The Express.
London, England, 1848-11-21 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EYE!WO• NOVEMBER 21, 1848.

GATTLB.—Corxnurnit,Nov. 16.—Thers were more sales
effected in Sheep than for several weeks past, but we can
quote no wen
in prices. Ihe supply was very
isedurste. were several lots of good fat Besets,
whisk Lent ea load at the early part of toe day, but were
disposed of before the dose, at rather declining prices, the
demaii being very slow. Lean stock was plentiful; and to
awes galas, a farther &dine was acceded to. There was no
pelienlar variation in the vitae of Pigs. Supply Sheep
mid Lambs, 1,180; Beasts, 304; Pip, 2.55 ; Calves, 7 ;
Hamm, 29.
Livisszoox, Nov. 20.—The supply of Beef was consider-
ably Mss; of Mutton, larger than lest week. The demand
fait for Beef, at improved prices. Mutton in dell demand,
at rather lower prices. Beef, 41d. to 51d. ; Mutton, sd. to
to 6/d. per lb. Then were 1,921 Cattle, and 6,393 Sheep
at market
Nozencii, Nov. 18.—Our market exhibited a good show
of Seep and short-horns, but it being so near Hampton
Green Fall, trade was one of the worst this season, and
asthinmid worth notice. Pat Beasts few in number, and
tradefull, at 7s. per stone of 141bs. The pens were badly
tilled, still quite equal to the demand. Lambs firm in price.
Keeps( Sheep, 2s. per head lower. Fat Sheep, 7s. to
7s. 641 per yeas of 141bs. Good stare Pip, 251. to 30s. ;
it Perk, 7s. per stone, mad firm in price.
For naafis?, spearksts as lag pap.

.............--....--•----- ,
. gilt 4141100.1.: -
'•i',.-4• .. UAW* • tiismi.....
• ---r.";4-7----"".... -1.
tg
The overkill &Oh kelle. fie hetelhiere re hob
Wok Agee. Wiry Itompateep. he. erth be OW up ea he
M
et he
...igs art pritilit North Aruba. ilia di 17211,1 Iltatei,
lk be ash up Mite ~hi et tbe Ski lieg.
Ilk ogle ter kV%
es I t=lLlebele, Meeks. OAK ire Whetter
will be meg up be at he Mb Neg.
Ike-ae 6rNew huh eks. Von Deems% Led, eall New
WWI la be sues up gm the gook( et tbe Mb km
1ber...5....,0..., Aeries eat Iliddra will be mile
sem albs Oh NM
as wag Illab. INSIMME Ilemie. keetrre, Iterease.
lififf Ohmeme, ad leak% sad eirtehap Mom tor
pon.ebopmeegse. /low Oreueds, Chlk, eke reme, will
be =see up IS Um monks id Sr lINI Dee.
The mew hr lteralis. dr linells. sae Demo Arm wilt be
sage sp en tbe ~keg 'te gle Bea
Tr egotist mak kg Olerelerf.l.V.• Offeele. die lonian WANK
'Wyk Mrs. WON bid* It. rid Mims, vie Poutbsor
1411111 be swim apes he aorerele el he lea DN.
----.

RISE Want ♦T lAODDII 111111101111 L
=AI .11.efilML on. par les Aflaws.le Ws. Nil IL
selnalno6,l4lol.orl g Nis. lea 16

