The Express.
London, England, 1847-01-26 00:00:00

Eht pro*

MAILS.
The mails for Vigo, Oporto, Liabom Madeira, Cadis, and Gibraltar,
will be made op on the morning of the 27th January.
Me maim for New South Wales, van Ihemen's Land, and Now
Zeaband will be made up on the evening of the 31st January.
The mails for Sydney, Van Dieman's Land, Re., will be made up on
the evening of the 91st January.
The West India maul including thone for Menino, Ifondnraa, and
the ilayannah, will be made up on the morning of the 2nd February.
The Mail. for British North America, Bermuda, and the United
Staten, will be made up on the evening of the 3rd February.
Tb, overlsni trails for Gibraltar, Mahn, Grow*, the lonian islands,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, llong-Kong, and China, yin Soutriampton,
will be made op on the morning of the ..rd of February.
The mails for the Snails, the River Plate, Monte Video, Pernam-
buco, Belt* Ma Wire. and Buenos Ayres, will be ilepatchal on the
everting of the 4th February.
The overland cloyed mails, oho Mementos, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Hoeg Kong, &c., will be made up on the
systoles or the Sib February.

Vie most efts, la any way, any ccouningeatlas that la Pent to tia
bet dime who thecae to Woken ea la comildene• will
y gala ealipected. NEITHER CAN WE UNDERTAKE
TJ mita.v ANT IIIANILNCRIPTS WHATEVER.
Advartlmmrota Intended for The Eqwro. Lawlor main paper,
Mg IPS at the Office by Two o'eloet m the day of publication.

HIGH WATER AT lAMDON-HRIDOT-
ban Dr.—Morning, 37 min. poet 9; Afternoon; 17 ere poet 10.
To-Ncoenotr—Mornine, 58 min. port 10; Afternoon; 36 min. per 11.

LONDON, TUESDAY, JAN. 26.

IT is confounding and incredible to think, that a
people who have reached such perfection, wealth,
and greatness, in industry and enterprise, and who
have achieved wonders, to which those of antiquity
are as nothing—all done by free labour and private
spirit—should yet, as a state, be possessed of the
labour of indigent millions, have the provision of
these millions flung upon them, and in all their cen-
turies of experience should not have learned how to
utilise this mass of labour.
It is, that in our system, government for such
tasks is inapt, our monied and our landed members
of society are everything. When they are paralysed,
government seems necessarily and lamentably so.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL has just made this humiliating
confession. And yet this statesman came to the task
last summer with eager hopes and active pro-
visions. He devised schemes of public employ,
schemes for exciting private interest and cupidity
amongst the Irish gentry to compete with public
employ. In every way were these schemes modified
and dished up to suit the palate of the Irish
gentlemen. All in vain. And, last night, the
minister came down to the House of Commons,
flung down his hands in despair, and declared
that he bad no more hope, no fresh plans for the tem-
porary relief of Ireland, except to consider the labour-
ing class as paupers, and to feed them on the bread of
charity, without asking the semblance or the test of
work.
This forms one of the most mortifying pages of the
history of the two countries. We do not impugn the
necessity of such a declaration, the wisdom or the
generosity which dictates it. But we cannot repress
a feeling of both disappointment and despair.
Ireland, until the month of August, is to be one
vast poor-house. A Commissary - General, Sir
JOHN BuIIGOYNE, is to be despatched there
to establish depots, and soup pots, and elee-
mosynary establishments throughout the land, to
support which the guardians of the poor are to levy
what rates they can. Private charity and the Conso-
lidated Fund are to furnish the rest. We need not say,
that when such partners enter upon business,
charity ever becomes the sleeping one, and govern-
ment the active and responsible member of the firm.
The Labour Rate Act is at an end. The expenses
under it are to be paid half by England ; the other by I
the Irish landlords. We have always said, that as far
as the distress was a temporary visitation of provi-
dence, it should be met by the imperial resources. But
might there not be some distinction between those
who exerted themselves, and those who did not ? At
all events, the Irish landlords have reason to rejoice.
After all the chiding., all the menaces to them, and
all their frowardness in return, they are now treated,
as spoiled and cherished children, with half their fines
remitted. Truly Lord BESBOROUGII mast have been
a very eloquent representative of Irish landlordism, to
have talked and smoothed away the great dissatisfac-
tion, that existed with the whole of their conduct.
Fifty thousand pounds are to be advanced to the
landlords from the Treasury, to present their tenants
with seed in the proper season. This seems a wise

