The Express.
London, England, 1849-09-11 00:00:00

LEEDS. Ssigmber 10.

in=t-aseatiorov.—Ws bad in exemedlairly badlya
tids swift tbe ody trimmed= betas a eels ad Greet
lesetbles ralltrare atl ab.

. •

YORK, Sept* Aber 10.
STOCK BICHANO/L-811“: Great Marlboro Proforma
SL tla• Math British Pralareaar, U. 10a. 6eLt Tait awl Math
311ffirai, mi. 21

BRISTOL, September 10.

eroai-Ixcarawax—The market resataai taaetfw, bat
fa tin tromakas dad there w so militate' to Fiala

Ca= roa Sarraritaa—The railway calla far the pewit
swath are smeller in amount then in any preceding otie this
per. As already announced, they amount to 443.1811.,
et which 2110,0001. is called fcr by the South Wales Railway
Company dose.

OrpreiN•
/h..., MAILS.=--ING MAIL
Nardi Americo sad die 17alte1
v. we tbe maim (4'13.11.
TM 11.1 t, Optip-eete, Lisboa, llbe, Cobs, esl
Oilladtar be , merle we dept. 17.
!be Wed WM Pk.. Boma* Hevesee.,
Vaaviria,
SEIM, EINAMIIar N 0.5461 till
Wile tor °darer Irriett eltareatintailie,
• pt. deplee, bids, eid.adoe. via ttiestbasoptes, will
emile op ea the ii el Sgt. 91).
The walk, via is, to die kediteweesse, Zapt:
Obits, kite, Has-losg, M., will be wide up el die
reget lope. M.
. sidle Ow lialkOrt, tbs Bo" sod BUNKS Ayres,
will be node op we tbe mains et Oet. 4.

ZION WATIN AT LONDON TONDO&
TAN Dal 168/ffliBl. Sh. SOL eifal••••, SLIDE.
Twoosamw—amiss, Maim Alsormo.ll A. 11.1.

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11.
Tnz Kidderminster ekotion was a prodding in

which we took an interest that its 'airiest° import-
ance would have scarcely warranted. Bat there are
circumstances concerning this constituency that led
us to regard the occasion as one of which reformers
ought to take advaatage. Kiddermicater is
a manufacturing town which was first en-
franchised under the Reform Act. But the pri-
vilege conferred upon its ten pound householders
boo proved neither beneficial to the place nor to the
nation. From the very first election after Kidder-
minster became a borough, its constituency have been
regularly bought and sold. A more corrupt place is
net to be found in England—Sudbury not, perhaps,
excepted. The town, too, heretofore returned, at
every election except one, a memSer utterly uncon-
nected with manufacturing interests, and, except by the
accident of birth, in no way associated with the locality.
It hid returned this member, moreover, without re-
ference to politics: aloe as a political unionist, once
es a conservative whig, once as a protectionist, and
once as a free-trader. We desired to discover what
was the meaning of all this ; what were the influences
that Gould have secured the repeated re-election of
such a man as Mr. RICHARD GODSON, and how the
electoral system of the borough would be worked
under the new state of circumstances which followed

