The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-29 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 29, 1848.

widely differing from each other in character and
claims to compassion.
In the first place, the destitute in whose behalf we
would ask attention are not the professional beggars,
whose numbers and mischievous character it is
equally difficult to determine with any approach to
precision. Their commonwealth includes as many and
marked social and professional distinctions
as oar own. Beggardom is a dark, squalid,
treacherous, hideous little world, with its
known and unknown regions, its before and
behind the scenes, its masquerade and its reality. It
is impossible to take up a newspaper without hitting
upon some revelation of this mysterious and double-
! limed fraternity, this new order of mendicants. Our
number of yesterday, for example, lets in three
1 gleams of light on three distinct existences and in-
dustries of the beggar world. First, the Mansion-
house has its report, headed " An Ingenious Impos-
tor," which shows us the begging-letter writer at his
profitable aed ingenious calling. His is the "learned
profession," par excellence, of beggardom. He be-
longs to the crrline de la crime of the ragged
world. He lays rich and noble under black-
mail; never receives any coin more ignoble
than a half-crown; is at once a great ro-
mance-writer and a consummate actor, indulges'
the imagination of the one and the personation of
the other at the public expense; leads a life, in short,
which must have its charms for a man of ready wit,
with love of pleuure, and an aversion to work for
it. To be a successful begging-letter writer requires
a rare combination of qualities, and the calling is
gainful in proportion to the rarity with which these
qualities are found united iu the same person.
'This is, clearly, not a class for which sympathy need
be felt. The three months' imprisonment, with bard
labour, adjudged to the offender of Thursday (even
without the whipping, which a previous conviction
would have enabled the LORD MAYOR to append to
the sentence), is a real punishment to the begging-
letter writer, who does not, like some of his Bohe-
mian race, live better in prison than out of it. Our
next glimpse into the beggar world prompts sadder
reflections, and indicates a more deeply-seated evil.
A girl is charged at Bow-street with torturing
her infant brother, by running pins into his
body, in order to excite charity by his cries.
The poor little child was found to be in the meat
emaciated and filthy condition, its limbs shrunk with
hunger and cold, its body covered with itch and
ulcers. The father was found to be a pauper in
receipt of out-door relief trent Holborn Union, a tailor
by trade; but preferring to live on the parish dole
and the produce of his children's begging. The chit-
Aron are sent to the workhouse, and the rascally
father to the House of Correction or a month. This
man is but a subaltern in the mendicant order, but
yet one of a superior grade, inasmuch as he flakes
the miseries of others satisfy his roan wants. Ile
does not expose his own limbs to the cold, or parade
his own disease and deformity, but those of his
wretched little family. Ile is the proper party to
punish. No sympathy can be felt for him, much as
we may lament the hard fate of his children, who
can only be rescued front growing up into beggars
by being made paupers. The third peep
reveals one of the darkest scenes of this
wretched world, that lies so near our own, and yet so
utterly out of common knowledge. One of the im-
porters of Italian music-boys and street beggars is
brought to the bar and punished by a rare determina-
tion of the magistrate. Ile, again, is an arch-spirit
among those stronger spirits who put to profit the
weakness and helplessness of others. He really
trades iu beggary as honest men in corn or hemp.
Ho has cargoes of little children over from Northern
Italy to be manufactured into beggars, just as the
mill-owner takes hie cotton from America to transform
it into calicoes. We should be justified in resorting
to the strongest measures to put down so noxious an
industry. If ever there was a trade fairly indictable
as a nuisance, this of the wholesale dealer in Italian'
beggary is one. It is often said that these fellows arc
dexterous enough to keep on the windy side of the law.
Ilere, however, Mr. LIAM/WICK contrived to find legol
warrant for giving the padrene a month with hard
labour. We would have all fathers of distressed families
who proclaim their modest woes in a stentoriaa
voice to first-floor windows of quiet streets—all in-
teresting mothers of lovely cherub twins, sleeping
BO sweetly in their white gowns and caps under the
deadly influence of Daffy's elixir, or some other
poisonous narcotic—all begging-letter awiters, who
can create widows and orphans at discretion, and
heap all the woes of humanity on their
own heads in the wielding of a pen—all
importers of music boys, white-mice boys, and
that various swarm of bright-eyed prettily whining
little rogues of the south, whose ingenuous faces
make one doubly indignant at the rascality which is
training them to a life of lies—all " I am starving"
—" cold and hungrys"— " no food, no homes"
and others who inscribe woes on the flags, the out-
ward shows of which are nightly effaced as readily
as the chalk which records them, who show a white
shoulder from a ragged jersey, and a pathetic pair of
muddy or frost-nipped soles turned out towards the
compassionate passenger—we would have this whole
race of begging impostors made at once arrestable,
and imprisonable, and further punishable.
It is absolutely necessary to clear the ground of
such impostors, the very rankest and most noxious
growth of a diseased civilisation amongst us, before
any measures can be taken to relieve the deserving
and unfortunate destitute. The nature of such mea-
sures and their urgency will furnish matter for
another article.

