The Express.
London, England, 1846-09-29 00:00:00

qhe Cryortso.

M AI LS.
The mails for New South Wales, &c., will be made up on the evening
of the loth inst.
The West India Inglis, including those for Mexico, Honduras, and
Havana, will be made up on the morning of the td October.
The mils fur liriteth North America, Bermuda, and the United
Btate *ill be made up on the evening of the 3d October.
711.7 overland Trails for Gibraltar, M alto, Greece, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, and China, via Southampton,
will be made up on the morning of the 3d October.
The waits for Madeira, Brazils, Burnt. Ayres, Monte Video, Ete.,
will be made up on the evening of the sth October.
The mails fur Coruna, Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and
Gibraltar, will be ni tile up on tee 711 t October.
The overland closed mails, via .Varseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt. Arlen, Ceylon. India, llong-Kung, &c., will be made up on the
evening of the 7th October.

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HIGH WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
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To-noatow.—lllorning, 40 mie. past 8; Afternoon, 25 min. pica 9.

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPT. 29.

„WHEN you have done wrong stick to it,” should
be the motto of St. Pancras. The directors and poor
guardians in that parish have been actively illustrating
this comprehensive rule of life. They began by neg-
lectingtheir inspectorial duties. The workhouse master,
of course, abused his uncontrolled power; and a sys-
tem of lawless coercion was established. The terror of
returning to this, drove an unhappy female pauper,
out of place, to suicide. Such was the first result of the
directors' culpable neglect. An investigation ensued,
which brought to light practices at valiance no less
with law than with humanity. But the directors
hardened their hearts, and still stood by the master.
Complaints were made of the workhouse rations.
The allowances of the dietary were admitted by
medical authority to be sufficient, if the quantities
and qualities of food prescribed by them were actually
served out. To see that they were, was the duty of
the visiting directors. The parish surgeon declared
they were not. A hasty inspection was made
while the inviry was going on, and everything was
found satisfactory. Of course this farce of inspection
was worthless for purposes of evidence. But it ena-
bled the visiting directors to report themselves
perfectly delighted with the state of things in the
workhouse kitchen. Two of them, who made them-
selves conspicuous in brazening out a rotten case, drew
the most pleasing picture of the dietetic arrangements.
The soup was so good they positively cat it !
They, substantial men, a physician and a barrister,
eat the soup meant for paupers, when etiquette only
required them to taste it!
Elated by their glimpse into the St. Pancras kitchen,
Dr. lifttatiNctum, one of the soup-eating directors,
ordered ordinary rations of bead, meat, potatoes,
soup, porridge, cheese, and beer, to be placed before
the board. They were brought ; and struck conviction
into the doubters. Nothing could be better. Beef, very
superior round, worthy of WILLIAMS of Old Bailey
notoriety ; potatoes, innocent of blight; soup, that
might have tempted a second Es.tu ; porridge, enough
to draw half Scotland southwards ; cheese, bread, and
beer, all most sound, solid, and unworkhouse-like.
The paupers were called in to verify this tempting
array. Alas, for the daring directors who instituted
the experiment! The rations were not recognised.
" The meat we get is more like Sharp's-alley meat
than this," remarked an insolent inmate. " That's
more potatoes than we get," said another. " This
ain't our soup—it's better by half," sighed a third,
sniffing the odours hungrily. At this point we
thought the chain of misdoing must snap. A
HOWARTH might bear up against proud cruelty, ille-
gal punishments, insolence to a medical officer, under-
ground day-rooms, over-crowded dormitories, and
exhaling cess-pools. All these, a first-class barrister's
elasticity of conscience might lump under " classifica-
tion." But at this glaring proof of rascality, it seemed
as if even a HOWARTH must give up his defence of
the desperate case; and cease to stick to the wrong,
as a thing that had become too hot and too heavy
even for his Atlas-like shoulders to support.
There was nothing to be said. Mr. LEE was not
called on for explanation. Nothing was thrown out
to shake the evidence of the paupers. True, they were
paupers; and, as such, in a HOWARTII'S apprehension,
hardly entitled to credit. But the case against the
master remained, on the evidence, as conclusive a
case of guilt as was ever followed by condign punish-
ment

Investigation was barked. A report was pro-
cured, after an hour and a half's discussion with
closed doors. That report, while it proposed
some unimportant changes in the workhouse dis-
cipline, left untouched every point in which LEE,
the master, had been proved guilty during the
investigation. The transaction of the unfair al-
lowances was not even alluded to. A few more
peas, it was suggested, should be put into the broth ;
and a little more milk into the porridge ; but no
word appeared of the trick which at once pro-
claims the Master unfit for his situation, and the
omission of which in the report compels us, in our
own minds, to grace the committee of directors with
epithets it would be unsafe to print. But they have
carried out their principle. They have done wrong,
and stuck to it; through thicker shame and thinner
evasion than we ever remember in any similar attempt
to escape the charge of personal neglect by a deter-
mined ignoring of official misconduct.

