The Express.
London, England, 1847-01-05 00:00:00

MAI L§.

The mail. for Britt& Nottl7;l'ineriet, Bermuda. and Um Colted
Steles, will be made up on the evening of the 3rd February.
'hem oils for the the River Plate. Monte Video, rernam.
bum, Mateira, an Bursae /tyros, will be clos:latched on the
evening of the 4th February.
Them ills for lien, Opnrto. l.iebon, Madeira, endir, and Gibraltar,
will be made up on the moving of the 7th Jonior.
The overland dared re .its rin Marseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Alen, Ceylon, fotlia, Moog Kong, Sie., will be made up on the
evening olthe 7th Jannar.
The Vest lade trails, ezehullng throe for Me.aleo, llnntlarav, and
the ifemannab, will be made up on the morninz of the 17th January.
The *retie .4 wait, for Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian Isisnits,
Ades, Ceylon, Intlia, Ilung-Kong, and China, sin Southampton,
frliat made op on the evening of the morning of the 211th January.
The malls for New tooth Wiles. tan I,,v,hen'. Lund, end New
!Wand will be made 112 GU the evening of the 3lst January.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
•.• Adtartiseraenta intendad far The Repress, Loudon evening paper,
mon ha at tha Odin, by Two o'clock on the day of publication.

mGU WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
Tars DST.—Morning, 18 min. pad 4; Afternoon, 3 min. pad 4.
To-Xott. ow—Morning, 31 min. pad 4; Afternoon, 0 min. pad 5.

LONDON, TUESDAY, JAN. 5.

ME Times continues to deprecate and oppose the
impulses of English charity towards Irish distress.
We have always given credit to that journal for
being endowed with those sensitive feelings for
popular sufferings, which overcome and smother the
colder, but at times more just, principles of politi-
cal economy. But it is only when the English poor
are in view, that it makes philosophy bow to feeling;
because, no doubt, out of this same sympathy for the
English poor it was possible to raise a clamour
against a Liberal government. But where the Irish
poor are concerned, our contemporary reverses its
principles. The man of feeling is converted at
once into the rigid political economist, and the Times
lectures on the bad effects of charity to Ireland, by
pampkrasing and exaggerating the arguments which
Mr. SENIOR applied to the English poor, not in
moments of famine, but in years of abundance and
idleness.
Our contemporary has no bowels for the wholesale
starvation of Skibbereen or for the famine which
stalks over the bogs of" Mayo. Its tender sympa-
thies are all reserved for the pockets of the rich. It
dreads lest the Christmas offering of one thousand
pounds should seriously diminish the store of such a
charitable donor, as Mr.lteerliscHan, or Mr. BARING,
and it expresses its serious anxiety, lest the present
generosity of the English capitalist towards Ireland
should leave no surplus sentiment or coin in their
hearts or purses for the future distresses of England.
Why did not the Times preach this doctrine apart
the subscription for the burnt-out Hamburgers, or
for the hundred remote objects of the übiquitous cha-
rity of England? According to it, English sympa-
thies should never overleap English shores. It pro-
claims: " What is given to Irish is so much filched
from English distress. What is given to Tipperary
or to Clam is taken from Dorsetshire and Wiltshire.
What is poured into Skibbereen is deducted from
Sutton or from Stockport."
This is the old poor-law with a vengeance, dividing
the world into parishes, getting rid of Ireland by
the clauses of a poor-removal, and telling charity to
stay at home. This, indeed, is breaking up an em-
pire, and proclaiming more loudly than ever an ()Tox-
in'. or an O'Baux spoke, the Repeal of the Union—
the
union of common feeling and charity, as well as
of policy and race. Is not such language calculated
to make the Irish ask, how much of the rent and the
surplus produce of Ireland are consigned to those
English counties, here forbidden to return a pittance
of it in charity.
"It would be unjust," exclaims the Times, " for
rich Yorkshiremen to give to Cornwall a portion of
the wealth produced b' Yorkshire labour, whilst the
wants of poor Yorksluremen passed unheeded and
unhelped."
What if the Yorkshire wealth had been in part
compounded of Cornish labour? What if Yorkshire
had for centuries ruled Cornwall by unequal laws,
and unwittingly forced it down to a pauperism, aid-
ing its landlords in producing that very pauperism
which now, forsooth, the dominant country is for-
bidden to relieve by indulging the natural feelings of
charity? Out upon such beggarly, such narrow, such in-
human sentiments!—such mistaken, such federal, such
fatal policy'.—sentiments as disgraceful to the indivi-
dual, as destructive to the empire ; a policy so retro-
grade that one would suspect it to belong to the
I-Lergehayszthmeirxtthureanct; our day, and
whichhothevethrygether
class, and party in England must repudiate, and
which could not have been invented, indeed, except
by the perverse and arrogant spirit of dictatorial
journalism.
In addition to the selfish reasons so needlessly im-
pressed upon Englishmen to prevent their being
charitable, other assertions and arguments are brought
forward to show, that this great act of charity would
do harm. The public works in Irish counties have
withdrawn a great portion of the
.population from
agricultural labour. If English charity come in aid of
public works, agriculture, it is mid, will be even more
But here it is quite left out of view, what
been the alternative, had there been no
In Clam, in Cork, in Longford, in

