The Express.
London, England, 1847-08-12 00:00:00

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But he would prefer their rule to that of
extreme or thorough liberals. Re is angry
with the Swiss for not being moderados, as if
that were possible in a country where there are no
gentry, or so few as not to count as a class. Loris
VIIILIPPE can no more tolerate M. OCIISENBEIN as
chief magistrate of Switzerland, than he could
tolerate ESPARTLRO chief magistrate in Spain. His
Majesty has a horror of that radicalism to which he
owes his throne, and would make a war or a revolu-
tion any day to dethrone it, and get rid of its neigh-
bourhood and example.
Now, we are no unqualified admirers of M.
OCEISEMILIN, or of ultra-democracy, be it Swiss or be
it Spanish. But we do hold that parties and party
struggles in every country ought to be let alone,
without interference from without, and that, being
thus left alone, they will work out the cure of their
own defects, and remedy their own evils. Democracy
will work its own cure, if it be extravagant, just as
much as despotism. It would have done so in Spain,
if Spain had been let alone. It would have done eo
in Portugal. It would do so in Switzerland.
Our government, unfortunately, decided otherwise
with respect to Portugal. And now the powers
of the Holy Alliance come and say, that they
want to serve Switzerland as we have served
Portugal. And they propose a conference in Lon-
don. To their purpose of intervening we have
II unfortunately no means of objecting. We flung
the right away in Portugal. And the Times,
seeing that Austria and France are going to crush
the Swiss liberals, begins to excuse the deed of des-
potism, in its own oblique way, by abusing and calum-
niating these Swiss liberals. Just what it did with
the Portuguese liberals. It denounced the junta of
Oporto as • horrid, anarchical, impracticable people.
" Down with them !" And now that the word of
command of European despots is "Down with the
Swiss," the Times comes to tell us, what a very
shocking lit atm& the Swiss liberalaiii.
Th. Swiss t desire a Isigif seism& ademy'
in which measures of reform, of education, sad
of equal taxation may be carried. They object to a
few mountain cantons shutting themselves up in
ignorance, and poverty, and pride, and prohibiting the
march of improvement not only in their mountains but
throughout Switzerland. The liberals would abolish
the lazy convents and their mortmain laws of pro-
perty, and would at least send the schoolmaster
amongst those benighted regions. The Mies says
this shall not be, that the Pact forbids, that the
convents shall be sacred, that the little Irelands of the
Forest Cantons in the midst of Switzerland shall
maintain their Repeal, defy civilisation, and freedom,
and the schoolmaster.

The Times. in speaking thus, but speaks the
doctrines of O'CoNNELL without his liberalism. It
expounds the principles of hierrEuNtcn, and pleads
the cause of the Jesuits of Friburg and. Lucerne,
against the frank and honest, though, perhaps, some-
what rude, liberalism of M. OCIIANDEIN, and the
protestants of Berne.

