The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-07 00:00:00

PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS.

Three sessional papers of the Ileum of Commons were
delivered yesterday. The first (30) was moved for by Mr.
ooulburn. It contains two returns : one of "the quantities
Of ell articles which, in the year 1841, paid customs duty to
the amount of 1,0001. and upwards, which have been im-
ported, and of the quantities brought into home consumption
during each of the years 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1845, and
1846, distinguishing those articles on which the duty has
since 1841 been either altered or repealed ;" and the other,
of " the declared value of the exports of British and Irish
produce and manufactures in the five months coding on the
6th of Juno in each of the said years, distinguishing the
principal articles." This is one of the reproductions, in a
slightly modified form, of information previously printed
in papers of the house, which, to the great profit
of its printers, crotchety members ere accustomed to
move far on their own account, and complaisant ones at the
instigation of crotchety constituents or friends. In the pre-
sent instance, the anti-freetrader who devised the ingenious
volume now before us will take little by his motion. From
the second return it appears that the total declared value of
British manufactures exported in 1841, 42 and 43 averaged
about 17 millions annually ; in 1844, 45 and 46 within a
trifle of 20 millions annually.
(37.) This paper contains a return moved for by Mr.
Miles, of " the quantity of foreign grain imported into the
United Kingdom in each month since the passing of the
Act 9 & 10 Vic. ; distinguishing the quantity and -kind, as
well as the particular foreign country from whence im-
ported; together with the average price of wheat, barley,
and oata, in each respective month." The return substitutes
quarterly for monthly periods; the monthly returns from
the matrons to the Custom-house not embracing the distinc-
tion of countries.
(44.) A return moved for by Mr. Labouchere, of " The
exports and imports of the port of Liverpool for the first nine
months of 1816 and 1847." The declared value of the prin.
cipal articles of British and Irish produce and manufactures
exported from the port of Liverpool to foreign parts in the
first nine months of 1846 was 19,091,4431. ; in the first nine
months of 1847 it was 20,134,3671.

ght prefSO.

MAILS.

The mails for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and Oftwidter
will be made ap on the morning of the 7th January.
The overland ensiled malls, vie MemelUm, to the Mediterranean,
Mgypt, Ades, Ceylon, lad* Hoeg Kong, Be., will be made up cm the
swain of the 7th January.
The mails fur Pritilki North America, Bermes, sad the United
agates, will be mode up on the evening of the 141 k January.
The Wait India Mails, excluding Bermuda, Nassau, Itsvana
Rondonia, New Orleans, Vera Croo, Tampion, and Porto Rios, and
including tau. for Madeira, Joomel, Carthagena, santa Martha,
Chagree, Panama, Weal Coast of South America. and Pt. Juan-des
Nicaragua, will ue made up on the overdue of the 17th January.
The overland mails for Gibraltar, Malta. Greece, the loolaa Idea&
Fsupt, Aden, Ceylon, floag.Koog, and China. me SouthamPtes,
well le made up on the morning of the 20th January.
The mails foe Ncw South WWI; Van Diemen'. Inn& sad Now
Zealand will be made up on the evening of the 210 t January.
The malls for the Braubt, the River Plate, Monte Video, Perllan.
Bahia,, Bah' Madeira, and Buenos Ayres, will be made up on Vse
evening of the 4th February.

F:tig3PON IMAM
. T%17.4;:1ierd..t1. • .140."':,1„rim....--

SION WATID AT LONDON
D.,—)lenieg. 31 oh. pre 2; efeaes, tol. I.
To-Doaauvr-11222222. Slis* asAft 3.

LONDON, FRIDAY, JAN. 7.
THE charge of Chief Justice Blackburn to the
grand jury of Limerick, at the opening of the special
commission for that county, which we gave in
second edition yesterday, will be read with no
ordinary interest. Characterised by all those quali-
ties of precision, comprehensiveness, and vigour, for
which that learned judge has long been known,—it
reviews clearly and succinctly the course of legislation
on the subject of agrarian crime, and practically re-
minds men of the duties imposed on each class of the
community, and of the legitimate powers intrusted to
them for the maintenance of order and law.