many counties, more than half the population would
bate been swept away by famine. Farmers and agri-
eultutists in Ireland do not give wages, they give cabins
and conacre. The funds and reward for agi
ieulturtl
labour were wanting ; and between public works
and starvation there was no alternative. And now
what is proposed to be done with the charitable Lund?
To provide seed, huts, implements, the materials and
appliances of labour : to limit direct relief to those
'modifies and those families which are beyond the
operation of the laboar-rate, and utterly beyond toe
posers of a relief committee.
The subscription which has taken birth in the dc-
mands of the Skibbereen deputation will not go to
perform the charitable task that Irish property has
heft undone, but will be applied in aid ot• the in-
sufficiency of Irish property. There are proprietors
in Inland with wide domains, three or hew
years of whose rental will have been sunk without suffi-
cing to word off imminent distress. Lord Sutio's line
property is swamped for years amid the rising ocean
i of poverty around him. The gentlemen of the county
of Cork have raised subscriptions to the amount of
40,000!.; yet Skibbereen is in the county of Cork.
If, in such circumstances as these, charity is not
called fur; if to such distress, in a portion of our
domestic empire, placing the poor on the brink of the
grave and rendering the local proprietor, in too many
maws, utterly powerless,—if, in such a crisis, charity
is to be denounced as pernicious, then let charity be
blotted from the list of English virtues, and let a new
gospel be promulgated to suit the iron nature of the
age.