A meeting of the vestry was held on Saturday to re-
ceive this precious report: the triumph of Mr. How-
Alai', and the disgrace of St Pancras. We should have
expected the parish to rise en ;Hasse to protest against
the document. They have, however, sanctioned it, by a
majority of 18; and, by so doing, have appropriated
the discredit it throws on all connected with it. No
pariah but St. Pancras, we would fain hope, has such

directors of its board of guardians; and no such
directors but these, such a parish.
Mr. HOWARTH presented the report in a speech Worthy
of himself and his conduct throughout the inquiry. It
exhibits the purse-proud :arrogance of a BUMBLE; and
the same }fit, well-fed contempt for pauper humanity,
which marks that functionary in the novel. But its inhu-
manity is as nothing compared with its impudence.
We quote from a report for which we are indebted to
the Times :
Mr. Howarth read the report at lenth, and then proeeetled to ob-
serve "that the directors had gone very fully-indeed much more fully
than he thought ot all necessary-into an investigation of the com-
plaints which bad been made as to the treatment of toe tampers. A
number of the inteateo, who were taken indiscriminately from the
hall, were examined before the board, and were requested to give
their opinion as to the quality of the food they rt coked in tle hoar.
The result was what miyht have heen antwapated. A gratt number
of the inmates were no doubt dissatisfied with their diet, and if the
food provided them teas ten times us abundant, and ten times as
good -if that were possilee-as that note supplied, they waled not be
satisfied. If the directors or the veotry were to attempt to feed and
lodge awl ci Ake paupers to their entire stakfactiou, he did not think
they would be satirist with a palace, or that they would thkg any
luxury too good for them."
There is something that makes the blood (even of
those who shrink from all parade of humanitarianism)
boil when reading this language. This IlowanTH is
one of the men whose respectability " keeps a gig,"
and whose respect is confined to those who keep gigs
likewise. The image of GOD becomes invisible to his
horny eyes, when clad in rags. A pauper, quoin]
pauper, is to him a lying, discontented, wicked
being : and that without respect to previous life or
character. Poverty is to him disgrace, not the disorder
or crimes which sometimes lead to it. There is no
such thing to his wretched apprehension as good
pauper, or bad pauper. The word has no degrees of
comparison. It carries all its adjectives implicitly along
with it.
As to Mr. HOWARTH'S paltry quibble about the
share he had in sanctioning the incivility of LEE to
Mr. COOPER, we pass it over. It is entirely unim-
portant whether he ur another was chairman on the
disreputable occasion ; or whether it was in full board
room or no, that the master was allowed to insult the
surgeon with impunity. If he were not the offending
party, he only lacked the opportunity to be so.
An amendment was proposed by Mr. MANN, "that
a committee of ten or more vestrymen be appointed to
inquire into the whole management of the workhouse,
and the duties of the various officers employed therein."
The mover of this amendment spoke to the dis-
honesty of the ration-trick :
" Mr. Cooper had stated that if the quality of the food provided for
the paupers was good, a sufficient quantity was allowed. Now he
(Mr. Siesta) was present at the inquiry before the board on Tuesday
last, when specimens of the meat were produced, and be naked a per-
son who was acquainted with ouch matters to examine it. That person
maid that the meat produced before the board was decidedly good. Ile
and his friend afterwards went into the various wards where the in-
mates were at dinner, and examined the meat served out to them;
and the quality of the mod exhibited in the hoard-room was, to a,
the words of his companion, as different from that the paupers were
rereiring as a white coot is from a Vail sack." usat
Mr. HALTON confirms this, if confirmation were
required
" The dialler ration produced by Mr. Lee coasisted of two rery nice
diets of beef and wren potatoes; but a WAS whirls had been street,
out to one of the paupers, and which was brouyht in by one of the
directors, contained only three potatoes, and (shout half the quantity
of meat produced by Mr. Lee."
And Mr. SMITH had illustrated the difference prac-
tically :
" Ile considered that the proper course the directors should have
adopted in order to have obtained a fair sample of the food on 'faiesclity
last, would have been to visit the house in the morning, to select a
portion of the provisions, and to have put them under lock and key
and seal until the meeting of the board. Ile was satisfied that the
food produced before the directors was not a fair specimen of the diet.
Ile considered also that the cook, and the servants in the kitchen,
ought to have bees examined before the board. Ile had taken a plate
of meat on Tuesday, while the dinner was being served out, from the
first person he met in the passage, and he compared it with the speci-
men on the directors' table. The ration produced to the board con-
sisted of a benatiful piers of n round of beef and green notate, a; the
ration which had been served out was about six ounces of what was
called 'clods and stickings,' and three potatoes."
The same gentleman mentioned the dismissal of a
pauper who gave evidence as to the rations ; and fur-
nished several illustrations of the quality of the St.
Pancras diet, so much relished by 1)r. Iltilottsc-
HAM and the high-minded and humane llowAtatt.
His hints of a mal-practice, wider than has yet
fully appeared, will be of service to the Poor-law
Commissioners. Yet, after all this, the amendment
was rejected by 23 to 5!
Enough has transpired to show the necessity of
interference in this cast by the Somerset House autho-
rities. It was mainly for the HOWARTHS and the LEES
that the Poor Law Commissioners were invested with
their superintending authority. As the parish has de-
clined to act,we trust they will not be slow to usurp their
proper function; and show to the direct ors of St. Pancras,
that if they are safe from their fellow-parishioners,
there is a higher power to which they are amenable,
and before which all Mr. HOWARTH'S contempt for
paupers and pauperism will not protect him from a
severe lesson. We only wish it was likely to be more
adequate to his offence ; or that it could reach the
radical cause of his behaviour in this inquiry,—his
wicked and ignorant despisal of those of his fellow-
creatures whom poverty has consigned to the tender
mercies of a St. Pancras work-house, and the superin-
tending providence of a board of guardians which
admits a HOWARTH to its councils.

