The Express.
London, England, 1851-02-11 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 11, 1851.

EVERT SATURDAY APTEENCION WILL BE PUBLISHED,
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Moe of • Daily Morning. Doable Paper,
PEPE VOCE.t.ENCE,
Containing every posalble Info:mat:en relative to the
o,itEAT EXHIRITtON OF 11‘31,
Its Objects, Eabibitoest Proton-to, intended Contents, Arrangements,
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N the feilowingog
10, BouverisoMeet, Hest.-etreet.

in Lord Joint RusirLL's motion, will excite a hun-
dred times more interest in the House of Commons.

BErren relations are likely, it may now be reason-
ably expected, to spring up between thin country and
Brazil ; seeing that, for the first time since its inde-
pendence, that empire has in the session 1851 ob-
tained a favourable paragraph ht the royal speech on
the opening of parliament.
" the government of Brazil has taken new, and I
hope efficient measures, for the suppression of the
atrocious traffic in slaves." Such is the intimation—

such the expectation formally expressed by her
MAJESTY. It records a great fact in the history of
this painful and distressing subject; it accepts the
new policy of Brazil as substantial in itself and as
hopeful in its prospects; it gives Brazil credit for the
change that has occurred not merely in its legisla-
tion, but, in what is of much more importance, in
the conduct of its executive government and in the
policy of one nt least of its great political parties ; it
accepts the advances which that empire is making
towards a hater morality and to sounder views of
its own high position iu South American civilisa-
tion.

No doubt the paragraph might have gone further
with great advantage, and have given more substan-
tial encouragement than a mere notice can convey
to Brazil in the new career on which it has entered

For, if Brazil have taken new measures for the sup-
pression of the slave trade; if those measures are, as
hoped, likely to prove efficient; it; in short, the po-
licy and the practice of Brazil have become identical
with our own, it would seem to be a necessary con-
sequence that the time has arrived when the British
Parliament can be safely recommended to repeal that
exceptional statute which has given such deep and
such just offence to Brazil, and which Lord Chan-
cellor Tacna, no later than the 12th of March, 1849,
solemnly declared, with a view to his declaration
being read to the House of Commons, he had "al-
ways deemed a national disgrace, manifesting either
great ignorance of the law of nations, or monstrous
assumption; calculated either to lead to a war, or to
our rendering ourselvecontemptible."
It may, however, be that Lord Pst.mr.rcTos, too
deeply occupied in the embarrassments and the diffi-
cairns of European polities, Las scarcely had time to
make himself fully master of what it is that
Brazil has been doing since the session of 1t450
closed and that of 1851 opened; or,more likely, that he
waits to see whether the Brazilian government is really
earnest and zealous in carrviog out the repressive
legislation of the Brazilian clambers; and that,when
he either fully comprehends all the details of the
new policy, or is convinced that it is no illusory or
deceptive determination which has been conic to, he
will then, ere this session closes, make that recom-
mendation to parliament for the abrogation of Lord
AntinnsEx's law, which would, we think, have
formed so appropriate an addition to the paragraph
quoted from the QUEEN'S Speech.
If legislation can charge the policy of a nation,
Ow government of Brazil must now be 19.111ccd amongst
the anti-slave trade powers of the world; for its laws
at last emulate those of England, France, and the
United States, in stringency, severity, and elabora-
tion, on this subject. By the law of 7th November,
MI, all Africans landed in the empire after its
enactment, became entitled to freedom. Bat,
amidst the difficulties of an imperial minority, of in-
surrectionary movements in its frontier provinces, of
a weak central power, of restricted pecuniary re-
sources, and of adverse public opinion, the Brazilian
government had not the power to secure to the negroes
imlortedthef eedcmrwhtchllrazilanlawthusintendcd
they should possess. At last, however, on the 4th of
September, 1t4.70, a measure received the sanction of
the Brazilian legislature, to carry out the intentions of
the law of the 7th November, 1t431 ; under its provi-
sions
slave ships are liable to seizure and condemna-
tion. slave dealers to the penalties of piracy; and
rewards are adjudged to informers giving informa-
tion that will had to seizure and condensation.
In Brazilian legislation, the details of laws are
left to the executive government ; the legislature
contenting itself with laying down principles.
No sooner then had the Assembly beset this law of
the 4th September, 18.30, than the imperial cabinet
set about infusing life and vitality into it; and
within five weeks after its enactment, that govern-
ment issued((on the 14th October, 1830), very
ample provisions for fixing and regulating the
circumstances that shall constitute the legal pre-
sumption that vessels taken are slavers. Those

