The Express.
London, England, 1853-04-25 00:00:00

Zht e1:3)144'015.

TO 'ORR ES N ES TS.
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HMI WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
lau o.v—iiisewie. N. Aftersece. 211 s.
it..auear w—alowles Ss. 42 e 4e. 4s.

L9-VDON; MONDAY, APRIL 23.

Toe save at Tleyissa is kindled against Minis-
ters became. * peps, to reform the Legacy
Duty. Far esuststisos land has enjoyed unjust
exemptions from the tea on successions by death;
and instead of being grateful for all it hu
hitherto enjoyed by grace especial, and con-
science-stricken and silent on the announcement of

Tafyien alb" a tone of injured

virtue, and threatens ltiudly to take vengeance upon
those who would put an end to its unvirtuous privi-
lege. Conscious, however, of the utter weakness of
its cause in this particular, Toryism naturally prefers
to take issue upon other ground. The unamended
Income Tax will in many respect. serve its purpose
better, and upon this, therefore, the chiefs of the
Carlton have, it is understood, determined to offer
battle.

ibis battle of the session begins to-night, and
will probably last some days. To what extent a
counter-coalition may have been formed between the
Irish Catholic party and the Dcrbyites, we do not
undertake to say. But we record the numerical
strenetb, or rather weakness of the former, and can
therefore be neither by its own gasconade, nor by the
affectation of fear, somewhat clumsily assumed
respecting it in certain quarters. The entire con-
tingent that acknowledge the leadership of Mr.
LUCAS hardly exceed a score, and there are about as
many who have given in their adhesion from the
outset to the Coalition Ministry. The votes of some ,
half dozen Irish Whigs may be doubtful, but mat,
of them will either stay away altogether or support
the Government. Admitting, however, that from
sixty to seventy Irish members of all creeds and opi-
nions concur in declaring that they do not wish to
pay the same tax upon income which, for ten years,
his been exclusively borne by the people of England,
how much nearer will that bring Mr. FORBES MAC-
gems to his former post of Secretary of the
Treasury ? An evening contemporary tells,
with all the air of circumstantial gravity,
a story respecting. the arts which are said to have
been used to gain a decisive majority against the
late Administration. Certain Irish members con-
tinued, as the story goes, undecided until the last
moment : no genial arguments or blandishments
could fix their wavering resolve, unless Mr.
Harm could obtain for them a pledge from the
Coalition chiefs that, were they in office, they would
not extend the Income Tax to Ireland, these intract-
able gentlemen would not help to tarn Mr.
MACKENZIE out and to put Mr. HATTER in. After
are negotiation, the pledge, it is pretended, was
given ; and now these gentlemen, according to the
Beanciard, are fully justified in making reprisals,
by voting against the whole Budget, or
any part thereof they do not happen to
like. The story is only worth repeating as
illustrative of the state of decadence and despair
which pervades the party now in opposition. If
they had any great principle or any great cause to
invoke, we should nut hear of such tales of broken
faith, or of appeals to such miserable motives as these
on the eve of a great party conflict. It is pretty well
understood, however, that the more sensible men
among Lord mater's followers have no desire to
reopen the old quarrel between town and country.
Many of them have concealed their regret at having
been misled into desertion of Sir Roam PEEL.,
and since the humiliation to which they were ex-
posed in December last, when at the end of a
cox years' mutiny they heard every principle of
that illustrious statesman practically adopted by
Mr. DISRAELI, these sober-minded gentlemen
have made no secret of their determination never to
be run away with again by any insurgent genius.
They feel that in the main the order to which they
belong has everything to lose and nothing to gain by
setting itself against the common sense and general
interest tithe community at large. Free Trade has
already begun to convince even them of its compen-
sating advantages. The price of agricultural produce
has not for a long time been so remunerative, and
even oountry gentlemen are beginning to understand
that low and just taxation is better for everybody
than high and unequal imposts. We believe if such
persons were to speak the thought which is upper-
most in their minds just now, it is an un-
feigned regret that the Peelites were not induced
to join Lord DERBY in place of Lord
lons RUSSELL. Between Mr. GLADSTONE'S scheme
for the renewal of the Income Tax, and that of Mr.
DISRAELI there is no substantial difference, which
recommends the latter to the approval of country
gentlemen. Whatever faith they ever may have
had in their Arab chief, utterly (ha oat within them
before Christmas last, and of the two, they would
infinitely rather follow Mr. OLLDSTONS as their
future leader than his more venturous rival. To this
it may moms day or other came, aid meantime we
shall not be surprised at finding the names of many
respectable twenty ingrahsre miming in the list of
the division en the renewal for seven years of the
Income Tax. Lars the tax they may not.
bat they like the notion of a dissolution less, and
will not smelly be iodated, therefore, to neglect their
" heavy nide" or " argent private badness" in the
country to ease to town in order to precipitate a
Ministerial crisis.
If, upon the other hand, there be some pp*
in the Ministerial ranks en the present oseanon,
the Cnancxuna of the Exxxenuen has only to
thank hiring( for causing them. He knows as well
as any man the strength and intensity of the objeo-
dons so long entertained out of doors by men of all
shades of °plaion to the undissaiminating tariff of
incomes. ifs knows full well the justice of such ob-
jections; and he must feel that, sooner or later, they
are destined to prevail. Bat be seems in this
and some other more anxious to
walk in the shadow drag:, than to emulate those
practical qualities of legibility and adaptation which
so eminentl ehinederised his master. There was
nothing of ' et shape, or form which PEEL was
zip,
not ready eg sooner than endanger a great
object. Mr. OILLISTONZ admits—as it is impossible,
• for hitting deny—the prevalence and earnest-
ness of the mipmilissi to an indiscriminate rating of
incomes. MA wear than forego a literal and un-
reasoning adhormiss to the formula of the tax, as
originally end by Pizi., he offers to dribble it away
year by year, mid at last to abolish it altogether.
Nobo4, except Mr. GLADSTONE himself, seriously
believes that the latter result is likely to arise in our
time. Long ban 1880 many circumstances will
have mina to die natural progress of events which
may mike sate an abolition impossible ; and long
before then we desk not that we shaft see the just and
natural asserted of discrimination between
fixed and fluctuating incomes.

