The Express.
London, England, 1851-10-09 00:00:00

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day of pabtionties.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE
fir Der—WOrsuir, In. Om. Oa. MIR.
To-ssoasow—llorelni. 21a. M. Atterases. It. 26e.

LONDOIV, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9.

AG SIN has Mr. DIsBAELI spoken to the farmers of
Buckinghamshire, and in his own wild and eccentric
way has tendered them, along with his now well-
known specific, some very good advice. At the
South Bucks agricultural meeting he told his agri-
cultural friends and admirers that it is perfectly clear
the existing free-trade policy cannot he abrogated,
nor the protective system restored, unless the various
classes of the community " should arrive at the con-
clusion that the principles on which our commercial
system arc founded, are incorrect and injurious;"
and he recommended a postponement of all demand
on the port of farmers for protection until that time
should arrive. That such a postponement of the de-
mand for protection is its abandonment, was of course
obvious to the dullest farmer amongst the adroit mem-
her's audience, and in offering his constituents such
ads ice he does them good service. For years past
irothing has rttarded agricultural improvement, and
that which is its indispensable preliminary—a read-
justment of the relation of landlord end tenant—so
mach as a kind of sickly longing after monopoly
prices which has lingered about the agricultural
mind. It is true that Mr. IftstuEit's specific mea-
sure of shifting local taxation from the lead to the
jcileral industry of the country does not meet with
any very enthusiastic support from the farmers of
Buckinghamshire or elsewhere; for while they can
un I rstand that their landlords may be benefited by
the operation, could it be effected, and the member
for Bucks may advance his political objects by its
'missal, they see no great chance of producing the
change, and they doubt whether if it were
to be produced, they would be much benefited.
Land agents have a wonderful knack of turning
r‘i re fiscal alleviation nominally conferred upon
yearly tenants to the account of the landlord, and
the farmers see that any jugglery about local taxa-
tion would only prevent suitable reductions of rent
and revisions of tenure which they arc now demand-
ing from their landlords, and will probably obtain.
Mr. Pt.:no:ifs advice to outspend their demand for
the bringing back an abrogated system" until the
n.-1 of the community consent to the imposition eta
11% on their food to keep up rents, is therefore tat
likely to induce the farmers to abate the energy et
their demands for a settlement with their landlords,
or their own determination to see what thy