his demise. We wished, in fact, that the public
should be enabled to form a judgment as to the state
of our representation, from what they saw and heard
concerning Kidderminster.
In the various communications which we have pub-
lished from the place some idea has been given of the
past history of Kidderminster, and of the causes of
the late member's frequent re-elections. We shall
not now repeat the ciscreditable story. The sum and
subrance of it we hive already stated : the
borough was bought, openly, undisguisedly, without
even an affectation of a blush. There are instances
of members who have retired from boroughs from
disgust and loathing at the base election system
which they have discovered to exist in them. The
late member for Kidderminster had no each delicate
stomach. He reprated over and over again the treat-
ment which he had been the first to adopt, and he has
been known to speak of it with bravado, and to bout
of the success with which it was attended.
When the late vacancy occurred at Kidderminster,
it was gratifying to us to find that the canLidate
who appeared on the principles of progressive reform
presented himself to the constituency with an avowed
determination not to perpetuate the practices of his pre-
cis ci sews. " I am told," said Mr. GISSORNE, in his first
address to the electors, " I am told that you have a
queer character; I hope I shall not find it so;
but, remember, if you exprot a shilling, or a shil-
liog's worth, from me, you ere doomed to certain
disappointment." " Purity of election" was the
motto which Mr. Gamoitire inscribed upon his ban-
ners, and under which he proceeded to the poll. He
employed no " messengers," he gave away no " beer."
He trusted to the justice of his cause, and to the
force of the language in which he could place it before
his hearers. Well the constituency, by a
majority of 17 (217 to 200), rejected the
man who thus came forward to fight the
battle of purity and honour. Did the non-
electors reject him also? Did those thousands
whom the legislature has branded as unfit to exercise
the right of voting, did they oppose him because he
gave no beer and distributed no money? On the con-
trary, we find that the non-electors formed a commit-
tee to promote his return; that on the nomination
day his procession, chiefly composed of working men,
extended onwards of three-quarters of a mile ;
that the show of hands was in his favour
four to one—just as it was also at Boston in
favour of the candidate whom the electorate rejected
by a majority still larger.
Now this was not the work of beer, it was not the
work of bribery, it was not the result even of associa-
tion—for in Mr. GODSON'S day, the people of K'd-
derminster were, from peculiar causes, all upon his
side. It could have been nothing else than, empha-
tically, the power of truth. The people of Kidder.
minster, debauched and degraded at previous elec-
tions, had their eyes opened by Mr. Gresorten's ad-
dresses, and joined him from conviction of the justice
of his cause. But the constituency rejected him.
Does this constituency, then, represent the people ?
The population of Kidderminster and the sur-
rounding district may be taken at nearly 25,000.
The entire constituency of Kidderminster numbers
about 480. The proportion, therefore, is
about one voter to every fifty non-electors !
The Boundary Commissioners, when they examined
this borough in 1832, were much struck by the very
small proportion of the electors to the non-electors,
and ob•erved upon the circumstance in their reports
to pediment. The cause spears to be that the
Kidderminster artisans prefer residing in small
dwellings to resting portions of larger houses. These
small dwellings are not usually need at a sufficient
amount to entitle the occupier to a vote, so that some
thousands of the working men of this populous place
are debarred from exercising the right of voting,
however otherwise well qualified.
Of the 480 electors about 200 are independent
liberals and 180 independent conservatives. 40
are under tory influence, or are only to be persuaded
by an influence of another sort; 40 more are de.
scribed to us, in the words of a good judge, as " quite
loose fish," fellows who will take what they can get
—the more the merrier. The remaining 20 are
careful, scrutinising, keen-eyed men : men who
wish to weigh well the merits of the candi-
dates, who rarely make up their minds
until the last moment, and who have been
known to take, at that moment, a compliment of
1001. and 1501. a piece from the atndidate whom they
at last are brought to think the best. And it is these
fellows, and such as these, who drown the voices of
the honest working men of Kidderminster, and decide
by a majority of 17 that they shall not have as their
representative the man whom some 8,000 of them
have sesompanied to the hustings. It is difficult to
stifle the indignation which the contemplation of such
a rystent rouses; bat we content ourselves with "ek-
ing fir the present, are such thirga no arguments for
an " EXTENSION or THE FRANCHISE?"