--
It dwells forcibly but briefly on the calamitous
state to which society has been reduced by the preva-
lence of pradial outrage, the denial of the plainest
rights, and the neglect of the most obvious duties—by
the loss of all neighbourly confidence and sympathy,
the failure of men's hearts for selfish fear—by the
cowardice of the cruelty which surprises its defence-
lees victim, and the cruelty of the cowardice that
dares not to shield the innocent or to aid in the detec-
tion and punishment of the guilty. Turning from
these sad and disheartening topics, the judicial
monitor seems to prefer fixing attention on the
universality of the social peril and of the social obliga-
tion to assist in averting it. After glancing at the
danger to which persons, eminent for their property
and station, and resident in the disturbed portions of
the country, are conspicuously exposed, he truly adds
"that we shall take a very limited view of this fright-
ful calamity if we consider these outrages as exclu-
sively confined to interference with the rights or the
remedies of landed proprietors; in truth, the spirit of
lawlessness and wickedness once let loose knows no
bounds, and acknowledges no distinctions. The per-
sons and property of individuals are indiscriminately
assailed and plundered ; and if these practices be sot
arrested it is impossible to say that there will exist
in this country either the dominion of the law, or
safety for
*person or property."
There is in reality no branch of industry, no pur-
suit or calling, which is not injured by the presence
of public disorder and interested permanently in the
restoration of security and peace. The combination
which has its origin in squabbles about rent will not
nicely abstain from using its power to coerce the
dealer to sell at a price named, or to forbid others to
bay from him if he neglects its midnight mandates.
The threatening notice is addressed to a land-
lord to-day, because he has obtained a civil
bill decree for the arrears of rent that are
due to him. A similar notice will to-mor-
row be addressed to the shopkeeper who has
obtained a similar process to compel the repayment of
the like sum, lent to another tenant last year to save
him from eviction. The very calendar at Limerick
contains striking proofs of this. The first man ar-
raigned on Tuesday last was one accused of complicity
in murder supposed to have been caused by proceed-
ings in ejectment. The next was a person by whose
hand an opulent dealer in one of the minor
towns was suspected of having fallen. When
once the spirit of violence and vengeance is
suffered to walk abroad, every man'who cherishes die-
honesty or hatred towards his fellow avails himself
successfully of its blind and indiscriminating edicts;
or readily contrives some pretext to point the aim of 11
the mercenary executioner of the secret and san-
guinary
tribunal against the unsuspecting object of
his private enmity.
Nor is this all. The evils which prolonged inse-
curity and violence produce are not confined even to
these classes of society. It was feelingly observed by
the assistant-barrister of Roscommon, Mr. Finlay—
when, in commencing the business of the quarter ses-
sions the other day, he took occasion to comment on
the distracted state of the county—that " among the
classes who suffered thereby he could not help think-
ing peculiarly of the poor, whose losses, both direct
and indirect, he traced with the faithful and judicious
hand of an experienced, thoughtful, and upright man.
No class in the long run has so much to lose by
confusion and anarchy as those who depend for daily
'subsistence upon the employment of their labour.
Without talking of the effect produced in deterring
and repelling the approach of external capital, the
diminution of the active and useful re-investment of
the profits acquired by previous industry in the
district itself, is as lamentable as it is in-
evitable. Who will set about new works, or
costly improvements, when his family, terror stricken
at the daily horrors around them, urge him to fly from
the scene? Or if inspired by a noble sense of duty he
remains, how soon will he find his position isolated,
and the houses of his less resolute neighbours closed ?
In vain do the miseries of the innocent many expos-
tulate against their being compelled to share
in the consequences produced by the guilt
of a comparative few. Between rich and poor
—employers and employed—there ie in Ireland
a great gulf fixed ; and when the waters of mutual
distrust that flow between are lashed into a storm,
individual pity avails not—vits voice is unheeded or I
unheard.

