The Express.
London, England, 1862-07-18 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY *TIMING, JULY 18, 1862.

leave what the law calls theirs to wander at lame
without making the polies its guardians. But we
do, for their own sakes, most deeply regret that
• the " landed property " should have had influence
enough to obtain recoglition. by the Hose of
Commons of a claim so outrageous to every prin-
ciple of justice.
For in this matterthe interestaof the landowners
stand on one aide, and those of the community on
the other. It is mere foolishness to say, as has
been said, out of the House, by some who
show their ignorance of the habits of the animals in
question, that the public at large have any con-
cern with the preservation of game in the sense in
which the words are now used. So far as the sup-
ply of food is concerned, the public would be better
served if game were kept in the enclosures in
which so much of it is brought up, without the
ceremony of turning it out into the fields to be
shot down by noble sportsmen or by ignominious
poachers. Abolish the Game Laws, and the markets
inevery town will be stocked more amply by profes-
sional than they are now by titled poulterers. Grouse,
perhaps, only excepted (and they are not now in
debate), there is no species of British game which
cannot be profitably bred and reared in moderate
yet secure confinement. Pheasants, we all know,
are so brought up by preference ; partridges will
not shift out of their native field if they find food
and shelter in it ; hares grow fatter the less dis-
tance they have to travel, and only the courier,
who wishes them to be in good wind, finds advan-
tage in their being compelled to go far for their
living. The case of salmon is in some respects
different, but in no point does it afford support to
the principle of the Game Laws. Salmon is by
nature as much a salt as a fresh water fish, and
an annual migration to the sea is a necessity of
its existence. For its preservation, while thus pass-
ing through the land of many different owners, the
law enacts certain regulations, but the observance
even of these is committed to water bailiffs, paid,
not out of the general rates, but out of sums
assessed upon those who receive profit from their
employment. But a much closer analogy is to be
found in the case of deer in a park. These
animals, formed by nature for fleetness, are the
shyest of our wild creatures, and certainly would
seem to be the most tempting objects to the
poacher. Yet they thrive, as we all know, in
enclosed parka, and being thus enclosed they are
scarcely the object of illegal pursuit, while the
law, consolidated in the Larceny Act of last year,
has long recognised the difference between the
crime of stealing them from such enclosures and
of hunting them in open ground. So too in both
respects is it in the case of rabbits kept in warrens.
Utterly idle, then, is it to pretend that the supply
of food question is involved in the maintenance
of a system which has for its object only to allow
game to wander at large, and to restrict the office
of slaughtering it for our use to delicately gloved
hands. Utterly defenceless on any ground of
public advantage is the proposal thus to re-enact
the curfew laws, and confine every Englishman and
Englishwoman to their houses between sunset and
eight in the morning, under penalty if found
abroad of being searched by the rural constables
lest they carry concealed instruments for the cap-
ture of game.

But futile and founded on ignorance as are the
pretences that the new coercive measure is of
value for increasing the supply of food, the sug-
gestion that it is required for the repression of
crime is far worse than foolish. The returns
lately produced to the House of Commons show
that poaching is but to a very slight extent the
nursery of criminals which it has been studiously
represented to be. Out of 190,000 persons com-
mitted to gaol during seven years—for we see no
reason in excluding from the total, as Mr. HENLEY
did, those committed in the Metropolitan district
—only 2,000 had been previously committed for
poaching. It is true that some poachers might be
unknown to the police ; but on the other band
there were probably many among the 2,000 who
were burglars first and poachers afterwards, and
who therefore were not poachers before they were
burglars. Yet such proportion, be it greater or
smaller, as truly were lured into the ranks of
crime through the temptations of poaching, are
the sternest witnesses against the laws which
create poaching. It is admitted that but for the
Game Laws, game would not be an object of illegal
pursuit; their supporters say, because there
would be no game ; their opponents say, because
game would be kept for sport in moderate num-
bers, and for food, in enclosed places. In either
way, however, the Game Laws are confessedly the
source of this temptation to crime. Are they
worth it? Is any man's amusement worth another
man's soul f Is the recreation, is the existence
of a whole aristocracy worth conservation at the
cost of making 2,000 hardened criminals every
seven years ? Such are the questions which the
game-preserving majorities in the Lords and Com-
mons would set men pondering, even in the
quietest and happiest of years. But now, when
we have famine in the land, and rich
men will neither give of their superfluity nor will
even yield so far to human weakness as to shut up
from the view and the reach of starving men, with
starving wives and starving infants round the cold
hearthstone of their homes, those half-tamed ani-
mals which live only for sport to the pampered,
but which would be life to those to whom famine
clings—what, in the name of misery, are we to
think of game-preserving now ? For the very
statistics which form the cue of the game-pre.
servers declare, beyond doubt, that theirs is the
contest between redundantease and simple hunger.
The law has remained unaltered for twenty years,
and offences against it remained, till eighteen months
ago, at their average amount, and even now are
not increased in the majority of counties. But
since mills have been closed and factories and
workshops put on half time, there has been in
Cheshire, Lancashire, and Shropshire, most
notably, a rise in the number of offences under
the Game Laws, and of assaults on those employed
in enforcing them. There is no conclusion to be
drawn but that it is want which makes so many
poachers now. Evil is the case of that land,
and perilously threatened are its institutions,
whose rulers, in the hour when want drives men to
desperation, sit in high council on the question
how they may keep their own to themselves,
and by repressive laws and new powers given to
the police make more assured and more exciting
the pleasures in which they propose to spend their
months of idleness.

