The Express.
London, England, 1852-06-08 00:00:00

TUItIEL

The following trot. her brew joint to the member,
of the diploma& corps in Consinalino*
The forespen she exercise Winans at its In this
capital have lately painnet. Is the Tali* esi ether satire
leassign beds cod plushists WM*. ad assigns•
int tlis snessisn. Oen posgssasp sae act Is be We.
rated, espeatill wily by yield liner that wawa
are poring* is fallow the aen at primal wafts
us. It is, thessibre, es preisly ftblides to prim la the
satire leagues' may been sr penshlets sot seastiosed by
the 'anent soversasat, ar se pin snit is laa•
wittiest the pensions. et Ibe Inning Piaegistriai
boas ebtaissi.

The issue al this order his less caossicised by the
PabWads% principally by Brian sad Austrian
spots. sod with an obvious wpm% at jamphlets
is whisk tha deepest ads= aro ayst to depict
the provost tionclities al the °items aspire.

ROYAL COLLIIOII OP CHI 101111tY.—T110 eighth an.
seal general meeting of the above imealtutlatt was old, yes-
terday, in the 140/story of the milers, Oxford street ;
&elude Oliveira, Esq., F.A.S., In the chair. The report
showed that the amber of students at the college fell off
last year, in soesequence, so it is presumed, of the peculiar
ezeitenssete of 1861. The number entered for ths present
session is meth larger. It is proposed to erect a luge leo-
tem hall at the sellers. The veleta( rendered its best
Raab to Dr. MAIM for his services, and voted him the
sem of lOW. to mist him la preseettiog his experiments on
alkalies substation. Tles halasetesheet showed an income
of LIM. Is. td., Including WU. b. students' foes, and the
expenditure wsd 1,0771. b. Id., Leaving a balance in heed
of 110 i 13,. Id. Their delis were 4031. 154. 3d. On the

reeontrnendatton of Sir James Clark, Il.ilTilessre.
bread and Allsopp, the brewers were sleeted members of
the and the several °deers were re eleeted, and •
vote of thanks Meta( paned to his Royal algluises Prince
Albert as patron. and thanks harts,' also been gins to R.
B. Cabbell, Esq., lb* treasurer, and to the @Wilma, the
business tersnastod.

JUNE 8; 1R52

Vit Orpreoo.

TO CORRUPONDINTIL

Mr of lidialon al ; ilmiliap— rese. -4ea—oagoi ; ‘..tb• enoia grallgri
0 Ossetia." Is published every Tuesday sad Friday Wat 4 la tints
ke pal
UteartgemeNto Waded hie 011te CZINSIN.Lasise amine paper,
wort be et Hs Oise. lii. acsaverlauaget, by Tan Vele* ea the
day et obligation.

PllOll WATNR AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tose Wv—yeritl.l Y. 15..........AiW lb. Ilia.
I -aloesoir--Mersiag, 7*. ka......-...akonses. fI. Us.

LONDON, TU13811,47; JUNE 8.

THE address issued to the electors of Bucks by the
great political conjuror of the day contains nothing
new except a theory of rent, which is utterly
wrong. Rent, sooording to our new economist, is " a
return for the capital invested in the improvement of
laud." Rent is nothing of the sort ; it is the surplus pro-
dupe of land after payment of three things—the oust of
production—the maintenance of the cultivator and
his family—and of the interest on his capital. And for
I the landowner to take from the tenant any part of the
return et the capital which the tenant has invested,
until the latter is fairly remunerated for its outlay
and secured in its ultimate return, is not rent—bet
something ve7 like robbery. But thus it is with
the protectionists : rent with them is a certain sum,
and whatever more they can get; and by confusing
the theory of its true nature, the more they are likely
to get. Therefore the great protectionist dealer
in legerdemain propounds tor landowning use a canon
under which confiscation of tenants' capital might be
carried on wholesale.

