The Express.
London, England, 1853-07-27 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

4eemd Edifies ef " The Faprem,. oontaialog tha Num evening's
" Gazette," ts published am, Tuesday aad Friday algid. la Ulna
kr post•
tracts/wide intended for " The Expreee," London Seesaw paper
rust be et the Od!ee, 10, Boueerlastreet„ by Two *Weak os tbi
lay of pablie.atiort.

NIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tan DAT —Magill& int. !!)117. Afyrsete. 714 Is.

70. Rim..

711.45 m.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27.

ANOTHER " Count Out" took place last night.
A Contemporary seemed inclined, yesterday, to
persuade the Members of the House of Commons that
they are very ill. treated gentlemen, and that they
have at least as good ground for " striking" as the
"hands" in any manufacturing firm who complain
of long hours and short wages. The suggestion does
not seem to have been thrown away. There is some
reason, also, to fear that the gentlemen in question,
after such advice, may, under feelings of virtuous
indignation at the oppression to which they arc
subject, give themselves a few hours more
bed in the morning, and a few MOTS
boars after dinner in the evening ; and
that our legislation consequently may suffer in two
ways. It will be less considered before hand, and
more hurried afterwards. We shall have the after-
dinner legislation in a more aggravated shape. This
will never do. The price which honourable mem-
bers pay for their seats is sufficient to show the value
they put upon them. They let their money flow
like water at the time of election. They
abandon the virtues of whole constituencies

to the temptation held out by unscrupulous agents
with endless purses and unlimited stores of beer,
wine, and spirits. They are prepared to suffer in
their own pockets to any amount, and to expose
boroughs to an influx of immorality from which they
can never wholly recover, in order to obtain seats in
the House of Commons. The price paid for seats
shows their value in the estimation of the class who
buy them. But if the buyers shirk the duties they
are pledged to fulfil, the seats are is danger. Mem-
bers should either do their work, or should make
way for better men. If the House of
Commons, with all its members, were swab
lowed up to-morrow ; or, if some successful
Gum FAWKES should scatter it to the winds, the
columns of the newspapers would the next week be
filled with the addresses of hundreds of gentlemen,
all anxious to take the places of the martyred sena-
tors. There are only two answers to be given to a
plea for mercy in favour of hardworked legislators.
They are either unfit for their work, or they plan
their work badly. They have the whole arrange-
ment of senatorial business in their own hands; if
the present arrangement is bad, let them remedy it.
If they cannot, the fault is their own.

It is the more necessary to speak oat on this point,
because the public is certain to lose the benefit of al
number of proposed measures, if the House is per-
mitted to shirk their work ; and it is in the highest
degree expedient that the number of those permitted
to play truant should be as small as possible.
First and foremost amongst the important mea-
sures still to be dealt with this session is the Charitable
Trusts Bill. For the first time in the history of the
agitation of this subject, which began in 1786, does,
there seem a fair prospect of passing a measure
which is calculated to be of great benefit to
the country. The Bill has passed the Lords,
and is now waiting the seal of the Commons. It is
of such immense importance that no Liberal member
can be considered to have done his duty to tho
country who dces not exert his utmost to prevent
the measure from once more slipping through amidst
the batch of lost bills which each year sifp]alife the
closing of Parliament. The country is languishing
on account of the deficiency of education. The
Charitable Trusts Bill will be the means of organ-
ising due regulations for the disposal of an income
of more than 300,0001., applicable to educational
purposes alone. Districts have been often subject to
heavy exactions for the support of the poor. The
Charitable Trusts Bill will liberate large sumsof money
left for the relief of local distress, but which have
not been applied to the purposes for which they were
intended, owing to the existence of legal difficulties
which the bill will sweep away. The whole income
over which the provisions of the bill will give
the Commissioners power is more than 1,200,0001.
Such a measure must not be sacrificed by the
indolence or the incapacity of members, who are
injudiciously told that they are so hard-worked, that
there is every excuse to be made for their mistakes
lor their neglect. Thousands of pious men who lived
in past ages, and heaped up wealth in order that
posterity might be benefited by it, could they look
down now, and see the present application of their,
pious bequests, would regret that they took so touch
trouble for the accomplishment of so little
good. Many of them would see the pro-
perty they left for the use of the indigent
spent on the luxuries of the rich. Many would see
funds, intended for the education of the needy, ab-
sorbed by schoolmasters who refuse to teach any
but the children of the rich, by which they obtain
large additional incomes. Many would look in vain
for the property they left behind. It has long ago
disappeared, having passed into the hands of faith-
less stewards, who were asked to decide upon the
disposition of it. Justice to the pious and the
benevolent of past ages, and to the poor and
needy of the present, makes it an impe-
rative duty on the members of the House of Com-
bons not to throw away the opportunity of passing
a measure which the greatest statesmen of modern
times have declared not only just, but necessary.
Lord BROUGUAM owes a great portion of his well-
founded reputation to the earnestness with which he
once advocated the enactment of 'tome measure of
this kind. Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Government adopted
the principle of the measure, but did not succeed in
carrying a bill through the houses. No opposition
worthy of notice has been made to the bill as it now
stands. The amendments in Committee have removed
whatever defects were involved in the original measure,
and its fate now depends merely upon the sincerity
and activity of men who have been long pledged to
the principles it involves. We call upon these men
not to neglect this opportunity of signalising the
session by the passing of so great and desir-
able an act as this. Too little has been done
to allow us to look calmly on while
another sacrifice is made. The list of dropped mea-
sures is sure to be long, if not disgraceful. Let
members redeem past neglect, by passing a bill which
will have the effect of liberating large sums of money I
for public services, and putting an end to some of
the grossest jobs which disgrace our social system.