tail do for themselves. Now, then, he seenii
likely to become a real fanners friend. And
more than that, he tells them very truly,
"that there is a general disposition on the part
of the public opinion of this country to view the
agricultural question in a temperate and mode-
rate spirit, and there is an anxiety to
,cometo
some arrangement, which without interfering with
the financial prineiples prevalent in this country,
would make the position of the cultivator of the soil
;Isis r by minting the cost of his manufacture."
Now possible the speaker may have used this lan-
guage ill sonic double sense; there is much truth in
its most obvious meaning. By the abandonment
of protection, by the withdrawal of a monstrous de-
mind to tw guaranteed by the rest of the community
against bail seasons and had husbandry, fanners will
find all other industrious classes inelincd to give at
tention to any special grievance or peculiar burdens
the firming interest may labour under. There will
lie no longer a necessity of meeting their demands for
redress of grievances with a prompt denial
because they no longer insist upon imposing
a bread-tax on every one else. For such counsel the
farmers have reason to be thankful to their self-con-
stituted political lender; though it is, to say the least,
doubtful whether that wily gentleman will thereby
very much forward his own purposes. The farmers are
shieod men. They know well enough that with per-
manently low price* a different sj stein of culture and
manngement must be adopted, and they fear that it
must be a more difficult and laborious one than was
required when prices were high. They are well
uoare that noshifting of local taxation, even if they
gut all the benefit of it to their own share, could be any
equivalent fur the lons of ten shillings a quarter on
wheat, and twopence a pound on fat meat, which,
rightly or wrongly, they attribute to far-trade ; but
this they do know, that, while they have borne the
brunt of the change of system, the pains and perils
of the tninsition from a protected to an open trade,
and have had to re-eonsider all their calculations and
re ;adjust their scheme of cultivation, their landlords
ha, e done little or nothing fur their relief, notwith-
standing the real value of their rentals has been
greatly and permanently enhanced by the existing
commercial policy. This is the direction farmers
efforts and energies will, and very properly, take
when, in compliance with Mr. Diseahhes good ad-
vice, they abandon—or postpone, fortis the state
thing—their demand fur protection. This was
strongly expressed by several farmers at the ,
livrtfind Agricultural Meeting, after Sir En.
WARD WON'S inanities had excited their
choler. Thus, Mr. Rout:ars said the landlords are
now sharing in benefits which arose out of their
tenants' losses. They are keeping their horses
cheaper, their general housekeeping expenses and
the cost of maintaining their iwrvants are less ; they
can travel through the country at a much cheaper
rate than formerly, while the fanners' rent remained
about the same. The tenant, therefore, had a right
to call upon the landlord for every concession he
could make ; he should Five up game preserving
altogether ; he should strip the fields of trees and
assist the tenant in a variety of ways quite within
his power without reference to rent ; and on that
and other occasions during the present autumn si-
milar opinions have been expressed and reiterated
by tenant farmers, to and in the presence of their
landlords, with a frankness and decision of which we
have previously seen no examples. And it is worthy
of is mark that in every instance such observations
have come from farmers who have hitherto been
the active agents and the firmest political adherents
of the protectionist landowners, and have aided and
abetted them in every act and movement against
commercial freedom, for it is notorious that more in-
telligent and far seeing farmers, who advocated or
assented to free-made, have generally abstained from
these meetings. They have left the squirearchy to
fight it out with their own disgusted and disap-
pointed adherents. Such being the present state of
feeling and opinion amongst farmers, what will be
Mr. Disktedd s chance of enlisting them in his cru-
sade against local taxes, when he specifies the land-
tax as one on which they. the farmers, may appeal to
the legislature for an equitable adjustment of taxa-
tion ? Every farmer knows that the landdax is a
charge upon rent and rent only; and that by the
simplefact that he is in the constant habit of
paying it, and then deducting the amount from the
nal?. as by act of parliament he is entitled to du Far
better than such " dodges" is the plain and practical
refenmee of Sir .1 tits Ott mast at Aberdeenshire to
the beneficial changes which enterprise, skill, and
self-reliance have of late years produced upon the
agriculture of that counts-. This, however, w esti,-
factory, that the practical effect of the advise mid
conclusion of both politicians is the same. namtely,
that. in seeking to recover protection farmers are
locking after a vain thing, and that on their own
energy, be it exerted politically or agriculturally,
they must alone rely.

ON Friday last the platform of the Town-hall,
Manchester. was °cynicd by a body of men which
included representatives of almost every school of
politics and religion in England. Among them were
the Bishop of M tNCIIE•qt.n, Mr. Canon S to% ELL,
Dr. V.tt Guts, and Mr. Hemoolv. The object
which brought together such apparently discordant
elements in such friendly communion partook in
some degree of the singularity of the meeting itself.
It was to celebrate the opening of a richly-endowed
college, founded by a tradesman, and governed by a
layman.
We bare a right to point to the erection of ,
• college at Manchester, as a remarkable fact,
although our reasons for so doing will be found
to be somewhat different from those of somnolent

