The Express.
London, England, 1849-12-19 00:00:00

gfte erpreoo.

OUTGOING MAILS.
The rails ler Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian 'simian
Nape, Unto', India, and Cities, via Southampton. will
b. madto.merrow aiming, Dee. 90.
TIN lady,iriA Marerilles, Rs tbe Mediterranean, &opt,
Copies Hoar Yong, ~ will be made up en the
monis. el Dee. M.
TM sent mein for Lisbon. Spain, and Gibraltar will be
node Tap on Din 27.
TM mails foe British North America and the Usited
Oen, will be leads se on*. evening of D.e. 28.
TM Meet India Malin ieeledieg. Hamada Ifevannak
Sennee. Ilo,ldnras, New Orleans, sea lionise, and ezeduding
Mesa I. Madeira, St. Jean-de-Niesranue, New Onatada,
ATM
end Peru, will be Made 44, en the griming el Jan. 2.
Tie me& Par llederbs, tle Brasil., sad Beeson Ayresorill
M made upon the evenMg of Jas. 4.
WWI WAT A
OTa WOW= YAW=
Ts Ms —4144•466, 44.
sv...aaro—marree. SA 1em..........A5am0n. Ih. iiMa.

,ONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19.

ef some remarks of oars, the Spectator
i the cause of labour against capital. Capital it
represents as highly favoured in England, as unre-
stricted yet protected ; whilst labour, left to fight its
own battle, is completely at its mercy. According to
the Spectator, capital has wings—nothing so easy as to
move it from one employ or investment to another;
whereas labour it represents as chained to the ground
en which it stands and the trade to which it is wed.
Whilst labour cannot even float with the tide, capital
OW charter • vessel, and hoist itself to the furthest
sods of the wort 4.
Without at all denying the hardships of labour, we
would merely my, that the advantages of capital are
not (sly is** but in general argument and assomp-
_ti_oly exaggerated. Capital is considered as
' solid and materiel, and imperishable,
whwilrehe en wee amassed, can be locked up, and kept
profitably and securely. It is considered to bear some
eulogy to that gold which is its most vulgar repre-
sentative, with, however, the additional attribute that
gold has not, of fructifying by itself.
This, however, is not the ease. Capital is not
exempt from the greet law of the universe; it must
ish in order to be re-born. As seed is thrown
into the ground to rot, ere it re-produce', so must
capital run the same risk in order to bear profits.
Nations, indeed, have set apart a certain quantity of
capital, in rather they have spent a certain portion of
it,of which they pay the interest, and this may appear
to be dormant capital, whilst it really can only be aid
out of the profits of active capital the security aod
vitality of one is simply b mud op with and dependent
on the other. Capital is said to be accumulated labour.
True; but there is no mode of aociimuLition that will
keep. Corn will not keep, nor provisions; no, nor
buildiogs, nor the earth itself in a productive state,
unless all are turned and worked, and spent and rt•

irodsced.
The law of capital is, therefore, that it should be
active, that it should be turned, that it should be
risked, just as it is the law of labour to expend its
daily toil. And one of the consequences of this law
of activity is that capital cannot stand stationary—it
must or recede. There are economists who
talk orprtti:g a stop or an artificial check to the
productive p mer of the country, who would
prevent mills from working, and would make export
seams. They imagine that so much capital might be
withdrawn, locked up and kept, that the nation or
half the nation might retire from business, and live
upon its wealth in olio cum &imitate. But whatever
a man may do, a nation cannot do this. The old and
the noble may rest, and enjoy rent and dividend,
but it is only on the condition that the young
and the ignoble work. In the following up
the great law of its existence, activity, capi-
tal has its difficulties as well as labour; nay,
greater difficulties. That transference of capital,
which the Spectator represents as so easy, is, on the
contrary, far more difficult than the transference of
labour. Ask the farmer, or the millowner, or the
shipowner, as to the famlities of transferring capital
and a very different answer will be given from what
the Spectator lays down. And consult even that
class who put their capital in less active and more
moveable investments, and ask whether their loans,
and anxieties, and difficulties of late years, have not
ground them and worn them almost as much as the
labourers dependent upon hire. But when we treat
of the capitalist, we generally fix our eye upon a
fortunate specimen, whilst in our lucubration upon
labour, we infallibly revert to the inhabitant of the
poor house, or the ejected Irishman. 1 he commissioner
of a philanthropic journal can make his inquisitive
way into the garret or the cellar, but he ignores the
miseries of the second, aye, and often of the first

