The Express.
London, England, 1853-09-23 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

• dossed &titian af• 7tte Capew.ti'o;l7ts7als;tbe Game ',rainy's
tar
.osartto,"s pabbalad every larsday sad Friday mem, to ties
pas.
Adearebemease Weeilli tor "'The T.sreeek" Leedue E•ehihr Ms".
seem ee at tam Oils% Ilsiurerississat, by Two oMesk es as
day La pehtieetles.

1110/1 WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
1..14 DAT —*mum. >t.l7. Anemone, Sk. Ina
Towitubuw—lenesing, ie. San ...Atm*" ik, 18.

LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

Wnex the Empress CATUERINE was making a
" progress" to the Crimes, her favourite POTEMKIN
considered it a delicate attention on his part to pre-
serve his Imperial Mistress from any miserable sight
calculated to excite her sympathies in a disagreeable
manner. One ut the devices he adopted in further.
nice of this object was to send an order on to all the
vi lieges on the route, to the effect that all the villagers
should appear in holiday costume during the pass-
age or the slay of the Emi:ress. The courtier
would not have his Imperial Mistress believe that
misery could exist in a territory so favoured as to
be under her benevolent governance. Queen VIC-
Ton:a's Min caters were not disposed, we may imagine,
and certainly not able, to present the population oil
I)ublin in holiday costume. The keen eye of the
(luxes and her Consort pierced through the living
walls of officials atld well dressed people who lined
the passages through which she peened, and
saw the ragged regiments behind. Her MA-
JI.,TY caught a sight of those picturesque speci-
mens of humanity, enveloped in multitudi-
nous rags, bristling with dirt, and strung together in
such complicated figures that it is a matter of cer-
tainty that the wearers will never take off their gar-
ments deterred by the sheer impossibility of ever
getting them on again. Her MAJESTY, it I. well
known, is a lover of the picturesque, and one of her
greatest amusements is sketching scenery that comes
under that description ; but humanity is seldom pic-
turesque unless unhappy, and the Quez.v has acted
upon a praiseworthy recognition of the fact in sig-
nifying a wish that the picturesque Celt should
be if possible banished from the streets of Dublin.
The wish appears almost Utopian, but in a country
which has already been subject to so many changes
that appear almost magical, it would be wrong to
despair. The occasion of her MAJESTY'S being led
to express any opinion as to the desirableness of any
alteration in the national costume, arose out of the'
sending a subscription of 3001. to the Dublin Sanitary
Association. The QUEEN and PRINCE ALBERT in
trausmittiog the donation accompanied it with a
letter, (ruin which the following is an extract:
The QUEEN and PRINCE consider it of very
great importance to the social condition of her people
that this attempt at the improvement of their habita-
tions should be successful ; but her MAJESTY and
his Royal Highness feel also very anxious that some
attempt should be made to improve the feeling of the
lower classes in Ireland with regard to the state of
their clothing, and to induce them, at least, to make
some exertion to keep their clothes, of however poor
a quality, in a decent state of repair. It might,
perhaps, be possible to join to the ad-
♦antage of cheap and improved lodgings,
some condition that the tenants of these

apartments would be expected to make 110€11C attempt
at mending their clothes, and they should be made
to feel some shame at raggedness, which is (u is
seen in other countries), by no means a necessary
accompaniment of poverty."

That Ireland should ever become rich and well
dressed, is a consummation which almost passes
imagination, and yet the immense changer that have
already taken plane might give us reason to hope.
The Castle Rackrents are nearly all demolished. Pro-
prietors are taking can of their own estates..
The mud cottages are vanishing with the
ruined castles. The miserable system of putting
minute fractions of land up to competition amongst
a starving peasantry is abolished. The thousands
who lived upon potatoes from year's end to year's end
can afford themselves a taste of meat now and then
if they do not prefer an additional quantity of whisky.
When alterations of this kind have taken place,
there is no reason why we may not hope to see the
day when the Irishman shall have a good coat to his
back, and when the streets of Dublin shall not pre-
sent such a " dainty dish to set before the Qvus"
as appeared at her last visit.
Whether the plan of admitting the poor to the
new lodging-houses only upon condition of the
" making exertions to keep their clothes in a decent
state of repair," or of "making (at least) some
attempt to mend their clothes," could ever be
adopted with success in Dublin, may be doubted.
People who are only decent in their persons by com-
pulsion are seldom decent any longer than the
compulsion lasts. A large portion of the cases
of disease in the army arises from the invincible
habits of filth that no discipline can extirpate from
■umbers of the common soldiers. We trust more to
the inevitable elevation of the Irish labourer's posi-
tion than to any external regulations. Emigration
has delivered him from the ruinous competition
which reduced the value of his labour to the lowest
pittance which could keep him from starvation. In
the place of impoverished landlords--a curse to the
tenantry--appear the DARGA2IB, who, in addition to
the imaged blessings they confer ce their labourers,
add the priceless boon of making the labourer feel
that be in sow a free agent, and that he can bargain
masa to man far a pries foe tkat labour which is his
only insane of support. When the Irish labourer
*els that he is so longer half a mendicant in the
receipt of alms rather than wages, he will begin to
tied that rags are no longer the eastume for him.
When he finds that his limbs are adapted for some-
thing better than lounging lazily in frost of a mud
cottage with the eternal pipe in his mouth, he will care
more for their covering. We shall not get a model
peasantry by paying them for dressing up according
to our models. Better their condition—let them
have an increased feeling of their own value—and
we shall see that the alteration in the man will soon
extend to his costume..

In the meanwhile, as the Irish are an u:tra-loyal ;
people, it might be worth the while of their in-
structnrs to point out to them that royalty dors not
like rags. And they might be told that this dislike
springs from no sentimental equeamishhess
en the subject of unpleasant sights, but
from a sensible conviction ths.t rags arc a!
sort of fruit that only blossoms upon very
worthless plants. As a general rule, rags mean
idleness, filth, debauchery, crime. There may be
exceptions to this, and the exceptions were formerly
mote numerous in Ireland than elsewhere ; but they
do not destroy the rule. A population does not lose
its sense of decency until it has parted is :th other qua-
lities quite as valuable. But rags are not only a tes-
timony to what the man is, but instrumer.ts of terror
if rightly viewed to all who come in contact with
them. Out of rags come &Beale, pestilence, death. It
was not only the wearers of the rags whom the (l: sex
h►d in view when she counselled the Irish to " mend
their clothes," but the rest of the popnie:ou grouped
Firoond them. The dirt accumulated in the dwellings
of the rag-wearers may be the nursery of Cholera.
Vie trust, then, that improvid circuoutances, good
teaching, and loyalty, may tend to do away with
the rag 'miasma in the ►trects of Dublin ; and that,

on her MAJEiTI'd next visit to Dublin, bey LAO
subjects may bees sprucely Oared ap Mr. DLanAahrs
psttern peasants, without having had to. pay the
price of thirty or forty years' labour kg ',heir
clothes.