The Express.
London, England, 1848-09-28 00:00:00

able, from want d espital, industry, or skill, to cul-
tivate as they are callable of being cultivated ; and
yet they will neither sell nor lease them to those who
could, and would, if they were allowed, cultivat', im-
prove, and employ.
The excuse of every insolvent or absentee proprietor
is that he is weighed down with incumbrances, that
he cannot live at home, or, if he does, that he cannot
find money to improve his acres and employ his
reople. But if you ask why don't he sell half-a-
dozen townlands, pay some of his debts that bear
high interest, and plant, fence, sub-soil, and build
farm-houses with the residue, he stares at you incre-
dulously, and asks with a sneer " whether
you aro aware that the property in ques-
tion has been in the family since Cromwell's time ?"
with which conclusive answer, if you are not saoisfied,
it mast be you who are stupid, not he. Traders who
gave him credit may lie long out of their money and
lose it possibly at last. Those who have lent his
father or himself small sums on the prevalent security
of bonds may be cheated of their interest for years,
if not finally out of the principal. Tenants may bo
harassed and discouraged instead of taught and
helped, until at length a r.ceiver in Chancery is up- I
pointed, under whose withering hand all sinks daily
into deeper ruin. Labourers may turn beggars, and
poor-rains may increase as employment every diy
grows inevitably lees and less. BD: is not the cause
of all this misery and iniquity one of the hereditary
'olds of the land? and is nut land secured to them by
law is strict monopoly ?
Look at the mass of misery and see if it be where
the mil is lightest, or the population densest, that
wages are lowest, or improvements the most rare.
Exceptional instances may perhaps be found where
these circumstances are concomitant; but in the main
it is notorious that where estates ore fewest and
largest in extent, there is least industrial life, fewest
thriving tenants, the smallest amoupt of agricultural
labour in demand, and the worst pay given for it.
Property is twice as much divided in Leinster a', in
Connaught, and the condition of the country and of
its inhabitants differs as widely. The northern pro-
vince is sill more partitioned among the owners in
fee, and the avrrage culture and comfort ob-
servable therein very far exceed thoto of
Munster. And so with particular counties. Wee-
ford and Armagh contain as many freehold
estates as Mayo and Clare, either of which is treble
their size ; and their relative condition in every re-
spect presents the most striking and instructive con-
trast. We do not mean to say that other incidents do
not contribute to produce the result. All we contend
for is. that the circumstance to which we allude is one
of the most permanent and i eportant causes of the
difference which is observable.
And if we but consider the matter in a few of its
chief bearings, the reason will appear sufficiently
plain. In the first place, it is not the proprietors of
moderate prupertics that are absentees. They cannot
afford to neglect what they have for any length of
time. They are somebodies at home, but they are
nobodies abroad. A certain amount of their own
land kept in their own hands for farminr " in an im-
proved way," gives the rent-owner of 1,0001. or
2,0001. a year ample occupation, a higher sense
of hie own importance, a seat now and then on
the county grand jury, and some additional hundreds
a year. Where several men of this class divide amongst
them an electoral division under the poor-law, there is
the materiel for its well-working. These men, by
combining wisely and thriftily together, can keep,
down the rates, by keeping up employment. Even
their little jealousies and neighbourly rivalries tend,
in some sort, to good. If a tenant shows a spirit of
industry and a desire of improvement, and his
landlord refuses to allow him just compensation foe
what he has done, or sufficient tenure to induce him
to persevere in future, he is not without alternatives :
ether landlords whose character he knows, and whose
mode of dealing he prefers, will give him a farm on
fairer terms. The very belief of this is a bridle in
the month of his own narrow-minded landlord, and
silently extorts from him some concession of that
which is his due. Compare this with those desolate
regions which abound in too many parts of Ireland,
but more especially in the western half of the king-
dom. The tenant whose lease is expiring wants a
renewal and allowance for the fields he has reclaimed
or the drains he has made. To whom
shall he go? To an agent paid by a per centage
on the net amount he can remit by a given day to a
London banker ? To an attorney, whose livelihood is
made by actions of ejectment, waste, and trespass ?