TILE Irish landlords complain that the English
press is " preaching a crusade against them." The
English press has done nothing of the kind. It de-
nounced the attempts of the Irish landlords to relieve
themselves from any contribution towards the relief
of the peasantry, and it interposed to check their
attempts to convert the relief extended from this
country into a source of profitable jobbing for them-
selves. But the greater part of the Irish landlords
having shown themselves amenable to good counsel,
and backed out of shabby proposals (or, as Mr.
RALrit OSBORNE delicately calls them, " eccen-
tric opinions"), the English press has shown every
disposition to let bygones be bygones, and to encou-
rage the Irish landlords to persevere in the better
course they have entered on.
Such encouragement is much needed, and so may
an occasional reprimand be. The Irish landlords do
their work; but they do it grudgingly. They have
not yet abandoned all hope of inducing Government
to allow them to convert the advances intended to
relieve the immediate distress of the peasantry, into'
means of permanently improving their private estates
without any cost to themselves. To this end they
endeavour to create a prejudice against the Govern-
ment plan of relief, with a view to raise such a popu-
lar outcry as may compel Ministers to abandon it.
" Are you aware," asks Mr. OSBORNE, in that letter
to Lord JonN RUSSELL wherein the selfish callousness
of an Irish landlord is daintily designated an eccentric
opinion," that the entire of the sums of money pre-
sented will be laid out in works of public inutility?
—that we are literally endeavouring to make moun-
tains of mole-hills, laying out roads which lead
nowhere, and planning works which will benefit
no one but the country surveyors; creating, in fact, a
gigantic system of ' unproductive labour, to be repaid
by borrowed money introducing habits of laborious
indolence, in the shape of breaking stones, amongst an
agricultural population, whilst the land which is to
pay for all will derive no benefit from the labour
about to be wasted on the roads ?"

