The Express.
London, England, 1849-01-01 00:00:00

Vie earilVEoo.

The red; it the Not Ord of Aleir and lladdra will M rids
up this erterep, the lit la*.
The amid ter New earth Wake, Tea Drama% Land, sad New
lislerl aril le cads op tads weals(, the lMJen.
The Wed ladle Ma. riddles Barr* Negro, Havanna,
New edema ad Hades, end excluding those for
libted=ek Jairedsdrinetia, New Gnaw* Chill, and Peru, will
M irde lathe warreg of the fed irai
The rolls her Kadire, the rolls arl imam Area will be
sada op ea Me erred altar ddi Ja
The ti it Mg% Opal% Urea. dtedaey Cdr, sad Caraltax
will he tree ad en the ereslagot 7th La. The mak eta to the blediterranisa, r4prit, Aden,
Woe, lads. Hoselvflead, will be nudeup oil the evades of
I the 7th Jaa.

Tao eballe far Itritish North America, and the United States,
will be made up cm the evening of the 12th Jun.
The Malls lot Gibraltar, Melt% Übe lonian Island% Sim 4
A made up cc des, °tyke, Ind*
morning ot Ilims-lions.the and
Jan. via Southampton, will
be the

ttrb t.6.24OZR.RESPON DV:TH.
.he be. Beaearteaweet. Prerieetir" ""tif pier ".`
4 the day pa be e We.

DWI
./FATEI AT lONDGy BRIDGE.

T... D., 17;m17g7icr::. "ade..—iilioa poet
roasow—Lonaag„ SO tom past 6. Altornotio,:t .10. past 7.

