The Express.
London, England, 1851-07-17 00:00:00

EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 17, 1851.

auccansfid 1 the (Anna)
'ted; sad great injury
our yarn-apinners7
and exported from
mouth of' Scotland
It eras in 1848,

,264,000 cwts. ; iii

never was so busy
in both spinning and weaving the flax fibre. Ger-
many and Belgium have supplanted France as a
customer; and from their own official returns we
gaUter that the French have crippled their export
linen trade by taxing the supply we were accustomed
to yield them of yarn.

THE Secretary of State for the Colonies has had
a narrow escape of it. The Earl of DERBY'S motion
relative to the affairs of the Cape was only negatived
by a majority of six in a house of 142. That the
vote should have run so close is not surprising : on
both sides the voters were struggling between con-
flicting motives. The supporters of the Earl of
DERBY were divided between their eagerness to deal
a blow to the whig minister and their reluctance to
abet the cause of self-government and free represen-
tative institutions in the colonies ; and it is but cha-
rity' to suppose that the whig or liberal peers were
in like manner divided between their disinclination
to give a victory to the protectionist tories and their
dislike of the despotic doings at the Cape.
Perhaps the most curious feature of the whole
affair was the contrast between the pococurante laasi-1
tude of the attack and the desperate energy of tho'
defence. There was nothing of Prince RUPERT about
the Earl of DEHEv's onset. From first to last he
was like a fencer who is more intent upon covering
himself than bringing home a thrust to his adver-
sary. The vehemence of his attack was crippled,
paralysed, by his anxiety to forestall, by explana-
tions of his own conduct while in office, any to quoqese
retorts. Lord LYNDHURST, too, who undertook the
legal part of the argument, intimated at the outset
that he should not state any opinion of his own on
the subject, but merely the grounds upon which the
learned persons who had been consulted had pro-
ceeded."

But, on the other side, this desultory, half-earnest
assault was repelled with all the desperate energy of
despair. The question was taken up by the colonial
minister as a purely personal one, and he spared no
devices, no subterfuges, to obtain a verdict in his
favour. For weeks before, if common rumour
may be in aught believed, the whole GREY
clan, male and female, had been in the
Held canvassing for votes. The earl himself
took every advantage in the debate. For example,
the Earl of DERBY and Lord LYNDIIURST having
divided the task of opening the case between them
—the former taking to himself the political and the
latter the legal points—the Secretary of State for
the Colonies insisted upon making his reply when
the case had only been half
opened, in the hope that
the advanced years and physical weakness of Lord
LYNDHURST might weaken his efforts at a later
hour, if not prevent him from speaking altogether.
And Earl GREY'S speech was a running alternation
of the argumentana ad inisericordiam (plaintive culo-
tries of himself), and the argumentuai ad invidiam
(vehement vituperation of his opponents). He even
forgot the dignity of his position as a minister of
the crown so far, as to peril the issue of the debate
on the alternative whether the house wished Earl
GREY Or Mr. FAIRBAIRN to dictate the manner in
which the difficulties of the Cape arc to be settled.
The misfortune of all this is, that the decision of
the House of Lords simply afftcts the personality of
Earl GREY. The peers have determined to let him
off altogether, or to let him down softly, and they
have left the Cape colonists and their concerns—
their sufferings and their discontents—entirely out
of view. This has a twofold bad effect. It exas-
perates still more the uneasy feelings and discontents
of the inhabitants of that particular colony; and it
lut.s been the cause of certain very questionable doc-
trines, enunciated by the defenders of Earl GREY,
passing unchallenged, that cannot but alarm our
colonists in all parts of the world.
For example, it has hitherto been believed that
privileges, or rights, conveyed by letters-patent of
the crown, were held permanently by the grantees.
But the LORD CHANCELLOR went so far on Tuesday
night as to maintain that all such rights are only
held during the good pleasure of the crown, and arc
revocable at any time. "In 1817 (said the noble
and learned ex-attorney) the crown issued its letters
patent to its officers at the Cape to call a council, and
in that it merely conveyed to its officers in the
colony a right to exercise its prerogative to legislate
for the colony. That authority, he maintained, was
at all times revocable by the crown, and might be
recalled, for instance, if the council were not called
in conformity to instructions from time to time fur-
nished." This monstrous doctrine strikes at the root
of all chartered rights whatever, of all constitutional
privileges of the subject. Nothing like it, we will
be bound to say, has been heard from the mouth
of an English judge since the miserable time-
serving days when the lawyers of JAMES 11. were
abetting his attempts to wrest their charters from
the English corporations. The King of PaesstA
himself—that great setter-up and knocker-down of
octroyed constitutions—never propounded a doctrine
more flagrantly iniquitous.
And the vote of the House of Lords on Tuesday
night has allowed this servile doctrine to go forth to
the world with the apparent sanction of one branch
of the British legislature. What effect must such a '
vote have upon the inhabitants of all our chartered
colonies? How must they feel when they are told that
even their narrow privileges are enjoyed only during
the good pleasure of the crown. Such a diction ema-
nating from a Lord High Chancellor, listened to,
unquestioned and uncontroverted by the Peers of
Great Britain, is enough to sow the seeds of rebellion
in half our colonies.