And herein lies the great organic want—the chief
structural defect in society as it is constituted in
Ireland. We hear it said continually that the occupying
tenants of the soil are too many. What is of far more
importance, but what is seldom heeded, is, that
the proprietary are too few. They are too few for'
their own sakes, too few for the sake of the poor, and
too few for the safety of the state. Without capital
commensurate with the extent of their domains, they
are unable to improve the capabilities of the land or
to employ its people. A single individual finds him-
self in the midst of thousands whom he fears too
much to trust, and who will not confide in him. There
is no middle class, nor in many instances any element
of a middle class, to blunt the edge of mutual suspi-
cion that subsists between him and them. With good
intent, and, in the abstract, good design, he commences
to improve, and gives occupation to many who stand

Is amid oat. Bat his sympathies are not with the
stassitivated crowd of peasants among whom h.
dwpUs, and he unthinkingly and unconsciously does al
the and little things that foment in secret their dis-
trust Then comes some quarrel with half-a-dosen
twain* with whom it signifies little which is most in
tits wrong, he or they. Where are the elements of
&ir or just opinion to judge in such aMO ? Seven
miles off he has ono neighbour like himself who hears
his side of the story, and approves what he has done.
He takes another step thereupon in the matter, and it
is then too late to retract. Meanwhile the multitude
who only know that they are all equally in this man's
power, who have heard from every side of wholesale
eviction, and to whom the experimental doctrine is too
welcome that landlords like other men,when placed in
circumstances of great irresponsibility, are prone to
be capricious and oppressive in the exercise of power,
hear without emotion that the legal notice to quit has
been answered by warning notice to desist from fur-
ther proceedings. We need not follow out the chain
of reciprocal menace and exasperation.
But it is manifest that in proportion as properties
are vast and fow,the errors, whether wilful or blind, of
an individual are momentous ; and in the same ratio
the popular sympathy with resistance to his will is
likely to be intense and dangerous. Nor can we rea-
sonably doubt that, if in addition to a more numerous
proprietary, there existed something like an agricul-
tural middle class throughout Ireland, as the alterna-
tives of employment would be multiplied, so the local
strength of the social garrison would be effectively
increased, by whose courage and co-operation alone
the integrity of property and the sanctity of life can
be insured.
And while we do not cavil at the principle laid
down in his recent charge by Chief Justice Black-
burn, that " the law cannot tolerate its own violation,
or admit of any cause or any fact given as an excuse
or justification for the commission of crime "—and
that those who are sent to administer it have no dis-
cretion to inquire into the accumulative provocations
and incentives to the perpetration of particular acts of
outrage and cruelty—we cannot help asking how long
will the legislature halt between two opinions, and
shrink from the manifest duty of striving in
right earnest to remove, or at least effectively
to abate, the causes of such wide-spread mischief and
misery It is idle to pretend that the evils are beyond
the reach of legislative power. Some of them doubt-
less aro ; but others are not so. A bankrupt pro-
prietor wishes for leave to sell part of his estate; the
statutes of the realm alone prevent him. Several of
the very tenants with whom he has been at feud for
years would gladly become the purchasers of these
litigated holdings : the law will not show them. The
country has been left to struggle and suffer under the
dAris of feudalism, while every other land almost in
Western Europe has either peaceably or by revolu-
tion shaken off the ruinous burthen. Until a funda-
mental change in the relations of property in Ireland
is made, its security or enjoyment cannot be hoped
for; and, until property be secure, no permat.ent
amelioration in the people's condition will be found
possible.

