The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-08 00:00:00

Zile erproig.

The overland elated maDe.eiTebilaiseillee, to the Mediterranean.
Egypt, Ad., fusion, Ind* Hoeg Kong, kc., will be made up on the
evening of the Bth Nov,
The malls for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madera. (odic, and Gibraltar
will be made up en the morning of the nth November.
Letters for the tinted States will be forwarded by the French mall
vic.m-packet Union, espected to sail from Havre on the lOto lost.
All lrtteia intended to be forwarded by this conveyance must be
mareially addressed, " By French packet from Howe."
The west ladle Hada excluding Bermuda, Nam., Havanna,
Honduras, New Orleatui, Vera Cruz, Tampico, stet Porto Rico. and
including time foe Junta, Carthame. Meth Herds., CUM*.
,Weed.
on of South America, and St. Juart-de-Nendeguer
will be made up on the morning of the I;th Wet
lbe mode for British North Anieriaa Bermuda. and the Unite.
Siam will be made op on the evening of the 18th November.
Th. overland mails for Gibraltar. Malta. Greece, the lowan !shads.
gavot, Aden, Ceylon., India, I 100s-Kong, and China. no 8041U1SOL011111,
will be made up on the morning of the Ice November.
The mails for New South Wales. COI tomato's Land. and New
Tasiand will be made up on the evening of the 30th November.
The mails for the Brasile, the hirer Plate, Monte Video, Pernam-
buco, Bahia, Madeira, and Buenas Amt., will he made ap on the
ironing tithe lth December.

0.•
at Alverifteuria
the OMlee.l4 !

TO COllllllll,Olll/EPITI.
Woodall • Tee [mod Loodo• l M. mart bp
lonatonheuron. b, Two debark on Pm dap of publication.

BIOS WATIA AT LONDO2I-1111001.
Tess Pal—Mlocals. 4 INIAP44. M 44,6444." =
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LONDON, MONDAY, NO V. 8.
PRIVATE letters received by the last packet from
Rio de Janeiro, contain intelligence of very consider-
able importance. It is now, our readers will remem-
ber, some years since the treaty of commerce which
had so long existed between this country and the
empire of Brazil was terminated by the latter in con-
formity with its provisions ; and, since its termina-
tion, all the efforts of oar diplomacy to conclude an-
other treaty have proved unavailing. So long, in-
deed, as the sugar of Brazil was excluded from con-
sumption in Eugland, it was unreasonable to expect
that Brazil would give to our commercial relations
with it any definite or permanent—still less
any favourable—character ; and the failure of
our special mission to Rio, under Mr. HENRY
ELLIS, therefore surprised no one, except, per-
haps, the cabinet that were foolish :enough
to send it. From that date to this, our im-
portant trade with the Brazilian empire has been
conducted without a single interna•ional stipulation
for its protection; an immense amount of British
property in Brazil has been, and still is, at the mercy
of laws, the administration of which is not distin-
guished
by, to say the least, perfect purity; and in cases
of the deaths and intestacies of British subjects having
pioperty in Brazil, it has passed into the custody of
lira zilian auth.orities,from whose grasp it is not very easy
or very economical to recover either part or whole. It is
true indeed that the Brazilian government has not, as it
had the power to do, placed any differential duties on
British goods; but continues to admit them on terms
as favourable as she does the goods of other countries.
But this wise abstinence from retaliation has been
caused by a regard to her own interests, in the same
way as we have at last removed the prohibition on
Brazilian sugar, because we became convinced it was
for our own benefit that we should consume it, regard
less of its mode of cultivation.

That removal would, of course, under ordinary cir-
cumstances have dissipated all the objections previ-
ously entertained by Brazil to the renewal of a treaty of
commerce with this country, and nothing, it might have
been anticipated, would have been easier than its
conclusion. Ail that we could desire arc the commer-
cial rights of the most favoured nation in Brazil, and
such s,ipulations for the protection of British property
in the empire as experience had proved to be needful ;
and corresponding provisions on our part would, it
may be supposed, have satisfied Brazil. But, unfor-
tunately, since the termination of the former
commercial treaty, the relations of the two
countries have, in other respects, assumed a
most unusual character: and the imperial cabinet
of Brazil has refined to entertain th- proposition,
with which Lord Howden, the new British minister
at the court of Rio, has inaugurated his mission for a
new treaty of commerce : or creel to discuss any other
subject of importance with his lordship.
_ . _