TIIERE must be something vicious in any law which
cannot be carried into execution without outraging
every sentiment of justice. And where the constant
interference of the executive is found necessary to
co:rect the administration of a system of law having
a defined and well understood purpose, the necessary
conclusion must be that the law is erroneous. Now
the game laws are obnoxious to such objections. The
foltrwing paragraph which we rcpnnt from our
column of provincial news of last week, is truly a
startling announcement to those who recollect the
evils resulting from the maintenance of laws con-
demned by the intelligence of the community. This
is the passage :
H,: arsett DS 11 I RE. —T HE ROYAL PA RDON .—The governor
of the Hertford gaol received last week two documents, ex-
tending the royal pardon to Jos. Brooks, and Thos. Body,
of Wiggiugton' committed for several terms of imprison-
ment, fur the otfence of poaching. The prisoner Brooks was
committed on three warrants Jot one tfence, and Body on
two warrants, each of which was to take effect at the expira-
tion if Me imprisonment ordered under Me preceding con-
rid ions, tier Majes.y ordered the discharge of the prisoners
at the expiration of the term of punishment authorised in
the tirst warrant in each rase. It is stated to be the intention
of the government to pursue Mil courec, with a view td dis-
courage the infliction of cumulative penalties in cases of
poaching.
Here we find that the extraordinary prerogative to
pardon offenders is to be constantly exercised to cor-
rect the administration of the game laws. We be-
lieve that such exercise is wise and necessary on
the part of the government ; and that the justices of
the peace who are game preservers, or who partake
of the prejudices sf game preservers, to execute a
code of extreme severity with so much harshness as
' to bring their administration of law in general into
discredit, cannot be trusted without some such check.
But why is such a system of law permitted to exist?
These cumulative punishments are peculiar to the
game laws, and are directly opposed to the spirit of
British law. It is a rule, not only that a man shall
not be punished, but that he shalt not be tried twice
for the same offence, which prevails throughout our
criminal code, with the exception of the squire's code
—the game laws. Tire property of the merchant,
the manufacturer, the tradesman, or the farmer, is
deemed to be sufficiently protected by visiting
offenders against the laws of property with a single
punishment for one offence. But the amusements of
the gentry are fenced round with penalty upon pe-
nalty, ana fine upon fine, which overwhelm with utter
ruin every offender against whom the game laws are
enforced.
Nor is this interference by the Home Secretary to
correct the severity of the game laws a new matter;
for the late government found it necessary to adopt
the some course. Upon this point some striking evi-
dence was given before the game-law conunittee by
Mr. PIIILLIPPS, the permanent Under-Secretary
of State for the Home Department. Mr. Pam-
' 1.11,PS said that the attention of Sir JAMES GRAhAM,
when Home Secretary, had b.en called to the subject
by ob erring that out of 201 commitments made in
the year 1844 for the county of Bedford, 143 were
game eases, and en calling for returns of those com-
mitments, four of the game sentences were found to
have been altogether illegal. In consequence, it was
determined to inquire into the mode in which the
game laws were administered, and for that purpose
an order was issued to all gaolers to send to the
Home-office copies of all commitments in game cases.
Returns were accordingly made of all the Commit-
ments in England for game-law offences between the
23rd of May, 1844, and the 11th of March, 1845,
from which it appeared that out of 1849 second com-
mitments, forty persons had been discharged from
prison, their sentences having been clearly illegal,
and that fourteen other sentences had been commuted.
Mr. PUILLIPPS said distinctly " All the discharges
were on the ground of the law having been actually
violated, the sentences being against the law. There
had been no instance in which a prisoner had been
discharged because the commitment was defective in
point of form." And when asked whether " those
returns did not strike him as showing that a very
great deal of irregularity and injustice had been
committed by the magistrates under the game laws,"
kis answer was, " I must say eery great. I have
been very much surprised, and I have expressed my
surprise very frequently to the Secretary. of State
upon the subject. I could not have conceived that
there could have been such." And it marks strongly
the spirit in which the game laws are administered ;
that in every instance of irregularity discovered, it
was against the offender ; that is, punishment be-
yond the law, or which were not authorised by the
law, had been inflicted. For instance, where 40s.
was the maximum penalty for the offence, a fine of
31. had been imposed, which, not being paid, the of-
fender
had been sent to prison. So where the ex-
tremo period of imprisonment allowed by law was
three months, commitments for longer terms
had been made. Again, there were many convictions
by a single magistrate, where two magistrates had
jurisdiction, and a single magistrate could not legally
act. There had been convictions under the Game
Certificate Act, where the magistrates had ordered
six months' imprisonment, with hard labour, which is
against the law. There is no hard labour justified
under the Game Certificate Act,—only imprisonment
without hard labour. There were instances in which
I there had been no less than three punishments—
three imprisonments fur one °fence! A man was
convicted under a special clause for poaching on a
Sunday ; then he was convicted for the same offence
under the trespass clause, that is, for trespassing in
pursuit of game ; and he was afterwards proceeded
against for killing game without a certificate, and im-
prisoned for non-payment of the penalty. He was
imprisoned by means of these cumulative penalties
for eleven months for one offence. Can anything be
more monstrous? Are the public aware that any
rural bench of justices may inflict such punish-
ments for trespasses upon their own preserves.
It is true, magistrates do not often act in their own
cues, but the advantage of that, where there is such
a strong community of sentiment, is rather appa-
rent than real. As one of the farmers examined
said, with much point, "magistrate A commits the
poachers on B's estate, and magistrate B commits
A's poachers." An enumeration of the penalties and
punishments, actually enforced in the case above-
mentioned, will give some idea of the power which
game-preserving justices possess over the liberty of the
subject. Killing game on a Sunday or Christmas,
subjects the offender to a fine of 51., or three months'
imprisonment with hard labour; killing game with-
out a certificate another fine of 51., or a second three
months' imprisonment with hard labour ; and besides,
I sporting without a certificate subjects the offender to
the payment of 201., to be levied by distress, or six
months' imprisonment; and also to be charged a
double certificate duty, amounting to Si. Is. Bd. These
bat penalties are recovered before the commissioners
d rsesd taxes, and are nominally fiscal charges;
bat y, the Game Certificate Act is used solely
sa ilta:Zhe suppression of poaching. The penalty
&SOL can only be mitigated to 101., and there is
no power to remit any part of the double duty ; then
a labouring man when proceeded against under the
Game Certificate Act, and few except labourers are
ever so proceeded against, must pay 18/.13.8d., or go to
gaol. The total amount of the maximum pecuniary
penalties above mentioned—three penalties for one