CONFEBITONs are the fashion. LOUIS PHIMPPE
has confessed at last that his syslats• was based on
false impressions, which every day, for eighteen
years, he desired to dissipate, bat would not coax his
minirers to agree to. The African squadron is ad-
mitted to he a failure; though every session an om-
niscient parliament, during we know not how many
years, has voted it to be a blessing to mankind, and
no burthen to the patient folk who paid for it. Re-
voiationary schemes to emancipate the nations
by sudden sad simultaneous effort own that
they vaunted over much of popular resource',
and that they staked too mach upon a cast or
two. Protectionism and Poetises alike avow that
their respective games were in reality played out
some three years ago, and that all we have since
then witnessed has been but empty make-believe to
gain time and look out for new cords, and partners.
Young Ireland's confession of folly and failure has
been penttently frank and full; and het Majesty'.
advisers have been compelled to own that " utterly
impracticable "reductions of expenditure 'may never-
thole"' be made with " perfect safety and a dee re-
gard to the efficiency of the public service," whenever
they are tried.
Under such circumstances we do not despair of the
limes. Fashion goes far with oar aristocratic content-
pnitry; and confession it is clear is the fashion.
While being candid, therefore, is d la moods, wedo not
relinquish the hope that we shall some Ilse morning
have the satisfaction of musing an muneseved ad-
mission, on the part of our imaginative rival, that the

SEPTEMBER 11, 1849. .

glittering project so egregiously puffed not many
weeks ago in its leading columns was, after all.
nothing but a babble, though vast in semblance and
pretension. We allude to the plan for the p4otation
of Connaught by the city of London corporation.
Modern civilisation and Christian philanthropy, ac-
oordiog to the limest had never previously been
tested by so magnificent a conception. England's
wealth and En land's wisdom never had been applied
'to any undertaking half go grand. The common
council had for months been lying awake o' nighte
thinking how they might devise something worthy
of themselves, their country, and the age; and when
8 DORS shouted forth "Eureka!" all turtle-
doss resounded with unanimous acclaim—" the beg is
pod, and the LORD MAYOR is a prophet r Forth
into the Celtic wilderome would these self-denying
champions go. the moral crusaders of the nineteenth
century, the chivalry of industry. Did not their
ancestors plant Ulster two hundred plus ago,
and why therefore should not they plant
Coonaught now ? Were not poverty and
discontent the incantations of catholicity and
ignorance which the piety and erudition of aldermen
alone could dispel ? And as for the requisite means,
who ever doubted that in the cellars of the Mansion-
house there lay, piled up, hoarded treasures of imal-
coleble value, out of which any amount that might be
necessary could and would by a suitable resolution be
drawn ?

