The Express.
London, England, 1853-01-28 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, JANUARY 28.

Tim Peace Society held yesterday their Man-
chester meeting. There can be but one opinion as to
the value of the object which the members of this So-
ciety are struggling to attain. We wish them heartily
success. It is true indeed that the principle they advo-
cate is no new one. Universal peace has been the
object of the aspirations of every good and great
man since the world began. The Hebrew prophets
sung in solemn and hopeful tones of the day, when,
in their figurnti ie language, the lion should lie down
with the lamb; a great General, in our own day,
mourned over a " glorious victory" as the
greatest calamity that could betel a nation, next to
a terrible defeat. In proportion as civilisation has
gained ground, in proportion as men have begun to
comprehend the surpassing worth of their intellec-
tual and moral qualities, as compared with their
mere physical qualities, they have learned to dread
and to hate the recurrence of war, as the agency
which stands most in the way of the cultivation of
the intellect and of the moral sense. The love of
peace has, in the most barbarous nations even, found
an expression. Scarcely any country which has
preserved records of its earlier literature, is with-
out references to a golden age, when all was
quiet And delight—an existence in a moral and ma-
terial "crystal palace," where the eye and the ear,
and the understanding, were continuously fed with
the richest food, and where all nations met together
with no other rivalry, than that of effecting the
greatest conquests over the powers of nature. The
ides, then, w,iich presided at the formation of the
Peace Society, was no new one. Nevertheless, that
was no reason why the said Society should not un-
dertake a new promulgation of it. 1. he very greatest
and the best ideas arc precisely those which need most
frequently to be brought before the public in every pos-
sible shape. They rare those which unfortunately lie out
of the circle in which the minds of the majority most
commonly move, and they need therefore to be con-
tinually reproduced. All hail, then, to the Peace
Society for doing mankind this service.
But acknowledging as we do the blessings of
peace, we acknowledge at the same time the blessing
of all those virtues against the breach of which the
docalogue and other moral codes launch prohibitions.
If we do not like fighting, neither do we like
robbery, nor slander, nor murder. nor adultery. And
precisely because we do not like these crimes, and
because a fraction of society is addicted to the com-
mission of them, is it, that we enact laws for the
punishment of them. Because the experience of
every society shows that robberies will be committed
we establish a police form to protect us against rob-
bery. Because there are preens who, in spite of
the detestation in which their practices are held by
moral men, will talk slander and commit adultery
and murder, we affix a punishment to the eras-
mission of these crimes, and protect ourselves against
their occurrence as best we may. Because we are
told that there are about 30,000 persons in Ludes
whose moral sense has not taught them the true dis-
tinction between MUM and truss, we levy a police
force sufficient to keep rogues in order. Because that
police is not übiquitous, we prepare for defence at
home, by providing ourselves with arms, and
furnishing our doors with bolts and bars.
This may be degrading. It may show that
we have not made that progress in morals,
which might have been expected from a nation
which has made such vast advances in all other
branches of science ; nevertheless it is a fact that
cannot be denied. We admit the great value of
honesty. We long for the advent of the " Good
time" when the world will recognise that " honesty
is the best policy," and act upon that dictum, but we
behave like men of sense, in recognising that, in spite
of our wishes, dishonesty . exists, and we prepare
for it. No jeweller in the Strand, how-
ever persuaded he might be of the advantages
of :.he abolition of thieving, would fling open the
doors of his shop, when he went to bed, in seder that
his sincerity might be put to the test.
In the same manner we cannot afford to throw
down the bolts and bars of the kingdom, and open
the doors of our treasury, because we believe in the
blessings of universal peace. We do not think that
the knowledge of a till being open, and exposed to
their depredations, will ever cure the " City Arabs"
of their propensity to rob such a till; neither do
we think that the certainty that England is without
defence will be sufficient to keep an invading army
oil our shores.
It is for these reasons that we cannot go along
with the Peace Society in their condemnations of the
adoption of methods of national defence. We look
upon these methods as a kind of international police
force, which we should as soon think of abolishing as
of dismissing the police intended for our domestic
protection. Both, it must be allowed, are evils, but
they are intended to be the check and suppression of
greater evils. Both also admit the existence of ter-
rible agencies at work in the world; but it is better
to admit the existence of these agencies and be pre-
pared for them, than to fall a prey to them.
But we are told, and with some truth, that the
best way to prevent war is to prevent the causes of
war—that we must study to avoid giving offence
to those nations with which we stand in inti-
mate relations, and that then the need of an
armed defensive force might be avoided. Un-
doubtedly there is some sense in this. But
when these causes of war are specified, they are
so numerous and so subtle, that we either find out
that we might almost u well be told to avoid the
causes of death, and that then we might secure ha-
mortality. Some of them it is almost impossible to
avoid. We are desired, for instance, not to express
our opinion too loudly upon the subject of the con-
duct of the present Rahn of France. Now it is clear
to demonstration that under the present state of
freedom of the press, people will not be
prevented from expressing their opinion. The
only remedy is to gag the press. There
are, we liege, very few Englishmen who would
not my that such a consummation as this would be
a heavy pries to pay for any advantage that it might
purchase. The freedom of the press is the very life-
of liberty.
The Posse Society will doubtless do good in fa-
vouring the progress of ideas which are daily gaining
more power. It finds some portion of its work done
to its hands. Nations are not aow so possessed with
the feeling of national prejudice as to be able to
Sad a eons isflti in every chance occurrence
that has a tsaducy to wound national pride. As
the boundaries at European countries have become
mom rigidly Mem' the chances of frontier wars,
the most fregmat of all, are diminished. Trade be-
comes more ensl more essential to the prosperity,
almost to the emidenes of a country; and the chums
is increasing whim whole interests are bound up in
the maintenance of pima The preponderance of the
arts of peace OVIR Hess al war has taken away much
of the glitter sad gerMdane attached to the latter. The
courage that would outrun us under war, should it
arise, has not .Ii aped, but the pugnacious spirit
that seeks coaled, has. Then are a vast number of
causes like these working in aid of the Peace Society,
and. with these the Society mast endeavour to co-
operate. If it confines its operation to these
causes, it will have a trims of suceeek—fbe
is so far it works with the spirit of the age.
If it seeks to do more than this—to persuade
men that the only way to ward off danger is
to denude yourself of the means of protection, it will
meet with little belief or sympathy. To be sue-
eeedbl, it must be content to be rational.
Mr. Connmv argues that the criticism of the press is
likely to provoke war—surely this is no good reason
for neglecting national defence. The Army and
Navy Estimates are voted without opposition—
none of the Members of Parliament present at the
Peace meeting voted against the last addi-
dant° oarmilitary 'Seco—sorely in return we ought
to be made secure from invesisn. The peaceable and
peace-loving people of England must not be left open
to a danger which a few sharp critics may—we are

