The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-01 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, NOV. 1.

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pamper landlords and capitalists ? Is no mite to fall
from the rich man's table to feed those whom fortune
has placed more aeart from the high road to wealth ?
But more : for this crime of having received high
wages during a pressing demand for labour, the
workman is now to be looked upon as undeserving
of pity, after the works which occasioned the demand
for labour have been brought to a stand still.
" One good result of the present crisis," says the
Times correspondent from Liverpool, " is the stop-
page of railway works." Thousands, it ia acknow-
ledged, will, by this stoppage, be thrown out of
employ; but, adds the smooth-penned narrator, " their
employers find that they had undertaken more than
they could execute." Certainly, if every engine is to
be set to work to cry down the useful works provided
for these labourers, and put it out of people's
power to continue them, such will be the result.
But even in this case there is an appeal. The real
employer of these men is public opinion. Public opi-
nion, and not the opinion of journal or of party, de-
cides on the merits of railways. To this the labourers
have a right to appeal, and their friends have had the
right to contend that this appeal shall not be tampered
with. This is the meaning of the battle that has
been fought against the Restriction Act, and which
bas been gained. Men are now no longer scared from
investing in legitimate securities by the fear of a clique
in Parliament-street. Government has been obliged to
acknowledge that in this free country the fates of all
classes are indissolubly linked together. The lowest
cannot be hurt without injuring the highest. The
interests of the labourer and capitalist are one.
It was a clever trick, worthy of the compass of the
school from which it emanated, to seek to press all
the earnings of the country into the service of the
fundholder. In order to carry the price of Console up
to 100 it was only necessary to abeorb the floating
capital, to which the labourer, the machinist, the en-
gineer, the man of science, looked for bread. To
abstract one farthing from this vile destination was
to endanger the cause in which the Times and its
friends had staked reputation and success. Railroads
might be extinguished and naccies might starve, but
with Console at 100 the Timcs and its political econo-
mists could afford to laugh at the ruin they had
canoed. They could dine with the fundholder instead
of the director; whilst for the labourer they had had
the union kitchen whitewashed and ventilated.

THE conduct of the French government towards the
Swiss diet and executive is certainly an example of
the most barefaced and scandalous bullying, that the
minister of a constitutional state could be guilty of.
French interference in Spain, however liberticide and
unwarrantable, had still its excuses ; its marriage of
the Queen to a nonentity of a husband, its subjection
of the constitutionalists to a military and self-called
moderado party,
ILd had at least the intelligible
though very pretext of supporting French
interests, BM the maintenance of an ultra-
catholic and Jesuit party in Switzerland can-
not tend to advance the interests of France ;
on the contrary, it strengthens the natural enemies of
France and of French ideas, both in Switzerland, and
in Italy, and in Germany. The German liberals,
even some of the German powers, stand aghast at
what Franco is doing. They ask each other, can it
be that France and Austria have renewed an ultra-
catholic league, for the maintenance of the old religion
of the middle ages in all its bigotry, extravagance,
cruelty, and non-education? For such are its
characteristics at Lucerne. The Grand Duke of BADEN
has shown his sense of this by refusing to join
Austria and France in drawing a military cordon
round the frontier of Switzerland. Such a protest,
made in so marked a manner, will give the duke
much deserved popularity.
Had France even the pretext which it has in Spain,
of supporting a moderado party, or a party calling
itself moderado, the policy would not be so incon-
sistent. But the interference of France is on behalf
of certainly the most extravagant and outrageous
party in Europe, in comparison with whom the
Carlists of Spain are liberal, and MONTEMOLINO
himself a moderado.
So utterly at variance with the age, its humanity, I
its love of education and intelligence, is the conduct
of the Jesuit party in Lucerne, that this said party
could of itself not hold a moment against the diet and
against public opinion in Switzerland. The Sonder-
bund could only have been formed under the influence
of France and Austria; and but for the en-
couragement of France, Lucerne would not think
for an instant of resisting a solemn decree of
the diet. France now interfering, in order, as M.
Gutzor alleges, to prevent a civil war, is a piece of
burlesque impudence; for no other person excites that
war, and renders it possible, than M. Gutzon himself.
But war, and civil war in Switzerland, more se-
rious than an attempted surprise or coup de main, ap-
pears to us too absurd to credit. Lucerne it
is now hopeless to surprise, whilst a few
hours would bring to its succour the whole of
the male population of the forest cantons. Friburg
would be almost as difficult to attack from the side of
Berne. The Vaudois could alone attempt it, and they
do not seem equal to the task. To attack any portion
of the forest cantons themselves, with winter in these
regions already commenced, is what Berne durst not
have thought of. We still, therefore, remain incre-
dulous on the subject of the war. And we are strength-
ened in this opinion by the Diet's appointment of three
very moderate men to be the general and the lieute-
nants of their proposed army of occupation. Basle
was said, at the last moment, to have offered itself as
arbiter between the contending parties.
We repeat, u e do not see any aim in this war. The
reduction of Lucerne itself would not enable the Ber-
net. to liberalise its government. Whilst the suc-
cessful resistance of Lucerne, tinder the patronage of
France, would only render Louis PHILIPPE and.M.
Guizor responsible for all the monstrosities of Jesuit
rule in Switzerland, as the triumph of CEIRIiTINA in
Madrid renders the same minister and sovereign re-
sponsible for all the doings in the Spanish capital.
We must say that our Foreign-office seems to neglect
its duty in not having an experienced diplomatist accre-
dited in the present critical period to the Swiss Vorort.
Mr. PEEL is a dashing, spirited young. man; but he
wants altogether the years, the experience, and the
weight, necessary to give due importance and effect
to the counsels of an English envoy at Berne. Mr.
PEEL can, no doubt, fitly deliver the messages, and
execute the orders, of his principal in Downing-street.
But to wield influence of himself, to take upon
him to decide or recommend in doubtful circum-
stances, and, even in not giving advice, to exercise a
salutary and pacific influence on the vorort—all these
are duties not to be expected of the years, standing,
or character of Mr. PEEL. Lord PALMERSTON leaves
him where he is, no doubt out of compliment to Sir
ROBERT. We should, however, prefer paying any
other compliments to a respected name than those
made at the expense of great European interests. Of
all the men on Lord PALMERSTON'S list of diplo-
matists Mr. PEEL is perhaps the last who should, at
the present moment, be chosen for the poet of Berne.