We were among the first who ventured to express
our doubts of the whole story. We took but little
time to discover that the entire proje it was a flaw,
originating how or with whom it matters little now to
inquire, but made use of by the Times for political
purposes, namely, to divert attention at the close of a
wasted parliamentary session from the realities lift
undone. As for the Loa]) MAYOR, no one attributed
the original idea of the scheme to him. He was the
principal dope, we believe, from fire to last. Bat we
did not hesitate to declare at the time that had he and
other well-meaning persons reflected more maturely
on the nature of what they propelled, they would
never have lent it the sane ion of their names. For
we questioned the possibility of what was said to be
so feasible; and we denied as a matter of fact that
anything bearing the slightest resemblance to it
had ever been done before. We doubted the fitness
of any corporate body to become owners in fee of vast
tracts of country ; and we more than doubted their
inclination to become snob. We disbelieved the fabu-
loan tales of unappropriated wealth capable of being
invested in land by the municipality of London, and
we discredited the golden promise of profit held forth
in dazzling terms. All the was flip, tautly set down,
of coupe, to oar perverseness or stupidity, if not to
something even less pardonable. We contented our-
selves, however, with the feeling that we had only
t erformed an obvious duty in exposing a splendid,
but mischievous delusion; and we looked confidently
to the day when its hollowness and absurdity would
be acknowledged even by its most grandiloquent
puffer.
That day, if we are not very much mistaken, is
already nigh at hand. The common council having
been formally moved thereto for the purpose. several
weeks ago appointed a committee to inquire into the
practicability of the Plantation Plan, as it was called.
They were to search we presume for precedents of the
purchase of Irish estates, aid to make a calculation of
the net profit and loss arising out of their corporate
possession. They were.doubtless then to inquire what
the western province of Ireland cJuld be bad for;
and further to state what funds were at the disposal
of the city, or could be made available for the pur-
pou. We can imagine half-a-dozen shrewd livery.
men seated round a table on committee business beet,
and sagaciously agreeing that, to save time and
trouble, the, might as well begin with the last
named portion of their inquiry, and defer the his-
torical, statistical, and philanthropical portions of it,
until a subsequent period. And we cau fancy their
look of perplexity when, in reply to a few categorical
questions, they were assured by the competent autho-
rities that in the corporate coffers there was to be found'
applicable to the purpose of this or any other specu-
lative investment, not a million sterling, nor half
a million, nor a hundred thousand pounds, nor one,
nor tif much as half a crown. Yet were they not
appointed to find supplies sufficient for the purchase
of a quarter of a kingdom ? What was to be done
Could not a loan be raised, on the credit of the City
revenues—suppose we say upon the duty levied on all
seaborne coals entered for consumption in the p,rt of
London. But then the obvious answer came to every
lip, that if this coal tax could be mortgaged it might
be remitted; and the idea cf raising so revolutionary
a discussion in municipal finance was instinctively
abandoned forthwith, nemine eentradieente.
In a word, the corporation of the City of London
have not the price of a parish, to say nothing of a
province; nor have they any legitimate means of
raising money for "industrial crusades" or land-
jobbing speculations of any sort or kind. The pro-
perties which their predecesa.rs acquired in the time
of JAMES 1., were not bought by them, but given to
them, being part of the lands confiscated after a
desolating civil war. Their whole extent wee
less than a third of the smallest county
in Ulster ; and for many generations they
wets merely let on long leases to middlemen
who paid a moderate rent, and treated the occupiers
pretty much as other middlemen used to do. Re-
cently the leases having fallen in, the corporation
have taken the management into their own hands;
but they have made little if anything by the charge,
and the condition of the lands and the tenat.try is
decidedly inferior to that of many estates around
them, whose proprietors are resident and improving.
But were it otherwise, the want of the vulgar where-
withal must interpose an insuperable obstacle in the
way of the present municipal body undertaking the
exalted task, which the Times so confidently assigned
to them.

THE accession of the city of Hamburg to the new
Federal Empire, of which Puree declares itself the
head, is an important, and, to tome, a startling event.
The old Beeped, that so long resisted the Zolkerein,
and encouraged the north-western states of Germany
to do so likewise, and to form a commercial league
apart, has succumbed. And the Prussian tertff—
whatever that may be—has not only conquered the
mouth of the Elbe, bet must advance to that of the
Ent., and absorb all North Germany.
If Prussia is to remain as she was at the com-
mencement of 1848, and if the old political and com-
mercial status quo is to be restored, this will be a very
lamentable result of the great movement of 1844.
The events of the last aid present year have had, at
least, the effect of annihilating the independence of
all smaller states, and as to free cities, has rendered
their existence an anomaly and an impossibility.
Hanover, Saxony, Baden, the Hesse', as well as
Frankfort and Hamburg, survive in their old form and
dimensions merely by the support of Prussian armies.
Bavaria and Wurtemberg, with their kings, exist, by
the grace of Austrian alliance. And the only prin-
ciple of authority and right in Germany at present is
Ernst-Reeht, the right of tie strongest.
It is now therefore as it used to be in the middle
ages. Welker states and class- s unable to protect or
coostitute themselves group round the fortress, and
the authority which can do both. There are but two
standards to rally to, the old Diet with absolutism and
a Marrsaxtes at its head, or the newly promised
empire, which P,uema seeks to establish, sad which
gives (what Austria peremptorily refuses) a German
representative assembly, with local constitution and
rights, in fact a federal system, based on freedom and
on union. _ _ .