those
still,

told—bring down upon us et soy hour. Old modes
of defence cannot safely be neglected till the new
millennium is really ours.

Os no one point were the Tory shipowners so
positive as that if under stress of competition we
were to keep anything of • commercial marine
afloat, it could only be by buying our ships of
Danes, Swedes, Pnwians, and Russians. For some
brief period it was just possible we might manage
by purchasing Finland dr-built ships. at 81. per ton, to
keep up some semblance of ship-owning, but the true
English ship, sound-timbered, strong, able for all
seas and all weathers, would become a mere memory,
a thing to be talked of by aged shipowners and ma-
riners, but nowhere to be found upon the ocean. Mr.
GEORGE. FREDERICK YOUNG especially delivered a
most mournfully prophetic warning to the committee,
imploring them to learn of his experience as a prac-
tical shipbuilder—as one who had served his time to
the trade, and knew its secrets—and to believe that
English shipbuilders exposed to competition would
at once either give up business or remove their es-
tablishments abroad. At Boulogne shipwrights had
but eighteenpence a day, the American builders had
timber close at hand; and so, what with the cheap
wages of some places (not work, for that would have
let out the fallacy), and the timber by the very shores
of others, there was no chance for English ship-
building. It was a trade we had made our own, by
shutting all the rest of the world out of it, and so
surely as we let them into it, Russia, France, Ame-
rica, the Dutch, and the north countries would have
all the building, and wo none; and if war should
come upon us, even though we would still have
sailors, we would assuredly have no ship-carpenters.
The private yards from which men were so largely
drafted in the late war to meet the emergencies of
the royal dock-yards would be extinct—we should
learn too late their value as reserves, when our shat-
tered ships must remain unrepaired, and there would
be no possibility of supplying with sufficient speed
the places of our sunken and disabled thunderers.
Free Trade was, no doubt, a very beautiful theory,
but there was too much at stake—no less than the