and necessary piece of generosity. At the sometime
the soup-pot of charity, being full for the indigent,
and no return required for it in labour, it is to be.
hoped that the peasant may find time, health, and
leisure to till his own plot of ground, sad the
farmers' too. This, at least, may be expected.
Such are the temporary measures for Irish relief.
The permanent ones are divided by Lord JOHN Rue-
SELL into three classes : the first comprises the im-
provement of private property, for which loans are to
be given, reimbursable at the rate of six-and-a-half
per cent. in twenty-two years. For this purpose, the
drainage acts are to be consolidated, all improvements
considered as drainage, and the mode of repayment
under this act extended to all who have borrowed under
Mr. LABOUCHERE'I4 or Mr. TREVELYAN'S letters.

The second class of permanent measures relate to
public works. And of these, the only one at present
proposed is the reclamation of waste lands. The
Woods and Forests are to undertake this, or rather
the enclosing and draining; exerting a compulsory
power to take any lands (or the purpose, under the
annual value of 2s. 6d. an acre, on the landlord re-
fusing to sell or to reclaim himself. The I tads are
afterwards to be sold or let in lots of from 20 to SO
acres. On this one million is to be expended.
Most of the other measures stated by us in Decem-
ber come under the head of public works. Of these
I emigration might have been expected to hold a larger
place. But it is evidently not a favourite measure
with the Premier, who generously deems the population
of Ireland not too great, with agriculture improved,
and the due means of employment and sustenance
provided for it. There can he no doubt of this ; but, in
the meantime, until some improvement does take place,
it is to be feared that the over-stocking of the labour-
market will paralyse all other efforts to raise Ireland
to a normal state of prosperity and comfort. Lord
Jon N RUSSELL'S reasons, however, for not augmenting
the already deep annual tide of emigration, were
powerful and just.
The third class of permanent measures was the
eleemosynary, viz., the Poor-law. This provision for
Ireland was to be extended ; relief was to be in all
cases afforded to the indigent. And when the work-
houses were full, out-door relief and labour were to be
furnished for the able-bodied. The mention of the
Poor-law was favourably received by the House.
It is evidently the opinion, that the Irish landlord can
only be reached, rendered careful of the poor, and
responsible for his duties, by such a law. Inde-
pendent, therefore, of the wants or feasibility
of an Irish Poor-law, it is popular ; and
the minister has but to speak, in order to give it all
the force and extension that an act of parliament
can give. Did the series of measures, now brought
forward, even attempt to restore any due proportion be-
tween labour, and the demand for it ; a poor-law might
be made to follow them. Without each, we fear, that
however speedily enacted, it will long remain a dead
letter in Ireland.

As Lord JOHN RUSSELL drew to the
close of his important statement, he seems
to have felt that it was far from a cheer-
ing one, and therefore to raise the despondent
spirits of the House, he read two pithy extracts from
Sir Thwass MORE and from another writer, de-
scribing the state of England and Scotland in the
16th and 17th centuries. The epoch seemed to be
that following the Reformation and the break up
of monasteries, which gave to England and Scot-
land a very Irish state of mendicancy and disorder.
But these maladies of England and Scotland were
the effect of temporary and known causes. That of
Ireland is a chronic complaint, that requires some-
thing more than time and hope, however powerful as
remedies, to cure.
Ministers in either House did not put the
courage of the audience to the test, by naming
the sum which these measures and grants were to
cost. A sum of fifteen millions would have made a
sensation. It cost but twenty to emancipate the
negroes. An equal sum were well spent if we could
emancipate the Irish pauper. But fifteen millions,
merely Imeards that object, is a severe and unsatisfac-
tory outlay. The remarkable speech of Lord LA.NS-
DOWNE demands a separate notice.