Mischief enough was done when Earl GREY
allowed it to be seen so p'ainly that personal pique,
the assertion of his own self-will, has been his great
moving principle in his dealings with the Cape
colonists. But that mischief has been incalculably
aggravated by Earl GREY'S Lord Chancellor laying
down the law that the constitutional privileges con-
ceded to colonists by the crown may be resumed
whenever the crown sees fit. The sarcastic compli-
ment paid by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN to the English
colonial ministers of his day may, if matters are
allowed to go on thus be applied some day to their
successors in ours—that they are adepts in the art
of making a little empire out of a great one.

TIM exhibition of live stock in the Home
Park at Windsor forms the complement of the
show of British industry. for 1851. And it is in
many respects a most interesting one. We do
not refer to the trite, though true observation, which
has been so often repeated, that the live stock show '
of the Royal Agricultural Society for the present
year offers a practical contradiction to the predic-
tions of declining husbandry wherein some indifferent
landlords and weak politicians have indulged ; for
such predictions had been previously falsified by
events. The fictions of disordered imaginations have
been as different as possible from rural realities. We
see new energy and fresh capital applied to agricul-
tural improvement where energy and capital have been
before applied, while in districts and amongst classes
not hitherto remarkable for the energetic or intelli-
gent use of farming capital, improvements are being
made which, ten years ago, the improvers and all
their acquaintance would alike have thought beyond
their imagination or their reach.

And in no department of rural industry is this more
remarkable than amongst breeders of live stock. Recent
low prices have taught farmers that inferior stock will
not pay, where good stock, well managed, will give
a fair return for labour and outlay ; and the result is •
constantly increasing attention to the breed and cha-
racter of the stock kept by farmers. Of this no
rarer proof can exist than the increased
number of competitors for the prizes of the society.
Many reasons, however, might be suggested for
the enormous increase of the stock exhibited at
this year's annual meeting besides the legitimate
increase of trading breeders consequent upon •
growing demand for their stock. The spirit's
of emulation excited by the Great Exhibition has
doubtless had its effect in stimulating our farmers
to send animals to the Windsor show ; and the
proximity of the show-ground to the royal residence
and to the metropolis has also not been without a cer-
tain effect. Then the society has offered prizes for more
numerous classes of animals thanon former occasions.
Thus, in addition to the standing prizes for short-
horn, Hereford, and Devon cattle, there are now