floor.
We may depend upon it, that when the labourer is
suffering, the capitalist is not at his ease. And instead
of talking of restricting capital, proscribing competi-
tion, and fixing a maximum of wager, what capital
requires in this country is the doing away with a
great restriction, which fetters its activity, and with
that activity the employment and prosperity of the
The Mommy Post declares, that the manufacturing
industry of this country an bear any competition, but
that agricultural industry cannot. Why? Because
capital has been forced into manufacturing indus-
try, has begotten ingenuity, and created a new soil
of wealth. All that English agriculture wants is the
seine freedom, the same advantage. Let there be
the same facilit of investment in the land that there
is in the mill, the same sureties of return, the same
chance of profiting by the variation of the market and
the inrouity of toe cultivator, andthe capital which
inundates tailoring will infinitely prefer or irrigate
and fertilize the earth. We are no communists,
although the Spectator very idly and illogically
casts the epithet; we estimate no privilege
so highly as that of individual freedom and enter-
prise. But we would have the land free—free, not to
be paroelled out, but to be purchased ; not to be
parked, but to be cultivated ; not to be confined to
the keeping up of a nominal rent-roll, or to be per:
petuated to the grandchildren of one man, but to be
exposed to the same risks and fortunes, and thereby
thrown open to the same ingenuity, skill, and pros-
perous development that capital or property of other
Rinds is subject to, or, as we should say, is blessed
with.
This is a subject on which we might largely dwell.
But we psis it for the present, in order to arrive at
other considerations connected with it, and also con-
nected with what is a cherished idea of the Spectator.
That idea is emigration, which is to be the great
panacea for all our woe+, the issue for our plethory, the
lazaretto for our epidemic.
We do not deny this. We are no enemies of emi-
gratios. We do not oppose such partial and humane
scheme+ as the humanity of Mr. SIDNEY .--14itenrwr
has taken up. But some of the opponents of M-.
HERBERT have said a true thing in declaring, that the
best and most useful of all emigration is an agricultu-
ral one. For an emigration to be perfect, the great
proportion of it should be agricultural; and not merely
agricultural in labour, but in skill and in capital, and in
being of the employing as well as of the empl .yed
class. But how is the overflow of emigraion (irefully
to tab,' place until English agriculture itself be full,
and until skill, capital, and labour have become
prosperously redundant on it? To see that it is not
Do, we have but to traverse any county in England,
even those nearest to the great reservoir of capital,
the metropolis. People talk of farmer's capital.
What is it, independent of stock and imple-
ments? Far from the land haring been able
to take advantage of or draw to it the
surplusage of capital amassed by the manufacturing
and trading interests, we do believe that it has existed
parked up from any such source of improvement,
and dependent for any increase of tillage upon the
profits of the famine prices of protection. Whatever
dribbling* of rent went to the improvement of the soil,
have never equalled the sums, extracted from agricul-
tural improvements by the mortgages of spendthrifts.
The first outlet for capital and labour is on the
land of England. It is when capital and labour thus
expended and employed have become redundant, that
then the overflow of both together, endowed with the
skill and the habits of cultivating the earth, can be
profitably and naturally turned upon our colonial wilds.

THE mettleg of the representatives of the railway
companies, which, on the Bth of November, promal-
ths beads of a plan for amei.ding the present
fitted
of audit, was then adjourned until this day. In
order, however, to afford more time for nsetrtaining
the opinions of shareholders on ths plan, its re-
assembly hag been still further deferred until Wed-
nesday that 18th of January, 1&50. By this further