With the exposure of the hollowness of this notable
scheme we may hope that all efforts to renew such
scandalous proceedings will cease. It has been de-
monstrated 'xi sufficient satisfaction that although the
usury laws may be suspended, it is a vain attempt to
keep up both interest and capital in the same market
at the same time. if accumulated earnings are
refused free and unobstructed investments at home,
they will go abroad, rather than submit to be locked
np in an unproductive shape in the English funds.
The difference will be, that if restrictive and other
troublesome acts of parliament drive capital out of
the country, the foreign manufacturer, landholder, and
labourer will have the benefit of it instead of their
English competitors.
That the intelligent communities of neighbouring
countries will spurn at such a boon is not to be ex-
pected. No sooner shall it appear evident that all
they have to do is to keep order at home to secure
an influx of British capital, than they will forthwith
' set about reforming their households. Their govern-
ments will even aid them with constitutional forms if
I revenue is to be got by conceding them, and the
Times and its friends may then console one another as
best they may, and lay their heads once more together
as to how the price of Consols is to be bolstered up '
to 100, when the labouring man cannot earn 3s. 6d.
per diem.

WE animadverted the other day on the conduct
of the Irish catholic prelates in defeating the govern-
ment scheme of education for the middle classes. The
conduct, however, even of the catholic prelates most
hostile to the plan, is tolerance and enlightenment,
compared with the behaviour of the clergymen at
Warrington, in the heart of merry and ignorant Eng-
land. On account of the stoppages of the mill
near that town, and the consequent destitution of so
many of the working class, a committee was ap-
pointed to organise the means of supplying the dis-
tressed artisan with toed.

The expediency was at the same time shown of
occupying the mind arid improving the character, as
well as satisfying the hunger, of the operative out of
work. It was proposed, accordingly, to establish an
industrial school, as also to teach in it reading and
writing in the books of the Irish national school.
Hereupon, the Rev. Mr. RICHARDS objected to the plan
altogether. If reading and spelling were taught,
he declared that it must be accompanied with
religious instruction ; but as instruction in
the religion of the established church was
impossible, owing to the number of sects, he
should oppose the teaching of anything beyond a
mechanical art. In a committee of seventeen, nine
voted against eight, that there should be no teaching
and of the nine, six were clergymen of the established
church, one was a clergyman of the Roman catholic
religion, and two were laymen.
Refraining from more comment at the present, we
shall merely subjoin the following remarks from the
Manchester Guardian