HAVING from the very first taken a warm in-
terest in the Health of Towns question, we acknow-
ledge a certain soreness on the point of its treatment
by the ministry lest session. We have been all but driven
to the belief that whatever might be the individual feel-
ing of Lord MCKPETII, the government did not
sufficiently recognise the great importance of the
measure. While all parties have admitted that some-
thing ought to be done to improve the healthiness of
our towns, there has been a lurking sneer ever ready
to show itself against the zeal of sanitary reformers.
Men who had not devoted special attention to the
subject, found a fertile subject for fun in a war
against stinks; a crusade against such ig-
noblelwld adversaries as filth and fector ; a cam-
paign, whose battle-fields were blind alleys, squalid
courts, and reeking cesspools. The old English feel-
ing was not absent Our forefathers had got on
very well despite these nuisances, and why not we ?
The charge of quackery or Quixotism was, it is true,
far oftener hinted than spoken out, butt certain be-
lief in it was present in many of those who gave an
outward adherence to the sanitary movement, who
about it, took the chair at meetings
for
it, subscribed to the association for pro-
moting it, got up the necessary blue-books, and
altogether played the part of sanitary reformers
with deception to themselvbs and satisfaction to the
public. Perhaps it must be so with all great changes.
A few men conceive them, and rise to a sense of their
importance. Their zeal, knowledge, and energy, en-
force an attention which partakes more of respect than
conviction. Every real adherent they win has a knot
of sham adherents round about him, partly led by the
nose, partly conscious humbugs, partly self-deceivers,
whose consciences seldom ask questions, and who are
net in the habit of giving them true answers when
they do.
We have looked with interest to the hustings ex-
planations of Lord Moareve on this subject. The
best thing in them is the utter absence of any attempt
at making out a case for the government. Hie words
imply what, no doubt, was the great difficulty he had
to struggle with. He found an impression existing,
at a comparatively early period, that the subject
was too complicated to be dealt with in the
last session of en expiring. parliament This feeling
realised itself as timid feelings generally do. The
bill was drawn up kastily, introduced as late as
possible, played with in its progress through the
house, pieced and patched, and entwined in a
conveniently inextricable tangle with three or four
other measures, and dropped till next session ; re-
legated to that land of promise which must be
paved, like a certain other place, with good inten-
tions. Lord Monerrft speaks strongly for the future.
He invokes upon himself and his fellow-ministers the
responsibility of a speedy and effectual dealing with
sanitary reforms. He gives only too good reasons
why the legislature should act promptly. He quotes
from the quarterly returns of the Registrar-General,
which show an excess of deaths on the year of 34,000
above the average. It is true that the year has been
one of famine and its accompanying pestilence. But
it is also true that the pestilence might have been
mitigated if not prevented—arrested if not eradicated.
The sanitary history of the past two months at Liver-
pool proves this. The 'clearing out of those sinks of
fever the cellars, at once reduced the rate of mortality
in a way that even the health officers had not dared
to hope. The curse of the year has brought to that
town a blessing in its train ; as curses sent of heaven
always do, if rightly comprehended and acted upon.
There is a case in our paper of Monday which
shows what is going on in the midst of us from filth
and the foul air it generates.
_ . _

A man was suffocated in the water-closet of a low
lodging-house in Long-acre. He had been struck
down by the effluvium as by a strong poison. The
surgeon who was called in found him lying in a
yard eight feet square, in which the stench
was so horrible that he could not remain in it
a minute. It was perfectly perceptible for sixty
yards round. This was in Long-acre, bordering on,
if not part of, the property of the Duke of BEDFORD,
in a neighbourhood where wealth and traffic tread, it
is true, on the heels of vice and squalor, but where
there is no unredeemed poverty to justify such a state
of things. A man going to the assistance of the de-
ceased fell down insensible. The surgeon said there
was typhus fever in the neighbourhood. Is typhus
ever absent from it? The jury adjourned, that the
place might be viewed. They will probably tack an
indignant remark to their verdict. But there the
matter will rest. It is only the strong hand of law
that can crush these abominations. Private selfishness
is not accessible, in general, to remonstrance or
rebuke. It is the veriest staff to talk of
the rights of private property, when the neglect
of private duties is destroying life and engendering
pestilence. Are the physical consequences of such
abominations the worst. "Cleanliness is next to
godliness," says the grandmother's proverb, and
there is a truth hidden in the maxim. Godliness
carries cleanliness after it, and cleanliness predis-
poses to godliness. We nowhere, in the towns of
civilised nations (the Celts mug be excepted),
see great filth go along with great so-
briety, honesty, and intelligence. The haunts
of criminals in a town are always its foulest
districts. Moral corruption is attracted to physical
by a law as unerring as that which carries the morti-
fication of a wound gradually over the limb.
The doker merIeILIEETEIS at miter, reform
may thank their stars that there are someforeseeing
and earnest spirits in the country to avert the evils
which their supineness will not rouse itself to appre-
ciate. Never, at any period of our history, did the
nation stand in more urgent need of spiritualising
than new. Trade is extending, and education is
needed to turn that extension into a blessing. Public
opinion is becoming more powerful, and it depends on
education to prevent that public opinion from be-
coming a brutal and blind tyrant instead of a bene-