If the Irish landlords are doing all these things,
they certainly are acting very foolishly; but they do
it of their own choice, and not by compulsion of the
ministerial plan of relief. They are not entitled
to make it odious by fathering their own folly upon
it. Ministers neither oblige them to make roads
where net wanted, nor to lay out money
on " works of inutility." Ministers only re-
quire that the works shall be of public, not
of private utility ; and such works have been
devised in various parts of Ireland, though Mr.
OSBORNE and his immediate circle have not had the
wit to hit upon them.
In Timoleague, 4001. has been voted towards the
erection of a Bridewell, and 300!. towards repair-
ing the parish chapel. In Knockane, 231. has
been voted to enclose the churchyard, and 30!.
to erect a wall round the parish chapel. In Ros-
common, something has been allowed to enclose the
cemetery of Clonfinla. The present is exactly the
time when works such as the Bridewell should be
commenced ; works of undeniable utility, but from the
expense of which ratepayers shrink when they have

no stronger motive than simple utility to urge
them on. The repairs of Catholic chapels, too, are
most useful. The church of the majority in Ire-
land is supported by the emtributions of
the poor: its chapels are too often so small that
they cannot contain the whole congregations, or so
ruinous that they cannot keep out the winter storm.
The erection of roomier chapels, the repairing of the
dilapidated, will prevent a whole host of coughs, ca-
tarrhs, and consumptions; permanently improving the
health and increasing the longevity of the Irish pea-
santry. Again, with respect to the inclosure of
churchyards; it is not very creditable to the landlords
of Ireland that we receive by the same post accounts
of two presentment sessions, one in Kerry and one in
ltoscommon, in which grants to enclose parish burial-
grounds are advocated on the ground that for want of
fences to them the pigs may habitually be seen disturb-
ing the remains of the dead. A general inclosure of
burial-grounds throughout Ireland would go tar to
teach habits of neatness and order, and to heighten
the reverence for humanity dead or alive.
These arc works of public utility; and towards
their completion, Eng'ishmen will gladly see ad-
vances made by Government, even upon such indiffe-
rent security as Irish landlords can give. But they
will not hear of advances for the mere purpose of
making improvements in private estates, for which
each owner ought to pay out of his own pocket.

Scorrisn Poon LAW ECONOMICI.--On the 16th
September last the Scottish Poor-law Board of Super-
vision issued a circular, calling on such parochial
boards as required "to make extraordinary allow-
ances to paupers" in consequence of the failure of the
potato crop, to make such allowances " in food rather
than money ;" and recommending that "stores of pro-
visions should im:nediatcly be made at convenient
places," so that the poor might have "food of good
quality," and in order that the boards might " purchase
larger quantities of provisions at a cheaper rate than
paupers could buy them in retail, and the difference
thereby be saved to the parish." This proposed institu-
tion of parochial Josephs has been met in a becoming
manner by the parochial board of North Leith, who
met on the 24th instant and passed a series of spirited
resolutions, evincing much mom knowledge of the
pritriples of political economy than their superiors of
the upper board. The local board admits, 1. That
the potato crop has failed, but considers that the de-
rangement of the food market consequent thereon
has been somewhat exaggerated, and that " prices
will be regulated truly according to the supply and
demand." 2. It holds that the idea of famine is un-
tenable, and that the freedom of trade, capital, enter-
prise, and "the accumulative ambition of our mer-
chants," will be found sufficient to procure supplies
from the cheapest markets fur supply of the dearest
markets, "and that supply will continue as long ns the
co:sinning prices yield a commission profit." 3. That
were the different parochial boards to step into the
market, prices would rise; and thus, while the pauper
would have his bread secured to him, the prices would
be raised on the industrious labouring pour. 4. That
the retailer's profits are at all times small, and if
withdrawn would affect their ability to defray the
expense of rent, taxes, and living, and so add to, in-
stead of mitigating, the general distress. S. That the
board, therefore, resolve that it is inexpedient to law
up stores of provisions. We trust their example will
be universally followed, as they have clearly common
sense and science on their side. Adam Smith wrote
his Wi,alth of Nations at Kirk aldy, opposite to
Leith ; and his doctrines appear to have been wafted
across the Firth of Forth, and to have taken root to
Same purpose amongst the denizens of North Leith.
The Board of Supervision was thecreation of Sir Robert
Peel's government ; and as the latter foundered in the
act of establishing free-trade principles, it were de-
sirable that all subordinate institutions should keep in
mind what is now the settled order of the day; and
give up the Gothic notion of doing evil that good • may
come.

