The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-11 00:00:00

took upon himself the functions of a modern JONAII,
come to announce the approaching desolation of this
great city, he appears to have entirely forgotten that
a proneness to unfeeling levity, and a tone of attenu-
ated jocularity, were accompaniments indicative
rather of an impostor than a prophet.
But, in despite of these dreadful prognostications, the
government, in a fortunate moment for its exist-
ence and reputation, did interfere : and, behold,
we are arrived at the seventeenth day since this cul-
minating point of infatuation, and we are neither dead,
nor dying, nor ruined, nor ten times worse than
we were before, nor likely to be ten times worse, nor
worse at all, nor trembling with apprehension, nor
fully convinced by actual experiment that, after all,
we are in the jaws of poverty, nor rebuking ourselves
in any single particular with having turned a deaf
ear to the admonitions of our lugubrious adviser. In
point of fact, the measure of interference has
answered most persons' expectations except those of our
eccentric cotemporary, and the party of whose opinions
he is a very ambitious, but not a very lucid, expositor.
Nay, so utterly undeniable have become the symptoms
of success—so abundant and so prominent are
the facts which falsify his predictions and his theory,
that in that curious department of his compilation,
which concerns itself more particularly with financial
questions, there has been for the last few days a most
diverting confusion between the statements of fact and
the statements of opinion. There has been a slight
tendency to a revival of those dull and didactic dis-
courses which, we presume by some error of the
printer, have frequently made their appearance in this
matter-of-fact division of the paper,very greatly to the
alarm and astonishment of the habitual students
of the " City Intelligence." But between the tenour
of these ponderous performances, and the significant
circumstances of the day's experience, there has been
the oddest contrariety. Thus, for instance, all the
effect of a solemn assurance that the railways are still
urging us on into the pit of destruction is entirely
neutralised by the intimation that any respectable
man who desires to raise money on the Stock Ex-
change can do it at four per cent. So, again, we are
utterly unable to attach any importance to a vague
notion about the "declining state of things," when the
next paragraph brings us the intelligence that money
is " much more plentiful than it was ; that there has
been a more quiet feeling in the City than has been
witnessed for some time; and that the demand at the
Bank is greatly diminished."
With these plain matters of fact staring as in the
face we content ourselves with concluding, that in
pursuance of one of his numerous crotchets our con-
temporary has been applying the principle of the
division of labour to his City correspondence and that
in order to secure greater variety ho has taken care
that between the person who delivers the opinions,
and him who collects the materials, there shall be the
least possible intercourse.
We do not know who may be our contemporary's
friends, but if he will accept the candid advice of par-
ties to whom, we dare say, he is not disposed to accord
the pretensions of friendship, he will endeavour to
redeem the respectability of his position, and
in some measure mitigate the outrageous cha-
racter of his mistake by manfully grappling
with the real facts of the case. Between
the 25th October and the Ist November we have the
testimony of the Gazette that the interference of the
Bank was confined to a contemptible 600,000/. of
additional securities. His own pages are covered
with proofs of the great and beneficent change which
between these two dates took place in the condition
of the country. Here, then, is the necessity. He
must diligently and duly educe from the diminutive
acorn of this paltry expansion of advances, the ex-
tended and luxuriant network of offshoots and foliage
which have grown out of the restored confidence, the
revived trade, and the reanimated industry
of a whole people. Either 600,0001. has abso-
lutely sufficed to set in motion the whole mercantile
machinery of the empire, or we were not in that
deplorably destitute condition which he so emphati-
cally proclaimed; and, either the experience of the
last seventeen days is a fiction, or his confident pre-
dictions of inflated prices and demented speculation
are simply another addition to that long catalogue of
vulgar errors which are impressed upon the memory
of the disciples of this unsafe prophet, by so many cir-
cumstances of disagreeable experience and distasteful
notoriety.