Oxford Dons, or bigoted denouncers of machinery,
who ask in contempt, can any good thing mine out
of commerce and manufacture ? Oar admiration
rather than our surprise is excited by the fact, that
Manchester, which may be considered to represent
more perfectly than any other town the combination
'of those numerous elements of power which have
within the last thirty years developed themselves so
energetically in the north and west of England,
should set tae seal upon so many vast achievements
by the accomplishment of another, to which its
enemies would have sneeringly pronounced it in-
competent, and for which its friends scarcely deemed
it prepared.
That the north-west counties have indeed taken a
giant's share in the actual work done in England of
late years, has never been denied. That they are
acquiring a predominating influenza in the country,
which is becoming more and more visible in every
movement of the national life, and will in all proba-
bility end in impressing itself very distinctly on the
national character, is matter of observation. But it
was too generally assumed that this progress was
merely a physical, utilitarian progress. Learned
lay monks *like SOUTHEY, and pretty pious
poets like Lord Jone MANNERS and Mr.
SMYTHE, and purblind Puseyites, like the
white-waistcoated Young Englanders in the house,
were shocked at the idea of men earning, by
labour, millions of loaves of bread on spots where
botanical gardens, supported by parliamentary
grants, must have been necessary before corn for a
few dozen loaves could be grown ; and called fran-
tically on the gods to restore the days when poor
men were fed by the crumbs swept out by the porter
of the castle hall, or the servitor at the monastery.
Everything great and noble, according to these persons,
was being withered under the miserable influence of
the spirit of trade. The cold breath of utility stifled
every generous aspiration which could not be brought
under the laws of the multiplication table, and esti-
mated in pounds, shillings, and pence. Matter was
dominating over mind. We were being reduced to
the level of the brutes that perish.
So much for the objections of the pseudo-spiritual-
ists, or rather spirits-and-water-ists. Others, like
ourselves, have seen with wonder and admiration
the marvellous growth of a mighty power, and the
astonishing precision with which its various mani-
festations have been made. Manchester, and the
numerous districts which it represents, have never
made a false step. They have gone on conquering
and to conquer. They gave us the cotton trade
which paid for the most expensive war in which a
nation was ever engaged; they knocked every minis.'
try on the head opposed to freedom of trade ; they
passed the corn laws. But the spirit which is un-
chained in these districts will not be confined to mere
commercial and political operations. It is gra-
dually animating other functions of public life. In
Manchester, deans and canons become liberal in'
matters of church preferment. In Manchester,
the bigotry which would condemn the majority
of the people to be uneducated, darts not lift
up its head; all classes do homage to the spirit
of progress, and unite in furthering a com-
prehensive education. Finally, Manchester possesses
now a college, to which, although no religious test is
required, either from pupils or professors, men of all
views in religion meet to do honour.
It is not too much toe:pea that a college founded
under such auspices, in the midst of a people ani•
mated with unconquerable energies, is destined to
take a very high place amongst learned and scientific
institutions, and to exercise in return a great in-
fluence on the minds of those who conic within its
sphere of action. We have every right to trust that
the spirit of the age which is banished so sedulously
from our great universities, will find a home here;
and that the intellectual and moral sciences may,
when freed from the dead weight which oppresses
them elsewhere, run a race with the physical
sciences, when they are cultivated with the same
ardour and unfettered endeavour. It may be
that the faculties have in the north been warped
by the too exclusive devotion to one object, and
that a want is becoming felt of a counterpoise.
Professor Scutt, the principal, in his eloquent open-
ing lecture, considers the foundation of the college
and the interest in its future welfare, a testimony to
the existence of such a want.

I may, therefore, (he observed) hope to find among you
a predisposition to weigh what may be offered as aid
towards a definite conception of the culture which a uni-
versity education is designed to bestow, and of the grounds
on which it is worthy to be taught; while on the
other hand, I ant stimulated to the undertaking
by contemplating the prodigious antagonist forces with
which the serene and Ideal attractions of the intellectual
life have to struggle in this metropolis of the world's indus-
trial activity ; forces some of them essentially hostile, des•
tiued, we trust, to be weakened or crushed in the conflict,
but for the mos: pail intrinsirally mole or oerdfol, and
capable therefore of bcinf harmonised with the influences
which we have now especially to advocate, and of cu•ope•
rating with them in a friendly opposition and healthful
counterpoiie like that which maintains order among the
powers of the material world, and which a due social orga-
niiiation strives to resemble.

