The Express.
London, England, 1847-03-01 00:00:00

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

THIS DAY, Four o'Clock.
The accounts from Ireland, received this morning,
communicate fresh instances of the progress of disease
and death among the famishing multitudes in various
parts of the couutry, but principally in the south, and
more especially in portions of Tipperary and Kerry.
Our Dublin correspondent thus notices the present
state of suffering in this portion of Ireland :
The condition of the people of Berry may be judged of
from the following cireum,tanoes,appeanng in a report of the
most recent meeting of the Tralee board of gitardians. First,
a famished boy entered the board-room, to seek admission to
the workhouse. He was supported by two other paupers,
and appeared, at first sight, paralysed. The medical officer,
having examined him, assured the board that his was the
paralysis of want.
The next was an able-bodied labourer, who had been earn-
ing 10d. per day on the public works, but having been four
or five days ill, he and his family were reduced to a state of
starvation. His prayer was that the guardians would
give him some relief for a few days, while he recovered
his ereugth, and he would be again able to maintain
himself. The board had no power under the law to relieve
this man, and yet there are landlords to be found in Ire-
land heartless enough to den 7 that the law requires
amendment in:that particular. The next case was that of a
boy, fourteen y. ars of age, who presented himself with an
infant in his arms, and two children not past the roan of In-
fancy following him. AU bore the marksof shocking misery.
The boy produced to the board a certificate that he had loot
his father and mother through destitution. I shall not mul-
tiply instances, but the general aspect of the applicants is
described as exhibiting " the rank clammy appearance of

- -
exhumed corpses "
There were 200 applicants of this description seeking ad.
mission, and the workhouse contains 1,269. The deaths
_ daring the week were 23. The board is indebted to the
treasurer of the maim nearly BOW., and there are in the
hands of contractors, 1,3001. of dishonoured checks. The
rates cannot be tolls tied.
Still worse is the condition of a district in the county,
celled Castlegregory. In one parish of this district, Kul-
linty, there occurred 93 cases of fever in five days. Io one
day—the 20th instant—there occurred twenty new ewes.
One man died of starvation who was said to have 41.
owing him on the public works': there must be most culpable
neglect on the port of some officers of the board, or this could
not have occurred. In another instance it is recorded that a
whole family, comprising the father and four children, died
of dysentery ; and in many instances the dead in this same
district lie for drys unburied, vermin meantime preying upon
their cold remains.
It would appear impossible to add anything to this pic-
ture ,• but it is only just to state that Col. Stokes, one of the
pardians of the Trs% Union, complained of the landlords
in that union who had undertaken to proceed with repro-
ductive works, yet up to this hour had not expended one
penny, or hies n one day's employment.
In Tipperary there continues to exist, and there must fur
months exist, much destitution. Fever is also prevalent.
There was a special sessions for labour-rate assessment, held
at Clonmel, on Monday, at which it was stated that the
workaof the Waterford and Limerick Railway, in the baronies
of Iffa and Offa, for which presentments had been made at
previous sections, had not, and could not, be undertaken, as
some landlords, abs ntees from the country, refused to
permit the officers of the company or their labourers upon
their property. Lord Kingston attended the meeting, and
denounced the landlords, who, he contended, ought to re-
duce their rents and give employment, and not throw the
people on the public works. There was not a single land-
lord present to coincide with him.
Notwithstanding the gloomy anticipations of some
as to the depressed value of landed property in Ire-
land, the fee simple of some estates situated in the
county Kerry, which was mold by public auction at
Cork on Thursday last, by Mr. Simpson, realised as
mach as twenty-seven years' purchase.
The grand juries of Wicklow and of Clare have
" pronounced in favour of a system of railways for
Ireland at the expense of the state, or as propounded
by Lord George Bentinck. The corporation of Li-
Iserick have returned their best thanks to Lord Geo.
Bentinck for propounding his scheme, and denounced
Mr. Robert Dillon Browne, M.P., for having voted
against it. The grand jury of the county of Longford
has adopted the resolution of the Reproductive Em-
ployment Committee, and protested against the omis-
sion of the names of any Irish gentlemen from the
New Relief Committee.

Some very useful euggestiona will be found in the
following communication from his Grace the Duke of
Portland, relative to the reappearance of the potato

diseiume :-:-

Bv,—lt is certain that the potato disease has again ap-
peared in the same manner as it appeared last year at this
season. No man, therefore, in common prudence, can de-
pend upon a crop of that root this summer. I venture, with
great confidence, to suggest *substitute, vio.,the Swedish tur-
nip. Till within these six weeks I was not aware that Swedish
turnips were good human food, much superior to the com-
mon turnip. I have since eaten 'them, and I think them
mach more substantial food than potatoes. Having had
much experience in the use of potatoes as food for ca
sure ttle,
I am that Swedish turnips are the better food of
the two. In point of quantity they yield larger crops.
I have grown here 22 tons per acre. I have no doubt
that in milder climates larger crops may be obtained.
The cultivation of the turnip is less expensive; compa-
ratively, the seed costa almost nothing. As they need not be
sown very early in the spring, they do not suffer from early
hate ; and in the autumn and winterfno frost will hurt them.
I do not know that on the same land they will bear repeti-
tion continually, as potatoes will; they are aho liable, in
sand lands, to be hurt by the grub. These two last are the
only disadvantages to which they are liable. When well
cultivated. on the whole, I consider them a superior crop,
Sad to he preferred, even If there was no such thing as the
Panto diaeue.—Scorn PORTLAWD.—WeIbeek, Feb. 26.
It

v stated from Brussels that the balance sheet
the Bank of Belgium for the operations of 1846 had
been made up, and showed a dividend of 19 from
Pee share. It is not stated how much has been paid
uP on each share, and therefore the rateable per
center of the profit cannot be arrived at; but the
Mae rompte render is shortly to be made public.

