The Express.
London, England, 1848-08-21 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, AUGUST 21, 1848.

mu OrpreiSlS.

MAILS.
The overland closed mails, tan Marseilles, to the Mediterranean.
Egypt. Aden. Ceylon, India, 11014-Kong. &0., will be made up on the
evening (tithe 24th AilS.
Ttr malls for Brush North *merles, and the United States
will be reeds for B evening of the 23th Aug.
'the malls for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and Gibraltar
will be made up on the morning of the 27th Aug.
• The malls for New South Wales, Van ideman's Land, aid New
Zealand will be made up on the evening of the lid August.
The mast for the West Coast of Africa and Madeira will be made
up on the evening of the 81st August.
The West India Mails, Including Bermuda, Nassau, Havanna,
Honduras, New Orleans, Vera Crue, Tampico, sad Porto Rico, and
excluding thorn for Madeira, !scowl, Cariliagcni, hunts Martha,
Magma, Panama, West Ciatet of South America, Mid St. Juau.de.
Nicaragua, a ill be made up on the morning of the lad Sept.
The mails for the Brasile, tho River Plate, Monte Video, Pernam-
buco, Bahia, histivira, and Buenos Ayres, will be made up on the
evening of the Ith September.
The overland mails lot Ctbraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonlonl,landx
Pgypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, llong-hong, and China, Oa Southamp-
t in, will be made upon the evening of the 2uth Sept.

NOTICE TO ADVE:LTISERS.
The number of STAMPS issued by the authorities of the
Stamp-office, during 1847, to the
DAILY NEWS was 3.447.009
This, we believe, is within eigAt per cent, of the nuraeo
issued to the Morning Herald, Morning Gimmick, airi
M 0,71494 Pat, ALL PUT TOGETHER.
In addition to the above, issued to the DAILY NEWS,
Morning Paper, there were issued tor the Eveneng Edition,
THE EXPRESS 776 714
Which wu more, we believe, than were issued tither to
the Glob's orState4;rd. Evening Papers.

TO CORRESPONIWNTS.
Inteedrel for^TM i:e►re•e.' London emtlwt ►eppeeer meat
Muorerfnetrft, by Two o'clock oe the Mb of tarbeet.m.

• A . .:Mer1...111.M
igl al the can. h‘

WlOll WATER AT 1.0711101.1 111111,011.
Two 7111 T-" 21 Alternaon. 47 ER.. Iwo •••
To.v.ra n'.—MoeuwA 1 Air pot .7; AM..... 4 • At'. l't••

LONDON, iIIuNDAY, AUGUST 21.
TIIERE is no quality for which John Bull is so
thoroughly conspicuous, as originality. Whatever he
has done in philosophy, or in politics, or in poetry, or
in mechanism, is lies own, with his own stamp upon
it. And whatever the idea or innovation, it is struck
out and achieved a full century before any of the rest
of the world could have imagined it. Whenever.
therefore, we see a few stray h.lk of John Ball's
family, erring from his lead, and forgetting the re-
gular, native, English tenor of progr, es, and running
about to imitate the French one day, and the Irish
the next, we may be kure that this is no English
moven- ent ; and that instead of Ling formidable, or
successful, it R ill be certain to turn oat ridiculous.
It is impossible, in the mixed urd numerous family
of Englishmen, that there should not be some, nay
many, fools and weak men. And, unfortunate Iv for the
respectability of the tot m Cliattist, this epithet has been
made to include a succession of exhibitions of filly,
which have frightened the timid, aroused the curious,
given work to the polite, and strengthened the hands
of the governm'nt and the influence of the tories.
First, after the French outburst, and as if to emulate
its success, we had the convention of delegates
in Tottenham-court-road, sitting and spouting at
so much a day, and Mr. Crerev menacing at a fixed
hour and field to put down military and police. Mr.
PEARGUEI O'Cossoit himself held his great field-day
on the 10th of April, and much difference of opinion
still exists as to its nature. Some will have the Ken-
nington-common display to have been the roaring of a
lion, and that the Iron was silenced and put down.