THIS is, in the horrible slang of the times, a
" sensation " year in town, and among the excite-
ments provided for our foreign and provincial
visitors, is garotting at night in the principal
thoroughfares, which the police authorities, by way
of a picturesque revival of the good old times, are
kind enough to authorise at least by the non-inter
ferenoe of the reputed guardians of the public
safety. To the profound generalizations of those
Parisian chroniclers who are following the foot-
steps of M. Animas; may be added something of
this kind. " London by night is what Hoene-
" low-heath was a hundred years ago. One night
" it is a member of the Parliament robbed and half-

" murdered at one in the morning at the corner of
" Pall.roall, and picked up in a pool of blood' by
1“ some brother legislators. Anothir night it is a
" gentleman who is knocked down ind choked by •
" gang of thieves ins street leading oat of Holborn.
" Another night it is in Piccadilly that a gentleman
" going home is seized by the throat and left
" almost lifeless on the pavement. We warn those
" of our countrymen whomaybeprojecting • voyage
" across the Channel that the British capital is a
" battle-field of raging cabmen by day, and a lair of
" footpads and assassins by night. It is a curious
" instance of the anomalous conservatism of British
" legislation, that while the Parliament is debating
" a project of law for the employment of county
" policemen u gamekeepers to the rich landlords,
" even Members of Parliament cannot walk home,
" after dark, from their public duties in safety. In
" this respect London by night, in 1862, is Old
" London with a vengeance 1 Those stiff and full-
I " fed figures in blue, who are types of what the
English call respectability,' are in some respects
" an admirable body of men ; and there are plenty
" of them wherever they are not wanted. Indeed,
" wicked jokers pretend that their habits are only
" too domestic, and that their principal occupation
" is the pursuit of knows fortunes and of subterm-
" neon suppers in the mansions of the aristocracy.
" All night they are to be met with, occa-
" sionally in groups of two or three, chat-
" ting, smoking, and taking it easy ; and
" it is true they make less noise than the cats."
There would be some trifling exaggeration in such
a picture as this from the pen of a Parisian phi-
losopher; but not much. The case of the hon.
Member for Blackburn, assaulted and robbed in
Waterloo-place, on his way home from the House,
will, it is to be hoped, induce the Hone SWIM-
TART and the Cruse Comituonoirsm of Powas to
provide, if possible, a little more efficiently for the
safety of those humbler public servants whose
misfortune, not fault, it is to walk from one end of
London to another in the dead of night or the
grey of the morning.

LATEST 111 TELLIGENCE.

AMERICA.

EXTRAORDINARY RUMOURS.
The following is posted up this afternoon at
Lloyd's :
" Reported by Glasgow (a.) vitt New York, sth
of July.

" Private news received by letter before sailing,
wbich a correspondent believes to be reliable.
Federal army retreating to Fortress Monroe.
M'Clollan on board gun-boat Galena, after
having proposed conditional surrender, which
others refused, declining any capitulation. Gene-
rals Lee and Jackson in rear of Federal*.
Price, opposite to Lee, refused any terms. Good-
man and Niel (Federals) arrived wounded at
Fortress Munroe. They report WOW and Rey-
nolds in bands of Confederates."

