloom with gardens, and, greatly to the benefit
of the metropolis as well as their own benefit, spread
horticulture over every foot of the unoccupied soil.
Why they are not allowed, and how it has come to
peas that with such urgent wants as the townspeople
have for the produce of the moil, and with such a pro-
gress as we have made in other branches of civilise-
floc, soil is not fully used, we will not now inquire.
We will merely say that the evil has appa-
rently been increased in the metropolitan
couoties by the land being in general owned and
occupied by those who have derived wealth from com-
merce and other source, than the land ; and who have
looked on it more as a means of enjoyment than of
subsistence ; who have inherited manorial and other
rights, and have preserved them as aristocratic
pri-
vileges without ever thinking of the duty they owe
to the public, which secures them the possession of the
soil to make nse of it, and to use their power over it
for the public advantage. They must now, when
the growth of population requires that none of our
own resources should be wasted, take measures in
order that these wastes shall be usefully occupied.
Within the last few years-end since the Corn.
laws were repealed—ioelosures have been made at
Cbsrlwood, Leigh, and other places in Surrey, close
to the isetropolia; and any oso may now ow good

roads and fins fields of corn when, when the land-
owners were sure of the monopoly, there were only
rushy commons and tracks difficult to pats. The
change which has taken place in the appearance of
the countly as well as in its produots alik;,,enouuragea
7us WI andlir p alild or cerium-A,
to the legis are sb d flake a poliffiref re-
mot ►ery ohs le v oltnsage or pi noir-
patio ain therlyfay of very foot of the
is raglaal ✓a in the -of the continent
dcfcribed by Mr. LOVE, to its a tcpriate use.

Vbe Cenci.

- ._

OSBORNE, ACODST 8.

The King of Portugal and the Duke of Oporto
landed f►na the royal yacht yesterday afternoon, with
Prince Albert, and were east by her Majesty on the
beach.

1 The royal party took a drive in an open carriage and
four.

Prince Albert went ag►in en board the royal yacht abaut
8 o'clock to dine with the King. Owing to the uceettled
weather the Queen was prevented dining on board.
Earl Spencer, K 0 , Lord Steward of the Household, sr
rived from London, and had ma,andience of the Queen to
present an address from the Hesse of Lords.
The Earl of Clarendon arrived from London yesterday,
and had an audience of the Queen. After the audience the
following were presented to her Majesty by Lord Caarendm.
Has Highness Ismail Puha, t►e Minister from Hayti, and
I Mr. H. Howard, her Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary at
the Court of Brest', on returning home on leave.
Prices Arthur his taken carriage airings on Monday sad
previously.

A Cabinet Council was held yesterday afternoon
at the Foreign-office, Downing-street. 'the ministers
present a ere :—Viscount Palmerston, tbe Lord Chan-
, cellor, Earl Granville, the Marquis of Lansdowne,
the Duke of Argyll, Sir George Grey, the Earl of
Clarendon, Sir William Molesworth, Lord Pans:lure,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood,
the Right lion. R. Vernon Smith, Viscount Can-
ning, and the Earl of Harrowby. The Council sat
two hours.

Despatches were lent yesterday from the
to the Governor of tte Falkland blends.