loucil occasionally obscure in its language the
Fifth and last Report of the Railway and Canal
Committee is in most respects an able document. It
very properly condemns the great amalgamztions
with which the present session of Parliament pre-
sented so plentiful and alarming a crop ; and it
argues that, practically, railway competition fails to
afford to the public the same security in respect to
accommodation which it gives in the transactions of
ordinary trade. But it rejects what many persons

I are inclined to infer from that argument, that a con-
cession of a certain territory should be made to •
particular Company, and Parliament be held to be
pledged against any intrusion. And very properly.
For, whilst we are compelled to submit in case of
railways to the absence of the ordinary consequences
of competition, the very worst thing we can do is
in any way or degree to give legal or implied
sanction to a Monopoly. Particular districts will
ordinarily be served (and generally well served, too)
by particular companies; but the only grounds on
which they can ask the Legislature to keep out
rivals are the existence of those good and
amicable relations with the inhabitants, which
naturally and properly spring out of cheapness,
speed, safety, and excellence of general accom-
modations. On these terms—and they are easy
terms—oompanies will gain such a character for
public usefulness in their districts as to repress all
I thoughts of aggression, or to repel invasion if at-
tempted. Such is the monopoly which first class
tradesmen very frequently possess. When compa-
nies, however, do not regard the wants and wishes of
their districts, but attempt to ride roughshod over
them, then Parliament, as the guardian of the general
good, may very prorerly introduce competition.
Then, too, it will tell ; for though, even udder
such circumstances, the outlay of two capitals may
not be as remunerative as one, the public benefit
will have been secured by rivalry and by increased
accommodation, and an overgrasping policy cor-
rected.

At first sight what are tilled Running Powers,
—that is, a power conferred by the Legislature on one
company to run over the line of another,—would
appear to be for the public advantage, by increasing
railway competition without increasing railway
capital, and by securing to the public the shortest
routes between given poit t But experience has
shown that in a great majority of instances they
have operated to the public injury. It is rarely these
powers have been honestly obtained. Under pretence
of serving the public they have really been acquired
as a means either of bringing a rival to terms or of sell-
ing a smaller Company t) a greater one. And where
this has not been the case, the terms on which Par-
liament has granted Runnin; Powers have been quite
insufficient to work and carry them out. The tolls
have been fixed too high; water supply and sta-
tion accommodation have not been compulsory;
and so the principle of Running Powers has not, in
practice, been successful. Besid es, there is great
danger in one company nsing the rails of another,
On the whole, therefore, the Committee condemns
Running Powers, and recommends the Legislature
to give greater encouragement to working agree-
ments—for limited periods.
Working agreements are, of course, where one
line finds the rolling stock and carries on the traffic
of another. Under the present law these arrange-
ments are legal on then scrvation, to the company of
the line worked, of a mileage toll. Fixed payments
or rents, or a percentage on the capital, cannot, how-
ever, be given as the consideration for a working
agreement; and hence—as a mere mileage toll leaves
profit an uncertainty to the line worked
these arrangements are rarely formed. For
what a company, on letting out its line,
wants, is a fixed and certain profit. The conse-
quences of the present state of the law, therefore, are,
leases which require the subsequent sanction, at a
large expense, of the Legislature. The Committee
recommends that, under proper conditions, and for
limited periods, working arrangements, involving a
division of profits, be sanctioned. But, as everything
depends on the "conditions," and as the Committee
does not hint at what they are to be, it leaves a re-
commendation, very sound in principle, quite in the
dark on the all-important point of details. It ex-'
presses a strong opinion, but gives not even a hint
how it is to be applied and worked out. Here the
Committee might obviously have gone much further
with great advantage to the Legislature and the
public.
But, after all, it is neither by Running Powers nor
Working Agreements that our railway system can be
made to subside into one harmonious and consistent
whole,—and that the Committee has felt. The great
and first thing to settle and lay down is a scheme of
Railway Policy. At present nearly every company
has a railway policy of its own ; and the country
has no railway policy at all. Having none, there is
annually a huge and discreditable scramble on the
part of railways for extensions of their particular
policies in the Committees of Parliament ; and sel-
dom more so than in the present session. This ab-
sence of a definite national railway policy, and this'
discord and Babel of special railway policies, is a
very discreditable state of things; and is, no doubt,
greatly owing to Sir Roneirr PEEL having refused
to support, with the force of his Government in 1846,
the recommendations and reports of the then Board

