The Express.
London, England, 1846-12-30 00:00:00

Ehi epprOg.

The mails for New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and New
Teahood will be made up on the evening of the 3lat December (to-
morrow).
The West Indio inailiy including those for Meaieo, llonditras, and
the llovannith, will he mule up of the morning of the 2nd January,
The nvio long mails for Gibraltar, Matti, Greece, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Ilona-Kong, and China, via Southampton,
will be made up on the evening of the 2nd tanu.ary.
The mails for Briti-h North America, nerintida, and the United
elates, will he made up on the eventog of the ith January.
The mails for the Broads, the River Nate. Monte Video, Pernam-
buco, !Ohio, Ma leira, and Buenos Ayres, will be dispatched on the
evening of the Ith January.
The overlonil eloied onmull, ein Marseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt Aden, Ceylon, India, Hon: Kong, &e., will be made up on the
evening of tin 7th January.
The malts for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, flodia, and Gibraltar,
will be made up on the morning of the 7th January.

TO COItRESPONDEN'fS.
•.• Adcartimmente intended fur The Aqua; London eTening Palm,
matt be at the Odic: by Two o'clock on the day of publication.

HIGII WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
Tate D. —Mornlna, 0 mat. pan 0; Anerno a, in mg 0.
To-Mornow—Taming, 41 min. pest 0; Afternoon, 7 min. past 1.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DEC. 30,

Tor•. decision, that a medal should be granted to the
surviving veterans of the Peninsular war, gives rise
to considerations and questions of a much wider
sphere, than the glorification of these warriors.
If government can undertake to award honorary
premiums, names or symbols, conferring dignity
and commanding respect, and if the public at
large acknowledges the value of such rewards, then
the government has at its disposal a mint, as much
worth management, and attention, and skill, as that
other mint or bank, which sends forth tokens of value
which, for the most part, also receive their worth from
public estimation.
The rewarding of public service and merit by
names or ribands, enhancing personal importance,
is a mode that has been largely applied in this
country to the upper classes. And we may add that
in general the fount, of honour has been wisely econo-
mised, so that a blue riband or a red one have been
prizes as anxiously sought for, and as dearly paid for
in exertion or support, as the more permanent ac-
quisition of wealth or hereditary title.
Other countries have found their advantage in ex-
tending this principle to the middle and even lower
classes, which they wisely and liberally supposed to be
just as sensitive to such distinctions, and as honourably
excited by the hope of such, as those of ranks higher
born and more wealthily endowed. We have heard
calculations of the value, estimated in money, coined
by NAPOLEON, in crosses of the Legion of Honour,
and which in this light must have spared many
minims of his military budget. Even at present, the
riband of the Legion of Honour is in many ranks of
officers considered equivalent to a step, and as such is
conferred by the great dispensers of favours. Are not
English soldiers and officers • fully endowed with
the feelings which correspond to such distinctions,
and give them value? If so, is such a mine to be left
unworked—such coin allowed to rot unstamped ? If
not worthy of the attention of the war-office, it must
surely be interesting to the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer. We should recommend it not merely to the
care of soldiers' friends, but to the meditations of Mr.
HUMS or Mr. WILLIAMS.
Now, giving medals, as we do, and are about to do,
is, in an economical point of view, flinging them away.
At present, medals are awarded to those, who have
participated in certain actions. All who were present
Lave a right to it. What distinction is there in this ?
Or what does the medal do, but simply add comment
to the army lists? Government, in bestowing such a
medal, stands in the light of one, allotting what is
due, not distinguishing or rewarding particular merit.
The medals ad hoe merely announce that the wearers
have been there. It is likethe passport which travellers
show; the fragment of Niagara rocks which the
visitor strikes off and brings home. It is a mere
memento or witness of presence. It is no grade or
substitute for a grade, creates no esprit de corps, and
scarcely enhances the feelings of individual pride in
the breast of the soldier, who probably would blush
to wear a medal indicating them.
lf, instead of these local, distinctive, jealousy-
creating medals, government were to institute
one large military order, or extend the military
orders now existing by the creating of other
classes, then the war-office, or the sovereign,
in conferring it, even though it were conferred on all
those present at a battle, would be bestowing an
honour and a favour. We should then have no rivalry
between Indian and European feats; between Water-
loo and Salamanca. Military and naval illustrations
would be blended together. There would exist a fit
reward for the gallant soldier, good to fight or to
lead, but little capable of directing or performing the
intellectual part of generalship. The soldier would
then feel himself not a being s.t wed, without sym-
pathy, or common pride, or fellowsh►p,existing etwe-

