The Express.
London, England, 1848-12-26 00:00:00

eel seen little money usto the army; and thus, by
es open,' habits that have been banded on the
~stios, it reins halt of them era they have well
maahood. Let any one acquainted with the
;owl
omost watch the Friday nights' military Garottes
am may thus is trace the ruin and evney sad
rowans deaths which this system is causing;
gad bow these effects of the system are rapidly in.
ell b PutteeterlY in the cavalry teltuants and in
the hensehold troops.
yew after yew the expenses at meson in all oar
• week regimenta have been going on increasing.
Why? Beams el the notion that the akar*, having
get their commission by punch ice, are g‘litionson per
..snore, and must consequently bye like a magma
The habits thus cultivated at mess pee.
west of their actions; and horses, betting-
woks, and mistiest**, long ago forced out of Lord
&Winos the exclamation that unless the entrees.
Iwo of its officers were arrested, the British army
would be reined.
Is ass. regiments these habits do • not
bat then they are not " crack regiments ;" they
iegimmits to be avoid, d ; regiments officered be
• mobs." And thus the evil habits of the most popu-
lar regiments have a tendency to disparage the most
wful tygiseeete.
a
If ingenuity were directed to devise a system of
debauchery, by bad example, of the whole British
army, it could not have hit on and more competent
erne than the household troops. For there extra-
legint habits ins.ifferab'e pretensions, and individual
igatigaey rule with almost undivided sway amonget
is younger officers. These regiments constitute, in
of fact, a sort of university in which to educate
lounger branches of the aristocracy, and of good
Nadirs, in the world of London—that world, me-
at* of high living and I,w morale—of opera
hales sod Tattersall's, of the saloons, of courtezans,
sad of the Derby, of lease balls and of steeple-
'hoses, of its parks and billiard rooms. They con-
=in and about the metropolis, and there
ise and destroy some of the finest young men of
the bast blood in England. And this under the Fe-
tes/re—the mi-erable pretence—of guarding the sove-
reign sod protecting her Majesty's palaces and the
public build gs ! Young men do, we know, escape
Ace this Maelstrom of vice; but that is owing, not to
the system in which they have been whirling, but to
tin strength of their own character.
It is due alike to the crown and the people of Eng-
land that this system of household troops should be
revised; and no revision will be worth a thought that
does not include the abolition of purchase in them.

THE Times,in its first notice of Mr.Coansa'a letter,
while it "congratulated him on the felicitous hoid-
ens with which he laid his finger es a straw point—
= a round sum in figures, and a round feet m his.
concluded the paragraph whisk contained this
amphora by refusing to concede "that 1833, a year
el forced and even fictitious semseeny, achieved by
sounding works, and by selling stores, and which
also brought increased expenses for the future, is a
fir basis of measurement."
We have already 0-1 two occasions, one of them
ems days before the publication of Mr. COBDEN',
Lao, endeavoured to explain bath in a general point
if view, sod more particularly as regarded the redo,
ties d ear army and navy expenditure, why the can-
lard d 1833 would be a judiei us limit for the advo-
cate of retrenchment to adopt. Even if other
yeses bed supplied examules of greater economy
be particular branches of the national ou,lay,
still the choice of the year 1833 would have
been expedient, for the simple reason that
be thtt year the current annual expenditure, exclusive
ef the interest of the national debt, as well as the
fetal amount rf taxes levied, was less than it
hod been at ray period daring the lot half century.
It was in 1833 that the attempt to roam to a pesos
expenditure, and to abandon the extravagant system
commenced in 1793, produced the most marked result.
We mightsay, Weed, that withthe wise sad temperate
views which do Mr. COBDEN SO mach honour, and
which, as disclosed in his hear, have already made so
profound as impression on the public, be had in het
so sheneative but to point t, the furthest point of
afros attained by the economists who preceded
. .