The circumstances that have produced this refusal
are these. Three years ago Brazil exercised the
power, reserved to her by treaties, of terminating the
mutual right of search over vessels engaged, or sus-
pected to be engaged, in the slave trade, which had
existed between Brazil from the time of its
separation from Portugal, and England, and of
abolishing the courts of mixed commission at Rio
and Sierra Leone. The Earl of ABERDEEN, then
Foreign Secretary, did not contest the right of Brazil
to release herself from these obligations: on the con-
trary, he fully admitted the legal power of Brazil to
do so. But, by one of the most flagrant perversions
of treaty-construction that diplomacy can furnish, his
lordship induced, at the close of the session of 1844, the
parliament, hurriedly and inconsiderately, to pass an
act authorising British ships of war to search and seize
Brazilian vessels engaged, or suspected to be engaged,
in the slave trade, and British courts of vice-
admiralty to condemn such vessels when captured
and brought before them. In vain M. De Lisnos,
the Brazilian resident here, protested to Lord ABER-
DEEN against so unprecedented a violation of the
rights of an independent state; in vain the present
Vice-President of the Board of Trade, Mr. NIILNER
Gin-oN, denied the legality by the law of nations of
such a statute, and pointed out its inevitable conse-
quences; Sir ROBERT PEEL took the measure under
his own special protection, and at the close of
the session procured its enactment. Well; the law
—no, the statute, for we will not call the enactment
law —has been acted on : under its operations British
ships of war have searched and seized Brazilian
vessels, and British courts of vice admiralty have con-
demned them. Renewing from time to time the pro-
tests of their representative at this court, the ministers
of the Emperor of Brazil have submitted to these out-
rages—outrages they really are—u acts of force and
violence which they have not the strength to resist.
But now that Lord HOWDEN has submitted to
them proposals for the conclusion of a new treaty
of commerce, the Brazilian cabinet has declined to
entertain the negotiations, or to enter on the discus-
sion of other subjects between the two countries re-
quiring decision and settlement, until this art of 1844
be repealed. And Lord Hownex has been obliged to
apply to Lord PALMERSTON for his decision on this
point; and we rather think his lordship has been
officially made acquainted with the fact, which he
ought to have learned sooner, that the Emperor,
senate, chamber of deputies, and people at large,
men, women, and children, are determined to enter
into no negotiation with England until Lord ABER-
DEP.N'S bill is withdrawn.

For the present, we feel that we shall have done
sufficient in stating these circumstances, and in
calling the attention of our merchants and
manufacturers connected with Brazil to them,
in order that they may lose no time in
pressing on Lord PALMERSTON the absolute necessity
of immediately applying to parliament, on its assem-
bling, to remove the obstacle, which Lord ABERDEEN
induced it to erect in 1844, to the renewal of commer-
cial relations between the countries; for they may
rest assured that there will be no treaty of commerce
concludes with Brazil until the act of 1811 be re-
pealed—an act in the teeth °revery acknowledged prin-
ciple of international law, submission to which would
render Brazil unworthy of a place among independent
nations.

ON the ever memorable sth of November the
Standard and 3rerning Herald, resolute to have •
GUY of their own, hawked the luckless Lord
STANLEY about from door to door. The noble lord
was becraencd with the trappings of a party leader,
and cut quite as desolate and lugubrious a figure as
the legitimate effigies of the day.
Lord STANLEY, we learn from the sources of in-
formation referred to, has issued • circular inviting
the members of his party to meet at his house on the
morning of the 18th, preparatory to the opening of
parliament. As to the character and composition
of Lord STANLEY'S party the Standard and Herald
appear to be rather at a loss. They are not even
agreed upon its name, the one desigtwing it" the
Conservative," the other "the Country party." Of
its principles they appear equally ignorant. The
Herald indeed boldly asserts "that all attempts to
un-Christianise the House of Commons will find no
sanction in the noble leader of the conservative
party." But the Herald is by no means so certain of
the intentions of his followers. With respect to them
it falteringly stammers out that " it is hardly possible
to conceive that the followers of that leader will be
lees sensible of the obligations due to the religion we
profess, and the holy church to which we belong."
" one point, however, the STANLEY gazettes an