We persist in thinking it the bra) ing of an MP, who
pricked his ears at the sight of Commissioner MAYNE
and made off.
To the monster demonstration of Feamus suc-
ceeded the minor gathering and the übiquitous elo-
quence of Mr. Eusesr JONES. The very taunt of
the toriee,that the chartists had mus'ered for a revolu-
tion on the 10th of April, and had not courage or op-
portunity to persist, tempted Jost.s and his companions
to make another appeal. 'they attempted it in the
most'populous and seasonable quarters; they invited
French example and Irish sympathy all in vain.
The London populace would neither follow King
PEAROUS nor Prince ERNEST. And the open jaws of
Newgate swallowed up the poor fools of would-be
leaders with as little effort or excitement, as if they
were so many pickpockets.
And now we have the third, and we trust the last,act
of the physical-force tragicomedy. The police have
caught what they dignify to the height of Irish
sublime by nailing it a club, being a set of con-
spirators, who meet to hatch treason in the first
open public-house they stumble on, end where, without
closed doors, bone or bars, initiative ceremonies,
and apparently without even turning out or minding
the casual inmates of the tavern, they proceed to hoed
their secret and treasonable councils. We do not
want to deny the guilt of these fellows, or opposel
their receiving condign punishment. For daring to
mimic the very worst, most destructive, and diabolical
form of conspiracy, they deserve to suffer, as dangerous
fools. What we deny is, that the association or plot
appears to have been for midable to society, or govern-1
ment, or that it was more than a guilty attempt
to play at treason. If armament and preparation
indeed implied the skill and the determination to
use incendiary and destructive weapons, these men are
so many Guy PALAEs. But the greater part of their
ammunition and armousy was stored, it seems, in an
open yard, to which more than tee* hundred persons
had recourse, and where, of' course, secrecy was im-
possible. Then these conspirators were in the habit
of walking through the streets to council in the first
public-house, loaded with the most clumsy and
uneoncealable arms, with pikes and pike-heads, swords,
heaps of fire-balls, strongly smelling tarpcntine ;
while one notable fellow actually tied a coal-
scuttle round his chest by way of armour.
In short, they were enacting conspirators, without
having any more idea of screwing their courage to
the sticking point, than they had of screwing the
pikes upon the pike heads.
We were at first very much afraid that POWELL,
the informer in the case, and who introduced himself,
he admits, to the meetings of the delegates in order to
get at their secrets and betray them—we were at first
afraid that this man had got up the entire conspiracy
and suborned the guilt for the sake of making his
profit by the betrayal of his dupes. They seem,
however, not to have required tempting, and to hays
flung themselves, without either precaution or ecm-
cealment, into the exciting pastime of political con-
spiracy. Powett indeed admits that on one occasion
he gave half a pound of gunpowder to one of the
leaders, an act, certainly, that strongly marks his
character and mission. Such are agent as this, active
in the distribution of gunpowder, and ideas akin to
it, amidst a set of delegates, who, like PAY, " never
knew the object of his mission, or what particular'
duties it imposed upon him, ant who, in
the performance of that mission never did or said
anything to anybody "—such a combination of
victims and of the animal which feeds on them does
cense some pity to mingle with the indignation and
the contempt inspired by such guilty folly.
Whatever be the result of this discovery, and the
terror which must ensue from it, the exposure cannot
but be useful in scouting and eradicating from this
country the un-English custom of secret political
clubs. Even in Ireland they have led but to crime and
disgrace. Cowardice as well as guilt has been their
character. And the precipitation with which the
members have rushed to conceal themselves and creep
from punishment, has only been equalled by the brag-
gadodio with which they provoked it. A secret club
is a thing that infallibly draws after and with it the
informer. The one species of vermin breeds the other.
And both are as disgraceful to the national character
as to whatever cause is thus sought to be advanced.