list it is neceesery to *emu% at the same time that
es year 183.5 had but a very trifling advantage is
Piet of econnmy over some of the adjacent
rem The terms in which the neer demurs to
steeptuer the outlay of 1835 as " a fair basis of asps-
meant " might lead any ou who was unfamiliar
with the subject to infer that there had been in that
years sudden and marked contraction of the ezpendi-
tare of the state, follow. d by as sudden an expansion,
when the calculations for that year were found to he
laminas. But such is not the fact. The
expenses of 1333 and 1834 exceeded thew
tif 1835 by a very trifling amount ; the
inter by about 350,.'001, and the latter by
shat 500,000/. So that either of th' se years would
lave been practically as gond for Mr. Coterie:es &ma-
mma as the one he selected. Mr COBDEN bilinear
MO care to refer to the year 1830. " a time who ri
this nation was still under the rule of the borough-
Imogene," as supplying a "startling argument in
hew of his plan," its geeeral expenses being
he than three of the peat year by no
hie a sum than 8,723,0001., or within a mil-
ban and a quarter of the redurioe he hen pu-
reed. Mr. COBDEN might, if he lited, have referred
is other and earlier years, when the borough mongers
were supreme, and reform hopeless, for saircele less
itrikiog corroborations ot his views. In 1822 the
riral *mono s of the state were but 20,826,00" L
le 1818, the year after the resumption of cash in-
state the amount wes eery nearly the Mink..
K 843,0001. Or taking the 20 years from 1817 to 1838.
we find the average of the general experts of
eovernmeet, to have been 20,496,0001.; or six mil
lines and a Reuter less ti an those of the past year.
, Or not going further bark than the era, when in
hswever lame and imperfect a fashton retrenchment
m well u reform really c =mewed: t. a. the year
1828. we shall place in a st.ll stronger light the
extravagance of 1848. In 1827, the cost of
government, exellosive of debt, amounted to
25550,0001. In 1828, alter tee acme-ion of the Duke
ef WELLINGTON to the premiership, the general. z-
rues wets only 21.407,0001., or a reduction of more
than four millions on the previous year. By 1830,
they had been redeem' nearly three millions and a
half more. Lard ALTHORP then came into office as
Chancellor of the Exchequer. He followed up
shadily, in accordance with his own notions.
the retrenchment on vigorously commenced by
the Duke of We.nniearom (fur it is rather to him
than to Mr. Gounerew that we assign the principal
writ of it,) and rff-cted in four years a further 'v-
iatica of two millions, making in all a reduction of
of mice millions in the seven years that
between the death of Mr. CANNING and that
of SPENCER. The average expenses of those
mut years (1828.34), during which retrenchment was
nay progressing, were 18,400,0001 The limit reached
is 1n.5, it. read of being, as the nue asserts, a cue
of "lotted and iletitious I onnnmy," was the result of
Mel years determined effort on the part of men like
the Duke of WEILLegOTott and Lord ALTHORP, who,
vitaliser Veit errors and ehortenatings into which
they were rather led by their political associates than
Wised by the bent of their own characters, were at
all mots shrewd, !oughts& re resolute men of
him; as straightforward and honest as they were
lit Add ktigable
horsed l; mat who have sourdingly been honoured
idesisen oltheir English
people. le Lant tanruyst and
hewer they made in one respect an adequate re. urn.
They were thrifty stewards of the national income,
ad had their example been followed by their saw
alikere, the nation would not now be agitating fur the
Moho id an expeselitere exceeding by mega than
%Meru any thing which since the peace eves Ennl
toseremen's have attempted to squander, or some
mimed parliaments dared to grant.
We have now referred to a va.iety of periods since
he per. We have stated the expenditure of
°innate years, sod al-o given the average of several
hatessive years. Will the Mies or any other oit-
Prim of Me Comottes plan, conieseend to pant 'nit
Ile there ie in the " p passion, the weal (query
yPour y?) the value of money, the political relations
Iliteesteects of the country " at the present time.
tft.'"oss pronto seek a contrast to those of 1818.
a. Is any year between 1830 and 1838, as
se WOW an outlay for either civil or military
Cll, exceeding by six melons the highest, and
":111 millions gm lowest expenditure of those
Pyre We say eleven smiliems, for the fact is, Morsel
hismisnir'Caollirn in
inseam the Tames hints. either "dog
hie asseetseee,' eg et visionary in his de-