FRANCE.—TouLON, JAM. 23.—A no-EL-K ADER.—
Ah,l-el-Kader appears to suffer leas is mind since the arrival
of Colonel Detains'', who delivered him an autograph letter
from the King. The Emir is frequently visited by that offi-
cer, and was Invited on the day before yesterday to a dinner
which the commander of Fort Lamalgue gave in honour of
this superior offic, r. Re seldom leaves his apartment, and
when an observation to this effect was made to him, he re-
plied that the surveillance to which he was subjected had
eausid him to adopt the resolution of sot going out. It is
positive that in this respect the Emir is treated with the ut-
moat rigour. It is said that Abd-el-Kader passes the time of
his captivity at Lamalgue, in haying the history of the cam-
paigns of Napoleon translated to him by M. Rousseau, his
intirpreter. We are assured that among the projects of our
government relative to Abil-el-Kader, is the notion of sending
him to one of the colaeir of Senegal.

of Beat ; Gee. E.. A. Cook;to be AWL, by par., Mee Alegander, who
;K. W. Wilean, Gent.,to be earn, by pur., vice Cools.
12th Light Drap. —W. e11er.411814., to be vet. Barg., vice Brett,
tO Cavalry Depot at tilohlotosto
14th Lt. Drega—Llent M. M. Befiessr, from the 59th P., to be lieut.,
I vice Oreenbam. who evalsimege.
Coldstream Reg. of F. Oweigle..--Ens. and Lieut. W. C. Lyon. to be
lieut. and eapt., by par., Cl. Melville, who ret. ; Ena. T. F. Holt, from
'the 63rd Beet., to be so. rid lbw., by our., vac Lyon.
19th Reg. of F. —llemAlnier L Denny, from the 55th F., to be
capt , vice Parrett. Irbil ezigkeeps.
514 F.—B. J. Lena; got, to be ens., by per., vice thrailield,
promoted.
39th F.—Lleut. W. Oreembeim, from the 14th Lt. Drop., to be
liwL Mee Baader, who eralifoffe&
50th F.—Ens., with temporary rank, C. Macdonald (Town Myer of
Montreal), to be ens., without per., vice Heston, dee.
56th F.—Ena. W. W. Hewett, to be lieut., by per., vice Saunders,
who retires; M. (roan, gent., to be ens., by pun., vim Hewett
38th F.—kept. W. T. Parrett, from the 19th F., to be rapt., vice
Denny, who exchanges.
Girth F.—Major Lord C. J. F. Bunsen, from h anat. to be major,
vice J. IL Trevelyan, who ex. • Brev..ldej•ir J. Temple, to be major,
by per., vice Lord C. J. F. Bothell who ret • ' Lieut D.JOOeS, to be
cept , by par., vke Temple; tioa..Lieut. .1.1.. llattereby, to bo Bret-
lhait., by par., vim Jones; C. W.
lieut., by Is., B."° P. Lillingston, gent., to be am.-
=0.,63,4 F. me. E. a, C. , from the 70th F., to be en., vice
Bolt, app. to the Coldstream Reg. f F. Guards.
7sith A. Rae, gent., to be ens., by per., Hee Richton, app. to
the 62rd F.
75th F.—Lieut. W. Brookes. to be rapt., without per., vice Brevet-
Major J. Bohai, who yet. on full.puy.
101st F.—W. It. Stseton, gent, to be ens., by per., vice Lamont,
who mares.
03rd F.—Lleut. J. P. A. Bartle, to be adjt., vice Macdonald, prom.
in the 37th F.
99th V.—Gent. Cadet A. F. Smith, from the Royal Mil. CoL, to be
ens., without pun., vice Fraser, who resigns.
Berver.-11Mor C. J. F. Rummell, of the 40th F., to be lieut..col. is
the army; Capt. J. B. Dodawortli, of the 2nd Reg. of Life Gds., to he
major in the army.
Mammas:mew. —The Chrbstlan names of Fns. Armstrong. of the
05th F., are John Herbert. The half-pay of Brid..Major J. F. L.
Benne, as a capt of infantry of the Rine s German Legion, has been
cancelled, be having accepted a commuted allowance on the 24th
Jan., 1810.
Erratum in the anomie of 21st Jan., 1810.—Fot Gent. Cadet W.
Ball, from the Royal MiL Col., to bens. in the Glth F., vice Madder,
read, Gent. Cadet W. Bell, to be, .