national security—no less than our supremacy upon
the seas—to allow of its being carried into practice
upon shipping.
The prophetic warning was unheeded, and the
Free Traders had their way. It is now three 1
years since Englishmen had liberty given them
to build or buy their ships in any quarter of
the globe, and since our whole commercial marine
was driven on all seas, to face in open com-
petition, the shipping of all the world. And Mr.
RICARDO, to whom the credit is duo of
having been the first to call attention to the
injurious effects of the navigation laws upon ship-
ping and commerce, and who so perseveringly and
ably summed up the evidence against them, may well
Taal some pride in reviewing the results of a measure
Ihe so entirely made his own. The lesson furnished
by Sunderland is irresistible. It is one of the most
active ship-building ports in the kingdom. Periods
of depression in shipping always used to be felt most
severely at Sunderland. In 1843, under the corn
laws, the sugar laws, and the navigation
laws, there were whole streets of deserted
houses and empty shops in Sunderland;
of 80 shipbuilders, 36 were bankrupt or insolvent,
5 had abandoned business; 20 merchants, chain and
anchor-smiths had failed. There were more than
5,300 persons in receipt of relief as paupers • being,
as the population was in round numbers 56,000, more
than one in every ten. Ship carpenters' wages were
3s. a week, and employment, even at that, so hard to
be got, that many of them went to sea as common
sailors. Vessels were lying idle in the docks; there
were 55 ut-Non the stocks, several of which
had been finiahed for months, but could find
- one either to charter or buy them ;
unfinished were either at a complete stand-
or were worked at by only the apprentices,
.er the superintendence of a foreman; and, if we
ecollect aright, the shipowners were before Parlia-
ment complaining of their condition.
That was three years before the bill passed repeal-
ing the Corn Laws, four years prior to the act altering
the sugar duties, seven years-before the first unpro-
tected British ship put out to sea, and the shipowners
were then in league with every class of Protectionist
for the mainterance of every monopoly.
In the year 1852, when, if there had been
any true prophetic vision in Protectionists, Sunder-
land, save in its colliers and glass-works, should
have been extinct, n Aiwa are served upon the
borough surveyor for 556 new houses. The popula-
tion numbering now more than 70,500, exceeds by
14,300 that of 1841; but the paupers are now but
2,806, or less than one in 25. The ships built and
registered in 1851, the second year of no protection,
exceeded by 30,546 tons, or 143 per cent., those
built and registered under the shelter of protec-
tion in 1843. In December 1843 there were in
course of build 48 ships, of the united tonnage of
12,364 tons. In the November of last year,
when, according to Mr. GEORGE FREDERICK YOUNG,
foreigners were to have built all our ships, there
were upon the stocks 91 ships of 44,765 tons. The
average tonnage of the ships of 1843 was 258 tons ;
of 1852, it is 492 tons. But not only were the ships of
1832 more in number, and of larger size, but they.
were of better build ; 13 of the ships on the stocks is
' 11143 were under eight years (A 1), and there was not
• *lngle one of them above 12 years. At the clue of
1362, there was not a single ship in build under eight
years, and there were 21 above 12 years. The years
A 1), we need scarcely remind our readers, are
regulated by the kind of timber and fastening
used in the construction of the ships. The greater
the number of years A 1 the higher the price of the
ship, and the greater the number of years she will
bear the buffet of wind and waves. Nor is even
this all. In 1843, of 65 ships at Sunderland, not one
could find a buyer. In 1851 146 ships were built,
and every one of them sold ; of the 91 upon the
stooks in Nov. 18.52, 35 were sold before they were
out of the builders' hands. The shipwrighes pay
is now 4s. a day, there is employment for every
one of them; and the sailor who, in 1843, when the
navigation law nursed him for the Royal Navy
had 31. 10s. for the voyage to London, has now
44 10s.
It is, perhaps, too much to expect that ship-
owners, so long accustomed to grumble and go to
committees, should at once profess their contentment
under Free Trade, and be satisfied to have their
prosperity admitted in Parliament. Still, admitted
it must be. There is no help for it. There is no-
thing peculiar about Sunderland. Timber ship-
building thrives there as it never did before. Iron
ship building no less thrives in the Tyne. Sunder-
land has not run away with the building from
the Thames, the Mersey, or the Medway. Oar satire
build, as we have shown by the last Board at Trade
returns, is greater than at any foram period.
We are building larger, better, faster talky ships
sow than we have ever done. Competition isprovuig
the strength and completing the development of our
inherent genius for ship-building and the ssa. We
have set an example to the world, whisk' with such
acts as those of Sunderland to enforce it, &mild bring
maritime nation to abolish, as a timelier to
Itvessia all restrictions upon the shipping of other
countries. But this flood of prosperity Amid also
do something else. A period of shipping PferritY
is jai*, time for amending the Famotagery Act.
Stipovimeo can now well afford to be lie* if not
=l.*to those who sail with them tease anew
leyood the seas, and should, dattlamo, go
bpi in band with the public Mei an
amendment of existing laws as world pato the
WONs and the unwary emigrant from dale who
sow too often make him their prey.

Baxus' PENSION SOCTETT. T.Yt Sht the
onmaal general meeting of tills society was at the
rßut Tavern, Bishopegate-street ; Kr. Napier in the
. s —The Chairman, in opening the busbies@ of tl,
Mgisdag, said that he bad to esogratolate the meeting rc
eatisfactory state al die esesonta, for the funded pre-
prey had increased, and the lloosarer had a brier balance
la band than bad been *be
id, kr peen. Friends'
betatutiat had ahe iamsod, which was a wishes'',
ilsa. But is the midst off~ this success, the claims of rib-
bons coatianed to be great. They had now 46 applicant@
the charity, sad each were the vicissitudes is the bade
that it was more than probable this number would bet ia-
creased than &Welshed. There were now 20 nes, and 22
worsen es the list. The balance-sheet showed the follow-
ing state of the funds of the Society :—The balance in hand
at the close ef the last year was 1911. 17s. 3d. The re-
ceipts for the year amounted to 8911. 6s. 3d., and after de-
fraying the necessary expenditure, th, somsked a Wawa
of 3231. lls. Id. at the end of the year just concluded. The
report was adopted, and the meeting, after transacting some
formal business, broke up.