The Express.
London, England, 1852-12-16 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER le,

Tee protracted discussion on the first proposition
of the Budget will, it is probable, terminate to-night.
Every day's delay has added new strength to the
opposition which that ill•starred project has encoun.
tered, and has more and more alienated men of
sagacity and independence from a disreputabla came.
Party feelings may deter some from openly voting
in condemnation of the Ministerial scheme; and
it is nut impossible that some names will
be missing from the lists of " ayes " and
" noes, " w hose absence may more easily he
regretted than explained. But the true result will
be denoted, not by a nominal preponderance of num-
bers, but by the worth and might set in the scale of
opposition against the helplessness and hopelessness
that characterise the sopporters of Government.
Ministers have played out their game of shuffling
and evasion to the last; and whether the tables are
overturned, and the gamesters compelled to vanish
hastily from the scene or not, the stakes are lost and
their credit gone.
Whatever may be the numbers on the
Jinn, and its piuhable effiet on the fate of partied,
the result of the debate now approaching a conclu-
sion is clear. We shall hear no more of an aug-
mented or extended House Tux, imposed not for the
purpose of revenue, but of landlord compensation.
The feeling of the country has been pronounced un-
mistakably on the subject, aid the people's will is 110 W
to be shown by the votes of their representative,, at
'it already has been through the medium of public
meetings in every large town, and by the voice of
the press. The people will not be juggled into acqui-
escence in any scheme such as that pro.
posed by Mr. DISRAELI. In vain have thi•
worst motives been appealed to. On the
one hand the cupidity of the rich, on the
other the appetite for sensual gratification, has Men
held forth to the poor. We have had open appeais
from the sobriety of the nation to its drunkenness,
and from the patience of industry to the prodigality
of rank and privilege,—but all to no purpose. Time
was when such appeals might sot have been altogether
in vain. The country has happily, however, outgrown
its susceptibility to mean excitements and transient
considerations. The insolent supposition that it
oould be bribed by a farthing a pot in its beer has
been summarily set at rest. The reckless and un-
principled party who have usurped and burlesqued
the functions of government for the last
nine months, imagined that they should
carry a Budget, as they have carried seats for
small boroughs, by a wholesale system of treating.
The reductions of duty on malt and tea were
bluntly offered as the considerations for the sake of
which landlordism was to be suffered to have its
way, and allowed to re-impose its taxes on the intel-
ligent and industrious masses of the community.
But the project has met with a resistance which its
authors never dreamt of.

An analysis of the division now impending will
unerringly demonstrate the truth we have just
stated. On the one side will be found ranged the
buyers and brokers of small borough scats and the
self-nominated members for uncontested counties.
On the other hand will be found the representa-
tives of all that is most powerful and influen-
tial in the great cities, the thriving towns,
and the more intelligent and diversified of
the agricultural districts. It will be the protest
of the worth, the power, and the intellect of the
nation against the prejudice of birth and the
stupidity of ignorance. It will be the proof and pledge
of political and social progress as opposed to the
fanatical and fraudulent attempt at financial and fiscal
reaction. The members for l.ondon and Edinburgh,
Southampton and Birmingham, Bristol and Manches-
ter, Glasgow and Leeds, Wolverhampton and Hull,
Sheffield and Newcastle, sustained by the delegated
voices of Middlesex and the West Riding, Wiltshire
and Cumberland, Lancashire and Cork, will, doubtless,
be recorded against the principle of compensation. It
will be the same verdict that condemned Protection and
rendered its maintenance no longer possible in 1546,
though then, as now, scores of dumb representatives
of nameless and notelesa places were arrayed in un-
availing resistance to the true expression
of the national will. Had Sir Boum PLR
affected to rely upon a merely numerical majority he
need not have surrendered the keys of free importa-
tion, er the seals of office. But he recognised and
respected the difference between real representation
and its counterfeit. He knew that when the great
constituencies had pronounced in favour of uncondi-
tional Free Trade, no minister could long venture to
withhold it; and, with the sagacity of a jest
and wise man, he resolved to concede fully and freely
what he saw that the nation had mado up its mind
to refuse if "addled with dishonest and extortionate
conditions. Sir Roemer PEEL knew well that com-
pensation to the owners of the soil for the surrender
of that which they no longer were able to hold, could
only end in aggravated disappointment and humilia-
tion. He told them plainly, that to tamper with
taxation in the hope of eking out an equivalent for
the loss of their food monopoly, would prove to be
o delusion, a mockery, and a snare. They
scoffed
at his counsels; they deposed him with
insult, and set up a juggler in his stead.
And what is now the final issue of their blind
credulity and dull ingratitude ? Has not every word
of Pan's come true ? Have they not been duped and
fooled by their conjuror in chief as no men were
ever duped or fooled before ? Have they not wasted
six years of the nation's life in a hateful and idle
struggle to regain Protection, or secure some species
of equivalent for it ; and have they not now been
compelled meekly to listen to the open repudiation
of the one, while they must now despairingly submit
to the extinction of all hopes of the other.
Parliament—a Parliament summoned by a landed
Cabinet, and packed unscrupulously to do its bidding
—Parliament has not sat above a month, and already
the last shadow of Protection has vanished, and
every gleam of compensation has disappeared. So
miserable and so mean an exhibition the balls of
Westminster have never witnessed. Never have the
annals of party blushed with the record of tergiver-
sation so reckless, or acts of self-abnegation BO !mot-
less and so base. A great party, numbering in its
ranks the degenerate descendants of halt the nobles
of the realm, and many men of opulence and private
worth, ,have submitteel to sit by, and hear every
principle by which they were bound together im-
pudently renounced on their behalf by one whom
in private they do not even pretend to trust or lore.
And they have done so on the shabby and the shame-
ful plea, that it was the only chance remaining
whereby they might outwit their adversaries and
clutch some sort of compensation. What would they
give for their chance of compensation now? Who.
ever is minister when Parliament re-assembles after
the recess, his obvious task must be to steer a course
Y wide as passible from the treacherous shallows is
which the last plank of l'rotection has gone down.

A SUCCESSFI'L SWINDLE.—A rather successful
"do" was practised upon a respectable shin-budding tiro
in Glasgow • few days ago. The company had a shin for
sale, and one of their number was waited upon by • ; rroa
of gentlemanly appesrsuce, who described himself as r
presenting a newlpformed campany in London, and wish"'
to be informed of the price sought for the vessel. On bruit
informed that it was at the rate of 181. per ton, coroplefo.llo
toot • couple of hours to consider of it, and at the esnay
of that time returned and completed the negotta-
tion, ordering at the same time too others of the snot
class and size, and sending a tug to have the ship takes
round the Broosnielow. Ile then, being a stronger
in town, requested to be recommended to an hotel, intend-
ing to wait till some more of the partners came down is
couple of days, and the shipbuilder hospitably invited his
to take up his quarters at his house till that time. On the
same protect 201. was subsequently borrowed to purchsos
some articles for the vessel ; and to complete the swindle
a dinner for live was ordered at one of the George square
hotels for the expected party from London. On al
strength of this the shipbuilder and his friend partook
an excellent luncheon at the same place in the fort floc.
after which the latter, leaving his companion at the hotel
enjoying himself, went up to the railway station to
his friends, and vanished, leaving not a wreck bekaul
himself or the 201.—Ureenock Advertiser.