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOV. 21.
EVERT day's
_additional experience of the state of
things in Irela attests the urgent need of poor-law
reform. The bungling and inadequate provisions of
the bill of 1847 no longer find apologists amongst any
clue or callicg. While the munificent grants in aid
Iran the British Association lasted, the deficiencies and
vices of the measure were unfelt or unregarded.
Thoughtful men, indeed, feared and foretold what the
consequences must be whenever the attempt should
really be made to supply the destitute multitude with
food by rates assessed on property not according to any
principle of inherent ability or of just liability, but
according to the random map made by a blind man
tee years ago at Somerset-house, and endoreed " per-
het by another blind man at the Treasury, eighteen
maths since. Present suffering, however, thinks not
of the future ; and thus, while the doles of private
dimity lasted, the enormity of the impending system
situation was, comparatively, little heeded. It seemed
ungracious to cavil at prospective dangers, while pen-
nies wants were in any way provided for ; and
these whom sense of the inapplicability and
Westin in tie details of the recent enactment
prompted them to remonstrate, shrunk from apparent
mention with these whose hostility was to the wise
and humane principle on which it was founded.
But as the eleemosynary aid which for a time
emend the nakedness of the land was gradually
withdrawn, the manifold defects and misfittings of its
legal sabstitute became palpable ; and the mischievous
abosmillp became manifest to all un-offic.al mortals
of a sense which ordains that property and industry
shall be fined to contribute for the support of the poor
—not wending to their supposed capabilityof doing so
bat according to their ascertained incapacity ! The
r ;lof winter, the failure in many districts of
ot crop, the abandonment in many instances
of farm, and the flight rather than deliberate emigra-
tion
of the industrious and labour-giving classes who
would have naturally formed a breakwater between
property and pauperism—all tend to force men to
combine together in self-defence, and to seek some
prompt and efficacious redress of a grievance that
is hourly felt to be more and more intolerable.
As for attempting to sustain the papule
tion of the western unions on the produce of
rates levied in each of them respectively, the
notion would be ridi'ulous were it not fatal.
Even already rates have been collected in the
districts to the extent of six and seven shil-
rn7itn the pound ; in some ten and eleven shillings
have been struck ; and in Scariff the nominal nem-
ment reaches thirteen and sixpence in the pound. It
wete just as easy to enforce the payment of as many
lies of rupees as to extort within any assignable
period such an amount of poor-rates from such a com-
munity as at present dwell beyond the Shannon and
the Lee.
The cardinal error in this hap-hazard distribution
of the local borthen of a poor law in a country like
Ireland appears to have siprang from the assumption
that what had been found to work well generally is
England must of course be transferable thither. The
theory of poor-rate pressure acting's a stimulus to em-
ployment had been practically found correct on this
side of the Channel ; why Lot also upon
the other ? Perhaps the true answer may be
said to lie in the comparative history of the
two countries for generations past. But shortly
it may be stated thus : from whatever causes arising
poverty in England is the exception not the rule—
poverty in at least one-third of Ireland is the rale sot
the exception.
With us the preemie is oftentimes felt to be seven,
but hope enables us to bear up against it, be-
cause men believe eat if the spare hands
are not drawn off and absorbed in new employ-
ments elsewhere, its local amount may be
lessened by combined exertions to give more lend
work and wages. A few score additional labourers
in a moderate sized agricultural pariah in Doreetshire
makes ail the difference between heavy rates and me-
derate rates; and co-operation being possible among
neighbours who come frequently together, and have
common and reciprocal interests and feelings, '
there is every motive and every facility for
its being attempted. But what motive or what power
—what hope, or what possibility is there for such co-
operation in a union thirty miles long by
twenty broad, in which the heads of families
requiring out-door relief during eight months of the
year are twice or thrice as numerous as those who are
nominally classed as ratepayers, and where the entire
valuation of the property is less in pounds sterling
than the population estimated by the head ? To ex-
pect farmers or proprietors so circumstanced to under-
take works of improvement, individually and each of
his own accord, with the ultimate object of profit, and
the immediate purpose of imperceptibly abating the
influx of destitution, is downright nonsense; and to
expect. that practical co-operation can take place under
such circumstances is equally absurd. The pressure
crushes instead of stimulating, and does positive
harm instead of good. For the thrifty and industri-
ous seeing nothing but a widening range of pauper-
ism around them, and seeing no limit to the rate upon
rate which the paid agents of the central theorizers
may think fit to impose, naturally resolve to prepare
as beet they may for future exactions, by buttoning
their pockets tight, and cutting off all exiture
that is not absolutely indispensable. First, ex-
tra labourers are turned adrift • then, farm-
servants lastly, those who used to earn their
bread by indoor-occupations. It is incredible to what
an extent this fatal change has been forced on during
the last few months, every day adding to the number
of involuntary but inevitable idlers.
It is said that tardy conviction has begun to work
its way in the minds of those in authority, so
far as the extravagant size of unions and divi-
sions of unions is concerned; and that the com-
mission of inquiry, appointed in March last, in
compliance with the unanimous demands of
the members for Ireland, is prepared to report in
favour of partition and re-distribution in several in-
'dances. But mere partition and re-distribution are
not enough. To diminish the area of taxation, with-
oat providing some limit to the amount which the
poorer and more 000ulotis districts may be called
upon to pay, would only be a huge piece of favouritism
on the one band, and of summary confiseaffon
on the other. There is no social equity,
there is no political prudence, and there is no
Howl use in endeavouring to perpetuate dispropor-
tionate taxes, or to exact the payment of exorbitant
ones. The fundamental principles of the Irish poor-
law are placed in jeopardy when one set of men are
let off easily for no merit of their own, andanother set of
men are stripped of two-thirds of all that they pos-
sess for no peculiar fault. To talk loftily about such
being the law, and superciliously to ask the complain-
ants whether" they ever heard of a system that had
not some inequalities?" is mere impertinence and
folly.
The day for this style of logic in high places is
past, and the question of a maximum rate cannot be
much longer evaded. We are fully conscious of its
difficulties and not unmindful of its dangers. But the
necessity of the cue is too plain and pressing.
The poor must not be suffered to die of starvation;
the means of purchasing cheap and wholesome food
for them cannot be obtained without confiscatiln of
property and annihilation of industry in many exten-
sive districts, while in many others property is nearly
altogether free from the contributive bun. This
state of things cannot last ; an essential change is
unavoidable in the mechanism of the poor law, and
the sooner it is metered and made known the better.