Rent, if we are to believe him, is a fixed quantity
which thelandownersare en titled to receive half-yearly,
as the fundholders receive dividends. That fixed
quantity has, he alleges, been diminished by five
millions sterling since our ports were open ; and to
that extent injustice, he declares, has been done to
the landowners. To restore to them the five millions
a year is the problem he has proposed for solution to
the country. And, in like manner, he deals with the
"eager producing industry." Its former receipts
were not the profits of a manufacture, but rent; and
the increasing cost of production having for a time
nearly extinguished that rent, it also, according to
the CHANCELLoit of the ExcutQues, must be restored
by some ?wow focus legislation.
Why, what nonsense and folly all this is!
What has parliament-to do with rent? How can
legislation restore rent except by taxing the general
community, directly and avowedly by means of corn
and sugar laws, or indirectly and treacherously by
shifting the incidence of special burthens ? And
why, if capital has been improperly invested in
land unworthy of cultivation for the purposes of rent
—in land which will not, except by artificial stimu-
lants, yield rent—are the people of this country to
pay out of their flesh and bones "a return for the
capital" so ill invested?
" Rent—Rent—Rent " (as Lord BritoN sang at
the time) was the object of the corn-law of 1815.
Aid Rent—rent—rent "—is the object Mr. Dts-
ltse.l.l avows he has in view in 1852, after that
law has been repealed six years. This, then, is the
point never to be lost sight of at the general election
—for the issue really taken by the MANcELLOR of
the ExcßeQuza is, whether or not the community
generally should restore to landowners the five
millicou of rent which he says they have lost.
In this address there is not a syllable about the
general condition of the country. It is not pretended
that the country has suffered, though rents have fallen
five millions. Note word is there about the tenant
farmers or their lames. It is not alleged that a re-
duction of rent to that extent has harmed them. Not
an allusion is made to the plight of the labourer. It
is not asserted that a diminution of the demand for
work, and of wages for work, has followed this loss
of rent. There is no sympathy expressed for any
class or section; no comprehensive estimate of the
general state of the community. Nothing of that
sort is expressed. Rents have fallen; rents must be
raised ; that is the proposition to be worked out by
the DEIST cabinet—that is its " miaaion."
Now, let us grant for a moment the accuracy of
the statement that rents have fallen to the extent of
Ike millions sterling. The fall has been caused by a
repeal of the laws dishonestly enacted to keep rents
up. Well, the consequence of their abrogation has
been a burst of prosperity quite unparalleled; a
great and rapid increase of capital; a demand for
labour so great that a scarcity of the better sort is
to be apprehended; wages good; work abundant;
food plentiful; moral habits improving; schools
filling, and content universal. If these have—ss
who can deny they have—been the results of re-
pealing the rent-supporting laws, are not be-
nefits so great cheaply purchased at a loss of five
millions of rent? And what must have been
the injustice, the cruelty and the immorality
of laws which, to put five millions of rent into the
pockets of landlords, stood between the country and
this improvement for more than thirty years. In
oar present enjoyment we are apt to forget that
view of the matter. It is not wise in Mr. Dreaseu
to provoke our recollection of what we suffered and
oudored in giving those five millions to the land-
owners. If justice was really done, the landlords
might to pay back to the people the five millions a
Tzar they have filched for the last thirty years—
.: one hundred and fifty millions sterling. An equi-
table adjustment would require the re-payment of
that amount already taken by the landlords under
the food-tax from the pockets of the people.
But are rents now five millions less than they
were in 1846 P We do not believe it; and the
looms-tax returns are no adequate proof that the
reduction is at present so grad.
It is notorious that before the corn-law was re-
pealed rents reserved in leases were in many parts
of the country higher than the amounts actually
received; but that bad practice the repeal has term-
need. Then the year 1861 was a year of agricul-
tural panic, from which farmers and landowners are
now fast recovering. Rents are not now falling ; in
several parts of England and Scotland they are, on
the contrary, rising. The value of land is increas-
ing; and it was only last week that an estate in
Northumberland was sold for • earn equal to 38
years purchase of the rent paid ; and there was no
allegation that the rent was not just as much as the
laid was worth.
Then, again, the conjuror, in stating the Ices of
mat at Ave millions sterling, and referring to what
helms been " oMcially " told about the income-tax as
pyoof tithe loss to that extent, omits to inform the
Bucks electors that the schedule whence the figures
are taken includes the rent of all the house property
and non-agrieulairal land in the island as well as all
the land devoted to wheat culture. More important
still, he fbegsb to tell them the sum total on which
the alleged occurs. Now the sum total was no
lass than 104024,7221. So that, at most, the loss of
not t on free-trade is (wily five per cent.
cm the aggregate of rents in Great Britain, a
Liss the emmitry may well sustain in the presence
of other Nis so allerilioat.
Bat ham the landowners of Grad Britain had no
sempsnialles for their loss? To road Mr. DisipAßLee
address it might be supposed that whilst subjecting
them to ths 'Moral laws of rent, they had received
no advantage from the operation of the natural laws
of supply and demand. He can see them only u be-
bulging to the producing class. But surely they are
consumers as well P They and their families
and large establishments eat and drink and require
clothing as well as humbler people. And if as pro-
ducers they have lost five per cent. of their rents,
who can deny that as consumers their 051.
will now go much birth.: than their 1001. before
1845? Talk of compensation—why already they
have had compensation and much more—they have
gained largely by the abrogation of the very law
against the repeal of which they ignorantly and most
selfishly complained.
They are better off now in every particular than
they were is 1845; they can borrow money on
mortgage (as Lotd DeasT can tell them) at 31 per
cent. ; they can purchase provisions full 16 per cent.
cheaper; they can keep their establishments, their
horses, their hound', their everything cheaper;
the poor-rates are lower, the county-rates are
less; the state has lent and is lending them large
sums at easy. rates for drainage. The men are
flourishing with the community generally : but so
inveterate are their prejudices and their selfishness,
that they will persist in their attempt to eat out of
other people's pans.
The claim for a readjustment of taxation by way
of compensation for loss of rent einnot, therefore, for
an instant be tolerated. Anydiminatien of rent has
been only a measure of strict justice, and foe it the

rentowner has been fully compensated. To go I
further, and to shift the incidence of local burthens
under the pretence of compensation, would be to
put money in the landowner'. pockets by way of
rent, after he had, se a member of the general com-
munity, had the full advantage of low pricer conse-
quent on rent being left to regulate itself. By such
moans they would have it in malt as well as iu meal.
A new renewal of taxation on sound principles
and for honest purposes would be a noble task tor
any ministry to enter on. But how wretchedly sec-
tarian is the spirit in which Mr. DISRAELI regards
the revision! Corn, sugar, shipping are all he can
see in the natter. Far different was Sir Roma
Plum's mission, when he entered on the task of re-
vising the tariff. " I will know no interest but that
of the consumer," was hie declaration; and nobly
and faithfully he adhered to it. Not so Lord DERBY
and the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER; they
would revolutionise our financial system to crib a
couple of millions of rent from the people; to foist
up the ruined agriculture of the West Indies; and
to put monty in the pockets of the shipowners, whose
prosperity I/ provokingly reviving whilst they are
mourning its decadence.
When Mr. Dinasett shall rise to the height of
the great argument for the revision and reduction
of taxation by renouncing and disclaiming the prin-
ciples of protection and the claims of compensation
—then he will be able to look for the assistance and
co-operation of the party who desire only the wel-
fare of the country. But until then they will receive
his advances in that direction with as much suspicion
as they do his claims to exclusive protestant ism—
with disdain and contempt.