Throughout Germany, with the exception of Wurt-
temberg and Bavaria, the states and cities have ac-
cepted or ere about to accept the Prussian offer. Hanover
may waver, but we do notsee how it can seriously resist.
And in fact these etateshavo no alternative. The armies
of the smaller states had no force and coherence in them
to resist a mob. Whilst the middle clam of these same
smaller states were not strong and confident enough
to resist princely and aristocratic reaction. Hanover
offers instances of both. Hamburg is another. Over-
wh&med with debts, unable to satisfy its citizens or
control its mob, Hamburg, unable to uphold its poli-
tical independence, has sunk that as well as its com-
m.-rcial freedom in the system of the new empire.
We are not of those who argue bad results from
this absorption, unless the reaction go so far as to re-
store the old diet and constitution of 1815, of which
the federal board and council consisted of a mere con-
clave of princes. Restore the diet and Austria to
their old supremacy, and we may bid farewell to
either political or commercial freedom, or, indeed, to
anything but despotism—a despotism leading infal-
libly to a new revolution.
The Prussian court, however, notwithstanding the
fears of our correspondents both in Hamburg and

anetontgohdprcveariv(7:ll:l";;---...1 chinftelitainhmeetzanptiltirelloanhtotilleflrotleiva:lllll4:
Berlin. seems determined
gOntheorann
rthouttreedbplttoliewll4gththfnhotrfec4shttui
edetzmn;tl
erections to take place for a German parliselaiZ
meet ea the let of Octob r. Let Germany, pc
teen-sixteenths of Germany, once again polecii`;
general representative assembly, without a erAi
popular beret of opinion behind it, urging to exttemi.
genes and excess, and there will be a standard aid
stronghold for the middle class of Germans 4rd,
to, in order to swore that degree of freedom, iteitele
material and intellectual development, se
iceg
peremptorily requires.
An important question for us is, bow this
affect the Interests of free trade. We have hither
been compensated for the exchthivenese of the &IL
verein by the low tariffs of Hamburg, Meekl
Hanover, and the North Western union. tliZebil
now be inevitably swallowed up and lost to us.
on the other hand, the Zollverein itself, its
tion and its tariff, cannot but be greatly modified! re
a liberal sense. The great practioniat powers,thro,
of Sushi& and Bavarie, secede ft :la the council of the,
Zollverein. Baden, which remains, must for a lee,
time be in subservience to Prussia. In lien of kel
protectionist votes, which ere exclud.d, there sole
the Zollverein the free-trade votes of the sect:
western state., securing to the great principle c
decided majority. Every country and port on thy
Baltic. lett to itself, meet be for free-trade. Aid
the Zollvertin now becomes, to all intents antellg,
poses, a new Hansa Con'ederation. Bremen, i
and others of the towns and watee, have elided'.
inquiries as to the probaMe views of the new politic'
and commercial union with rasp et to the scatted
the tariff. And the opinion haa been give., wed,,
derstand, that a general import duty of ten per pet,
ad valorem, would be about the mark.
Were this to he the result, we should bare eree
reason to congratulate ourselves. And we ehed,
have some compensation for the blows likely to is
dealt to our tree by the triumph of Austria end*
high tariffs throughout Italy and along the wick
course of the Danube. Besides, we should thee hip
a fair trial and comparison between the two floe%
We should see whether the protective see*
or the free trade north should be formed
in commercial activity amid financial pit&
perity. Bavaria and Wurthmburg, having alternately
b •longed to each, might judge which suited bgu
population, its revenue, and Pa welfare. And weep
pretty cinfident that the result would be the me.
@ion of the whole of the German state. to blind
tariffs and politics, and the ejection of Austrian
ciplee and dictation from Germany as from Italy. Wig
physical revolution has not had skill and meats.,
to effect, moral revolution, with the proe,thea aides
and experience, will accomplish.