others for long-horned, polled, and other Scotch
cattle, Channel Islands, Welsh, Irish, Suffolk, and•
Snares cattle. So with sheep : there are prim of-
fered for the first time this veer for mountain and
other breeds of sheep not hitherto deemed worthy of
the Society's attention. We apprehend, however,
that such prizes have been offered on this occasion
rather for the purpose of rendering the present show
a specimen of all the various kinds of British
live stock, than with any view to establish a perma-
nent competition at the society's yearly meetings for
mountain sheep, or the inferior breeds of cattle,
which, though possessed of some useful qualities,
have never succeeded in obtaining more than a local
reputation. And it is a fact quite notorious, that ono
or the other of the three breeds of cattle, or of the
three breeds of sheep, for which the ordinary prizes
of the society are offered, is in every district making
inroads upon, and gradually displacing, the
inferior local breeds. To the extended prize list,
however, some of the increase of stock shown is
due; the number being this year nearly thirteen
hundred against seven hundred of last year's show
at Exeter.
But none of the causes alluded to will account for
the whole of the large increase, for after deducting
what we may call the curiosities of the exhibition, it
will be found that the staple articles, the real business
breeding stock of the country, the short-horn Here-
ford and Devon cattle, and the Cotswold, Leicester,
and South Down sheep, are much more numerous
than at former shows. And not only are
the animals in these classes more numerous

than formerly ; they are also more uniform
in character. The competition is closer than for-
merly.
It would require no small share of pro-
fessional knowledge and technical skill to determine
to which animals the prizes should be awarded. That
was not formerly the case; a very slight experience
in judging of the form and quality of an animal was
sufficient at the earlier meetings of the society to
point out the winners even before the awards of the
Judges were affixed to their pens. That is not the
case at the present meeting, where there are so
many animals which are little inferior to the winners
of prizes, that an accurate knowledge of the points
of symmetry is indispensable to enable the looker-on
to affirm the judges' decisions.
Yet this is not occasioned by any falling off on the
part of the prize winners, in proof of which it may
be noticed, that most of our long known and emi-
nent breeders are still the owners of tho prize ani-
mals. Another circumstance, which has been re-
ferred to as evincing the general improvement
in stock, is, that the females of tho different
claws are equal or nearly equal in point
of form and character to the males. This tells
more accurately the perfection to which a flock
or herd has attained than the perfection of a few of
the male animals. In nearly all the stock shown, too,
there are unquestionable indications of vigorous con-
stitution, which at one time was somewhat under es-
timated by the judges of these annual exhibitions.
Altogether, the reflection which most forcibly occurs
after going through the stock-yard is, what an amount
of agricultural enterprise must exist in this country
to render such a show possible; for it must be borne
in mind that by far the greater number of the ex-
hibitors are breeders, men who make that branch
their principal business, and show their stock with a
view to attract the custom of the agricultural public.
Few know the time and the cost, the un-
wearied patience, and the determination not to
be daunted by first expense or partial failures,
which have been incurred and sustained by
every breeder of prize animals, and of ani-
mals likely to be winners ; and fewer still
can appreciate the judgment, the power of
close observation, the nicety of discrimination with-
out which no man can be a successful breeder of
first-rate live stock. And when we see the com-
paratively large number of persons who have sue-
ceeded us breeders, we may form some notion of the
extent of the demand for high-bred stock, which can
call forth so much skill, industry, and continuous
outlay to furnish the requisite supply. Another point
worthy of remark is that very few amateur-breeders
are prize winners, and that it is not merely an
unlimited command of means, and a fondness for
stock that will insure success ; there must be the
careful, the compelled intelligence of the man of bu-
siness, with whom success or failure is a question
of life or death.

The present show is likely to prove a good one
for our breeders, from the numerous foreigners who
are in thin country, and thus that foreign demand
for our best stock, which has always been an im-
portant one, is likely to become greater than ever.
This species of " foreign competition" it is probable
the most ardent protectionist will not object to.

ER then mooed that the clout( NMill : but" the Maiifee,
_flee pure
/I.
. . _ ,_
bill: "And for preventing ex- ,ordb,uocliototo forcib linm
lin Pro",uting the pit* ;h• i /O•pfra,. Rik to whom?, Thu o
e judges of the said in
gper Sat'at al'. The quantities made no
whom • chief ol4ogf.
north el Ireland .trod the poi
we, may from ti d.. 11 , e,,*l
r general orders for la - bontinind steadily te.increase.
wit" orders shall he he e1;17;h7-ielr;;;;1 I 11,722,000 cwt& ; in 1849, 17,2 t
this act : provided always, that such order
is- 18.50, 18,539,000 mots. Belfast ne
?lee "id the end a the maiehh of Par in toth suinnino: and weaving, Om
. . .. ...