THE disturbances in Ceylon are over for the pre-
sent. Under sentences of courts-martial some twenty
men have been shot, and under sentences of courts of

I:Okra bteitesklald, impteoted, whipped,
to Bird labotr.. TbiprooktmationSsnbyeeting
districts to martial law.itave been revoked.
To boron the Lepage of a aotorions manifesto,
it Order reigns inyloa."
The Ant proceedings of the session of the legisla-
tin coned of the colony, convoked about the time the
est& fell on this tragic drama, are a melancholy
esnlinnt upon it. The first integers submitted to
tidesmembly ofofficial and gagged non-official nominees
se as own by the governor was a bill of indemnity
Ise al auto does by the constituted authorities during
the svaltran of medial law ' • the next was a bill to
mod sack pants of the dog ordinance—the tax-law
which was one main cause of the rebellion—as relates
to the rural districts, that is, to the districts inhabited
exclusively by natives. After putting down the in-
surrection the first step of, the local government is to
punish the rebels, the next to pardon itself, and the
third to confeas that it provoked the rebellion.
The Ceylon government and its organs are busy
seeking to exonerate it from •the charge of pro-
voking the rebellion. They attribute it to
the priests and headmen, who, anxious to re-
gain their former wealth and authority, practise
upon the ignorance, superstition, and national preju-
dices• of the lower orders; and to the colonists and
I burghers who, dissatisfied with the pressure of tax-
ation, incautiously vituperate the constitution and
Ipolio yof the government in the hearing natives. It
may be that the grumbling of Europeaof nans LI OSM.
firmed the natives in the estimate they had prenously
formed of the character of the local government, sad
it is certain that ambitious priests and chiefs have
been attempting to turn the discontent of their coun-
trymen to their own advantage. Bat what has pre-
pared the mass of the natives to be blind tools in the
bands of designing priests and headmen? and
what has occasioned the incautious grumbling
of the Europeans ? There must be some :pre-
existing sense of injustice when the mass of a popa.
Ilation are ready to follow any leaders, merely to
I change their rulers ; there must be misgavern-
meet when complaints of the existing administration
I such as are safely vented in any reasonably well-'
governed country, are " like fire to heather set," and
6evitably produce civil oombastion.
Nor is the proof far to seek that this has been the
sass in Ceylon. That island has now been subject to,
British rule more than half a century. Yet the Chief
Justice in discharging the jury at Kandy on the
late occasion, felt it his duty to tell them :
—" There is a large part of this country whose
wants and circumstances are quite unknown
to us, where no European appears to have
been for the last thirty years (as one of the witnesses
I told us the other day); and I believe it is true that no
white face has been seen there, except perhaps of
those who have gone upon bunting expeditions."
But the inhabitants of those districts of whose condi-
tion the government is utterly ignorant—who derive
no benefit, receive no protection from it—cannot
escape its tax-gatherers. The census of 1813 gave a
population of 8,275 Europeans and burghers, and
1,310,000 natives. From this population was exacted
in 1843 (exclusive of rents and sales of land and
fines), the sum of 380,5584; and of this 272,4161. is
admitted to have been paid by the natives
exclusively. This gives an average of about
4s. 2d. per head paid for every native man, woman,
and child, to a government, the existence
of which they know only through the taxgatherer,
nine-tenths of the tax-payers having no clothes be-
yond a strip of home-made cloth, and living upon grain
and cocoa-nuts. Is it to be wondered at, then, that
these people should, to use the words of the Chie
Justice, retain "the feeling of their being a conquered
nation "? llis Honour added : "they are discontented
because they h.i.e not a government of their own."
Had he said "because they have no government" he
would have been nearer the mark. Incautious com-
plaints of Europeans, uttered in the hearing. of
natives, may have helped to excite them—ambitions
chiefs and priests may have held out to them false
hopes of improving their condition—but it is the scan-
dalous neglect and extortion of the government that
have prepared them to be so worked upon.
With respect to the alleged unguarded language of
the European settlers an important question is—Are
their complaints well founded? They complain that
the island is taxed beyond its means ; that the reve-
nues of the island are diverted, to illegitimate pur-
poses ; that men ignorant of the local laws and of any
law are promoted from other branches of the civil ser-
vice to be judges; and that unofficial members of the
legislative council, although nominees of the govern-
ment, are not allowed to originate any measure. That
these complaints arc but too well founded there is
good reason to believe. Sir EMERSON TENNENT ad-
mits that great retrenchments, and reduction of taxa-
tion, can and ought to be made. Lord 'l'ol.l
RINOTON, in his opening speech at the lute'
meeting of the council, stated that the revenue of
1847 exceeded that of 1846 by 24,0001.; that the
expenditure of 1847 was le,' than that of 1846 by
58,0001. ; but that there was still an excess of
expenditure, and that the accumulations of surplus
revenue from more fortunate periods were exhausted.
We have seen that whole districts, inhabited by
natives, receive no services from the government in
return for the taxes they pay; and such is the condi-
tion of the planters, that hundreds of young men, dis-
charged from employment on estates because the
owners could not afford to pay them, have been
obliged to solicit public subscriptions to enable them
to emigrate to Australia. These facts leave little
room to doubt that the local administration is such as
warrants grave and indignant remonstrance on the
part of the European population ; and it is rather too
much for the government to expect that they will
suffer in silence, because still worse oppression has
prepared the natives to rebel, where they only
complain.
The the rash and inconsiderate introduction of
new and unheard of modes of taxation precipitated
the outbreak there can be no doubt, and this proves
the incompetence of Lord TORRINGTON and his coun-
cillors.That with an overtaxed people and an ex-
hausted treasury the governor should continue to
draw the enormous salary of which he is in reeeipt is
unpardonable. But it is less the individuals than the
system that are in fault; the system of government
pursued in Ceylon may be more aggravated in degree,
but it is not different in kind, front what is pursued
in all our colonies. The recent events in Ceylon, and
the permanent condition of the island, are an example
of what we have to expect from Downing-street colo-
nial administration. Common justice ought to whis-
per to the British public that if they will conquer
and rule foreign countries they ought to rule them
efficiently and justly ; and to strengthen the " still,
small voice" that whispers this lesson, we may add
that Ceylon, with its exhausted treasury and inade-
quate revenue, is pretty sure to •be brought forward
as a petitioner for a loan or grant (it is the same
thing) out of the proceeds of English taxation.
of

