The Express.
London, England, 1849-07-19 00:00:00

DRAINAGE OF LANDS BILL.

This b;U was riad a mend time, and ordered to be cow-
witted.
ADMINISTRATION OF JSLAND) BIUSTCE (VANCOUVER'S
ILL.
This was read a third time, and passed.
NEW FOREST AND WALTHAM FOREST.
Mr. HAY fRR obtained leave to bring in a bill to au-
thorisc her Majesty to appoint commissioners to inquire into
the claims over the New Forest and Waltham Forest.
The bill was sub.: quently brought in, and read a first
time.
COLLECTION OF RATES (DUBLIN) BILL.
The report of the vomitus on this bill was received.
WORKHOUSE LOANS (IRELAND) BILL.
This bill was brought in, and read a first time.
The howie adjourned at half-past 5.

Cite erpreni.

OUTGOING MAILS.

The mane for ChM%ltar, Yalta, Greece, the laden blends, Pgypt,
(beim India, and Clunv. en, lanthamptca, will be made up to-
morrow morning, the 20th of July.
Mein tor ornuta Aorta Atuenea NM the United States will be
made up to-morrow evening, t.e 20th July.
The mails, rigs Marseilles, to the Meditemareaa, Egypt, (Xylem,
India, Monet-lione.Sta, will be made upon the evening of July 24th.
The mails for Viso. (Volt°, Lisboa, Madeira, Cadiz, and Gib, altar,
will be made up oa the 97th of July.
roe Wed tadia Ml.d , inUudiug Bermuda. Havana, Nassau,
Elnutiuna, New Greene, and Menke, and excluding there for
MAIM% $l. Junit-de-atearegna, New Granada, Chill, and Peril, wit
se made on on the 2r.d of August.
The inAlle for Madeira, the Brazils, and Bows Anna, will be made
upon the 4th of Matta.

NIGH W ATVS AT LONDON 1111.1DOIL
s —Vanhkr. 57 WA. pen . AMMON. Ns. Ime 1
T. X...now —Mena. 12 WA. pail 1; Allsreenl, IS W. Imo 1.

LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 19.

Tim aim of the House of lArds in their recent mu-
tit 'bons of the bill for the amendment of the Irish
Poor Law is not concealed. Lord STANLEY boldly
avowed that his purpose was practically to rescind
the act of 1847, by which, for the firsttime, the landed
property rf Inland was made practically responsible
for the en4tenance of the Irish poor. Up t 3 that pe-
riod there existed in that country but the shadow and
s-mbl ince of a pot. law. There was an official re-
tinue and offi ial oath', ; there were a certain num-
ber of half finish. d and not half-filled workhouses
for the ag-d and the infirm : and there were a
certain number of guardians, who, having nothing
useful to do, occupied themselves, in many instances,
with dnir.g what was mischievous. Bat relief—in
any national a nee of the term—under the poor law,
as originally framed in 1838, there was none. The
able-b died man, no matter how destitute he might
be, received no help. The struggling widow, who by
bard and ill-paid toil strove to keep her children at
home, instead of teaching them to live by mendicancy,
when temporarily laid low by sickness, could obtain
no legal aid. A rigid and inapplicable theory
of exclusively in-door rigid bad been embo-
died in an act of parliament, and by vir-
tue of that statute, a troop of employes