From Amsterdam it is reported that the budget
irht forward by the Minister of Finance showed
!cry favourable results, notwithstanding a considerable
increase of expenditure daring the last year. The
le
tie preseuted an excess of one million of florins
trey el estimated ways and means, and of 300,000
teabove the estimates of the oolonial budget.
NCROLT SUICIDE NEAR PRENTON.—A Mrs.
Ledbetter, the wife of a share-broker. at Blanchester, who
Bad to, ime time resided, together with her young family,
yith her father, Mr. Ussery, at Walton le-dale, committed
Weide about eight o'clock on Friday erasing last by drown-

ing herself in the river Ribble, having fint administered
poems to her Ave young ehil Inn. One of the children has
since expired, and the others are considered to be in some
danger. The coroner's inquest which sat on the body of
Mn. Leadhetter returned a verdict of " Found drowned."
The inquest on the body of the damaged child was adjourned
fur the purpose of a post morns' examination.

LETTERS ON POOR-LAWS.—No. IV.
Sir,—The being out of work is that which makes
able-bodied men paupers. Be it theirown fault in many oases
—in 19 out of 20, if you will—still idleness is the evil before
you—though a vice. still a misfortune, both to the idler and
to the state. Then why not try the remedy which the
malady itself suggests, and the patient himself asks for /
Why not set him to work 1 " Because;' say the political
economists, "it ain't be done." No system of public em-
ployment can be secured from fatal abuses. It relaxes all
providence, aeltreliance, industry, and good manners. It
confounds the pamper with the independent labourer, by
employing every man according to his necessity and not ac-
cording to his merits, and by reducing all wages to a mini-
mum. It leads, moreover, to boundless jobbing, favouritism,
and peculation on the part of agents and overseers. It is
useless to go into evidence ; look at the history of the Eng-
lish poor-laws; look at Ireland at this moment. There is
no employer of labour like private enterprise and capital—
no steward like him who is paying wages out of his own
pocket for his own profit. Government never meddles with
the labour market but to do mischief."

Now, be ell thee. difficulties and objections granted,
short only of the conclusion that they are insuperable.
Private employment may be better than public; free
labour is certainly better than forced. If all the
labour of a country were absorbed in useful and cheerful in-
dustry of heed or stand, the condition of that nation would
be happy. It is the beau ideal of society. But taking the
world.* it is, and our own portion of it in particular, we find
always a fluctuating balance of unabsorbed labour somehow
or other to be disposed of; the refuge of the market, perhaps,
in prosperous times, but ve7 much more than that in
seasons of scarcity or commercial depression. Why may not
the parish or the state step in and put tools into these vacant
hands ? Though their labours did not pay in a commercial
settee, it might in many other senses, of which political
economy does not profess to treat.
It must be some very recondite law of nature which pro-
hibits all public employment of the poor out of doors, con-
sidering what the alternative is for them and for society. All
unemployed hands, if not upon the parish, are still upon the
country. They are private pensioners, er hospital pstienta,
or hormiesews, or beggars, or sonless. They are poachers,
mauggbne, coiners, prostitutes, outlaws, and coavicts—un
profitable vocations all to the commonwealth. The work-
house itself pays nothing, unless as a repellant :and the
repulsed, if not driven back upon work, are direen upon
some of the aforesaid substitutes for it. Again, then,
why not " take order for setting them to work ?" But
the most popular of the economi.cal objections u the injustice
you thereby do to the independent labourer, by interfering ,
with him, and underbidding him in the market. The last
shall be first, it is said, and the first but, under every system
of pauper labour.
Now once more be it remembered that though " in
England poverty be infamous," yet paupers have to live ;
and in whatever way they do live, their living must lower
wages, if they be really supernumerary, because it most
come out of funds that would otherwise be wholly applied to
the wages of a smaller number.
If a private gentleman has too many servants. he turns
off some of them, and he and the rest are the easier
in consequence. But if, like the state, he could
not got car N them, but was bound to maintain them to hie
last gliding, would he do it hy pensions or by wages? Would
he say to them, " Because I cannot employ you all to a
profit, therefore one-third of you may take bed and board
for nothing, as long as the kettle will boil, and then we
must go down together." Would he not rather say, " Al-
though there are too many of you ter the size of my estate,
yet if any are idle we shall run through it the
fester. The more you all work upon it, the fur-
ther it will go." If, upon this, two-thirds of
of them were to say, " We are not too many for the estate,
you could employ us to a profit. Therefore, we ought to be
called independent labourers, and the rest paupers, and you
do us an injury by employing them at all." Would he not
reply, " I am father of the family, lam dividing my in-
come amongst you, I candift do more, and I must not do

If there be no failure in this analogy, wo will take the
principle for granted, and, with your leave, pursue the pos-
sibilities of the matter in another letter.—Your obedient
servant, TELIBUNVII.