agreed, viz., that this party, of whomsoever composed,
to whatever principles attached, by whatever designa-
tion known, is to do nothing. "We advise," says the
Herald, "no premature steps, no over-hasty abandon- ,
ment of laws to which the country is pledged, so bold
plans for breaking down the hindrenei which free-
trade mismanagement has raised." "We are aware,"
adds the Standard, "that the country is not yet
ripe for a retractation of the blunders of
the last twenty-five years (although it is ri-
pening fast), and, therefore, we should depre-
-1 cate any present demand for the repair of these blun-
ders." The "country," or "conservative party," or
whatever its name be, has no course of policy to re-
commend, and if the Standard may be credited it is
equally unprepared to undertake the task of opposi-
tion. "We assume that the country party can have
no purpose of displacing the present ministers, and
we will add thst an honourable and high-minded
party cannot design to embarrass a ministry which it
could not displace, or eves meditate a refusal of just
and necessary support to such a ministry, as far as
this support can be given consistently with the main-
tenance of its own principles."
This think-nothing, do-nothing, be-nothing stra-
tegy, is, in good sooth, all that the noblemen and
gentlemen, who may assemble at Lord STANLEY'S on
the morning of the 18th, will be capable of. They
lack the essential ingredient of a political party.
They have no hold on public opinion, or any section
of it. They are neither ruseyites, nor evangelical low
churchmen; they are neither for an exclusively me-
tallic currency, nor for inconvertible notes ; they are
not going to tilt against the poor law. In all matters
of ecclesiastical and economical policy they are at one
with the bulk of the moderate conservatives, and
not a few of the Whigs. They believe in the
volumes of the statutes at large. Their only points
of difference from either of the parties, we have named,
relate to certain constitutional changes which no
experience can drive into their heads have not already
been effected, or are in the process of being carried into
effect. They dream of restoring political relations,
which all the rest of the world have agreed are as
completely dead and buried as the divine right of the
times of the STUARTS. Beyond their personal in-
fluence with a few friends, and their proprietary in-
fluence with a few dependents, they have no means
of enlisting followers. They are political officers
without a soldiery.
The country or conservative party is moribund. A
real living party might find an ample apology for in-
action in the nature of the impending session of par-
liament. It is summoned to arrange a definite simple
piece of business, and be prorogued again. If pro-
longed, it can only be by the talking of ardent repeal-
er', and monetary theorists, whose talk can lead to no
practical result. A party endowed with vitality
might gain rather than lose by declining to take part
in the discussions of such a session, and husbanding
its resources for future struggles. But a party under-
going the process of evaporation cannot afford to
adopt such tactics. It must speak out while breath is
left in it. If it do not show front now, it may, by
the time parliament meets again, be where last year's
snow is. . .

There is singular appropriateness in the installa-
tion of Lord STANLEY as the leader of such a party.
The physical energy which characterises his declama-
tion when his passions are roused, and that wrangling
propensity which made him ever foremost among the
talkers of the lower house, lent him, for a time, the
prert ige of a daring and energetic, if not of a trust-
worthy, politician. But his career in office dispelled
the illusion. In every department he has filled, Lord
STANLEY has been found shrinking from respon-
sibility with morbid anxiety. His game has ever
been to procrastinate, except where he could transfer
the responsibility of action to some other shoulders
than his own. His paramount and paralysing weak-
ness is want of moral courage. The politician, who
dare not ay, is most appropriately placed at the head
of the party which cannot act.

IN one aim, at least, of his unwearied struggles,
DANIEL OThNNELL completely failed, that of bring-
ing about any common bond of feeling or interest
amongst Irishmen of different castes and classes.
Neier have these been so mutually adverse as they
are at present, so decidedly mustered in different
camps, each intractable and entrenched therein. The
landlords meet in the Dublin Rotund° ; the tenants
have their monster meetings, to assert their rights; to
which if a landlord, like Mr. OiDORNE, boldly
demands to be admitted and be heard, he is met by a
cold refusal. The lower class of all, the labourers, fed
on conacre in lieu of wages, have also their meetings,
or at least their common and fearful understanding
and law, which dwins the landlord, who denies
tkenr their old natural livelihood and dearly-loved
potato, to death.
All those classes of the Irish population are in sepa-
rate camps. And there is another camp of the towns-
folk; of people deriving the means of life, not from
land, or at least very indirectly from land. These are
denounced by the landlords as far too well off
under the new poor law, and as not found to contri. '
bate their due share of the public burthens. Nor are
, these all the standards that rise and glitter in the
field ; each church has its banners, its views, its preju-
dices, and its strength. Amongst all, the govern-
ment has to intervene, with very small powers and
force—for parliament has of late begrudged and denied
the Irish government more than a few places to give,
and some moral force to wield. Government has to keep
peace amidst these contending parties, to protect the
weak, menace the unruly reasoner with the sword.
and bear the odium of all that each of these classes
will not do and will not allow to be done.