LONDON, MON DAY,JANUARY 1.
IT would be no easy task to cast up the account of
1818, to state its merits and demerits, the pe.fit and
loss to liberty and humanity. It has been a year of
dissolution, of ferment, and of change. The Medea
of revolution cut into pieces the body politic of
Europe, and threw them into her cauldron, on the
promise that all should come forth young, strong, and
renovated. And yet, nevertheless, the forms which
have issued from the cauldron seem very much like
the old palsied limbs and careworn faces that were
flung into it. Let us await however the end of the
experiment; there may be complete renovation even
where as yet we can discover none.
The predominant feeling, the great characteristic of
1848, there is, however, no mis'aking. It was unde-
' niably a feeling of panic. And, strange to say, the
predisposition; to it existed even before the events oc-
curred which gave some grounds for its being
entertained. For in fact all those events,
all those outbursts of revolution, were caused
by panics in governments and rulers, and
by those in authority and power acting exclu-
sively on a principle of fear. It is impossible to
look upon Louis PHILIPPE and M. GUIZOT, pothering
both of them in trepidation and doubt, whether they
should allow a dinner to take place or not, without
perceiving that both had lost their wits from fear ;
and it is • gushy impossib!e to observe the weakness
of repressive force, the absence of precautions, and the
incapability of making use even of the means at
hand, without admitting that the French go-
vernment of February were under the influence
of a panic a panic that demented it and
this even before there was tle least real cause
for fear. Panic at Vienna, panic at Berlin,
panic at Milan, the universal defeat of the soldiery,
and the subsequently universal victory of the same
soldiers, showed that panic alone betrayed armies and
their generals into an abandonment of that strung
attitude which flung the people everywhere so com-
pletely on their own resources of government, and
which has led to the sanguinary, and, in some cases,
unnecessary, acts of repression.
England has been fortunately exempt from any
participation in the events which convulsed the con-
tinent in 1818. It has, however, not been exempt
from the prevailing sentiment. Panic has spread
widely and largely. Every class has undergone its
influence, and shows it by its acts. Our government
did nut escape the epidemy, and betrayed it on seve-
ral occasions. Our aristocracy have been in a per-
manent fright, and have scarcely uttered a word even
on the most trivial subject that does not worour of it ;
commercial men have been frightened, manufacturers
have been alarmed, and pressure from other
causes added such solid grounds to the ima-
ginary ones for alarm, that at no time
crhaps did idle fear beget such precipitate conver-
sions to conservatism, as amongst the very men and
the very class which may return to serfdom if liberal
ideas do not progress and prevail.
We are fully aware that for the last year we have
thus been struggling against a very strops, tide, the
tide of panic—a tide that has carried off whiggism
altogether from its frail moorings, and compelled it
into the same rapid current with that toryism
which it so long shunned and struggled against.
We do not despair, however, of seeing men and
things in 1849 recover their usual composure, and
resume their natural course. And we heartily desire
it; for to preserve the status quo in politics appears to
us utterly impossible. We mu-t go on, or we must
go backwards. As backwards is the way to revolu-
tion, it is the interest of all to prevent a relapse in
that direction, however generally the minds
of the dominant classes were tut ned to it
in 1848. Yet in progress onward, we do
not see what hopes are to be entertained
of the old aristocratic parties. They are pretending
to deal with the great and vital questions of the day :
but how, or in what spirit? Merely fumbling with
them. What can they propose with regt rd to tax-
ation ? Mere scraps of official economy ; half-a-mil-
lion to be saved here, and expended there. Whet
with Ireland? The old policy of keeping an army of
40,000 men to prevent two races and two religions from
cutting each others throats ; the government which
w ield s this army and makes this ex peudit ure, possessing
no real influence over either of the racee,which it saves,
yet which it allows to continue in the language of
defiance and the feeling of disgust. England sows
millions annually in Ireland, to reap merely abhor-
rence and rebellion.
Our foreign policy is as monstrous an absur-
dity, and as transparent a sham. We are pretend-
ing to influence and diplomatise Europe ; and
yet it is plain to ali Europe that the minister
whom we employ to do this has not the honest
support of even the aristocratic parties in the country
for what he is doing. As to the popular party, it is
either averse, or is kept in the dark. The consequence
is, that of the governments of Europe, the great ones
laugh at no, whilst the small ones insult us. And in
fact, the kingdom of Holland or the republic of San
Marino have just as mach influence in Europe as we.
It has been in order to arrive at this magnificent
result, that we have raised an immense fleet and
doubled oar military expenses. And Whigs and tories
tell us we can never fall back to our old peace estab-
lishment. Why? Do foreign powers threaten us?
They have neither the power nor the will. Do we
threaten them? Parliament would not hear of it;
and yet parliament is eager to pay for a military ex-
penditure which can only be warranted by views of
offensive warfare.
Oar colonial system tells the same tale precisely as
our domestic and oar foreign policy. Panic is at the
bottom of it, too; panic, fear of colonial frowardness,
and consequently bayonets, governors, and fleets
for repression. Fear and expenditure, expenditure
and fear—such are, in fact, the great cause and effect
in our aristocratical system of government. And we
do not say that it might not continue to succeed if the
sources of revenue were still abundant, or if the
accumulated weight of the expenses of past centuries,
had not brought the present generation into the
painful conclusion of having nothing left to spend for
themselves. In fact, if we had a wish to make war,
we could not ; and the keeping up our military estab-
lishment to the highest possible pitch to which re-
sources can be strained, is, in the face of such a poli-
tical axiom, one of the most glaring absurdities of the
system.
We cannot, however, dispel these illusions, and get
out of our present circle of deception and ruin, until
we get rid of panic. As long as not only our governing
classes remain in a permanent fright, but can persuade
the middle classes to join in it—u long as bugbears
are offered, or can be invented for the purpose, and
as long as these are successful in creating
affright—so long we may bid good bye to
economy, or to any other policy or government than
the present panic-stricken, puree-open, paralysed,
and aristocracy-ridden system. It has had a fine,
long, heavy, nightisare seat upon the very breasts and
hearts of the terrified English people throughout 1848.
We shall see whether in 1849 the nightmare may not
he 'lumen off and the terrified victim awaken.

MR. J. IlsGuEcort has published, in a letter to his
Glasgow constituents, a detailed expo,,ition of the
retrenchments which he thinks may immediately be
made in public expenditure, and of the way in which
he would avail himself cf the saving thus effected to
relieve the tax-payers. His statement is obscured by a
multiplicity of historical and auto-biographical details
interwoven with it. Separated from this extraneous
matter, and from a good deal of desultory remark,
his proposals are briefly as follows :