leafuly enabled to live at the public charge; but
until 1847, no attempt at enacting a law for the pro-
tection of the poor man's life in Ireland was seriously
made by the legislature.
And so thirge might have continued until now but
for the startling calamity which in that year reduced
one-thud of the entire population of the island to the
verge of absclute starvation. The state, overtaken at
last in its criminal course of neglect, was obliged to
incur the hum diate re spomibility of medeavouring to
save those multitudinous lives which, bad it done its
duty. betimes, bad never been thus placed in jeopardy.
Millions of money were voted out of the imperial
treasury to meet the terrible emergeecy; but it was
felt on all bands that as such as diet could not be
repeated, such a liability must never be again in-
curred. Parliament was therefore called on without
further delay to extend the principle and the practice
of the English poor law to Ireland, and thereby, to
warn the landlords of that country that if they did
not henceforth employ the people in profitable labour,
they meat be prepared is seasons of want to
euppert them out of poor rates. Few had
the hardihood in the representative branch of
the legislature to oppose this just and humane, though
tardy ensc'ment. In the landlords' peculiar chamber
there was less affectation of acquiescence. Some even
talked of resistance there. But the munificent acquit-
tance of past default made freely by the empire at
large was too fresh in the minds of men ; and with
sulky mutterings the bill was allowed to become law.
No sooner, however, did it come into operation
than the oligarchs began to repent of their having
bad the decency to permit it to pass. A systematic
course of frustration and attack was commenced in all
directions. Defects in the framework of the
system were magnified and exaggerated for the pur-
pose of bringing the principle itself into general dis-
repute. The greater part of last autumn and winter
was consumed in public disc-regions regarding the
various provisions of the deteattd law which gua-
ranteed the poor man's rig: t to live in the land
where he was born, and where he was ready to work
if any one would glee him work to do ; and finally,
the present session opened amidst a perfect storm of
reclamations against the evils of the system,
and of importunities that government would
forthwith proceed to remedy them. Select com-
mittees of inquiry in both houses were ap-
pointed. Witnesses without end were summoned
and examined. Every thing that could be said or
suggested was thoroughly Fitted and disguised. And
finally ministers brought in and carried through the
House of Commons, by majorities of 3to 1, a bill for
the amendment in certain Ott tile of the law of 1847.
Its price pal provisions do not require recapitu'a-
' lion. To guard against excessive rates, a ninzinium
I was introduced. We advocated the prineple, and
only regret that the government having once
I adopted it, did not adhere to it c ensistently. But
no modific .tion was more bitterly opposed in every
shape by the landlord party. No concession on the
point appears to have mitigated in the least degree
their inveterate hostility. In the same spirit, they
endeavoured to frustrate the provision which was
suggested for reeking the land liable to be sold for
the rates wherewith it was chargeable; th- plain
meaning of which in simply this—that when by col-
lusion between landlord and tenant, or by the dispos-
session of the latter, the rates assessed on a particular
farm remain unpaid, the amount ought to be re-
assessed over the whole district, instead of being
liquidated out of the prica of the fe:! Au
honest and wise policy, truly. Yet, upon these
points and upon the se grounds, Lords STANLEY,
LUCAS, and MONTEAGLE, have persuaded the Ilonae
of Lords so entirely to alter and mutilate the bill,
that it must either be thrown out by the Commons or
withdrawn by the government.
We trust Vie latter will not be the course pursued
by ministers. They certainly owe it to theme, lees
and to the country to plane the (petition without dis-
guise upon its real merits. The re Is no danger of the
Commons accepting on i's return to their chamber, the
tattered shreds of the bill they sent up to the Lords.
They are b eked by every f slog of consis• ency and ho-
nour to fling it oat withon• ceremony or delay. They
are bound to show the peep's cf England and of Ire-
land who are leagued together against them, and
what is the bond of their confederacy. To break
down the Dish poor law —to reduce it from a reality
to a sham, in the avowed object in view. Were that
object accompl stied, one of two things must happen
—either that the able-belied poor of Ireland wou'd
be left to tne tender mercies of the it hereditary mas-
ters, or weetdted upon the me Tonal ceche quer. Tee
last-named expedient is manifestly insufferable.
The people of Great Britian will nem r sub-
mit to any such imposition. And what is
meant by the alternative we ter well know.
'lo leave the destitution of Ireland te oui-t era-
tic conscience is pre ey much the same sort of
humeni y as that 044 d to reenemend the legislature
to leave the fete of the negro to the consi !mate care
of the West India planer. The erns are more DC Ay
identical than it MA'S squeamish pulitieiars to adm t ;
and as the life of the labourer in Jamaica never wee
safe until the legislature boldly interposed for his
protection, so the Itfe of the lab iura. in Mayo never
will be secure without a stringent and effective poor
law.

ONE of the results which m'ght have been hoped
from the r volutions of 1818 wus the putting an end
to the .cular rivalry which existed between the
royal and imperial houses of Prussia and of Austria,
and to the inealculah'e evis which that rivalry has
occasioned to the German people. The first ten-
dencies of last yo ar were to remould the p ilitical di-
' visions of Central Europe, to conni ct (Lumens, or the
greater p it Con of them, under one federal hot d and
chief, and to restore Austria to what al emed its na-
tural calling, in becoming the knitter and the re-or-
ganiser of the Selavotian race. The immense and
utterly unintelligent armies, however, which it h.O
been the a le purpose of those governments hithet to
to keep up, have in this instance succeeded
in perverting every natural tendency and suppressing
every popular desire. And those foolish courts, which
could not fores.e the storm, and which servilely
shrunk under it, have been thus enabled to resume a
task, for which they befime proved the mse:ves utterly
unfit. The old policy of past c. ntuties, which one
hoped to Pee Puperpea, d, thus return• in fuil force.
Austria, obliged to have recourse to Russia to save
her capital and I xietence, btu., by so doing, ceded to
that pawtr alike the chsrac er or the preension to
lead or to unite the S'avonic race. Austria is thus
Creed buck upon Germany, and driven to re..ume
that old quarrel with Pi assist which is, niter el', a
mere quarrel of dynater, a quarrel with which Ger-
mans have really nothing to do, and on which they
are called to waste their energies, spend their trea-
sure, and spill their blood for the houses of Lorraine
and Hohenzollern.

