The Express.
London, England, 1856-11-12 00:00:00

sustained by individuals—it is the conflicts of armies
by land, and of fleets by see, that deckle the gnat con-
tents of nations." Noe is the piarnieney which all.
to the lot of the navy any kind of eceepseatlon for the
peat injury inflicted upon the merebents and the son-
mu mere sun of the more powerful of the twoballigarent
States. Compare the sum total of all the pristmosey
won by English captors in the warn of the great
Napoleonic ware with the aggregats Joann of price
which Eogliah consumers had to pay on the items
(to go no farther) of colonial and Baltic produce;
throw in as much glory as you plane to the credit
of the ass plunderers; and then ask yourself the
worth of that barbarous system of sea warfare
which, while it inflicted so much gratuitous suffering
on cur enemies, occasioned to ourselves such a

maximum of discomfort and annoyancte, for
such a maiminn of rolil profit or real re-
nown. For be it always remembered, there is
none of the heroism of war in this legalised plunder
of the defenceless by the strong. A British man•of-
war coming into port with a whole convoy of prise
sloops and sohconers ender her guns may, for aught
we know, be an august manifestation of " the might
of England ;" but as an illustration of naval daring
we should rather turn to the exploits of some atro-
cious scoundrel of a Riff pirate, who, spinet long odds
and with amps round his neck, has fought and taken
some trader of twice his size. We know that the
existing laws of war make one act the act of a pirate
and the other of an officer and a gentleman; but then
laws are so barbarous and unjust, that it is high
time they should no longer be permitted to deface
our advancing civilisation. They inflict severe ant-
(cringe on individuals—they do not in any degree
tend to shorten war—they degrade an honourable
profession by the practice of legalised piracy. Let us
hope that Lord PALMUSTON will employ his beat
energise to accelerate, as a statesman, the abolition of
an evil which be has so eloquently denounced as a
speaker.

How did the Meiling world ever get on without
advertisements P What did the Greeks, for matinee,
do in the way of puffery ? Had they their party-
coloured chariots, like our advertising vans, notifying
in monstrous letters that the Athenian youth might
find a superfine chimer of the true saffron dye, or
a peplum of first rats stuff and pattern, at the stall
of such and each a classic Moen in the Agora is Did
a 13003i1111 MAZY WEDLAYZ ask them In her native
Doric if they bruised their oats yet? or did a young
practitioner of Cos, fresh from the hands:of the Meek-
piadie and the Egyptian schools, engage to cure all
known dimness by means of his Monnore's pill or
HOLLOWAY'S ointment P Did the Roman ladies rub
to "mina's sacrifice." paraded in tall black letters, and
buy there for a coa vsetir—the renowned transparent
silk robe from Coe--some make up article woven close
to the Magdalen-gate? How did they know which
Latin Tavinrr to choose for the building up of
their wonderful pyramids of fended hair ? And
when their croons oil unguentam was out, had they a
Roman ROWLAND and Box, with laos-work label and
pretorian stamp, telling them in Cieeronian periods
that his ungnentnm was She unguentam, and that
every Raman lady who and the same was sure of
" myrrh-coloured " hair in Jeannie abundance to the
end of the Greek Lalonde? How did the Venetian
merchant prison make known the arrival of their
Eastern cargoes P Did they man eceentricolookbig
gondolas, plastered over with hieroglyphics, meant to
proclaim that on such a day thin week Damascus
steel and Byzantium silks were to be had fora due
proportion of sequins under the pillars of their grand
"Royal Exchange" in the Pima Sari Marco P Did
they send out varlets quaintly dressed, to tell in soft
Venetian of wonderful chiropodists, and miracl►work-
ing doctors, as you meet with now in the streets and
places of Paris P--for of all the realms of puffery
Paris is the Empyrean. And the Goths, and the
Hens, and the Danes, and the Plots, how did they
mansge P And ourselves, in Queen Eusanirrifs
time P How did we know where to go for our man-
chets, when not made at home—for our mul-
berry-coloured nit% oar peaked shoes, our
starehed raffe, and oar meek and malmsey? It
must have been very strange, this living in a
non-advertising age. Ose wonders how consumers
and producers owns together at all, unless it were by
a kind of commercial Mesmerism, or by that instinct
which leads most animals to their proper pasture-
ground.

But if we lived ones without advertising, we are,
making up for last time now, in a way that of itself
would show we wrote letters by electrio telegraph,
and walked from place to place by steam. Then is
something almost heroic in the extent and manner of
our advertisements ; certainly there is something
scientific. It is an art, a science, a mystery of itself:'
it has its hieropkants and its professors, its neophytes
and its aspirants, like any other great mystery of
knowledge; and we of the outside world can but
marvel and believe—and believing, Buy, in all
the reverent faith of the uninitiated and the
unenlightened.

INCOME TAX.