Lim and his officer. Time would be created a new
incentive to good conduct and to that most natural
superinducement of the feelings of the gentleman
upon those of the soldier.
The French have gone still further. They have
*ted their system of retiring pensions upon the
Legion of Honour. Every soldier who gets a red
riband is entitled to a pension. His children have
right of entrance to military schools ; his daughters to
the great establishment of education at St. Denis,
Loges, and elsewhere. The Legion of Honour is
wealthy, well endowed. It succeeded to the old con-
ventual establi;•-` ' - Old soldiers have be-
-6 -

queathed to it large legacies. And it has resources
independent of the state. There may be some danger
and several objections to the erection of a military
order into such a corporation. But the subject cer-
tainly deserves attention, as every means should be
taken for reforming, elevating, and providing for the
army, and putting the service and its rewards upon
some new and improved footing.
We are glad of the grant of the Peninsular medal,
which is but justice to gallant men, overlooked and
slighted under the most frivolous and lazy pretexts.
But this reparation is merely the piecing up of an
old,rotten,ptecemeal edifice, which ought to be pulled
down altogether, and something new, seemly. and
dignified, in the way of an edifice, erected with
of
some
unity of plan, economy of means, and largeness
purpose.

WITHIN the last ten years applications for re-
presentative governments have been made to the
Colonial-office from the Cape of Good Hope, New
South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, Western Australia.
South Australia, New Zealand, British Guiana,
Trinidad, and St. Lucia. Of these New South Wales
alone has been for some years in possession of the
desired boon. New Zealand is on the eve of obtain-
ing it. In all the others the following passage will
excite expectations which we cannot imagine it ts the
design of government to raise only to disappoint