wisions are now before us; and were it

or the language and the legal form in which they
are embodied, we should have supposed them to be,
as indeed they substantially are, the stipulations of
one of our own slave trade treaties. The some pre-
sumption from open hatches, from extra boartbi,
from a greater number of water casks, from boilers,
handcuffs, food, in them constitute guilty occupation;
just ns our well known equipment clauses do.
On the 19th of November, lsdo, further instruc-
tions, of still greater stringency, were issued by the
imperial government; and it is now engaged in
taking the necessary steps to complete the organisa-
tion of the judicial establishment rendered necessary
by this complete revolution in the slave trade policy
of Brazil.
What arc good laws worth, it may be asked, un-
less efficiently and faithfully executed? Little or
nothing. But the government of Brazil. when
resolved to enter on this new carter, did not
wait until it had all its legislation perfect, all its
machinery in order, all its judicial establishments
organised. It began to act even before it commenced
to legislate; and between the spring and autumn of
last year, in less than nine months, as officers took
and liberated very nearly 1,200 slaves. On reference
to the files of the Jornal cl, Commertio of Rio -a
newspaper without political opinions, and devoted
exclusively to the collection of facts—we find on the
following dates the following capture of slaves :
Sc slaves taken at Niteroi. Jcwont do Comnrrein, March 18, 1851.
73 „ „ Alajou.
• Ilb „ „ Rio do Janeiro.
207 „ „ Pantos. ••
60 „ Jurerjerba.
22 „ ~ Cabaret°.
270 „ Mactib.
2 „ „ Rio Janeiro.
I 22 „S. Joao da Burrs. „

Aprll
„ April 10.
• Wpt I.
Oct. B.
• Nov. 16.
~ Nov. 21.

1162 dame taken between !larch 19 and November 21, IMO.

We have collected, and we give these particulars
in detail, because hitherto it has been the fashion
here to throw discredit on general allegations, and to
ask for proofs. Here then we have proofs that the
Brazilian government is actively engaged in repres-
sive efforts.

But these are not all. The above slaves were
taken by the authorities on shore. In addition, how-
ever, the Brazilian war steamers Thetis and Golfinho
are, we observe, cruising for slavers, and have already
taken two vessels equipped for the traffic, one of
them being the brig ltolha, on board of which was
found Senhor Fonseca, whose ease we have before
stated; the other a French merchantman that had

entered Rio with only two blacks on board.
The Brazilian journals teem with evidence of the
heartiness with which the legal and political autho-
rities are seconding and enforcing the new laws, and
of the approbation with which the public regards
their-exertions. Seizures have been mode at sea;

slaves landed, pursued by a military force firing on
and wounding the flying slave deilers; barracoons
have been destroyed, and their owners punished ;
and the evidence of slaves against their alleged en-'
slavers sought by dangerous promises of liberty. In
short. there are not wanting people in the empire
who fear that this reaction has started at too quick
a pare to last ; and in a late number of the Bratil
—a journal of reputation—we find the following
striking passage:

Public opinion now pronounces loudly against the slave
trade ; neither of the political parties now in contest adopts
it, or the itle.gi connected with it ; no organ of the metropo-
litan press defends it ; the government meets with no op-
position in repressing it. It is well. This reaction against
the slave, in itself a great step in the road of progress and
of civilisation—this reaction, like all other reactions, may,
by exaggeration, make us receive extraordinary ideas =CI
commit great injustice. Let us guard then against this
1 exaggeration ; we. who know that the holiest of causes arc
ruined by it, and that reactionary movements retard the
i cause they seem to promote.
i The highest evidence of the sincerity and earnest,
ness of the Brazilian government is, however, to be
seeu in the effect these proceedings have had on the
Portuguese slave dealers. Now it is a fact quite
notorious in the ports of the empire that the smaller
slave dealers are nearly universally winding up their
affairs and preparing to leave Brazil: nay, already •
very considerable emigration of them has taken
place to Portugal. The more wholesale traffickers in
African flesh have not as yet made any corresponding
movements, not because, however, they are not so-

