The Express.
London, England, 1852-08-05 00:00:00

LONDON. THURSDAY, AUGUST 5.

AT last the general election is over. The return
for Orkney has been made, and the l)erbyite candi-
date, Lord-Advocate Iseitts, has been defeated. The
House is made ready for meeting, and the questions
now rise—what will the Ministry
.put before it?
—and what will the House say to their propositions?
The efforts of the ministerial journals to affect an
air of satisfaction at the composition of the new
Parliament sad of security as to the existence of the
Diftni cabinet, are bat a thin and transparent veil
to hide from inquisitorial view what is really going
on in the camp of Toryism. To all who have eyes to see
And ears to hear, and ordinary powers of comprehen-
siom wherewith to understand, the true state of the
tase is palpable enough. Ministers are still in a
minority; the persount 1 of the administration is still
a jectly deficient ; and after five months' tenure of
office they are still without a principle or a
fOrIMIMC.
'to supply these fatal wants must be the occupation of
ministers during the period which will elapse before
the assembling of the Legislature. To win over
minor waverer, will be the business of the virtuous
and consistent SECRETARY to the TREASURE aided as
of yore, doubtless, by the discreet SECRETARY at WAR.
We are not in general given to suspicion. We think
it a corrupting habit of the public mind, never to be
lightly or rashly stimulated into activity, and gene-
rally speaking more apt to misdirect popular judg-
ment against the innocent than to ensure the
detection and exposure of offenders. Yet we freely
own that with unbounded means of political seduc-
tion in the hands of men who have proved themselves
so unscrupulous in the use of them as regards
the electoral classes, we should entertain no
inconsiderable fears as to their application to certain
portions of the newly-elected representatives of the
people, were it not for the salutary conviction that
already begins to pervade all minds that the present
Parliament is sure to be of no very long duration,
and that the next day of reckoning is certain to be
not very long deferred. The time was when a Par-
liament, no matter how da in character and
notoriously corrupt, might wit impunity protract its
scandalous existence, and run out its legal period
with impunity. But that day is passed for ever.
Neither the court nor the country are capable of
being bullied or swindled into acquiescence
in such a state of things as that to which
we allude. Let the conviction once be justly
formed that any party in office is attempting to
maintain itself in power by tampering with the
legislativs body, and its guilty doom would instantly
be sealed. An appeal to the nation would be spee-
dily demanded, and in a tone that would be wholly
irresistible. We do not therefore attach any credit
to the tales that already have begun to be circulated
about "the Man in the Moon " visiting the neigh-
bourhood of Westminster. After what wo know to

Live taken place at Liverpool and Derby, there can
be no hesitation in ascribing to the party of whom
Major BERESFORD was, and Mr. SIACKENZIE
is, the whipper-in, a zeal in tho performance
of their task not bounded by ordinary considerations.
But even they will hardly succeed in persuading
halfa-dosen Icentlemen who have been returned on
Liberal principles at the late election to vote against
freedom of trade, freedom of education, or freedom
of representation in the new House of Commons.
A change in the staff by whom Lord DERBY is
surrounded, is a matter equally desirable, but hardly
less difficult of execution. The unfitness of men like
'fiords MALMESBURY and JOHN MANNERS for offices
of high responsibility was indeed obvious enough
from the first. But their tried and proven
inmpacity. is more embarrassing to their co-
adjutors in the business of state conjuring.
Hitherto, the pleasant tale told by way of averting
condemnation from the blundering head of the sham
SECRETARY for FOREIGN AFTMES bas been, that once
the elections were over, and Protection decently
interred, there would be no longer any obstacle in
the way of Lord PALMERSTON'S entering the Tory cabi-
net in the capacity he had so long filled in the Whig,
and with the personal distinction of official leader
of the Home of Commons. And doubtless such a
change would be bailed by the whole of the re-
actionary party, not only in this country, but else-
where, with triumph and exultation. But without
wasting words in the discussion of the consequences
that would flow from such an event, it may
be summarily dismissed with a laugh. The
thing is impossible. Lord PALMERSTON, whatever
be his faults, has never been suspected of being defi-
cient either in spirit or sagacity. He may have mis-
taken the dispositioo of a foreign court or over-rated
his position among his official colleagues, and thus
fallen into embarrassments and errors. But he has
at all times played high for popular coofidence and
national applause. To win these he gradually severed
himself in his earlier days from the worst sins and
faults of the Tories, to whom he had originally be-
longed ; and for sake of these he has risked in ma.
turer years,
.again and again, the stability of the
Whig administration, choosing rather to stand well
in public opinion than secure in power. Dom any
rational man believe that now, at the end of his
career, Lord PALMERSTON would incur for an hour
the reproach of apostacy, and the still more galling
taunt of having been miserably taken in?
But after all the great difficulty of all remain,—
that of finding any set of measures which the stupid
bigotry of Toryism will support, and which at the
same time the country will endure. Putting aside
altogether the performance in mute pomp of the fu-
neral obsequies of Protection, how, or in what man-
ner, is the QUEEN'S government to be carried oo ? Is
the Income-tax, which Mr. Diemen has deliberately
pronounced to be incorrigible in its essential features,
and which he, at least, cannot therefore undertake
to modify or alter in its shape or form—
is this important tax, so obnoxious to the
throe hundred gentlemen who sit behind the CHAN-
CELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, to be made finally and
for over a permanent portion of our financial sys-
tem? Will any jingle of fine or evasive words
persuade those who hooted PEEL out of office, and
bunted him down in opposition, to pay this annual
tribute of three per cent. upon their incomes to his
memory ? Or, if there be a surplus in the Exche-
quer at the close of the present year, will these
worthies consent that the relief which it may enable I
the Minister to afford should be conferred upon the
industrious millions, instead of being clutched by
the few for their own peculiar benefit? And if,
upon the other hand, in the anxiety to make
some show of keeping his five years' word of pro-
mise to his followers, Mr. DisnAr.o should attempt
some of his oft-threatened jugglery in local or gene-
ral taxation, how many days will he sad his col-
leagues he able to maintain themselves in their pre-
sent position? Tho dilemma is the old and vulgar
000 of the rake in the farce. He has played out
his double part to perfection and triumphantly to
the last scene, in which those whom he haa
rally duped meet face to face, and he is simuitane-
Query by all of them discovered and disowned,

