The Express.
London, England, 1849-09-03 00:00:00

CU ergirtfOS.

OUTGOING MAILS.
The mails far Madeira, the Brazils, and Buenos Ayres,
will be made up tmmorrow ev.ning.
The mails for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and
Oibraltsr, will be made up en the morning of Sept. 7.
The mails for British North America end the United
States will be made up on the evening m Sept. 7.
The mails, via Marseilles, to the Mediterranean, Egypt.
Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, acc., will be made up on
the evening of Sept. 7.
The West India Mal, excluding Bermude, Havanna,
Nan, Ilundurea, New Orleans, and Mexico, and including
those for Madeira, St. Jean-de-Nicaragua, New Granada.
Chili, and Peru, will be made up on the emnicg of Sept. 17.
The mails for Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Ceylon, India, and Chine, via Southampton, will
be made up on the morning of Sept. 20.

MOB WATEE AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Twin Div —Minsing, k
St
. Attention, 2b Urn.
T.eneatnr—llennag, Th. lan. Aftetnnon, 11.

LONDON, MONDAY, SEPT. 3.

Tim most careless observer cannot pass through
any extensive rural district of England without re-
marking the great variations which exist between
different farms and the inferior cultivation of a
majority of them. And it has been somewhat hastily
concluded from each surface views that English
farmers are inert and incapable. But that is a mistake.
English agriculture, it is true, has yet many advances
to make before it can take rank with the other indus-
trious arts of the nation ; but when the actual posi-
tion of the farmers is understood, the wonder is that
so much in the way of agricultural improvement has
been done, not that so much remains uneffected. It
is a fact that the great majority of farming tenants in
England lice in a state of 'literal though modified
sertdom. Their condition is analogous, and far more
similar than generally supposed, to the serf tenants ef
the middle ages after they had acquired certain cus-
tomary privileges.
From various causes most of the tenants of the
larger English estates occupy their farms only from
year to year, and may be at any time dispossessed
after six months' notice. That fact will sufficiently
account foe any want of enterprise which may be
noticed among farmers, but the actual relations of
landlord and tenant are far more complicated than,
according to rerict legel rights, they would appear to
be. Prudence would dictate to the yearly tenant not
to lay out more capital on his farm than he can get
back in the year's crop ; and though the uncertainty
of his tenure does prevent much profitable outlay, yet
there are few farmers who, if dispossessed without
two or three years' notice, would not leave in the land
much of their own capital. This places them con-
stantly at their landlord's mercy, and renders them
socially and politically his servile dependents.
But the farmers, as a body, do not wear their
chains contentedly, for their pecuniary interests and
feelings of self-respect alike make them eager for
emancipation. Hence the demand for legalised
tenant right which is now working so powerfully be-
neath the surface of rural society, and must eventually
effect immense changes in the teletive positions of
landlords and tenants.
We have no doubt that the end will be to give the
tenants complete, though temporary, possession of
their farms, and to limit the landlord's interest strictly
to that of a receiver of rent. And such would be the
most beneficial state of things for both parties, for of
what use is land to a man who does not require to
occupy it himself, except as a source of income ?—and
, land will always produce the best money income
whoa let to a tenant up3ll the most unrestricted terms.
It is notorious that the restrictions and qualifications
which are now almost universally imposed by land-
lords on their tenants are maintained at the cost of
from one fourth to one third of the fair yearly value
of the land. And whether the legislature do or do
not grant a legel right to tenants to be paid for " un-
exhausted improvements," it is plain from the way
in which the subject is now being discussed, the pre-
s-ut semi-feudal relaticn between landlords and
tenants cannot lung be continued.
One of the moats markable discussions of this question
which has come under our notice is that at one of the
last meetings of the Burton-on-Trent Farmers' Club,
where Mr. CHAWNER, the president of the club, de-
livered a lecture on tenant-right and agricultural
customs. After stating the effect of the evidence
given before the select committee on " agricultural
customs," ho thus defined the farmers' claim
—" By the t• em unexhausted improvements I
mean that portion of the tenant's property which
he must of necessity leave in the land fur the
benefit of the owner or the incoming tenant ;" and
he considered that such claim might be enforced in
each case by a compulsory arbitration. Nor is there
any real difficulty in the way of such enact-
ments but the unwillingness of a legislature
wherein landowners are dominant to pass
a law which would tend to the emancipation ef their
tenantrv. This is strongly Mt by tenants and
formed the main topic at the meeting we refer to.
Nor is this feeling confined to tenant farmers. At the
same meeting Mr. DANIEL, a chancery barrister, said
he " had often felt astonished at the difference in the
law as to the rights in respect to improvements made
by tenant-traders and tenant-farmers. The law
favoured trade and commerce, but left the interests of
those engaged in cultivating land to take care of
themselves, and the result had been that the tenants
had been very much neglected. The farmer was
as much a manufacturer as the cotton-spinner.
Corn and beef could only be produced
by the skilful application of capital and
labour, and were as much a manufacture as a table-
cloth or any like article. The right of the tenant
farmer to compensation was so clear that it could not
much longer be withheld, and he had often thought
that it would have been conceded long ago if farming
had been cossidered a trade. The consequence of its
not being so considered had been that farmers were'
not subject to the bankrupt laws. This, which had
_ been thought a favourable exemption, he believed
had been prejudicial to the interests of farmers as a
class : ho thought that if their estates bad been liable
to be administered in bankruptcy, their creditors, who
probably bad supplied the very materials by
means of which improvements had been made,
would have succeeded in establishing against the land-
lord the tenant's claim."