The Warrington committee have thus deliberately re-
solved that, if a boy cannot be instructed in those theolo-
gical dogmas which they respectively deem essential to sal-
vation, it is best that he should remain altogether ignorant;
unless he is at the same time to study the church catechism,
or to be indoctrinated with the principles of Papal infallibi-
lity, he is to be debarred from learning to read or write.
We do know that such principles as this once found favour
in the Roman church, thougll they are now disavowed by
the most enlightened end emthent of that communion ; but
we were not prepared to believe that they would receive the
support of all the clergy of the protestant establishment in
an English borough containing 20,000 inhabitants. We
will not use the terms which, in our judgment, would
alone sufficiently mark the conduct of the majority. It is
impossible to calculate the amount of good which a few
weeks' interaction might afford. Young men might
thus, in a period of enforced leisure, have their minds
directed to useful and interesting studies, which would
afterwards have preserved them from debauchery and
crime. Bat seven ministers of the gospel thought it not
inconsistent with their sacred calling to resist any proposal
to extend the humanising influences of knowledge, and pro-
tested in the name of religion against any encroachment on
, the domains of ignorance, dwlpation, and vice. And,
further, in the circular which we have copied above, Mr.
Richards solicits support for his motion, as being " in favour
of godly and religious education r" if the rev. gentleman de-
sired to expose Christianity to ridicule and odium, he could
not have taken a surer step to accomplish his purpose. He
tells the public that to prohibit the teaching of reading,
writing, and arithmetic, to unemployed factory boys, is
somehow connected with the promotion of " godly and reli-
gious education." The working classes have learnt that
knowledge is power; with what feelings, then, will they
regard a religion that condemns them to that ignoranos
which they feel to be a hamiliation

Time are people whose sympathies are only to be
awakened for distress on a great scale. But with
each, even magnitudes of suffering are relative and
not absolute quantities. This is especially the case
with our contemporary, the Times. The Anti-Corn
Law League became a great fact the moment some
great lord subscribed 5001. to it. Before that memo-
rable epoch it was only a little fact ; at first ignored,
afterwards scouted, then ridiculed, but finally ap-
plauded. So it has been with the recent pressure
it was doubted, and held up, as a matter of course, as
a necessary and just retribution for over-trading or
over-dining, or for extending profitable investments
that had a tendency to make the funds and other fa-
voured investments decline in price. All at once a new
feature in the panic was displayed. The value of
money in trade threatened to interfere with the value
of money in mortgages. Bills were certainly, on the
authority of the Times, not equal to gold ; but in So-
LONION'a opinion, if they pay eight per cent. they are
still worth considering. The transfer of capital began
in England. A noble duke has been named as the
first aristocratic victim. We now hear of Scotch
letters and Irish judgment mortgages being ransacked
out of the strong boxes of men in the City, and most
menacingly placed in the list of disposable assets
in the stock account. Had the Times received a
timely hint of this state of things, we should
have seen it waver before last Saturday.
Like some huge collier, that we have noticed while
discussing a Greenwich dinner, backing its topsails
with its helm hard down, and jib snivering in the
breeze, all in time to avoid a collision with some
Queen's ship anchored in gloomy
.grandeur in the
stream,' orders with trumpet voice would have
desired the ready pens of inditers of leaders to go
upon another tack, and beware of falling foul of the
blouse of Peers. The pressure would, at an earlier
date, have been recognised es a great fact, and per-
haps the measure of relief that has been administered,
might have even been recommended with all the can-
dour and warmth of novel conversion.
There is, however, one portion of her Majesty's
lieges who, not being great people, excite but little
sympathy in that quarter until they reach the union
workhouse ; we mean our laborious countrymen in the
manufacturing districts. Having duly exerted itself
to bring them to that asylum, we must de the Times
throstio to confess that it cares about their board
wide they are there. Bat, as long as the
asst is doing his best to keep himself out
of the wakes, precincts, and to maintain himself
independontlyand honourably, he need expect no sym-
pathy. To find employment u 3 denounced es a crime.
To pity his distress is jeered at as mischievous
compassion. We are told that one of the sins of the
extensive railroad investments has been to raise wages.
" What folly," it is added, "to pay men 4s. and as. 6d.
per diem, who were before the Leania satisfied with
2s. 6d. and 35." Does the Times, Olen, in its inno-
cence, suppose that this country gets rich merely to