" NOT the slightest blame attache. to anybody."
This is the refrain of almost every accident that is
occasioned by the property of a public body, and not
an individual. When a large steam-boat cuts a small
steam-boat in two on the river, we almost invariably
read—" Not the slightest blame attaches to any-
body." When railway carriages shave the pillars of
a station so clearly, that if a traveller put out his
hand to feel if it rains, it is sure to be amputated
or if he put out his head to nod to a friend, h a
bruins are certain to be dashed out, the government
investigator mildly suggests that " the limit of safety
has been passed ;" leasing the inference that—" Not
the slightest blame attaches to anybody." This has
become so thoroughly and conventionally the running
verse, that even our own reporter, only yesterday, in
describing a fatal accident caused by a tire box and
ash tray detaching themselves from an engine of their
own spontaneous accord, takes up the running verse
from sheer force of imitation and habit, and writes
" no blame attaches to any one."

We are not going—considering that this Inst case
is under investigation—to demonstrate who is to
blame or who ts not to blame in this or that instance;
neither can we in any instance echo the absolution
and remission of the cuckoo-note so constantly
repeated ; but we think this a fitting opportunity
for a word or two on the rationale of what are
irrationally called railway " accidents" in general.
It is not to be denied that the victim of injury,
whether to purse or person, is exceedingly fond of
immediate revenge. Revenge is his first, because—
such
is human weakness—his sweetest impulse. No
gouty 'squire can deny that, when anybody intensi-
Iles his agonies by treading on his toe, the pain is I
promptly assuaged if he can only knock somebody
down. When a drunken cabman runs against your
Brougham and dashes your head through your own
glasses, tho suffering would be insupportable, could
you not enjoy the luxury of giving him in charge of
the police. There have been men who actually en-
joy being severely assaulted; or overturned in cross-
country coaches, because of the golden ointment
which they sec in perspective (in the shape of swing-
ing damages), for their present bruises.
Although this love of vengeance is not an amiable
trait of private character, it is not without public
advantage. It occasions carefulness. Its tendency
is to keep clumsy pedestrians off the toes of gouty
country gentlemen ; it restrains cab-men from gin
by means of a wholesome dread of "getting into
trouble;" it causes coach-masters to look vigilantly
to the efficiency of their axles and into the charac-
ters of their dnvers.