The spirit which animated the speakers at the
meeting showed that this want had been felt, and
the general concurrence in the views of university
education, stated in a masterly manner by Mr.
Scorn, proves that he will be assisted in his arduous
task by a public spirit as enlightened as it is ener-
getic. That such sentiments as the following, on
the value of veil/Wire us distinguished from prac-
tical truth, should have been listened to with favour
in the most practical city in the whole world, proves
that Manchester will not be behiudhand in pursuits
which it has hitherto neglected :

There is no application of physical truth which seems so
' like the multiplying the limbs, and extending prodigiously
of an individual human presence, as the great series of the
inventions of Jam's Watt. Your city as it stands is almost
his creation. To this there is no need to call your thoughts.
But observe the nature of his preliminary inquiries. Who
was likely to have considered as practical the employments
of a poor maker of mathematical instruments, devoting his
too-much leisure to mastering, testing, and extending
Black's paradoxical theory of latent heat ? It is the pulse
of his brain that now throbs in all your engines ; it is a
great assemblage of speculative spirits, which wields as its
instrument the myriads of arms and tools and machines
that stir round us. The men who in the very nature of
things can never be appreciated, can never be hired, are the
men that do the most even of that work which the world
is readiest to value and remunerate. • • • • •
I would take physical science as an illustration of the tran-
scendant part which solitary and abstract study, not immedi-
ately directed to any outward result, bears in
the history of the most practical improvement.
So that human society is, for its own good, bound to
afford for such study opportunity and encouragement;
since it cannot adequately recompense, to take care lest all
its members become mainly practical men, to store up and
continue from age to age the results of the more profound
inquiry and speculation, to supply to the hand of the workers
the stock of principles and facts on which the truth of their
working may be found, in varying and expanding eireunts
stints s, to depend.

STOPFAOE OF Two BANKS AT NEWPORT.-1110
Monmouth and Glasnorgunshire Joint Stock Bank, and
Messrs. Williams's Old Bank, both of which establishments
carried on business in Newport, Monmouthshire, suspended
payments on Tuesday. The stoppage of the former concern,
, which is the chief local bank of the district, is attributed to
the fact that their bills were refused by the London Com-
mcreial Bank. In the course of the morning • notice was
fixed on the doors and in the windows of the bank, an-
nouncing that "in conaequence of the recent depression in
the iron trade, and the withdiawal of support hitherto
received, the managers were oliged to suspend payments for
s'short time, but hoped to resume businns in a few days."
There are serious apprehensions entertained in the mone-
tary circles that " the wont is not yet known." Many of
! the shareholders have invested their little all in the bank,
and their fears arc very great. Many, also, who had credits
in small amonnts—considerable, however, to them—are
under the most anxious apprehensions. Soon after the
I notice alluded to bad been put up at the Monmouth and
Glamorgan Bank, the doors of Messrs. William's old bank
in this town were also closed, and • notice affixed to the
door, that payments wen suspended in consequence of the
suspension of the Monmouth and Glamorgan Bank. The
third bank in town, the West of England District Bank, is
unaffected by the crisis.

CILICITABLE BEQuEsT.-31r. James Mentor, late
of Bose-greet, Boho, coffee roaster, recently deceased, has
by his will, after leaving various legacies to his relatives
and friends, bequeathed the residue of his property, which
. will amount to between two and three thousand pounds, to
" the Grocers' and Tea Dealers' Benevolent Protection
Society, to be applied for the objects of the said so-
ciety, and in accordance to the rules thereof." Mr.
Mentor was an annual subscriber to this society for many
years, but took no part in its affairs, though he often en-
pressed his approval of the objects of the society, and of the
careful management of its funds. The Grocers' and Tea
Dealers' is strictly a benevolent institution, having for its
object the granting of permanent annuities to the distressed
honest members of the trade and thei• widows in old age
and infirmities, and temporary assistance, at the discretion
of the committee, to their orphan children. The society
also embraces in its rules East and West India merchants,
brokers, sugar refiners, and importers of and dealers in colo-
nial and foreign produce, whose principal business is Con-
nected with the trade of a grocer or tea dealer.