We have received the Paris journals of Sunday.
They are still occupied with the inexhaustible subject
of the Spanish marriage.
The National, after some prefatory observations on
the article in the Debars of Saturday, has the follow-
ing remarks upon the attitude of the English Cabinet :
The long silence of the Whig Cabinet is sasily explained.
Arrived at power through a happy chance, with but a bor-
rowed majority in the House of Commons, it feared meeting
adversaries who would cast in its teeth the it showed
in 1810. The question of the marriage of the Queen and
Infanta was discussed at Eu by Lord Aberdeen and M.
Guizot, in presence of Queen Victoria and the King of the
French. The Whigs wanted to know precisely what passed,
and only spoke out, after having receivel the assurance of
Lord Aberdeen and Sir Robert Peel, that they might rely
upon their support in opposing the accomplishment of an act
which these two ministers regarded as trickery. It was then
only that Lord Palmerston sent his diplomatic note to M.
Guizot, which, as we previously remarked, is worded in a
most polite sod moderate manner. He lava stress on the
stipulated conventions of the treats, of Utrecht; hut, besides
that there is another. which, though verbal, ought to be the
more respected by the ministers, as it had for witnesses and
guarantees, the Queen of England and Louis Philippe.
Lord Palmerston insists on the fact ; he calls
to mind that about two months since M. Guizot
sent a diplomatic note on this question, to which no
reply was returned by the British Government, as it was
first requislte to asecetain what had pa.-ed at Eu. It was
whilst awaiting this reply that the affair of the marriage was
concluded, without the knowledge either of the British Mi-
nister at Madrid, or of the Ministry, which had at various
periods professed its friendly intentions. Af'er exposing the
facts, the note enters into the objections, and, however mea-
sured may be its tone, the words remonstrance' and
'protest' must have been plainly uuderstood by M. Guizot."
Ws have also on the same theme the comments of
the Canstitutiannel :
" The marriage of the Duke of Montpensicr, suitable in
itself and agreeable to the two &millss concerned, is likely
to become a cause of rupture between France and England.
It has given rise to all those diplomatic difficulties which the
marriage of a French Prince with Queen Isabella would
have originated, as the Infanta is heiress to the throne. It
will never realise the same advantages, and we may add,
that the difficulties have been increased, instead of being re-
moved, by a three years' negotiation. The dispositions of
the two government► seem to be as follows. Our's, resolved
on the success of this family affair, is determined to carry it
out at all risks. After having for six years demanded innu-
merable sacrifices from the nation, in the name of the English '
alliance, it now breaks up that alliance for the sake
of a marriage which does not promise any great political
results, an alliance so highly boasted, amt to be so dearly
paid for. The Duke of Montpensi,r i. to leave on Monday,
and the marriage is fixed fur the 10th. The English Govern•
meat seems equally decided and tirm, sad as yet no judg-
ment can be formed as to hose far its opposition will extend.
There are but two possible issues to the struggle ; either
war, which a single spark would suffice to kindle at the
present moment; or, if the English Ministry contents itself
with a simple protestation, p'r,a inent political hostility be-
tween the two governments, until England sucei eels in re-
taliating severely upon us in Morocco or elsewhere; until
our ministers have paid a high p•ice, at the expense of the
nation; for the entente cordiale which they have just destroyed
with their own hands."
The Duke of Montpensicr is expected in Madrid on
the 4th of October.
The refugees continue to be the subject of vigilant
watchfulness on the part of the authorities. The
Marquess of Labrador and M. de Villafranca are
amongst the Spanish refugees whose houses have
been searched by the Paris police. Their papers have
been submitted to a severe investigation. On the morn-
ing of the 24th, the Spanish Carlist refugees who had
been confined in the municipal prison of Bordeaux,
the Colonels Manzano and Noguerucla, and the Canon
G. Caballero, were conveyed in the steamer to the
citadel of Blaye, as a measure of precaution, and
in order that these chiefs may not give any aid
to any fresh outbreak. Colonel Manzano has
been ill since his detention, and a doctor was sent to
him; but the authorities, acting in conformity with
their instructions from Paris, would not permit the
Colonel to remain at his own residence.

Preparations arc making at Compiegne to receive
the Royal family, who propose passing a few days
there.
The Ministers of Finance and Commerce have re-
cently received the grand cross of the order of
Leopold. Several subordinate members of the ad-
ministration in the departments of trade and customs
have been also nominated grand officers, commanders,
and officers of the same order.

Rear-Admiral Bruat will leave Tahiti before the
arrival of Captain Lavaud, his successor. Ile is ex-
pected in France in the course of next month.
Up to the time of our regular express of Sunday
being closed, neither the English nor the Belgian
mails had arrived in Paris. It was feared the delay
was occasioned by some accident on the Great
Northern Railway.

We learn by our letters from Madrid of the 22nd
inst., that on Sunday, the 20th inst., the Duke of
Valencia went to the Palace to have the honor of