The Express.
London, England, 1847-03-29 00:00:00

which these persons generally confined themselves.
To meet this, the oonditions of the private hill were
varied in every instance. The expense of such bills
was enormous. The real interests of oonsamers
were continually sacrificed to private parlia-
mentary influence, purchased by jobbery and
corruption. The houses of the rich were
drained, ventilated, and watered ; the streets
of wealthy disfricts sewered, paved, and lighted.
The houses and streets of the poor, on the
contrary, remained foul, dark, and noisome, without
drainage, sewerage, air, light, or water—shut out, as
far as mere life would bear it, from the enjoyment of
those elements which Heaven has made common to
man, as they are necessary to his existence.
But not only were the interests of rich and poor
thus set in artificial array against each other. The
interests of the different capitalists were often at con-
flict. Here, again, selfishness arrayed gas company
against water company, paving and lighting boards
against commissioners of sewers. In these struggles
the most conflicting rights and powers were bestowed
on companies iu the same town. Every place has its
dozen boards of local functionaries, under as many
acts, proceeding on plans alike inconsistent with each
other and with the public good or convenience. And
when all suffered, the poor suffered most.
A change must take place in this respect from and
after this session of parliament. The principle of
Consolidation Clauses Acta, introduced to facilitate the
transactions of railwuy companies, has been applied
and carried out in relation to all local measures. Ia
what have heels hitherto private bills, there is recog-
nised henceforth a public element, which should per-
vade all, and be provided for in a general measure,
with which all special measures must be incorporated.
Thus we have a Waterworks Clauses Bill, a Mar-
kets and Fairs Clauses Bill, a Gasworks Clauses Bill,
and, overriding and further consolidating these, a
Towns Improvements Clauses Bill.
These measures taken together, when incorporated,
as they will be, with every special act for each object
enumerated, will go fir to remedy the mischiefs
which have hitherto beset local improvement legis-
lation.
The Towns Improvements Clauses Bill, in particu-
lar, is an act of the utmost importance. It comprises,
in one measure, the provisions usually scattered
over a host of paving, draining, cleansing, lighting,
watching, and improving bills, and ensures uni-
formity in the provisions for these several purposes;
while all, however various, have one end in view, to
make towns and poulous districts more healthy,
safe, and habitable. 'this bill involves most of the
valuable enactments of Lord LINCOLN'S proposed
measure, which, with the report of the Health of
Towns Association upon it, we discussed at some
length in former articles. We are glad to see, also,
that its framers have availed themselves largely of
that report, and the improvements it suggested.
Another and even more important measure yet
remains to be introduced to the legislature—that
which appoints the general superintending power,
destined to preside over the due execution of all
these acts. The creation of such a power is the most
important act, perhaps, that a government can per-
form, in relation to the subject of sanitory reform.
Thus much, then, has been done by the government
to give to the country cleaner, sweeter, healthier, and
happier homes. Has the public fulfilled its part as
fairly as the government.? It is true that branch
associations have been formed in connexion with the
London body. It is true that science and benevolence
have united, in such pieces as Liverpool, Preston, and
Manchester, to inform the public mind on sanitory
questions, and take the initiative in sanitory reforms.
Public opinion is awaking, but not yet awoke. Never
was there a better, a purer, a nobler call upon its
energy than this for sanitory reform. All creeds
mayjoin in it; all classes suffer from the neglect of
it ; all quarters of the United Kingdom are languish-
ing under a daily drain of money and life, because it
is still a cry and not a fact. If ever the voice o.
united Britain has risen with irresistible potency,
from town and country, from ball and hovel, from the
peasant population of Dorsetshire to the swart artisan
of Birmingham, or the pale Manchester weaver, or the
stunted and scrofulous skilled labourer of London, it
should so rise now in demand of a change which
policy not less than humanity, our safety as a state
not less than our duty as a Christian people, renders
not only incumbent but imperative upon us.