then; :
Provision being made for establishing the municipal, the
legislative, and the executive institutions of New Zealand,
there is a virtual accomplishment of all that is necessary for
Its future government. From these institutions will flow all
subordinate powers—judicial, Sicil, magisterial, or of what-
ever other nature they may. be. The respective legislatures
will progressively mould tneir derivative organs of govern-
ment into such forms as the exigencies of society
will require. To a great extent it will be com-
petent to these legislatures so to mould even the
institutions which the charter itself creates, by regulat-
ing the elective franchise and the whole system of elec-
tions, municipal and legislative, care being taken that no
such enactments be either repugnant to the text, or at vari-
ance with the spirit of the act or of the charter. To pre-
scribe fundamental rules, and to create an authority for the
better adaptation of them to the real wants of the colony, is
the only function which the Queen or Parliament have as-
sumed to themselves, or could properly have assumed.
Many details of the New Zealand constitution are
obviously inapplicable to most of the colonies we
have named. It is intended to establish the autho-
rity of law, and protect the rights of the individual
citizen in a great country where there is room
for many colonies; where the influence of one cen-
tral government cannot possibly, in the infancy
of settlement, make itself felt ; and where such I
excess of centralisation must, as population becomes
more generally dense, be productive of many evils.
The Cape of Good Hope is the only other scene of
British colonising enterprise, resembling New Zea-
land in this respect, that is still destitute of a repre-
sentative legislature.
There is, indeed, in many respects, a strong paral-
lelism between the social conditions of the British
settlements at the southern extremity of Africa, and
those in New Zealand. The districts nearest to Cape
Town, the so-called eastern districts, and Natal, are
as incapable of being efficiently administered from
one seat of government, as Auckland, the Cook's
Straits settlements, and the incipient settlements at the
southern extremity of, the Middle Island. In South
Africa, too, as in New Zealand, we have to deal with
numerous tribes of aborigines, some of whom are
among the finest specimens of uncivilised men. The
federal system, and the distinction between fully
organised or " provincial districts," and imperfectly
organised, or " aboriginal districts," appears as
exactly suited to the circumstances of South Africa
as if it had been devised to meet its actual wants.
The principles of European international law recog-
nise in civilised governments a right of sovereignty
in regions inhabited only by uncivilised tribes, conse-
quent upon occupation and settlement. Natural
equity. demands that the exercise of this right of
sovereignty. (Ilona the natives should be enforced for
the protection of the colonists, but with every possible
respect for the libertiesand possessions of the aboriginal
tribes. In South Africa we have the cluster of settlements
which emanated from Cape Town before the colony
became British; the cluster of settlements of which
Graham's Town may be considered the nucleus, and
Natal. But, in addition to these, we have the settle-
ments of the Griquas, a half-blood race, whe emigrated
from the colony; the settlements of the emigrant
Boers, who are British subjects, in the interior; and
many missionary villages, and villages of our depend-
ants the Fingoes, scattered throughout Kaflirland.
It is the right and duty of the British crown to guard
its missionary and emigrant subjects from the assaults
of native tribes, and to protect the native tribes from
the encroachments of its subjects. In other words,
the necessities of the region render it a duty
quite as much as a right of Great Britain to
claim as its dominion—as a region in which no other
European power can have a right to colonise—all
Southern Africa up to the Portuguese frontier. And
the federal system, and the distinction between
municipal and aboriginal districts, about to be esta-
blished in New Zealand, will be found the most
efficient instrument for making the advances of civil
government and law keep pace exactly with the
advances of settlement and civilization.
In the more compact colonies of South Australia
and Western Australia, and we may add Australia
Felix, which has been proved experimentally to be too
remote from Sydney to be comprehended with benefit
in the same representative system, a simpler scheme
of representative
.government would suffice. The
provincial and municipal elements of the New Zealand
constitution are all that would be required. The scanty
numbers, too, of the aboriginal tribes, and the low posi-
tion they occupy in the scale of social existence, render
the plan of aboriginal districts in their case not only
uncalled for but impracticable. But though the
details of the constitutions for these colonies must of
necessity differ in from those of the constitution con-
ferred on New Zealand, the general principles which
the framework of local government introduced into the
latter is intended to realise—the general principles
of self-government are-equally applicable to them.
With regard to South Australia, indeed, the act of
parliament, under which the colony was founded, con-
tains an express declaration that as soon as the
Colonists amount to a certain number they are to
have arepresentative government. That number they
have, we believe, already attained : at all events they
are far more numerous than the settlers of New
I Zealand. At first sight there is some plausibility
in the proposal to unite all the colonies in the Austra-
lien continent in a federal system similar to that of
New Zealand. In practice, however, it would pro.
bably be found that the extent of territory is too
great. In Great Britain the feudal form of govern-
ment attained to system and coherence, because the
territory was not too extensive ; in Germany it broke
down into a number of territorial sovereignties, be-
cause the territory was too extensive.
With respect to Van Diemen's Land and the West
Indian colonies, which have applied for representative
governments, there are special circumstances to take
into consideration. There are strong reasons to doubt
the possibility of extending representative institutions
to a penal colony. In the case of the West Indian com-
munities, while slavery existed the home government
refused representative institutions to the whites, least
they should be perverted into instruments for increas-
ing the coercion of the slaves. Since emancipation
the very parties who asked for representative govern-
ment formerly have not seldom become its opponents.
They maintain that the recently emancipated negroes
are not yet fit to exercise the political franchise.
There is good reason to question the truth of this
assertion. The Creole negro has not, like a Kaffir or
New Zealander, lived in an imperfectly. organised
society. He has grown up under the influence of
regular government; has unconsciously imbibed, by,
his intercourse with society from childhood, general
notions of civil rights and duties. In the first in-
stance' a pretty high money qualification might be
advisable in those colonies where there is a large
negro population ; but the work of emancipation can-
not be regarded as completed so long as the negro is
not at least partially admitted to the political as
- well as the social rights of a freeman.
reen