WuT Sir QUALLS NATTER should continue to be i
so irate and inveterate against the Court of Directors
of the East India Company, now that the penciple of
division whereby he will obtain an eighth instead of
a sixteenth of the &nide prize money has been decided
in his favour, has created no little surprise. True, that
court gave a surly recognition to the independent go-
vernment of the province he acquired for it, which his
friend, the Earl of ELLENBOROUGH, erected and ap-
pointed him to; and refused to carry on direct corre-
spondence with the governor of the newly-
created province. True, the proteyi of the
court, Colonel OUTRAM, criticised with severity
the measures by which Scinde was acquirW.
True, its acquisition cost Lord ELLENBOROUGII the
vice-royalty of India, though it gained for him an
earldom. True, the court was not very favourable to
the larger claim of the Governor of Scinde in the
prize-money. Trite, he has not been made a peer.
All these acts of commission and omission doubtless
were hard enough to bear. But still, as they have
been handsomely gilded by no lees a sum than
70,0001., they might, most people have thought, have
been endured in silence.
Other wrongs, or supposed wrongs, however, it
appears, have been heaped by the court on the gal-
lant general. Lord GOUGH'S period of command of
the Indian army is about to expire ; and the Horse
r Guam., it is asserted, have ventured to recommend
Sir CIIARLEII NAPIER to the Court of Directors as his
' lordship's successor. This recommendation from a
quarter usually so influential in Leadenhall-street, it
I is added, not a little embarrassed the court. Guerin-
ink to disregard the recommendation altogether, yet
desirous not to act upon it, the court hit on a skilful
device to avoid it. The directors, we hear, intimated

•
to the military authorities that the recommenda-
tion' if pressed, would not be rejected ; but
that the new Commander-in-Chief would not,