To the proprietor whom he has never seen, who lives
in Paris or Florence; who knows and desires to know
nothing of the vulgar details of his complaint ? " The
poor man crieth, and there is none to hear him."
Of what avail is all his past fidelity, punc-
tuality, work before dawn, and toil after
dark ? His neighbour that idled and bullied,
and cheated and lied, has just as good a chance of
" being left in his holding," or helped in a season of
distress or sickness, as he. The whole parish and those
adjoining likewise belong to the rac't-renting spend-
thrift whose ancestral claims to oppress, and rob, and
desolate the land, a house of landlords carefully pre-
serve and fortify; that land from sire to eon may be
kept in strict monopoly.
And the foolish people ask what can the legisla-
ture do. They could if they would treat landlords as
they would merchants—make their properties liable
to be sold in payment of their debts; and take their
properties in satisfaction of their arrears to the poor
rate. But this is precisely what they will not do ;
and to hide their neglect they pass sham measures
annually that will never reach the evil.

Uv Fliday last we inferred, in some detail, to the
financial position of France. After an appeal to the
exactnessea of arithmetic, which is open to the scru-
tiny of any competent person, we found ourselves con-
ducted to a very disagreeable result. Reckoning up
the resources, and al.-o reckoning up the expenses of
the republic, we confessed ourselves convinced that
the Minister of Finance would not see the end of the
present) ear without a deficit in the ways and means
of 66,5,000,000 E This is the general result, as a
matter of difference, between the magnitude of the
ordinary income and of the ordinary outlay, confined
to the mere arrangements of the single budget of 1848.
Some mitigation mat be found in the converaioa already
accomplished of so large a portion of the floating debt
of France by the consolidation into Rents. of Bons
drt Tri;sor at the rate of 55. It is difficult, in the
present con used state of financial questions in the
Assembly to state with accuracy what this operation
really effected. If we err at all, however, it shall be
on the side of generosity, and we will suppose that it
cleared away a mass of 485,000,000 franca of exigible
liabilities from the exercise of 1848. Take it at this
sum, and there is still a lugubrious deficit of
200,000,000 francs lelt for the perpetual contempla-
tion of M. GOIIDCHAUE, and of every Frenchman who
sets any value upon the national faith of his
country.
But we must not go too fast. It is very true that
this convenient prrcess of funding has brought a
most comfortable relief to the difficulties of one year.
But funding and getting into everlasting debt
are the same thing, and during the last
seven months the republic have been carrying on a
system of this kind with a degree of most heroic ra-
pidity. What with the Bons do Trfsor—the reim-
bursements of the savings banks—the Lyons railway
—and the new loan of August, they have already
committed themselves to a creation of 42,000,000 ,
francs of additional rentes—that is to say, they have
increased the annual expense of their national debt
by about 1,800,0001. This is a situation which it can-
not be an exaggeration to call desperate, and it is
producing proposals of desperate remedy.
The committee of agriculture propose at once to
fertilise the fields and re-fill the Exchequer with a
modest experiment of two milliards (2,000,000,000
francs) of Bons hypotlikaires. Citizen POUGILtED
has a notion that a forced loan of 200,000,000 francs
garnished with a machinery of paper money, would
be a most convenient device; and M. POUGEAILD has
met with so much attention, that LEON FAUCIIER, in
the name of a committee, has conferred upon him the
honour of a refutation. LED= ROLLIN, with cha-
racteristic audacity, falls back upon the schemes of
the first republic, upon the philosophy of Law, and
the dishonesty of Law's patron. He recommends
plenty of coinage , and asaignats ad infinitum.
Journal des Debuts, on the other hand, with
the best intentions no doubt, advises—we must be
permitted to think with less than its ordinary saga-
city—that the Bank of France should at once resume
the payment of its notes in specie. The Dibats says
truly that the Bank is in a position to pay its notes in
coin on demand, as far as its own internal rename
are concerned. The bullion has already attained even
somewhat more than the bare limit at which in the