(ay aarrlau Arm razaa Kaairtrio TZLIOIL!H.)
(mom oua OWN coaasszorniarr.)
LIVERPOOL, FRIDAY.
The following is the pith of a private telegram,
per Glasgow steamer, received this morning :
" NEW YORK, Jtax 5.
"Federal army in full retreat from before Rich-
mond. M'Clellan had offered to capitulate, but
General Beauregard had refused anything but un-
conditional surrender. M'Clellan had taken refuge
on board the Galena. Confederate Generals Price
and Lee were between Federal. and Fortress
Munroe. Several Federal generals killed and taken
prisoners."

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(ruse[ ours own oommarosingrr.)
PARIS, THUISDAT EVWHO.
The laconic summary of the news from Mexico
in yesterday's Moniteur has not served to disguise
the fact that the situation of General de Lorencees
corps at Orizaba is, in the words which the Opinion
Nationale does not fear to use at the head of its
columns, " truly difficult." In the general's report
published to-day he says that he expected to be
attacked on June 12 by 11,000 men, under the
Mexican generals Zaragoza and Ortega, and that he
was " prepared to receive them." No doubt
French troops, in an entrenched position such as
Lorencez is described to have at Orizaba, would,
unless they were very unlucky indeed, repulse a
vastly superior numerical force of Mexicans.
But Geueral de Lorenoez admits that his small
army is very much scattered, and that the garrison
of Orizaba may possibly be very small at the moment
of an attempted coup de main. Private letters,
thought by the Opinion Nationale to come from a
good source, speak of 20,000 instead of 11,000 as
the probable force which Juarez was bringing
against Orizaba. There are letters from Orizaba,
dated June 12, showing that the attack had not
been made on the day that Lorenoez expected. It
is hardly likely that the Mexicans will knock their
heads against the French entrenchments, but it is
more than probable that they must have entirely
cut off the communications with Vera Cruz, which,
as proved by the 3foniteur's admission of the loos
of 20 waggons laden with provisions, have never
been easy and regular. An attack upon Vera Cruz,
which these letters speak of as imminent, is
more probable than one upon Orizaba, because at
Vera Cruz the French forces are miserably weak,
and the fortifications from the land side
are inconsiderable. The Mexicans cannot, of course,
expect to hold Vera Cruz long against the naval
force which the French can bring to bear upon it,
but they may make a diversion there extremely
embarrassing to Lorenoez. It ia rumoured that con-
flicting recommendations have been brought by the
last packet from Lorencez and the French minister,
De Saligny. The general renews emphatically the
statement contained in his despatch relating the
defeat of Puebla, that the French government had
been completely taken in by General Almonte as to
the feeling of the country ; and argues that no good
can be done except by lending a hand to the IRieral
party. Saligny, however, still holds out fur the
clericals and reactionists represented by Almonte,
on whose behalf the intervention was con-
ceived. The most pregnant confirmation is given,
by the whole tenor of the latest news, of the
hatred of the Mexican people of Almonte and his
French allies. Almonte got a large sum of money
from the French to buy off Juarez's generals. He
sent some of this money to General Negrete, who
kept it, sent him a letter in return reproaching him
for his treason, and coutinned to serve Juarez.
His attempts to debauch other officers of the re-
publican government met with no better success.
This man Almonte, however, is allowed by the
anomalous and most unjustifiable French protec-
tion which he enjoys to play extraordinary antics.
He has enthroned himself at Vera Cruz as " Pro-
visional President of the Republic," and promul-
gates proclamations and decrees under cover of
that title. He has created the new crime of "dis-
affection," of which he declares that every Mexican
citizen will be deemed to be guilty who refuses
to hold any office which he may assign
to him. Moreover, by a decree dated Orizaba,
June 1, "in the name of God and the law,"
Almonte created 500,000 piastres of paper money,
which he directed should have a forced currency
under the penalty of heavy fines, a large propor-
tion of which were to be given in rewards to
informers. When this impudent proclamation
appeared all the shops, hotels, and cafis in Vera
Cruz were shut up, and a great many of the
inhabitants signed a protest, which they took to
M. Roza the French ConsuL In consequence of
M. Rcze's remonstrances the decree was pro-
visionally suspended and the shops were opened
again, but at the moment of the departure of the
Vera Cruz packet it was rumoured that Almonte
was determined to carry out his decree.
The Pays tells the very improbable story that
Juarez had proposed to General de Lorencez an
armistice for a month, and that the request was
peremptorily refused. This is most unlikely,
General de Loreucez, on his own showing, being
on the defensive in an entrenched position, and it
being obviously the game of the Mexicans to
harass him on all aides, and cut off his communi-
cations.