IN order to a wise and just conduct with regard to
the consequences of the Spanish marriages, it is
necessary to keep apart and to distinguish carefully
the different questions, which have ansen from these
events. The political results likely to follow them,
in the increase of French power, the confirmation of
that power over the government and fortunes of Spain,
and the consequent derangement of the commercial,
military, and especially the naval, balance between
the great countries of kurope, form ono very import_
ant consideration. This, however, is not a question
which presses—it is one which we may discuss at
leisure, since the French have gained their point,
and have re-establisbed.their future domination and
influence in Spain more successfully and more solidly
than did Louis XIV. himself.

A question that more immediately presses for solu-
tion, is the conduct and fairness of the French govern-
ment. If we have been the dupe, not of French
artifice, but of circumstances; if the weakness of the
Spanish court, if our own political changes and offi-
cial oversights, if the French court, and ministers,
and envoys, have practised no more than common
selfishness, conducted matters with no more than ordi-
nary astuteness, or obeyed merely foolish jealousies
and fears—then, however unfavourable and menacing
the events of Madrid may seem to us, we still cannot
make them a cause of deadly feud with the govern-
ment and dynasty of France.
No w the French court and mi ni sterassert thatthis pre-
cisely was the case. The King, M.Gu izor, and the Duc
DE Bnootiewere the persons, who recognised ISA-
BELLA'S right, and set aside the male branch. They
were all necessarily anxious, that the result of this
step of theirs should not be to throw the Spanish
crown out of Bourbon hands and French influence.
They made an arrangement with Lord ABERDEEN,
ensuring the continuation of the Bourbon dynasty.
And they pretend that the accession of Lord PAL-
MERSTON, his conduct, his words, and his silence, to-
gether with certain acts of the court of Spain, did
create in the French court and cabinet a real fear of a
Coburg marriage. To prevent this, the French court
hastened Queen ISABELLA'S marriage, and the Spanish
court, for its own reasons, precipitated the Infanta'a
marriage.
Such 111 M. Guturr's story. We regret to say that
we cannot give it confidence. It does not appear to as
to hold together, nor would it bear an hour's
investigation in a court of justice. First of all, we
do not think that M. GUIZOT could be seriously
alarmed at the pretensions of the Duke of SAXE
COBURG. The correspondence laid before parliament
clearly proves, that the Saxe Coburg. themselves
refused to entertain the idea, without the previous
consent of the King of the FRENCH. And it equally
proves, notwithstanding M. GUIZOT'S pretended igno•
rant* of the fact, that Louts PHILIPPE was quite
cognizant, as well as master, of the negotiations of
the Spanish court for a Coburg marriage.
According to M. Guizor, in his speech before the
Peers, the Spanish wart was merely anxious for a
marriage which would give them the support of a
foreign power, and did not care whether the prince
was a Coburg or a Bourbon. We cannot suppose the
Spanish court so foolish as not to be well aware that
a Coburg—especially the Coburg intended—had no
pretensions to be considered an English prince, and
that his marriage with Queen ISABELLA would have
brought the latter no foreign aid. What the Spanish
Queen wanted, was the support which a foreign court
might lend against her own subjects. It was not to
England she could look for this. To France alone,
then, far more than even to Spain, did the Spanish
Queen look for support and alliance. They desired
the double and the Bourbon marriage, and merely
made the Coburg name a bugbear, not so much to
frighten France into a NIONTPENSIER marriage, as to
afford her a pretext for pretending to be frightened.
Count BRESSON made the puppet, and dressed it, and
pulled the strings.
When this trick, this diplomatic coup, was resolved
upon, of marrying the Infanta to a French prince,
simultaneously with, or soon after, the Queen's
espousal, the French minister, had he any fairness,
would have abetted the marriage of the Queen with
, Don ENRIQUE. ISABELLA herself desired it. And
England desired it, for simple reasons, with which
all the world are acquainted. But no—under pretence
that the younger brother was too liberal, the elder
brother was preferred to him, for the manifest reason
of ensuring to the Duke de MONTPENSIER and his heirs
the succession to the Spanish throne. This is the
most flagitious part of the whole transaction, although
it is one but casually hinted at in the diplomatic
correspondence on either side.
J We mast own, too, that the speeches of the Doke of