WE lately spoke of the operation,—as a corrective
of such negligence or misconduct as may endanger
public safety—of the law of last year, enacted on the
abolition of deedande. The positive design of the new
act, according to our understanding of its clauses,
appears to be as reasonable as was the negative passed
at the same time on a system inherited from a diffe-
rent state of society, that has been perverted of late
years to erroneous uses by coroners' juries, in a man-
ner tenting to the gg of individuals, and to the
prejudice of law. The declared purpose of the Acci-
dents Compensation Act, as set forth in the preamble,
was to supply the existing want of a means
of obtaining redress by an action for damages,
from any one who by his " wrowidul act,
neglect, or default," may have mused the death of an-
other person. It empowers his survivors to bring an
action and recover damages, in all such cases as would
have entitled the party injured to maintain enaction
himself, had the injury not been absolutely fatal to
life; the intention being thus plainly limited to au-
thorise the recovery of damages, where the accident
can be proved to result from the doing, by the party
against whom the action is brought, of something
that he was bound to have avoided, or from his omit-
ting to do something it was his duty to have
done. Within these bounds, the principle of the
law is perfectly sound, and is likely to produce
wholesome effect/. Any attempt to strain it fur-
ther would deserve, we think, a very different
character, arid lead to objectionable consequences of
various kinds. There have already been some in-
stances of such attempts; a disposition has been
shown by common juries to apply the law in a way
far beyond its proper intention, and, as it appears to
us, in a manner wholly at variance with plain jus-
tice. Some remarks, therefore, may not be out of
place on the line which may be fairly drawn to dis-
tinguish between the grenade of liability in such
cases, and those belonging to the class of mere acci-
dents, for which no one can be justly made charge-
able. It will beproper also to point out the iniquity
of carrying reuponotbility even beyond the further

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVE MG, NOVEMBER 1, 1847.