THE CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER is site
right as to the important effect the abolition of the
Soap Duty will,—by stimulating the demand for
Palm Oil,—have on confirming the suppression of
the Save Trade ; and in giving an additional impe-
tus to Negro improvement. He might, however,
have gone further in his African speculations, and
have added that by increasing the consumption in
England of another African production, Ground Nuts,
—whence the oil so largely used in making Continental
Soaps is expreseed,—it will have still greater

effects than ho anticipated upon the affairs
on the Western Coast of Africa. When the
Portuguese first traded with that Coast
they found Palm Oil and Ground Nuts articles of
native food, and so they remained down to a period
within living memory. So used, neither required
any cultivation or gave rise to any notlonwof pro-
perty. Though whole tracts of countqf are crowded
by the Palm Tree, little care was taker of what wee,
in fact, superabundant ; and, f,se cleqund Nato,
they were simply dug up as prudenee. or Necessity
dictated. Some thirty years ago a cask or two of
Palm Oil was sent home from the Gold Coast ' • it
met so ready a sale that it was further inquired
after, and the total amount now imported into Eng-
gland ranges from 25,000 to 30,000 tons annually.
The exportation of Ground Nuts is even larger ;
' but, owing to our Excise on Soap, they have hitherto
gone principally to France—to Marseilles especially.
Of these two articles, it is to be observed, the
Western Coast of Africa appears to have a mono-
poly; and with respect to Palm Oil, it is further to
be remarked, that it is exactly behind those ports
and up those rivers which were formerly the great
nests of the Slave Trade that its production is
largest; and just as the slave trade there has been
crushed, a commerce in Palm Oil has sprung up and
replaced it. There are men alive who recollect the
Slave Trade flourishing on the Gold Coast; it has long
been extinct there ; and Palm Oil is now largely ex-
ported. It is but a very few years ago since that
traffic appeared to be irrepressible at the
mouths of the Niger: it is now expelled, and thence
Liverpool obtains, instead, its supplies of Palm Oil.
So, also, later still, at Whydah and the other ports of
the kingdom of Datum and along the lagoon
which connects Dahomi with the Benin River, there
the Spanish slave dealers are themselves inaugurat-
ing a considerable commerce in Palm Oil. Already
the trade in this quarter is considerable • and it would
have extended much more rapidly than it has done
were it not that disorder and warfare in the
interior have been promoted and prolonged
by the indiscreet zeal of some of our own
naval officers and by the desire of some of our
I missionaries to rule at Abeeokuta, at Logos, and at
Badagry. When, however, order and tranquillity
are restored, a most important trade will undoubtedly
arise here. A generation ago, when Palm Oil was
merely an article of food, there was, we have said, no
property in Palm Trees. Since, however, large
foreign demand has arisen for this oil, the Planta-
tions, as already they are called, begin to be cared
for ; and lately the title to some of them has been
disputed in our Courts on the Gold Coast : a
contention which constitutes the first evidence
we have received of the value of land, not
actually under their own cultivation, being re-
cognised by the Natives. Thus the feeling of
property and the desire for accumulation are spring-
ing up out of the Palm Oil Trade ; and they are every-
where the germs of nascent civilisation. It is no light
question, therefore, thus involved in an increased
demand for this article ; it may produce African
consequences of incalculable importance to the whole
human race. It la in France hitherto that the great
consumption of Ground Nut Oil has occurred. It is
there used in the manufacture of soaps which, though
preferredabroad, are little used in England—very much
because of the Excise Laws. The specific gravity of the
soap made out of Ground Nut Oil is higher than those
laws permitted; in consequence we could neither
make It for our own use or for foreign exportation ;
and thus France has substantially the Soap Trade of
the world. By the repeal of the Duty, England
will be enabled to compete—in this, as in all other '1
trades,—with France abroad.

INDIA AND CHINA.
THE OVERLAND MAIL.

We have received by submarine telegraph the fol.'
lowing despatch, dated
" TRIESTE, Arm 24.
" The steamer Bombay arrived at half-past two
o'clock this morning in 108 hours from Alexandria,
bringing advice, from Calcutta to the 19th ult.
" There was no news from Btirmah. Trade was
improving at Calcutta. Exchange on London, 21.
" Trade was dell at Bombay, and money plentiful.
" According to advices from China of the 12th ult.,
it was said that Nankin had fallen into the bands of
the rebels on the 19th of February, and it was
thought that nothing but European intervention
could maintain the Emperor on the throne."