We are rejoiced, however, to see the symptoms
of such terrible disorder so very slight, and
to see only the merest fools and waifs of society caught
and drawn in by the vain desire to imitate
conspiracies, for which they have no motive beyond
sickly vanity and an itch for imitative and theatrical
politics. The law will have its course ;we have no
wish to interfere with its action ; but we have a
strong desire to prevent the public from considering
Ia formidable what is really puerile, and from ima-
gining the body politic of England to be threatened
or afflicted with any serious disease, requiring strong
and violent remedies, or severe regimen, when in
reality the symptoms are those of sanity and security.
It is indeed wonderful, that events inch as have oc-
curred so recently and, thickly on all sides of England,
should have produced so few tendencies, much lees
events, of a similar kind. This country is exempt
from any struggle either of classes or races, except
that argumentative and constitutional struggle which
it is right end wholesome for all to indulge in, and
the freedom to indulge in which is, indeed, the true
and best preventative of any more serious or vital
strife.

Tat Hudson's Bay Company is the last of those
collective and mercantile sovereigns, springing from
Engl.sh habits of association, which in seeking trade
achieved empire, and which have mainly contributed
to the extension of British power and the accumula-
tion of British wealth. Whatever may be said of the
rapacity, the cruelty, or unscrupulous politics of our
great Eastern company, yet, after all, the natives of
both Hindostan and of the northern portion of North
Amcri-a have reason to bless the coming of the Bri-
ti-h amongst them, end the establishment of their
rule. Had the fur trade been abandoned to
the free adventurers of all nations, or even
of our own, the animals which feed it would
have been ere this exhausted and destroyed,
the Indians would have been more wasted and demo-
ralised, and civilised men,having no further use for the
natives of those cold regions, would have left them to
Perch or would treat them as foes. For the past there
is undeniably a mesh of gratitude and admiration due
to the Hudson's Bay Company, for the epirit, order,
and wisdom of its rule.
The future, however, is another and a new consi-
deration. The Hudson's Bay Company, in its mode
of government, is the Russia of the new world. It is
the purest despotism, with, of course, selfish and mer-
cantile interests, if not predominating at least influenc-
ing any more philanthropic duties. The Russia of
Europe is separa!ed from the opposite extreme of free go-
vernment by intermediate states of intermediate degrees
of freedom. Instead of any such rival gradations, the
chief settlement of the Hudson's Bay Company on the
Red River, governed in all the rigid exclusiveness of icy
rule, borders upon the district of the United States
wheretrappersandbaek woodsmen live in the combined
freedom of savage and republican nature. No wonder
thatthere are malcontent • onthe Red River, with catho-
licism, too, to swell their discontent; and no wonder that
they send emissaries to England to complain of the
Company, &though the lest persons, we should have
thought likely to receive and echo their complaints,
would have been Mr. GLADSTONE and Mr. GLAD-
STONE'S party.
Such complaints, however, are highly usefuL They
awaken the public and the company to the coming
times, when monopolies even for bunting and fur
trading must fall to the ground, and in anticipation
of which the rigid system of hunting-ground adminis-
tration must be relaxed, especially so far south as the
Red River settlement, an I give way to some system
more in harmony not only with American but with
English life.
Parliament and the public have, however, eleven
years before them ere they are calk d upon to decide
upon this change. The present question is, shall
Vancouver's Island be abandoned to the hudson's Bay
Company, to colonise it with their officers, subordinates,
end tenants, or shall it be flung open to free settlers ?
There can be no hesitation whatever in answering,'
open it to tree settlers if you can find them. But
where are they to come from? It is the furthest,
point of the globe for an emigrant to reach. The
soil is not rich were he even there. Commodities
tor trade there are none, the Hudson's Bay Company
having for years to come the monopoly of dealing
with the Indians, and the result of that dealing
having been for a long time but tho cargo of one
vessel annually from Colombia. Vancouver's Is-
land and the harbours around it will in time be
one of the most important possessions of the
globe. But this will not be till the continent behind
it be cultivated, peopled, and developed. At present its
sole use would be a naval war-station and depiet, for
which its coal renders it most apt. But if the esti-
mates for Labuan make us grumble, how is Lord
GREY to coax a million out of parliament for Van-
couver's Island'.' We think, therefore, that upon the
whole Mr. C. Itettea was pretty right—that govern-
ment has not funds to colonise Vancouver's Island; that
no capitalist has offered to undertake it, or is likely to
do so, and that although the Hudson's Bay Company
make very bad, very jealous, and very despotic colo-
nisers, yet we fear they prove the only possible ones
for the present.