There are, however, injuries—and those the most
wholesale and terrific that modern flesh and bones
are heir to—for which the compensating pleasure of
prompt requital is denied. We mean those occa-
sioned by railway accidents. When, while being
whizzed along at a mile a minute, yon instan-
taneously feel a sensation like the end of the world;
and, on recovering your faculties, perceive that you
have been suddenly converted into a small
ingredient of an appalling melange, consist-
ing of broken carriages and injured pas-
sengers ; and when on discovering you are
miraculously able to stand, and that all the passen-
', gem have been extricated, you look round for a vie-
um upm whom you can pour out the consoling vials
of your wrath—you look round in vain. You know
that the station-master is innocent, and learn, per-
haps, that the pointsman pulled the right levers, and
displayed the proper signals. The guard you com-
miserate; and, as for the driver, he, poor fellow, is
gelatinised under his engine. There is no one with
whom you can charge the police; no one even,whom
it is of any use to scold. Although you fiercely com-
municate to the directors (through ouc of the porters)
your firm intention to sue them for damages under
Lord CAMPBELL'S act, yet, when you find yourself
safely at home (not having an enduring sense of
wrong) your anger cools off, and you determine
not to undergo " the bother " of suing the company.
But, upon one course you are determined—you will
address to it a strong remonstrance.
"To it." That neuter pronoun is the pivot around
which turns the whole mare of coal-administration
that occasions railway accidents. Wherever a vitas-
' ttophe occura there is no one to knock down, no one
to give into custody • and, although there is the
whole body of shareholders to sue—through the
Board of Directors—for damage's, yet who is actually
and immediately to blame ? To whom can effective
remonstrance be addressed? To nobody; for the
official inspector declares, and tho newspapers tell you,
that " not the slightest blame attaches to anybody."
As the justest and most potent complaint cannot
cure the Past, its only utility is necessarily to give
impulse to precaution for the Future ; but no sort of
remonstrance, entreaty, or expostulation can move
the hearts of the directory and executive of a rail-
way : public bodies, having no individuality, have,
as is well known, no souls. Consequently—to sum
up the exact state of the cue—no one is practically
responsible fur Railway Accidents.
The moment men of even the highest responsi-
bility combine themselves into a board, they pus
into the neuter gender. They are as irresponsible as
oysters; and, on the subject under discussion, as
dumb. Although Lord CAMPBELL'S act makes the
company responsible for the consequences of a catas-
trophe after it has happened," the Board" invariably
holds itself utterly irresponsible for the cause. The
public hurl anathema at it; and it passes the com-
plaint in business routine to its executive officers,
who shift the blame from their own shoulders, with
the whine of a school sneak, " Please, sir, it wasn't
I ; it was the guard," or the " pointsman," or the
" engine-driver, " or the "station master." In the
end some (possibly) blameless subordinate is offered
up as a sacrifice to the wrath of the public ; the real
offenders escape, irresponsibility flourishes, and acci-
dents continue.

Let us trace the evil to its root ; we must not say
of railway boards that. like the rest of the neuter
world, they have no conscience to touch, no remorse
to reach. Directors stiuid between two harassing
fires—firstly, the half-yeerly heavy artillery of
dividend-exacting shareholders ; and secondly, the
incessant small shot of the remainder of the public
popping away at them for maximum accom-
modation
and minimum rates and fares. A
false, short-sighted, hand•to-mouth economy is
partly forced upon directors by the first,
which prevents that liberal disbursement of con-
structive and working expenditure which ensures
for the future sound and permanent economy; while
it hinders—often for the want of means—compliance
with the reasonable demands of the public ; and in-
asmuch as multitudes at low fares pay infinitely
better than few passengers at hitch fares—actually
operates to keep down the dividends, which the
shareholders clamour to be kept up. A too great
accumulation of experience has proved that of all the
incidents of expense none are so costly as accidents.
From five to ten thousand
.pounds in herd cash, be-
sides incalculable (because imperceptible) losses occa-
sioned by shocks to the timid, and, consequent re-
straints upon travelling, are drains upon railway
treasuries incurred by casualties which the public
scarcely hear oE It is nonsense to suppose, there-
fore, that Railway Boards are not fully alive to the
necessity of preventing accidents, and of ensuring
public confidence in their lines; but if clamouring
shareholders cripple their means, bow is working
efficiency—the only certain safeguard—to be at-
tained?

But here arises the question—Do railway directors
employ the pecuniary means entrusted to them to
the best advantage? Would, for instance, the Ash_
ford or the Hampton accidents have occurred if—in-
stead of thousands having been spent on the orna-
mentation of the Easton hall, and in dandy stations
along the line, and teas of thousands upon a senseless
competition with other lines—some only of the wasted
money had been applied to widening junction sta-
tions, strengthening fireboxes, and establishing a
thorough examination of engine gear before it
leaves the sheds? Would not some of the squan-
dered cash have been better employed" in
an efficient distribution of power over trunk lines,
so that when an engine has, in its calls at the various
stations, picked up more weight than it can effec-
tually draw--(as was the cause of the disaster at the
Bicester station some months since)—more power
could be promptly supplied ? The answer to these
questions is the fact that the losses sustained by
those so-called "accidents" would have paid fur such
timely precautions ten times over. Hence, in the
end, the proprietors have to pay for the luxuries of
litigation, for palatial waiting rooms, fur fierce com-
petition, and the cxpersive results of accidents in
addition. After immense sums have been squandered
thus, and lives have been lost, the necessary improve-
ments in the working of the traffic are in most cases
made. Railway prevention generally comes in Irish

i._