act—is 381. Is. 83. Besides these penalties, if the (mil
bud been committed out of season—if, for instance,l
pheasants had been killed ou the last Sunday in Sep-
tember, or the first Sunday of February, another and
additional fine of 295. for each head of plum, or im-
prisonment fur two months with hard labour is in-
flicted. The above provisions will amply justify the
remark made by Mr. PIIILLIPPS—" That the game
laws are the severest laws iu the statute-book." But
the reader will be mistaken if he supposes the limits
of oppression which may be, and frequently is, inflicted
under the game laws, has been reached. There is
the Night Poaching Act (9 George IV., c. 69), under
which a person convicted of poaching, or attentpting,
to poach; as for instance, setting a snare one hour
after sunset, or before sunrise, is subjected for the first
offence to imprisonment and hard labour for three
months, and at the end of that time he is to find sure-
ties for not offending in the same way again for the
space of a year. And in rase lie can find nu securities
1w is to be impriyme,l and kept to hard labour f.r the
space of six calendar months. The act is peremptory,
that if sureties are not forthcoming the offender shall
be committed fur six months. There is no rower of
mitigation. Imagine an agricultural labourer, earning
when employed from 7s. to 12s. a week, who when
out of employ has been detected in poaching—in com-
mitting high treason against the squirearchy—called
upon to find sureties not to poach again for a twelve-
month! Surely this is oppression, oppression which
might well raise a 1, cling the squires would not easily
allay. But this is not nll. Under the Night Poaching
Act a second offence is visited with six months' im-
prisonment and hard labour, and at the expiration of
that imprisonment two sureties in 101. each are to be
found against a repetition of the offence for two years,
and when such sureties arc not found the offenderis to
be imprisoned wills hard labour for one year. The third
offence is a misdemeanor punishable by imprison-
ment for two years with hard labour, or transposta-
lion fur seren years at the discretion II the court tf
quarter sessions ! !
And let it be observed, that a man who has killed
the game upon his own land—gt me, perhaps, bred to
his annoyance by his neighbour—without a certificate
may be subjected to many of the penalties we have
mentioned. To palliate these evils. Mr. rIIII.I.IPI'S
recommended the abolition of game certificates ; that
magistrates and gaolers should be obliged to make a
return of all game-law commitments; and that all
game eases should come before a jury. The protec-
tion of a jury was suggested also by sever other
witnesses, who had had opportunities of seeing the
administration of game-law justice. That these sug-
gestions fall short of the necessity of the ease we shall
have occasion hereafter to show, but they sufficiently
brand with injustice the existing game laws.
It appeared from a table delivered to the com-
mittee by Mr. l'immors, that during the five
years from 1839 to PM, the proportion of game-
jaw convictions, to the total male summary convic-
tions in England and Wales, had increased from 5.68
to 7.38. Since the Home-office has kept a somewhat
more vigilant eye upon these convictions, and Mr.
BRIGHT has drawn public attention to the subject,
magistrates have b.:en lather more careful, and game
convictions have slightly decreased. That the Hert-
fordshire justices, however, have not been influenced
by the signs of the times, is clear, from the necessity
under which the Home Secretary has been of correct-
ing their administration of the game laws.