We admit, indeed, that the precautions taken by
the wording of the grant to make the settlers placed
on Vancouver's Island by the company independent
of the company, are illusory in the extreme. Mr.
Gout-Butte too fully showed them to be so. There
are other means, however; and as these have been
already adopted on the Red River, why not apply
them to Vancouver's Island? In order to ascertain the
truth of the allegations of the malcontent party at the
Red River settlement, the Colonial-office has appointed
or got the company to appoint an (Beer of the govern.
ment, and in its confidence, to be the chief authority
in the settlement, in order to report upon the state of
things, and no doubt also in order to reconcile the
more independent settlers by putting within their
reach a power to which they may appeal. Why not
try this at Vancouver's Island ? Why not appoint
one of her Majesty's officers to be governor, and make
it his duty to see that the Hudson's Bay Company
throw no obstacles in the way of independent settlers?
This would be a better guarantee than a constitution
and a representative assembly upon paper, for which
the Hudson's Bay Company can alone furnish the
materials.
The development of the importance of Vancouver's
Island must greatly depend on the working of its
coal-mines. By giving these to the company, and at
the same time forcing them to expend the profit, the
grant increases their natural disinclination to work
these mines, or to give the island importance. So that,
in this respect, the Colonial-office is closing and
neutralising with one bend the incentive to colonisa-
tion which it offers to the company with the other. This,
at least, ought to be amended, and the coal-mines or
resources of the island opened to private enterprise
in less than eleven years, through the regulated
authority of an officer, who should, as at the Red
River, at once represent the government and the
Company.

WE had no intention, the local press of the city of
Durham may be assured, of merely noticing and then
abandoning either the subject of the misappropriation
of the property of the church in that diocese by its
clergy, or that of the misapplication of ecclesiastical
patronage therein. They are both evils so crying—
so scandalous to the charesher of the church—and so
hurtful to the interests of the laity, that our silence
thereon can only be secured by their abatement. Yet
are they vices of such inveteracy in the diocese that I
the very people in the midst of whom they have been
practised appear to have a very inadequate sense of
their enormity, and we are not so bold as to hope that
the ill habits of the Durham clergy will be reformed
on the demand of a few newspaper articles. Unde-
terred, however, by the absence of the local assist-
ance of our Durham contemporaries, and careless of
their censure, we shall test the question whether
a public opinion can not be formed, elsewhere
at least, which will by its fruits be productive
of some benefit to the permanent welfare of
the church in this diocese. The two facts
from which we originally started are undeniable.
First, that the wealth of the church therein is very
great indeed. Second, that the spiritual state of the
diocese in those districts, whence a great part of that
wealth is derived, is most deplorable. Our censures
of the clergy have brought one (and by far the moat
able and candid) of their local advocates to an admis-
sion of so much. Hear him now ; quantum mutatus
Very demoralising forms of dissent do prevail amongst
the pitmen, and throughout the mining districts; and it is
in thee identical districts, where church property is most
valuable, that the fewest and the cheapest churches are to be
found. We attribute this greatly to the system of leases
under which the land and the royalty are let.