This is the key to the whole question ; fanning has
not been deemed a trade, butthe occupation of a farm
hasbeen regarded sea favour bestowed by a patron upon
his dependent, and of course terms altogether capricious
have been imposed and submitted to. Yet, insensibly
to both parties the commercial principle has constantly
encrcached on the feudal foundation of farming con-
tracts, and higher rents have been obtained, and
better cultivation adopted than could consist with a
strict adherenceto the theoretical plan of landlord ma-
nagement. Hence the present anomalous state of the
relation of landlord and tenant farmer. If landowners
were to act to any considerable extent upon the legal
powers they possess over their yearly tenants, their
rents would tall considerably, while if tenants did not
manage their land as though they were sure of
a longer period of possession than a year,
England would not be half so well cultivated as it is
at present. It is plain the actual state of things can-
not continue, and we have no doubt that tenants will
gradually so act upon landowners as to induce them
to grant leases. Thus, at the Burton meeting, Mr.
GRELTON, a farmer, paid. " That a long leave would
form the best tenant-right, and that where improve-
ments were needed no mode of tenant-right was so
good as that which left to the tenant the risk of the
unskilful, and the reward of the skilful application of
his capital."
The evil of the existing system is, that full
liberty and perfect security for the application of
capital to land are not possessed by English farmers,
and it wiil be only by identifying themselves with
the rest of the industrious middle classes, that they
will be able to improve their position. Low prices of
agricultural produce, though temporarily incon-
venient to farmers, will ultimately berefit them, for
the present rents cannot be maintained unless the
land is well farmed, and to farm well the English
farmers must be relieved from the burdens of land-
lordism.

A REWARD or 1001. has been ordered to be offered
for the apprehension of Daniel Devon port, who fired two
pistol shwa ont of a revolver at James Reed, a trustable of
Werwiek.bire, who was escorting him lo prison. What
makes the crime of the culprit worse is the fact that Reed
had allowed him the indulgence of calling at his own house
to precure some things on his way to pruon, which enabled
him to obtain the pistol with which he perpetrated the
cowardly and unprovoked attack. The constable lies in a
dangerous state from the two wounds inflicted upon him.—
Observer.