THE perfection of a poor-law would be, that it were
at once efficient and silent ; that it should make pro-
vision, and take care that none of the population
should starve, avoiding scrupulously to make this
known to the poor. This is nature's poor-law, one
that has existed in all countries of east and west,
neglected at times, but ;operating voluntarily in all
virtuous communities. The corruption of the law is,
when charity becomes ostentation, as the monks and
religious houses made it in England, creating that
swarm of paupers and beggars for which, on the
fall of those religious )louses, the statesmen of Emu-
BETH found it necessary to provide.
We can now, however, do nothing silently, not
even establish or work a principle. The time has
come when there is no use in preaching to the
wealthier classes; they must be coerced even in the
duties of humanity. In order to make landed pro-
prietors maintain their peasantry, coercion ; in order
to make manufacturers respect the youth and en-
lighten the ignorance of the children of their artisans,
coercion. Coercion to enforce humanity will pro-
bably be followed by coercion to enforce religion.
We have just had a fast-day by act of parliament, an
idle act without a penalty. All the cardinal virtues
will very probably be enforced by act of parliament
on the rising generation.
We wonder then, that a philosopher like the Arch-
bishop of DUBLIN, so capable of discerning the spirit
and progress of the age, should make so very decided
and outrageous an opposition to the law ordaining that
the property of Ireland shall feed its poor, in
or out of a workhouse. There is no denying
the great truth of mach, that the Archbishop
said; no doubt of the very great inconvenience o.
telling a population, in which all impulse to industry
beyond the supply of immediate wants has been long
killed, that this only impulse may be relaxed, for
that all shall have subsistence. No doubt of
this: but the answer is that of Lord Jome RUSSELL
To the deputation of the Irish party—What do you
propose instead? What else can we do? How coerce
the Irish landlord to exert his every effort to employ
the poor? A semi-poor-law has failed. Cost what
it may, we must, if not try, at least menace and enact
a whole and complete poor-law.
If a e keep out of mind the necessities of the'
moment, the conduct of the Irish landlords, and the
downright criminality of leaving things as they are,
we should certainly side with Lord firiounnam and
Archbishop WHATELY against Earl GREY. We can-
not admit with the latter that any portion of the
wealth or prosperity of England has been owing to
its poor-law, which was a mere superfetation in the
industrial development of this country. Neither do
we believe that a poor-law alone can ever raise Ire- I
land to a level with England in industry and comfort.
Nay, we will go further, and assert, that no cul-
tivation of the land, or efforts of the proprietors of
land, ever could or did suffice to raise a country or its
peasant population. The proprietors of land are
never rich, never enterprising, never the operators
of great changes. These must come from quite a dif-
ferent class, from that class which amasses capital,
generates enterprise, begets improvement, which
first raising the labouring class which it employs,
thereby raising the labouring class engaged in agricul-
ture, and lastly turns to land itself the subject and
material of its own science and efforts, and assimilates
it in prosperity to the counting-house and the mill.
Now, the great defect of the present ministerial mea-
sures for Ireland is, that they look too much to the
proprietors of land to effect in Ireland a species of
revolution and amelioration, that proprietors of land
have in no country been able to effect. Some of those
measures, indeed, are directed to the introduction of

new men, and fresh capital into landed proprietor-
ship.' But the operation of them will be slow.
Ireland possesses few of the class, and little of the
capital, able to effect the transformation. And we do
think that the effort and the generosity of govern-
ment ought to have gone rather to supply the want of
commercial capital, than to furnish funds to agricul-
turists, so few of whom make tho right or best use
of it.

Lord GEORGE Bincruccit's colossal scheme was,
indeed, inadmiasible, throwing such a mans of capital
into speculations, which men of capital most affection.
But even railroads ought not to be overlooked, when it
is evident that the introduction of capital, as the source
of profitable ewloy, is what must be chiefly looked to
as the means of ratifYing the ]abode &Parket. This