We do not know of any district in England mere
melancholy to travel through than the mining villages
of Durham. At a bird's-eye view there is no religion
visible. Towers or spires there are scarcely any, and of
simple belfrys far from an adequate supply. Churches with
low pitched rook, and cheaply done, everywhere speak r,
modern thrift, whilst engine-houses, built of materials wet.
calculated to defy time, and fitted with machinery of the
most perfi ct and expensive hind, cast the humble houses of
God into the shade. In every village two or three meeting-
houses are found which afford an exciting resource for the
otherwise dull Sunday, and are admirably fitted for " lore.
feasts," tesdrinkings, and violent political er anti-owners'
meetings on the evenings of the other six days. God and
man are alike uncared for—it is a district given up to the
heartless pursuit of wealth. The villages are frightfully
disorderly, and what tidiness is visible is due to the unaided
energies of the men, or rather the women, themselves. Of
resident proprietors there are few or next to none, for the
approach of a pit village is an immediate hint to the pro-
prietor to quit his house, and either to let it as a whole to
the viewer of the intended colliery, or in tenements to the
work-people.—Durhans Advertiser, Aug. 11.
Such is, on the showing (and a very graphic sketch
' it is) of their own chosen organ, the state which the
church has allowed the mining districts of Durham to
be reduced to. We say the church, for until it can
be shown that its wealth in those parts la insufficient
to meet their spiritual necessities, the clergy are pri-
marily responsible for the plights thus described; and

it will not do to transfer any of their obligations to
the shoulders of the laity, broad though they may be.
The mining operations of the laity enabled the church
to provide amply for the religious nurture of the po-
pulation introduced into the districts, and so long as
the clergy pocketed the revenues thus augmented by
the enterprising spirit of the laity without making
such provision it is nothing short of gross hypocrisy
for them when detected to throw the blame, or any
share of it, on the lay proprietors.
But a " better disposition " is now, we are told,
arising in the church, though we must not, it is
characteristically added, expect too much in the pre-
sent generation. Now, if we are correctly informed,
this improved disposition is to be seen principally
amongst the lay proprietors of the mining districts ;
for it is, we are assured, by their contributions chiefly
that new churches are here and there raising their
very modest roofs; and those benefactions, whether
prompted by considerations of abstract benevolence,
or dictated by the more worldly suggestions of self-
interest, are undoubtedly cm.dieive to the pecuniary
advantage of the northern coal-owners ; for one of
the disastrous consequences of the religious and edu-
cational neglect of the mining population by the
church has been the frequency of disputes between
the colliers and their employers, and the serious losses
incurred by the latter through strikes. Whatever
"better dispositiou" has been manifested is, there-
fore, on their parts; and as they (thanks to dear
coals in London) have not much credit to lose with
the public, the organ of the Durham clergy must not
deprive them of this.
What extent of improvement the church in Dur-
ham proposes to accomplish in the generation in
which we are thus forbidaen to hope for much is of
c.urse only knowu to themselves, if (and on this point
a doubt is permissible) they have ever given the sub-
ject a serious thought. But the very suggestion of
mother generation's delay on the part of a bishop, a
dean and chapter, and a clergy so richly endowed—so
competently endowed—soable by the means thechurch
has lavished on them to make every requisite provi-
sion
forthwith, shows (if any such proof were needed)
how unworthy these men are of the responsible posts
they hold in that church—bow hopeless it is to ex-
pect any adequate or comprehensive reform from
them v..luntarily—how spiritually destitute they
themselves must be! A generation! Why, in half
that time the mineral property of the church in many
of the parishes of the coal districts will by these mis-
appropriations have been entirely alienated. Another
generation! Why in that time the church it elf
would he destroyed if this principle were to pr:vail
throughout the kingdom.
No; what is required is that the clergy of Durham,
episcopal, capitillar, and parochial, do their duty to
God, the church, an! the people entrusted to their
cure at once. The present race cannot secure immu-
nity for their past neglect and for future misappro-
priations, by the delusive hope that their successors
will be more conscientious. The chartism, the
drunkenness, the ignorance, the tactiousness, the bar-
barism of the Durham coal villages are not to be
atoned for by a bequest of their amendments to the
next generation. The charge against that clergy is
that they, by their misappropriations of the mineral
wealth of the church, to their own private use, are
depriving those who may succeed them of the oppor-
tunity and of the means the church now has of doing
its duty. To this accusation, made more in sorrow
than in anger, we have heard no reply.
The misappropriation is now admitted on all bands.
