The Express.
London, England, 1853-06-25 00:00:00

affects to treat the measure as a permanent one, and
as such deprecates its adoption upon Insufficient and
iecomplete in'ortnatian ? This is au ob% isms inco•
hominy of urefessions a palpable instability of
pretences which the most superticill and I
thoughtless cannot fail to obserse. Th. Bill of
Sir CHARLES W 001) is in reality nothing. hut a
provisional one; and its most glaring defect is, that
it is not so in name. But this is a defect easily
cured. Let some reformer propose to invert a clause I
limiting it to a period of three years, and lot Young I
Derbyism support such an amend= nt, if it ill.
This will be honest, practical, and self-explanatory.
It would meet at once all the objections to imperfect
legislation upon incomplete inquiry, and ali the
oSjectione not unreasonably felt to a mere
factious adjonretnent of the question without
any time of postponement being named. It is no
better titan solemn trifling on the putt of Lord i
STANLEY to tell the house in a passing parentle•sis,
that he means of course in the event of the Ministe.
rial project being rejected to recommend the adop-
tion of a Continuance BM for a certain • period,
leasing the period, a most material point, to be settled
hereafter. This is the very trap which we have all
along warneA our more vehement friends, that it
was likely they would find laid for them. First
they are to be made use of to throw out
the only Bill now before Parliament relative to
India ; and that feat once accomplished, the Carlton
camp would forthwith be broken up, and Young
Derbyism would, perhaps, not reluctantly declare
its inability to compel ministers to pass a Continu-
ance Bill. What must be the inevitable result
Simply this : that when Parliament re-assembled after
Christmas, ministers would come down to the House,
remind it that the act of 1831 was expiring, and
on the plea of urgency call for immediate and per-
manent legislation for India. A thousand pretences
would then be found for protracted discussion ; and
then the moat corrupt Parliament which England
hu seen for half a century would vote with eager-
ness that the session of IS‘l4 was too far spent to
permit the consideration of the dreaded Reform
Bill. This is the trick of Young Derbyism. Who
will be its dupe?

THERE is a recent morsel of news from Wales,
which appears as significant as it is agreeable. The
South Wales line of railway is open now to Ss an-
us ; and the fishermen in the bay seem as much
surprised by the sudden increase of demand for their
fish as if the same thing had not happened before, I
when the Holyhead line was opened. The coast
population is as busy as can be in that neighbour-
hood pocking up mackerel for the rail ; and in the
towns along that rail, and in several which commu-
nicate with it, there is such an eating of fish
as can hardly have been seen since the old Catholic
days. The demand is likely to increase rapidly
if the price of meat continues to rise as it
has done lately. The labourer will do now
what the tradesman did in the most oppres-
sive days of the war; he will often buy the
cheapest fish he can get instead of paying for mutton
30 per cent, dearer than he did a year or two since.
At the beginning of the century, it was no uncom-
mon thing to see in tradesmen's families, and even in
some of the next rank above, a tureen of cockles in
place of the joint ; for the same reason that the loaf
was made one-third of mashed potato—the dearness
of provisions. The labourer is more at ease now,
perhaps, than the tradesman of that time. Three
years ago, when the farmers were giving up the
hope of the restoration of the corn-laws, they still
pleaded for a prohibitory duty on foreign cattle,
and provisiors, saying that the lower orders had
now got cheap bread ; but that meat was the
affair of the classes above the labourers ; and that
those classes ought to pay a reasonably good price for
a luxury which was above the labourers reach.
Here was another instance of human propensity to
settle beforehand what men should eat, and pay, and
experience. Within these three years, labourers
have become, to a considerable extent, meat eaters,
from the rise of wages and the cheapness of bread.
To supply the demand, the old depots of cattle, in
almost inaccessible places, have been cleared out, by
the aid of railway transit. An unfavourable season,
especially for sheep, has followed; and the prices of
meat have so risen, that the farmer. may be quite
easy about the labourer having the luxury of beef
and mutton too cheap, if he can get it at all. The
supply of cottage pigs, from which so much of the
cottager,' bacon was formerly derived, has not been
extensively renewed, since its decline in consequence
of the potato failure. Jug as the labourer has en-
joyed a taste of the comfort of fresh meat, it is rising
out of his reach again; and the salt is not so easily
procurable as it was. And at this juncture, when
he is sighing at his work over the additional
penny per lb. of beef, and three-halfpence per lb.
of mutton, and wishing he and his neighbours bod
pigs, the train rushes past, and he sees huge crates
piled up, filled with many thousands of mackerel, to
be sold as cheep as any food whatever. It really
seems as If certain influences were converging to-
wards making us the fish-eating people we once were,
and that our island position tells us we ought to be.
In the ancient days, when not only all conventual
houses, but nearly all country houses, had their fish-
ponds, there was worse management has even of
late about supplying fish for popular eating; but
the people were fewer, and not so dependent on their
own exertions for food, as at present. Somebody
was bound to feed them; and while they were living
on the salt meat prepared in autumn (as our fore-
fathers did not know how to keep their cattle alive in
winter), the gentry relieved their salt diet by fresh fish
from their ponds and rivers, and, when near enough,
from the sea. The tasteand demandfor fish seem tohave
declined as our grating skill increased, and the
catholic uses of fish diminished; till it became a
standing wonder that, in a group of islands like
ours, with channels, bays and inlets all alive with
fish, our people could ever suffer from hunger. But
the fact was easily accounted for by those who know
the effect of political meddling in industrial matters-
Our exportation of fish never had a fair chance, from
Ithe amount of protection with which it was incum-
berred ; and the small home supply languished, for
reasons which the railways are putting an end to
for ever. One of the earliest facts on record—a fact
of just a thousand years ago—is curious, and might
have been instructive, if rightly read, for several cen-
turies past. The predecessors of the Leith and New-
haven fishermen were forbidden to sell any fish to a
distance till their neighbours were all supplied at a
regulated price. The fishermen very wisely went over
to Holland, and taught the Dutch the value of Scotch
fisheries, setting up that opposition in Holland which
has been the subject of endless complaint, in Parlia-
ment and in our markets, for centuries. Nothing
that our rulers could do ever availed against any of
our rivals, till Government conceived the wisest idea
possible in the came,—that of doing nothing.
CHAIM IL took the matter ink nd, and failed.
He formed a company, permit a lottery, and
ordained collections in tho churches. He compelled
all victuallers and ooffce-shop keepers to take a cer-
tain quantity of herrings every year at a certain
price. He imposed duties and offered bounties ; and
all in vain. An old economist of the time offers Ms
opinion of the reason :—" We fish intolerably dear,
and the Dutch exceedingly cheap." The last pre•
tection of the provincial fish-market is now op&
ssded. The post-horse duty has been long remitted