TIIE statistics of poverty are, at the present mo-
ment, a prominent subject of discussion. England
set the example, after the passing of the Reform Bill,
of instituting fearless inquiries into the state of the
labouring classes. Their wants, their habits, their
improvidence, their sufferings, were made public.
The rich were led, by the commissioners of inquiry,
into the courts, the wynds, and the hovels of their
poorer neighbours. The factory, the mine, the work-
shop, were laid open to the light of day; and there
can be no doubt but that many improvements resulted
from the knowledge of the abodes of misery thus
diffused. Our continental neighbours have a different
way of going to work in these matters. The adminis-
tration of government is carried into many depart-
ments, that in Engl and are either abandoned to parish
management, or that are willingly left in the shade.
In France and Germany minute enumerations of the
people have for a long tune been in practice. Accurate
and costly surveys of the face of the country
have mapped out every possession, however
small. The trifling contributions of the poorer in-
habitants of those countries form the great mass of the
moderato revenues raised, and a person accustomed to
the exemptions customary in England and Ireland,
would be astonished at the amounts for wi.ich the
tax-gatherer deals out his receipts, and to collect
which even military aid is required, where arrears
accumulate.
The effect of the inquiries made in England were
not lost upon the Continent. No blue books were
printed, and the writers who ventured to make the
privations of the poor a theme of declamation,
were silenced by mulcts or by imprisonment.
Yet were the governments not remiss, as far as
their power went, in watching over the state of the
bulk of the population. Factory regulations, not quite
so stringent, nor so strictly enforced, as in England,
were enacted. The state of the revenue of parishes and
towns was inquired into, and rates were recommended
to be assessed, where the disposable funds did not
meet the demands upon them. There is now not a
town in Prussia that does not make an assessment
for the poor. Every village has one or more " Fathers
of the poor." The relief is unostentatious, and
changes little or nothing in the habits of the people.
Private benevolence is not slack; and not only are
there refuges for the destitute provided in all large
towns, where heated rooms, cheap soup, and
work for the aged or for females is provided, but of
late years the richer citizens have gone so far as to
purchase meal and bake it at a moderate price for
such poor families as are deemed objects fer relief.
Nor is the standard of distress very nicely dig-
tiuguished. The " Fathers " have plenary power to
give out-door relief, or to send the applicants to some
fitting occupation. But compared with the very mo-
derate standard of wealth in Germany and France,
the standard of benevolence is undoubtedly a high one.
There can be no doubt that this general attention to
the state of the poorer portion of the inhabitants of
at least one-half of Europe has had a material effect
upon the market value of the most necessary supplies.
Parishes, and even private individuals, make their
calculations with forethought. A larger number of
claimants must be supported than formerly from the
same extent of soil, and often from the same means.
The small contributions from the surplus once left to
feed the great markets, are sparingly parted with, and
often altogether withheld. A diminution like that
occasioned by even a partial failure of the potato crop,
creates alarm, or induces over-caution in the owners
of food. Hence the frequent rumours of scarcity, and
the scanty supplies that threaten, and occasionally
produce, famine. If we are not mach mistaken, the
possibility of controlling the market has not escaped
the watchful eye of capitalists. A gigantic speculation
is now in progress, centering at Marseilles. But to
what account soever this scarcity may be turned, the
important thing is to trace its origin.
While we are occasionally tempted to acknowledge
that the principle on which relief is administered on
the Continent is a better one than obtains under our
system, it must be agreed that a minute attention
devoted to these points of detail is no compenaa&a
for a neglect of the greater questions that more
directly influence the results of the productive
industry of nations. In another column of our paper
the reader will find a notice of a small work on the
German Zollverein, with some statistical statements
ting the condition of the people of Prussia,
whichare of high interest, as evincing a elate li
insight into this great truth. The author of the
pamphlet
reviewed has affixed his initials to the
preface. He fills a situation at Berlin nearly
corresponding to the office of Secretary of the
Board of Trade. At the present moment the
influence of a colleague, M. RCEN NE, is more powerful,
and M. RCESSE is an advocate for those restrictions
on trade that are miscalled protecting duties. It is
interesting to know that free-trade has its champion
at Berlin, and that the advocate can plead its cause
with the talent here evinced by M. KCIINE. The
forcible argumentation of this short appendix cannot
fail to have its due effect upon the government, which,
as we have seen on the other hand, is not deaf to the
growing claims for a mode of relief that is at all
times distressing, and which on a large scale becomes
demoralising. Various German papers have recently
given estimates of the proportion of paupers in
towns that do not much differ from Lord DEvos's
°dialect, of Ireland. In the small town of Fulda, in
Hetr.,e, 700 inhabitants out of 2,100 were stated to be
rlsieiving relief. A Frankfort paper, that by no means