Th • Durham Chronicle and the Durham Adrertieer,
and the local preys generally, all now see the spolia-
tion of the church's property by her unnatural sons,
which they had so long and so strangely overlooked
before we drew their attention to the facts. And it is
at last coolly suggeste.i by one of them, as a reason-
able arrangement, that from all coal-rents received by
the Durham clergy one-tenth should be taken and
spent on additional spiritual instruction. One-tenth, I
indeed! •
.Why, covered by such a paltry sur- I
render, the remaining nine-tenths would only be
more rapidly alienated. One-tenth is quite an
inadequate contribution; it would, we repeat, be
a mere premium for the preservation and aliena-
tion of the other nine-tenths. What the laity
ere entitled to is, to have the mineral produce of the
church's property treated as the church's capital, its
preceeds funded, and the annual increments of the in-
vestments applied to church purposes; and this proposi-
tion shows a spirit so brigandish as to suggest that
the first step towards a remedy of the grievances now
confessed is a complete and precise knowledge of the
alienations in progress ; and to acquire that, we
can see no adequate or trustworthy way, except
through committees of the two houses of parliament,
and to their appointment next session we shall direct
our attention.
And now a few words. before concluding, on the
personal questions, which have far greater charms for
our local contemporaries than these graver matters
affecting the permanent interests of the church.
They have shown us nothing to retract in
what we have stated as to Archdeacon
Trionre. He is, we repeat, a pluralist—a enrcharged
pluralist; and, as such, has done, is still doing, the
church of which he ia a servant irreparable injury.
We repeat, that in the demolition of the dwelling-
house in the College-square of Durham, adjoining Dr.
THORPE'S prebendal residence, there was a wanton
destruction of church property, to the extent of
1,2001. at least; and if we are still told that the
destruction was justified by an architect's certifi-
cate, we shall be glad to know who the architect
was, and in what relation he steed to Dr. THORPE.
Dr. GILLS', too, against whom they unjustifiably
allege we made insinuations, is, we must remind them,
though to a less offensive extent, also a pluralist ;
for not only is he a prebendary of Durham, but he is
Vicar of Norham, some sixty miles distant from his
stall. And when we look through the great livings
in the county of Durham, and find that in Stanhope
the Rev. Al ILLIA3I NICHOLAS DARNELL was pre-
sented to one worth 5,0001. a year, that by the resig-
nation of the stall which he previously held
in Durham Cathedral, the present Bishop of
EXETER might be inducted thereto that
in the great, populous, and wealthy living of
Bishop Wearmouth Dr. WELLESLEY enjoys several
thousands a year, and is besides a prebendary of Dur-
ham Cathedral—that in the profitable rectory of Es-
sington, we see a near relative of Lord RAVENS-
WORTH—and that to the richest incumbency which
has fallen vacant during the episcopate of the present
bishop he has nominated his own eon, we are surely
more than excused, we are justified, for holding the
opinion that other considerations than fitness have
prevailed, and do still prevail, in the distribution of
patronage in the diocese of Durham. And when we
are told that the trusteeship of Lord CREWE'S
I estate is a thankless office we appeal to
the facts that the eon of the Reverend
WILLIAM NICHOLAS DARNELL, who bolds what
SYDNEY SMITH would have called the STANHOPE
" prize," and who is one of these trustees, has now
for some years held the ble living of Bam-
borough, and has married daughter of the
Venerable CHARLES TIIORPE, another of the trustees ;
and we inquire whether a trust productive of each
comfortable family arrangements and alliances can be
properly styled " thankless ?" Other advantages
there are, too, connected with the administration of the
affairs of the CREWE charities, which country
gentlemen at this season of the year would prize as
valuable privileges ; for example, the right of grouse
shooting over the moors belonging to the estate in
Northumberland, which these active trustees do most
religiously reserve and preserve for their own friends:
although this right of sporting might annually be let
to the pecuniary advantage of the trust. And yet we
are gravely told the office is a " thankless" one. "So
true it is, as Sancho Pan:a says, "that greedisP
_ of 1 bursts the bag!"
well