The Patrie denies, and we must hope on good
grounds, the report of ten French soldiers and two
women having been burnt alive by the Mexicans.
Yesterday evening the fashionable promenaders
on the Boulevard des Italians were startled by the
sound of a pistol, which was tired at a carriage
drawn up at the side of the pavement, by a young
man who ran away and was not captured. The
horse was wounded. No further particulars of this
mysterious affair are known.

The Bourse, after opening quietly at yesterday's
prices, was toted upon during the last quarter of
an hour by a panic which is not yet explained. The
Rente fell 20c. both for cash and account, closing
at 68fr. 25c. and 68fr. 30c. Mobilier fell 3fr. 75c.
The Italian Loan, which has lately been so firm,
was carried away with the stream, and fell 25c.
Railways were, all about 2fr. 500. lower.

A new English church is being built in that part
of the Rue Roqudpine which is prolonged to the
Boulevard idslg:sherbet.

MURDER 07 ANOTHER AMERICAN MISSIONARY.—
Hardly have we reported the capture of the murderers of the
Rev. J. Coifing, before the telegraph brings DOW/ of the
equally brutal assummation of another member of the same
excellent brotherhood.. The Rev. I,7„Yer.ian!,
.an..9rent of

the American Board of Mimions, stationed et: Phillitopoii,
who bad been lately ampropanied to Constantinople y bit
wife, left in the beginning of last week on his return to his
station, and after a short halt at Adrianople had arrived
within three hours (ohm miles) of Phillipopoli, when the
little party was attacked by brigands, and Mr. Ideriesn
brutally murdered. Till yesterda,y the intelligence bad
only reached the capital in brief telegraphic. form, and we
are therefore unable to do more than report that the widow
of the unhappy gentleman finally succeeded in reaching her
desolate home, and the authors of the crime are as yet at
large.- -Leveret Herald, July 9,
A LIFEBOAT STRUCK BY LTOICENING.—ORRBBY,
NEAR GREAT YARMOUTH, JULY 17.—The Csistor lifeboat,
belonging to the National Lifeboat Institution, was yes-
terday lying on the beach ready for immediate service
during this stormy weather. About 2 p.m. we were visited
by a very heavy thiroderstorm, accompanied by terrific
flashes of lightning, which struck the lifeboat. The
electric fluid appear to have entered at the misen-
mast-head and proceeded downwards to the iron keel—
no injury is done to the boat. The mmt, 25 fest
long, appears as if it burst from head to heel, and •
long splinter driven out of it. Two men, Robert George,
age about 73, and James Webster, about 36, sad also two
boys, Wickersoo and Goulder, between 5 and 6 years old,
were taking shelter under the bow of the boat from a very
heavy shower of rain and bail, and were rendered insensible
for • short time. Mr. Palmer, of Yarmoutbotod Dr. Wood-
man, of Ormsby, were shortly in attendance, and under
their care the sufferers are likely to do well. George's
injuries are io the leg and foot, which are
scorched in several places ; this morning be is able
to leave his bed. Webster's arm is lacerated, and the
sleeve of his coat was torn to some extent. He is well
enough to visit Yarmouth this morning. The boys seemed
stunned more than burt. Some hair no the top of Wicker.
son's head was singed, and has cap driven off. This valuable
lifeboat has during the past winter and spring rendered on
two different 00011SIODS some of the moat important services
ever performed by a lifeboat to suffering humanity, as the
stews of sixteen men balosiging to the brig Sider*, of Whit-
by, and schooner Trial, of Poole, can testify.

E. IL IL D. 1.0. L L. 1 L
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A -BIWOMIIi 60.61 67 51 &S.W. 6 5 Sr 0.00
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lulu 81.06 61 SS W.S.W. 6 Or 0.16 2
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freak to madame', Mt.. -
showery.
B.W .to N.W., treat IRELAND. W.R.W. to N.N.W.
to moderate, loose Itsbt to fresh.
Movers.
As nest above. W. tIcerRAL Westerly, moderate.
Similar to above. B.W.IrsoLAND. R.W. to N.W., took-

rate, One
8.8. W. to W.N.W., 8. E. LWGLAJD. As next &bore.
fresh to moderate,
merrily AIM
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ahowera.