class of casualties, by inflicting damages in cases
where the sufferer alone has been to blame for his mis-
fortune. A recent instance of this wrong will be
cited to show that in questioning such an interpreta-
tion of the law, we are not dealing with fanciful or
merely possible abuses.
In applying the new law of accidents, there may
arise in the minds of common people, a confusion of
its design with that of the old deodand system, which
will be best got rid of by pointing out the respective
principles of each. The original notion of a deodand
was that of a sacrifice made to the Supreme Being,
on the occurrence of any fatal mischance, by the
owner of the implement, animal, or other thing that
had been the immediate cause of death. All acci-
dents whether arising from what we call " chance,"
or from visible default or evil intention, being equally
ordained by the Almighty, there could be no idea
suggested of a discrimination of special causes,
when the purpose was of an offering to the ruler of
all causes. Very different is the case when we come
I into the region of law, and have to deal with those
acts of omission or commission for which only man is
justified in making his fellow-man responsible. From
these, all events that, humanly speaking, may be
termed accidental, must be wholly excluded. Those
only
.can become the object of just advertence by law,
whicn arise from some breach of what can be reason-
ably shown to be a duty or obligation • some default
under a liability that ought to have been known and
acted upon, before the misfortune, and in consequence
of the neglect of which it can be proved to have taken
place. The deodand regarded the calamity, per a', ir-
respectively of its moral causes, as an occasion for an
offering to Heaven. Law deals with the agents only
when a calamity happens by human fault.
This distinction between different kinds of casual-
ties will perhaps be best shown by examples from
matter of fact. A chimney of sufficient workmanship,
and in good condition, is blown down in some hum-
cane (like that of 1838), and by its fall kills a pas-
senger in the street. In a hard post, the iron of a
woodcutter's bill snaps asunder while he is chopping
timber, and one of the fragments, flying off, mortally
wounds some one standing near. A child steals into
a neighbour's mill unseen by the owner, and is crushed
to death while playing with some part of the ma-
chinery. In all theseceses there might, under the old
system, have been a deodand levied ; but no one will
say that the owners of the chimney, of the axe, or of
the mill, would now deserve to be made responsible
in law for a misfortune in each case purely accidental.
The storm could not have been prevented ; the flaw
in the iron foreseen ; the miller could not be expected
to hinder a child from getting into mischief during
his absence. Where blame cannot be cast, responsi-
bility bas ne place whatever.
It is only when casualties can be traced to a cause
that it can be proved to have been the duty of some
person to guard against, that any liability, whether to
punishment or to demands for compensation, can
justly fall upon him from their consequences. The
owner of a furious bull, for instance, is fairly liable
for all the harm the animal may do, if it escapes from
an ill-fenced paddock into the high-road, or if it be
suffered to graze in fields crossed by a public footpath.
He is not so, however, should the beast gore a tree-
passer, who clambers over the paling of his straw-
yard. Again, a man may be justly made account-
able for any evil that happens from his use of
unsafe or insufficient materials, where others are
apt to be injured by their giving way; or, on
the same principle, for mischief in a business affect-
ing the safety of others, done by a servant wham
he has not properly instructed in his duties, or has
reason to know is reckless, dissolute, or incapable.
But he is not so, if an accident happens from any un-
expected flaw or failure in materials to all appear-
ance of ordinary and sufficient quality, after he has
taken due care to secure a good material ; not so, if a
sudden act of misconduct should prove a servant,
whom he had every reason to suppose trustworthy, to
be unfit for his place, or if the agent should muse
some misfortune by ono of those blunders or defects of
judgment to which all human beings are liable. To
make any one responsible for the effects of casualties,
actions of others, or their defects of character, beyond
the point of caution which reasonable attention and
sufficient care might have been justly expected to
reach before the erent, would be to punish man for
wanting the attributes of Deity. And, as we have
said, in no case where punishment would be unjust
can it be otherwise than an injustice to compel the
payment of money damages to survivors.
This principle, we apprehend, is not sufficiently
understood by jurymen, some of whom seem to think
a verdict for damages may be given in all cases where
a coroner's jury in former times would have imposed
a deodand. In a trial at the last Surrey Assizes,
damages were given against a railway company
ander the new act, where the claim for non liability
was still stronger than in instances of pure accident
only. The man ARMEWORTII, whose widow reco-
vered the damages, was killed while at work on the
South-Eastern line at Meretham. After filling his
waggon he chose to climb to the top of the load, and
was jerked from this place by the start of the engine
with the ballast train, and thrown under the wheels.
On this waggon the man had no right te ride, and
knew that in riding on it he was disobeying
orders given by the managers for the plate-layers'
safety. It appeared in evidence on the trial that they
were strictly forbidden to ride on the earth waggons, and
that an empty truck was attached to each ballast
train, expressly, for their use and security. This order
ARMSWORTH met his death by transgressing, for the
trivial purpose of saving a moment or two in getting
his waggon unloaded. Nothing unusual had occurred
in the way of starting the engine—nothing to make
it probable that the man would have been otherwise
than quite safe had he but obeyed the rules issued for
his safety. In spite of all proof that ARMSWORTII
was the author of his own death, the jury granted
heavy damages against the company, who seem to
have done all that could have been expected of them,
to prevent the accident.
Now if such were to be the usual application of the II
new law, it would be no salutary check on impru-
dence, bat an engine of much wrong and extortion,
the action of which cannot be in any way beneficial.
It would become too dangerous to employ labour
in any kind of work requiring caution, if
the employer, after taking sufficient care to
preserve his workmen's live, is to pay dearly for
every instance in which a wilful fellow runs obsti-
nately upon his own destruction, in defiance of ex-
press orders—if, in short, the muter is to be made
accountable for calamities that nothing but om-
niscience could foresee, or omnipotence prevent.
Such an interpretation of liability flies in the face
of every principle on which a man or body of men
can properly be deemed liable for the misfortunes of
others; and to abuse the law in this manner can
only tend to bring it altogether into discredit, while
the precautions that would necessarily have to be
taken against the injuries canoed by such a misuse
will be apt to tell pret y heavily against the very
parties the law was tdesignedto protect. No-
thing, indeed, is ever gained by departing from
equity; and in this claw of cave the effects
of the deviation would very soon make themselves
felt, if juries should attempt to turn what was
meant as a fair safeguard into an unjust imposition.
They have shown a propensity of this kind in more
than one instance of late, where the defendants have
been a railway company. In an action tried at
Durham the other day the jury insisted on giving
damages, in spite of an express charge from the judge
to the effect that the injury was proved to have arisen
from the plaintiffs own imprudence solely.

The Paris
,journals of Friday and Saturday are
much occupied with a pamphlet of M. Capefigne, de-
dicated to M. Guizot, in which the author advocates
very strong retrograde doctrines, among which are
restraints on the freedom of the press, and the partial
abolition of trial by jury, and with the letter of M.
Dufaure, in which that deputy refuses to preside at a
reform banquet, not conceiving such demonstrations
calculated for the attainment of the objects of the
party with which the hon. deputy is identiSed. The
ministerial journals disavow the soft impeachment im-
plied in the dedication of M. Capell&ue's pamphlet, on
the part of M. Guizot, and the opposition journals deal
rather roughly with M. Dufanre. These are polemics
which, however interesting to the habitues of the cafes
of the Boulevard des Italians, would offer but few at-
tractions here.

Friday being the seventh anniversary. of the pro!
sent cabinet to power, a dinner was given on the
occasion by the King at St. Cloud. In the course of
the raven years, however, the Guizot cabinet his
undergone so many mutations, sustained so much loss,
of matter rejected, corrupted, or decayed, and re-
ceived such various accessions, that it would be as dif-
ficult to establish its identity as that of the boots,