Ir is impossible to contemplate the foul murders,
which now form the common occurrences of Irish life,
without instantly recurring to the means, the poesibi-
bility of prevention. When is this frightful state of
things to cease? When is this reign of terror to be
over ? Is it in the power of any coercive law to put
an end to it ? We wish we could think so : but of
all crimes, the most difficult to prevent is that of the
secret and sadden assassin : and the most difficult to
punish, is that which springs from wide-spread com-
bination, and is perpetrated under the shield of clan
sympathy.
An arms bill is often talked of. If any plausible
grounds can be advanced to show that an arms bill
would be effective in ever so small a degree, no well-
, disposed man would think for a moment of opprdng
it. But we have no great opinion of such measures.
Agrarian murders have been committed with strin-
gent laws on the statute-book, limiting the right to
possess arms. At best, they only throw a diffi-
culty in the way of obtaining them—a difficulty
easily surmounted by a miscreant stimulated by re-
venge, and panting for bloodshed. The murderer,
besides, is not confined in the choice of his weapons;
a club, a atone, a pike, or a spade, are engines as
mortal in a villain's hand as a musket. Where there
is a bloody will, there will be found a bloody way ;
the agrarian assassin has never wanted an instrument
to wreak his private vengeance, or execute the man-
dates of the secret tribunal. The sole object of an
arms bill, moreover, is to disarm the villain and the
man of blood ; but the operation of such a measure is,
unfortunately, to disarm likewise to some extent the
peaceful and unoffending, and place them at the
mercy of the ruffians that surround them.
The law is levelled at arms as offensive weapons
only, yet the machinery necessarily extends to those
intended altogether for defensive purposes. Another
consideration is this : admitting that the facility of
obtaining arms, which at present exists, may have a
tendency to increase and encourage outrages of a par-
ticular kind, it is undeniable that the effect of an
arms bill would be (as it has always proved) to pro-
mote in an equal degree another species of agrarian
crime. We mean the robbery of arms. The opera-
tion of such a law is doubly severe upon the well-die-
Cedpeople of a district; it makes it difficult
them, in the first place, to obtain the
means of self-defence ; and when they have obtained
them, after compliance with all legal requirements,
it exposes their houses and cottages to the assaults of
those who can no longer procure arms, except by
midnight violence. These are a few of the reasons
which disincline us to expect much benefit from a
legal restraint upon the possession of arms. If, how-
ever, it were possible to frame a measure so as to de-
prive the assassin of the moat convenient instruments
of murder, without occasioning any countervailing
mischief to any serious amount, it would be hard to
object to it in the present frightful state of rural
society in Ireland. Rural society ! Peaceful
words, how inapt to describe a country, where the
plough is idle, while the blunderbuss re in fell em-
ployment, and where society is torn to pieces between
monstrous crimes, monstrous miseries, and monstrous
follies !

Nle have great confidence in the provision for the
Irish poor now established by law; particularly
since a vigorous government has pledged itself
to carry it out thoroughly, in defiance of inte-
rested recusancy, and besotted clamour. In this pro-
vision, we have the seed of the social regeneration of
the country ; from this alone we anticipate a revo-
lution of the moat beneficial character, in the
ideas and habits of the peasantry, and in the
mutual relations of rich and poor. We most,
however, possess our souls in patience : an element of
improvement so great as the poor-law has introduced,
must have time to work—time to develop itself. We
may depend upon it that we shall daily see more and
more of its potent virtues and its healing and reno-
vating operation. The poor of Ireland do not yet
know what a great boon has been conferred upon
them ; they are far from having, as yet, a distinct
notion of the immense change which the legislation
of last session has made in their position. They have
yet to learn that there is virtually an end to their
state of miserable villeinage and abject bondage to
the soil. Their existence no longer hangs upon the
vile system of con-acre ; depends no longer upon the
success of a miserable bidding for a rood of
ground. They have long been taught to envy the
condition of the people of this country, and now they