The Express.
London, England, 1855-06-18 00:00:00

TO OUR READERS•

Tun Newspaper Stamp Abolition Aet has received
the Royal Assent. sod will oene into operation on 1
the 30th inst. The price of the Express (lu:stamped)
will be then :educed to 2d.
Consequent upon the change, this Paper will re-
ceive the full benefit of the arrangements of the
Daily News, and will, from its own resources, seek
to be distinguished as unequalled among Evening
Papers.
It will be published in time for the afternoon
trains, and can be supplied to any distance within 70
miles of London by an early hour in the evening.

bay think they may with hapnaity raise a shout
when wanton insult is dined to a sea who has con-
tributed more in his time to the isatrnetion and le-
proyement of governors as well as governed thaL
I their whole tribe put together P It is hi ply to thkti
credit of Mr. LABOUCEUS, by w the cappmMt
meet in gateau was Dade, the *should not itel I
defend it as specifically unotiessable, bat that ine!
Amid have emphatically declared the satisfaction b.
I
continued to feel at having had it in his power to
recognise the claims of one so distinguished's& writer.'
But it may be, perhaps, as well to state shortly the
true history of this curiously misrepresented ease.
The statistical department of the Board of Trade was
originally formed under the direction of Mr. DEACON
Hume, and places( under the superintendence of the
late Mr. PORTE& Sir B. NOSTINOTE is lavish tibia
praise of the constitution and the working of the do-
patment so formed ; but he forgets, in his eagerems
to render the civil service a close and exclusive pi.
feesion, to state that Mr. Pones was himself refil-
-1 sally engaged in mercantile pursuits, and that he wee
1 token from them to aid in the conduct of an execs-
1, tire department. But this, it will perhaps he aside
was done by the Whigs. There is
I curious incident in the History of the Board of
Inds under Peelite management, which it is
I still more edifying to find that the hon. hareset
has forgotten. From being private secretary to Mr.
GLADSTONE, he was himself promoted to be assistant.
secretary in the Board of Trade, an office whir&
began and ended with his, for upon his retirement it
was found to be superfluous, and was consequently
abolished. We do not assert that during his
sojourn is the department, Sir S. NORTHCOTE may
not have contrived to find useful and honourable
occupation; but we submit that under the cireum.
stances. be is about the last man who ought to raise
a cry of prejadiu against what he is pleased to term
" strangers • being imported into a particular branch
of the service. We are far from wishing to under-
value the results of Mr. PORTER'S labours as a stela-
titian. Noe do we think it necessary to argue
that other and higher posts might have been
more appropriately offered to a man of the diversi-
fied experience and information of Mr. FONSLANQUE.
But common justice requires, es the question has
been raised, that a judgment should be expressed
upon the comparative merits of the official works'
formerly published by the Board of Trade, and those',
of more recent date. There is not, we believe, a
man who hes had frequent occasion to consult, for 1
purposes of study, the undigested compilations of ten
years ago, relative to trade and navigation, and the
admirable digests lately issued by the statistioal de-
partment, who will hesitate as to which deserve
the preference. Mr. Fonnunotre would be the
lest mu, we are satisfied, who would seek to appro-
priate the undivided credit of the works last mo-
tioned. much of which is unquestionably due to Me.
VALET and other gentlemen who act under him. Bat,
when invidious comparisons are rashly and
recklessly instituted, the public will insist
on seeing both &idea, and happily, in this
instance, the individual assailed is not likely
to be injured by full inquiry. We frankly
own, indeed, that Mr. FONBLANQUE is open to
two great charges. He is not connected with the
aristocracy, and he has often let the world hear hiss
laugh at the pedantry and pretensions of Puseyite
and halite politicians. In mitigation of the former
offence we have nothing to say. We have no doubt
that had he been a man of family, like the Hoe.
FRANCIS LawLET for example, he would have bees
deemed qualified by right divine for any executive
office in the State; he might have been able to point
to nothing previously done worth mentioning as a
warrant of his capacity or as a claim of merit; but
if his father hadbeen a peer, or if he himself happened
to be member foe a rotten borough, he might readily
have secured at six and twenty something very
different in tank and profit from the post
which is now grudged to him. As to the latter
mime, that of exercising the right of private judg-
ment in a public way, and of chastising the follies
sad errors of public men, in the best English, with
the keenest wit, we confess our inability to say more
within the bounds of temper and forbearance than
vs have already done.—Doily News.

THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT AND ITS

RESULTS.

Tax Commission appointed last year to

into the working of the Encumbered ideates Act in
Ireland has honed a Report which contains some in-
teresting fasts, and some suggestions of no little im-
portance. We shall glance at thee separately.
•__ ' -

The results of the experiment, begun in 1849, of
selling laud subject to incumbrances with the novel
recommendation of what is called a parliamentary
title, may be thus summed up. In the course of some-
what above five years, there have been sold under
decrees of the tribunal specially constituted to admi-
nister the act, 565,000 acres of land. This
gross acreage comprises much that is of
inferior quality, and a considerable portion
that falls under the designation of mountain
and unreolaien' ed bog. This is what might have been
anticipated, when it is remembered that the remoter
and lees fertile districts were those on which the
calamities of 1847 fell with the moat crushing weight,
and that it was with estates in the less perfectly cul-
tivated portions of the country that the new jurisdic-
tion wee at first chiefly called upon to deal When,
therefore, we learn that these 555,000 acres of all
desoriptkma realised in the aggregate a sum of
15,239,5704, we can entertain no reasonable doubt
that in the main a fair and adequate price has been
obtained in the compulsory market thus instituted.
Great sacrifices were unquestionably made at the
outset, owing principally to the unparalleled deprecia-
tion in 1849 of agricultural property and enterprise in
Ireland. But with the disappearance of blight, and the
diminution ot peasant-pauperism, there arose a demand

for the produce in which Ireland has always been most
proliflthsuch as has not been known during the present
generation ; and,without assuming that the high prices
of last season and of the present are likely to be perma-
nently sustained, we are justified in believing that we
shall not again see the selling value of land fall in
Ireland below the average indicated by the figures
above cited. That great good, economical, social,
and political, will be insured by the continuance
of the system thus begun, nobody, we presume, is
disposed to question. At the same time it is clear
from a candid examination of the foots bakes us, that
ideas, in many respects erroneous, have become preva-
lent regarding the transfer of landed property
is the sister island. A useful and equitable
method of bringing about a change of proprietors
is in program ; bat the rate of that progress has ob-
viously been absurdly exaggerated. What say the
figures? When we read that 111,000 sores of all
kinds, arable, upland, and waste, have been sold in
each of the last Ave years, it seems a great deal ;
bat we must recollect what proportion this extent of
' acreage bears to that of the entire country. The
latter may in round numbers be stated at 20,000,000 ;
so that making allowance for some diminution in
!stare years of the quantity brought into the eta-
. paling market, yeast hardly reckon upon more than
a two-hundredth part of the entire superlicies of the
soil changing hands annually in the time to cone.