The worst of this complete separation into camps,
this incipient state of war, is the suspension of all
permanent and profitable arrangements. Every ose
looks to the future; every one says the present is no'
time to fix anything. Let as live from day to day,
from hand to mouth. By-and-by, when it is seen
whether the poor law will last,—whether the unions
will endure,—whether the labour rate will beenforced,
—it will be time enough then to give leases or
make any settlement of land beyond the exigencies of
the moment The great curse of Ireland is that every-
thing is provisional, unsettled, hopeless, and that all
classes are looking through telescopes at the future,
instead of thinking of the present Three-fourths of I
the present insecurity of tenure, and other quarrels
between upper and lower classes, connected with land,
proceed from that cause. Neither landlord nor tenant
knows what men, what law, what prospects, or what
state of things to trust.
The moat prominent subject of grievance and dis-
cussion at present is tenant-right. By tenant in this
country people generally mean, we suppose, a tenant
of above ten acres of ground. For he who holds less
cannot be deemed to possess capital or to make im-
provements, or to entitle himself to compensation.
The question of tenant-right ought to be carefully
separated into that class which contains the real
Birmer, the owner of stock, capable of what may be
called farming, and the clans ofmere squatters. It is
the latter who are clamorous for tenant-right and
permanent occupation, who are menaced by clear-
ances, who avenge themselves by outrage.
The great problem to be first solved in Ireland, is
how to deal with the small holders. The landlord,
with respect to them, is placed in a terrible dilemma.
Government and the public call upon him to improve,
to drain, to give extra employment on his land.
Prudence tells him not to trust the potato
crop, or feed his labourer on conacre, for such
crop may fail, and then the poor-rates or the
necessity of feeding the population gratuitously,
will not only swallow up his rent, but the very fee
of his estates. If, however, the landlord clears,
giving half the labouring class means to emigrate,
and promising the other half daily wages, he is mur-
dered because he refuses the potato and the con-acre.
This was the case of Major MAHON, whose inhu-
man murder has spread horror throughout the land.
What was the situation of this estate ? Mr. MAllO:4'9
evidence before the DEVON commission fully de-
scribes it.
" From the circumstances of the 40s. freeholders, there was
generally one member of the family in parliament, and in
order:to make a number of votes, it wee set in very Mall
divisions. On the estate there are 2,097 houses to 6,000
acres, the population being about 10,485. The average
number of acres on the estate would be three acres and a
half to each house. The acknowledged tenantry who pay
rent are 745, and many of them era held in companies, or
co.'s consisting of three pereenc"
Here is an estate, of which the peasant popula-
tion was swollen, and the land subdivided to serve the
political purposes of the landlord. Lord HART-
LAND having become a lunctie, the property fell into
the management of Chancery, which never interfered
with a tenant as long as he paid his runt To this
property, on which pauperism bad been allowed to
spread, succeeds as intelligent landlord, who gives

largely for ernigrificrn. largely for relief, bat whose
aim mrsit have been to detach the peasant from the
land, not even allowing him the annual and casual
lependence upon conacre, and to throw him upon
fwatlor the rates. The Irish peasant has got no
m either one or the other. We have seen the result
in the dread catastrophe of Major MAHON'S murder.
We have here stated fairly both aides of the ques-
tion—that for the landlord, that for the peasant ; •
terrible and a trying one it is to both. Wl.ether par-
liament was all-wise in deciding that it was sufficient
to impose • poor-law in order to reconcile or draw a
line, between the interests of these classes, we have
always doubted, and still do so. But the poor-law
having been voted, through it and its supplement the
redemption of Ireland must be worked. And it is to
those supplements that the attention of the legislature
must be directed.

The council__ of landlords, which met at the
Rotundo, proposes to meet the financial difficulty of a '
poor-rate, by converting it into a general Irish property
tax, and at the same time to abolish the test, by
giving relief to the able-bodied in exchange fur
labour. For this purpose industrial workshop. and
farms are to bo created ; and the guardians are to
employ the poor upon the union farms, and make the
townsfolk pay the labourers, whom they cannot put
to work on their estates. These recommendations of