of Trade. That refusal has led to the expenditure of
probably not lees than 50 millions sterling in Parlia-
mentary contests about schemes for which the Legis-
lature refused bills. And even now, neither Mr.
CAkDWELL nor his Committee has dared to re-
commend that the Government of the United
Kingdom shall have a flxed•railway policy. All the
Committee proposes is, that there shall be a standing
Committee of the House of Commons of a more per-
manent character to divide the country into districts,
and decide on questions of principle; and that before
this Committee all railway bills shall in the first in-
stance be sent. As a substitute for a national railway
policy, this suggestion is poor and meagre enough.
But, as an improvement on the present systemless
system of railway legisla'ion, it will be a great and
substantial step, provided that the Committee be
composed of the ablest men of the House of Com-
mons, and can be got to work satisfactorily with the
House of Lords

Under the influence of such a Committee, well
composed and (*.operating harmoniously with the
Upper House of Parliament, it is quite possible that
in a few years our railway system may be licked
into shape. At all events, by its means a vast and
useless and even mischievous expenditure of money
in contention and rivalry will be stopped in limine ;
the investigations referred to Select Committees will
be limited and restricted; and the passage through
the House of Commons of unopposed bills will be fa-
cilitated. But it comes late; the horse has been stolen
before it was proposed to shut the stable door ; and
do what we now can, it will be impossible hereafter
to look back on our earlier railway proceedings and
progress with anything like national satisfaction and
complacency. For the plain fact is, that our rail-
ways have cost more by one-half the sum they
ought to have been constructed for, and no one
—but selfish landlords—is the better for the outlay,
simply because up to 1853 the British Parliament
never would look the railway question fully in the
face. It is, however, a long lane that has no turn-
ing ; and happy will it be if even now Mr. CARD-
WELL'S Committee should prove to be a new and
better point of departure.

ARCIITIMIOr WIIATELY AND "UNCLE Tom."
The following letter has just been received by Mr. Lloyd
Garrison, of the Boston Liberator, from Archbishop
Whitely, of Dublin :—" Roblin, 16• h June, 1843.—Sir,
A copy has casually fallen into my hands of the Boston
Liberator (4th March), in which I ant described as the
author of a review, in the North British, of Uncle Tom's
Cabin.' lam not the author. I happen to know that it is
from the pen of a Icily, a clergyman's widow, in the south
of Ireland. As I wish for neither credit nor discredit that
is cot fairly due to me, and as I presume you do oat mean
to mislead your readers, please to give rotico and correction
of the mistake.—Your faithful, humble servant, RICIIAILD
WiIATELY, Archbishop of Dublin."—W. L. Garrison, Esq.;

INDIA AND CHINA.

THE OVERLAND MAIL.

(BY SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH.)
TItIESTE, TUESDAY, Jt iv 26,
The steamer Bombay arrived here to-day, at 2
p.m., in 111 hours from Alexandria. The India
mail brings dates from Rangoon 4th June; Calcutta,
16th June ; Bombay, Nth June ; Hong Kong,
ith June.

Feorn Burmah the intelligence is that no advance
is to be made on Ava unless our troops or civil ser-
vants are mole.ted. Our present position is to be
maintained. Many officers have died.

Trade in India is dull, owing to the season of
the year. Exchange at Calcutta on London. 2s. I ;d•
The empire of China is divided, and Nankin is
indelmndent of the Tartar dynasty. Great anxiety
was entertained for Canton, and a rising was daily
expected there.

iho screw steamer Lauriston, on her passage from
Shanghai to Hong Kong. struck on Turnabout Island
and was totally lost ; crew and passengers ail saved.

LATEST FROM THE CONTI\ ENT.

AUSTRIA.

VIENNA, Jttv 22.

The Vienna plot is reduced on inquiry to an illegal
students'union. Visits to Switzerland are forbidden
to Austrian workmen; those now present in that
country must return to the imperial dominions
within two months.