riously alarmed, but because the course of their trade
obliges them to give the planters very long
credit for slaves, and it will consequently take a
lengthened period to wind up their affairs, even it
they do withdraw from their horrible commerce.
They have, however, become, from the suddenness of
their great wealth, objects of popular dislike and
odium; and in a few years Brazil will have, in all
probability, got rid of them too.
All this, we submit, is proof tbat a great change
has come over the policy, the legislation, and the
proceedings of the Brazilian government. Such
change is, no doubt, based very much on the political
interests of the party now in power in that empire;
but it is accompanied by a marked improve-
ment in public opinion, for by public opinion
the change is, we have shown, supported. At
all events the most powerful party in Brazil
has adopted an auti-slave trade policy. What
more tun we want ? What more can our government
wish? Whilst Brazil was weak and unwilling, we
assumed to do for her what she wanted the
power and the inclination to du for herself. Now
that she has the will and the strength to net for her-
self, we shall du more harm than ',mod by inter-
fering. The time is then coming when the very
promoters of the act of 1845 will, on their own
showing, be compelled to recommend its repeal.

THERE is something in Mr. Dlsn.setes agricul-
tural demonstrations which always reminds us of the
grandiloquence of un immortal work, which pro-
ceeded from his pen, in what seems now to have
been a previous state of existence. Dtsatuu the
younger, author of the "Revolutionary Epic," has
not much in common with the present member for
Bucks, and it is exceedingly probable that the hitter
personage would willingly ignore the farmer, but it
cannot be. Every now and then the old nature
peeps out, and no doubt we shall have a full and fair
temple thereof in the promised exposition of to-
night.
In fact, the }TORSO of Commons has had a taste of
what is corning in words which we have already no-
tieed. Listen to I)tsttat3A " the younger :" "If he
did not succeed in discovering what was the cause
of that mvsterious and continued depression of
agricultural industry which was admitted to exist,
and if he did not indicate the remedies which were
the natural results of that investigation which he
proposed to make—remedies demanded by justice
and counselled by policy, then he would never again
attempt to support the interest to which he was in-
&Med for the seat which he held in that house."
This reminds us of a sentence by the Name author
in the preface to that immortal work to which we
have before referred :
" Deeming myself, perchance too rashly, in that
excited hour, a poet, I cursed the destiny that had
placed me in an age that boasted of being anti-
poetical. And while my fancy thus struggled with my
reason, it flashed across my mind like the lightning
which was then playing over Ida, that, Sc., &c."—
no matter what, but something of no very great im- •
portance. So it has flashed across the mind of
DISRAELI, now no longer young, but "deeming him-
self, perchance too rashly," a political economist,
that he has found what is the cause of that myste-
rious depression under which agriculture groans.
Why, last year we had a Distumertsll mare's-nest
about local bnrthcns, which all ended in smoke, and
now we are to have either the old dish warmed up
again, or another emanating from the same school of
political cookery. But what can this mysterious
cause he? 'Mery is a very plain cause, which the
jog-trot squires have always alleged—a bad price, to
which this year is added a bad crop; but of course
the author of a "Revolutionary Ere" would scorn
to build his theory on so substantial a basis. The
juggler who swallows water is no better than a com-
mon man : lie must eat fire, and spout ribbons, and
stand on his head, if it be only to keep up his cha-
racter. Mr. Plume lifistirr, in his oration, were
satisfied with asserting the prevalence of agricultural
distress, and attributing it to causes which are at
least intelligible, though far enough from justifying
the concluAion he would draw
_from them; but to-