We have all alorg wished success to the efforts of
Prussia, hesitatingly and anwi-ely as many of those
efforts have been made ; for certainly rothing Icsa
than a military power of the first order would be
able to decend the nascent unity and independence of
Germany azainst the intrigues and enmities that
naturally beset it. Russia abhors the idea of this
unity ; Austria dread- it equally; France is jealous;
Eogland, in the narrow short-sightedness of its dirlo
macy, opposes it. In despite a such hostility, joined
to the still more formida"le enmity of the several
parties amongst the Germans themselves,
Prussia still pursues her aim. It is to her
armies that the Germao dynastic.s owe their
preservation. But for the reduction of Wes-
den all North Germany would have been in flame,
and the houses of Saxony sod Hanover have ceased to
reign. Pre mien armies have now overrun the Palati-
nate, and reduc d Baden. And however the leaser
powers m cy dispute to Prussia the title of protec.or of
the empire. she has exercised this function, and
wielded that supremacy de facto.
The Austrian court is, however, not supine. It is
sorely galled by seeing Prussian armies dominating in
the old Suahian territnries of the house of Hepshwg;
and the project of remodelling the Baden army by
Prussian officers annoys Austria more than the
previous extension of the 7.ollverein to the Inn.
The King of PRUSSIA has found powerful ear-
-1 iliaries in his scheme of constituting a federal and free
empire in the eminent members of the Centre of the
Frankfort parliament, who lat. ly met at G 'the. By
joining his 'sue to theirs he may still, we are con-
fident, succeed in that moat arduous and necessary tack
of European regeneration. Should he, however,
prefer adhering to his Brand-Teufel ministry, stoop
mg to fears of Russia, and allowing himself to,be
re-absorbed in the old politics of the treaty of Vienna,
the German people will only take up for themselves
a scheme awl a moose that these powers will have
thus, one by one, failed in, abandoned, or betrayed.

We related on a former cruision the canter-efforts
of Austria—her having gained over the Kings of
SATONT and HAIOVER to back out of thtir en,,age-
ments to the Praseo-imparial constitution. England,
too, has offered aid. The public will ba astonished to
learn that Mr. FORBES, our envoy at Dresden, form-
ally protested against this plan of German unity as
prejudicial to the future and eventual rights cf the
English branch of the houses of Coburg in Saxony.
This monstrous and absurd pretence of Mr. FORBES.
borrowed from that policy of the first GEORGE which
made England the mere cat's-paw for the interests of
a Gamin house, has been wisely repudiated by
Queen VICTORIA. But the objection had its effect on
the King of SAXONY, or at least gave a pretext for
his drawing back.
Whilst Austria has thus half succeeded in regain-
ing Hanover and Saxony to the scheme of reducing
Germany once more to the federal non-entity and
absolution of 1813, it has propostd to the emote of
Bavaria and Wvrtemburg a plan of a counter-empire
with an Austrian protectorate. To support this, it
would be necessary to dispense with Prussian troops
in the south, and to re-establish Bavarian power, with-
out having further recourse to Prussian generals.
Accordingly, Austria is said to have promised that,
immediately after the conclusion of her treaty with
Sardinia, a portion of the Italian army shall occupy
the Voralberg, and aid in the re-orgauisation and
strengthening of the armies of these two powers.
The conclusion of this treaty would at the same time
provide Austria with fends, or with the facility of
raising a loan on the credit of the indemnity to be
paid by Sardinia. Should the Austro-Russians at
the same time be successful agaicst the Hungarians,
the court of Violas hopes to raja, once more the old
standard of the empire in Germany. And we may
expect to see Prince MErrzainctr himself holding
another levee of diplomatists at Johannisbe rg, pro-
scribing popular elections, enforcing the et neirship,
furbishing up his military commissions and federal tri-
halals, and restoring the old perrugues and protocols
of the defunct diet.