seeks popularity by exaggeration, estimated the nnm-
ber of paupers in Berlin, *hose population is 330,00.,),
at 60,000. The number of those now enjoying ex-
emptions on account of poverty was stated to be
200,000. Where so much has been achieved as is
shown by the statistical statements that have been
furnished by the head of the Statistical Board at
Berlin, the Prussian government will assuredly not
flinch front the task of studying a searching remedy
for an evil that is evidently growing.

ANOTTIER warning to delay no longer the provi- I
sion of a suitable I'ublic Record-oftiee happened on
Saturday last, by the burning of Queen Anne's Bounty-
ofiice. Until this necessary and prudent measure is ,
adopted, no opportunity should In lost of reminding
the government of the neglect of their predecessors in
this matter. This office, like most of the others
which are made the repositories of public documents,
had no especial aptitude whatever fur its pa:pose ; be-
ing a common dwelling-house, exposed to ordinary. fire I
risks. It is said that its records, which are chiefly
ecclesiastical records of the value of livings,
and of the institution of incumbents t) them,
have been wholly preserved on this occa-
sion. We believe this is true of the great mass :
but that so many, which were iiitietty modern, as hap-
pened to be in the front room of the Keeper's (Mr.
110Dcsox's) house were destroyed. The file appears'
to have completely burnt this house from top to
bottom. It is on the side of Bean's-yard, Westmin-
ster, opposite to the entrance to the cloisters. As we
are now on the eve of the meeting of parliament, we
hope that ministers are prepared to announce that
practical steps are being taken at once to relieve the
records from that situation " to which," we repeat,
"no merchant of ordinary prudence would subject
his books of account" This statement of danger
is not at all exaggerated. Thirteen years
ago, the fire at the Houses of Parliament da-
maged the exchequer records. Five years after-
wards the fire at Baron .Il.sei.E's chambers burnt a
I great part of the documents relating to the "Fines,"
and now, in a few years after, we have the ecclesias-
tical records placid in great jeopardy, and some
destroyed. Let us hope that a jester sense of the
value of our public records exists with the present
Ministry, and that these disgraceful accidents will
shortly be rendered impossible.

5 lieglected. Bi
would have b
public works.