HOWEVER we may laugh at fortifications, scout
the panic of invasion, and defy any considerable
augmentation of the army estimates, yet it is difficult
to suppose that the government, urged by the Duke
of AS ettiscros's letter, and by the too prevalent
opinion of the sinking hec:lthof the present King of the
French, will not introduce at least a measure for
embodying the militia, and make use of the acts
which exist to call forth a certain portion of the popu-
lation for training in military exercises.
Whether this is contemplated or not, it is still so
clearly within the range of probabilities, that it be.
hovee the public to pay some attention to the subject,
and to their own interests, so immediately and per-
sonally involved in it. It is, or should be at this
time of day, a received principle, that every class
visited by a tax should be consulted as to the
easiest and most advantageous mode of bearing it;
whilst in the case of a tax applied to a special pur-
pose, the object of every ono must be, that it is made
to answer that purpose.
The present law for embodying a militia force has
certainly the recommendation of being that which
best suits the personal convenience and comfort of
the occupied as well as the wealthy classes. A sub-
stitute can be found at no very great expense, while
the cost of keeping up a militia of 100,000 or
150,000 men for twenty-eight days is not very
enormous. This system, however, suggests many
objections. It does not, like the Prussian, the French,
or the American system, instruct a whole population
in the art of military defence, and thus render inva-
sion impossible. It merely raises a secondary army
of the same destitute class as recruits of the line
are chosen from, of that class least calculated to wage
an obstinate defensive war pro aria et facia. It
constitutes an army of reserve, which sees 'fire for the
first time on resisting an invasion, and which, it it
indulges, but too naturally, in a panic, and is beaten
in the field, leaves the country more exposed and
crushed than if no militia had ever existed.
The great object of such a force is to
deter an enemy ; and no militia force, such
as we raise it, can have that effect in any
proportion with the effect produced by knowing that
a whole population are soldiers. To this add the
expenses ; and even half • million a year is seine
consideration for the very imperfect end of giving a
month's training to 100,000 men. The expense be-
comes still more serious when, on a sudden panic, the
militia is called into active service: 95,000 militia,
in 1813, cost three millions sterling. The mere fact
of a population being trained to arms would, in most
instances, preclude the necessity of embodying or
calling forth any armed corps of the kind.
Another objection to the militia iv, that it furnishes
no cavalry, no artillery-men, no scientific corps. In
case of actual invasion it confounds all classes : con-
demns the very engineer to carry a musket, the gen-
tleman who has followed the hounds to march with
a bayonet. The inhabitant of towns it sends into the
field with the peasant; the man of education with
the clodhopper.
Surely we might utilise men's capabilities in caao of
invasion better than this. Suppose every engineer,
when engineers have a college and a profession, was
obliged to add military engineering to his acquirements,
in order to pass his final examination, and the country
would always have an important corps, independent
of the royal corps of engineers. Why should not the
inhabitants of towns be taught the art of defending
them, and their youth be marshalled in corps for the
purpose? Instead of the heavy tax of militia andl
increase of military expenditure, a few holidays in,
the year spent in a healthful, patriotic, and in-
etructive exercise, would put into the heads aed
hands of the rising generation of each town the
knowledge and the means of rendering it impregna-
ble. Let the agricultural peasantry be drilled in their
localities, under their natural heads. But instead of
assimilating the entire population to these peasants,
let each learn what he can best learn and make best
use of. And the result would be, that instead of
being necessitated to augment the army, we might
materially reduce it.
The present day presents a very different order of
things and ideas from what .prevailed when the
Militia Act was passed in 1802, when the charge of
organising the military defensive force of the
country was given to the great landholders
in each county, and when the town popula-
tion of England was counted as nought. The towns
of England have made some progress since, and con-
quered some few privileges. They have won elec-
toral and municipal rights, and it is absolutely neces-
eery that a militia law, should such be put in force, be
assimilated to the other laws, regulating elec-
toral and municipal rights. There are pre-
cedents in the law, regulating the militia of
the City of London and that of the Cinque Porta.
Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, have become
more important than the Cinque Ports, and to hand over
the power of organising the military force furnished
by such districts to the lord-lieutenant of the county
is simply preposterous. We have outgrown the
militia law as we outgrow and outburst many others.
It behoves ministers to take this into consideration
ere they come forward with a simple resuscitation of
the old militia law, which, as it now stands, is, to say
the least of it, an anachronism. And it behoves the
public and the press to excite discussion, and express
opinion on a subject, and upon a purpose, which ought
not to be treated or attempted without grave conside-
ration—without bringing to bear upon it the lights of
the age, and thus suiting the law and the system to
the improved and expanded necessities and ideas of
that age.

WE have extracted into another column, from the
House of Commons papers, a petition presented on the
16th December last, which very seriously affects the due