night we shall see what wo shalt see—ririals Grey I
demonstrating a problem in economical science—
Torirred unveiling the Asiatic mystery.
Mr. DisnaEtt's manner always makes u.s fancy he
neither believes what he is saying himself, nor is
very sanguine about his supporters believing it. If
they believe it, their belief will usually be that trans-
cendental contidenec which enthusiasts place in their
, teachers—a faith superior to knowledge, unsupported
by the understanding. But there are certain facts
which the lust few days have developed, which, per-
, haps, the bucolic mind may be competent to digest.
They are contained in the reports of the Poor-law
Boards, and we must recollect that these facts arc
not questions of belief, reasoning or unreasoning, ex-
cept in the good thith and correct arithmetic of the
Poor-law Boards, although we suspect they will come
rather unopportunely for the great author of the
"flashes front Ida."
We have already, noticed one of these documents;
but we will recapitulate. The total number of pau-
pers relieved in 606 unions of England and 11 ales
on the Ist of January, PASO, was 931,328. The total
number on the same day this year was 862,749, or a
decrease of nearly 74 per cent., which, be it remem-
bered, is a decrease on a decrease. So that the total
decrease on the two years is about thirteen per cent.
And this is not confined to the manufacturing
counties. Bedford shows a decrease on a decrease.
Berks the same. Duckinyham the some. Dorset Ms
some. Essex, Devon, and Kent a decrease on
an increase; and only six counties show an in-
crease, in two of which it may be attributed
to the dullness of the iron trade. But this
is not all. The Board of Supervision for the
relief of the poor in Scotland, report that the number
of poor relieved from May 1849 to May 1850, was
about five per cent. less than the number relieved in
the preceding year, the expenditure having dimi-
nished in nearly a like proportion. But what will
the poet say to the report from Ireland? The in-
door relief has diminished from 932,207 in 1849 to
789,191 in 1850, or mare thin sixteen per cent. The
out-door relief has diminished from 1,210,486 to
372,688, or seventy per cent., the year in each case
being taken from Michaelmas to Michaelmas.
Surely his fancy will have to struggle very
hard with his reason before he can persuade
himself that this is the picture of a country
fast verging to ruin. There is, of course, the re-
source of politicians of the NEWDECIATE school,
an allegation of inaccuracy in the returns, but this is
too peddling an excuse for a great statesman. And
if he does not succeed in proving his point, he holds
out a threat at the bare mention of which we cannot
but shudder. Ile will cease to support the agri-
' cultural interest! Poor ignorant tillers of the soil,
little do they know what evil hangs over them. They
may plough and sow and go to market in shabby
one-horse chaises cunningly constructed to elude the
CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQCER; they may grumble
at weekly ordinaries and howl at annual protection
dinners, 'but it is all in vain—there is no efficacy in
cultivation, no sprouting of the seed, no gathering in
of the crop—for Dtsast:Li has deserted protection,
and the sun of England has set for ever.

MALTA, FED. 2, 1851.
The official announcement of the blockade by the
Turkish fleet of the Island of Samos, to take place on the
Bth inst., has been made by government to the commercial
body. Since my last several vessels have left Constanti-
no*, and some btramers have called at Smyrna, from
which city they have embarked all the disposable troops,
taking even those employed in the police force, in number
two thousand.
Iler Majesty's steam frigate Spiteful is, I believe, sta-
tioned off Samos; but here there is no appearance of a
move. The fleet is daily exercised in some important ma-
w:earns, and the tars are landed with their guns at
Florian ; in their exercises they display incredible acti-
vity, unlimbering and limbering in a very brief space of
time. On Monday last the exercise of the fleet consisted in
housing and re-wetting top-gallant masts and jib-booms, in
which exercise Superb occupied 13 minutes, Queen 17,
Caledonia, Ganges, and Albion between 17 and 21 ; but the
time I have not been able to.procure.
Sir Willoughby Cotton received pratique an Wednesday
last, and will proceed to England via Marseilles about 14th
inst. by the Merlin. On the same day Sir Charles Napier
is expected ; but the latter officer being in quarantine, the
two great malitaires of Indian celebrity cannot meet on
shore.

Mr. Saunders, appointed to relieve Mr. Napier as master.
attendant, arrived hire by the Indus on the morning of
Friday, and has taken charge of the office.

DEATH OF VISCOUNT NEWRY.— The Armagh
Guardian announces the demise of this young nobleman.
By his lordship's death a vacancy arises in the representa-
tion of Newry.