The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-09 00:00:00

destruction, that has eramped our political influeno6
abroad, and to a great extent demoralised society at
home, is, we hope, tottering to its fall. Mer-
chants and hankers who have grown up in trade,
and understand its workings and ramifications,
are the men who made England what it is.
Members of parliament who would force St. Stephen's
on the Royal Exchange must set their account to be
able to stand a City examination. If they are not
proof to that test, they must not wonder, if the City
comes to St. Stephen's. In our opinion it will be best
for the parties to divide their labours. Let parliament
leave the details of trade and banking to those who
managed them well until they were interfered with,
and the citizens will surely have no objection to leave
unto Cesar the things that be Cresar's
Were any argument required to enforce the flexes
sity of an expression of public opinion as to the mode
in which the commercial affairs of the country have
been trifled with in certain quarters, a striking one is
furnished by the oracular document to which we have
alluded. For months the cry has been repeated :
there is a deficiency of the circulating medium !
Although the fact was undeniable, yet it was appa-
rently doubted. The occurrence was sought to be ac-
connted for; it was shown to be a temporary pressure
that trade would remove. Appeal was made by the
trading world for the means of prosecuting current
operations. The appeal was coldly sneered at : those
who proffered it were denounced as unworthy of
credit, and the scourge was shaken over the heads of
all who ventured a word in favour of their suffering
countrymen, or who pointed to the destruction which
their fall would entail upon the nation. But when
the signal is given to change the direful note that has
so long been sounded, we find reasons given by this
extraordinary advocate of the ministerial movement,
that are still less endurable than the previous
Lag rhodetnontades.
When houses like Messrs. SANDERSON and Co.,
perfectly solvent, and with their cash-boxes filled
with good bills to the amount of a million
sterling, were obliged to atop, no relaxation
was allowed. Neither the men, nor the
shaken confidence of the trading community,
alarmed at so unprecedented an occurrence, were
i treated with respect, or even with compassion. It is
now suddenly discovered that the failure of banks
(which has been mainly a result of the shock then
given to confidence) has occasioned a decrease of
country issues to the extent of some 290,000/. It
lis hinted that on the . ground of this small de-
ficiency, a measure is to be founded in the
spirit, and even in accordance with the letter,
of the generally detested Restriction Act. We
merely notice this hint as indicating the tendency on
every possible occasion to establish an unheard-of
right of interference between public opinion and the
executive authorities. Since an inquiry is to be de-
manded on all sides, there is little doubt that it will
be a sifting and rigid scrutiny of the events of the
last three years. To prejudge its result, and pre-
scribe a specific measure, that can only follow this
inquiry, is to usurp an amount of wisdom and authority
ascendant over parliament, the country, and the crown.
With respect to the threat held out to the railway
interest, we think that it will prove equally futile
with the prescriptions thrust upon bankers. Men
who have large interests at stake are likely to be up
and doing ire their defence. They have been supine
and trusting long enough, incompliance with a feeling
that at one time prevailed in favour of a large measure
of government control. But when the country is
coolly told that its intelligent classes are unable to
di,tinguish right from wrong, and that these power-
ful instruments of wealth and civilisation are to be
given and withheld at the beck of a minister or of his
scribes, the long suffering, which is the Saxon ele-
ment of the British constitution, is likely to give way,
and the rights of the subject asserted in finding de-
fenders who are wise enough to form an opinion of
their own, and who have weight enough with the
country to cause it to be respected.

IT is necessary that those who take interest in the
West Indian question, and who do not or cannot re-
collect its past history, should know that there yet
survives a small knot of conceited persons who for-
merly were very much consulted (generally to their
own profit) by the West Indian proprietors of the old
pro-slavery school, and whose injudicious and intem-
perate counsels inflicted serious injury on the sugar
colonies. The opinions of these persons, untempered
by age and experience, have, happily, no influence
over the West Indian interest of the present day;
consequently the remedial views which now pre-
vail have no more bitter opponents than
some of the former advocates of the West Indians ;
and as these gentry still have access to a few ultra
tory journals, and as that portion of the press is irri-
tated at the rational and sensible course the members
of the West Indian body in the House of Commons
pursued in the last two sessions on the great and final
discussions on the corn laws, it must not, after this
explanation, surprise any one to read in the most
bigoted protectionist papers the most decided hostility
to the West Indians on the subject of free iman-
gratinn.
The latest manifestations that we have seen of this
hostility consisted in two inquiries intended to
operate as objections : 1. " Can you obtain free la-
bourers se cheaply as slaves are obtainable ?" 2.
" Can you make free labourers work under the lash
eighteen hours out of the twenty-four ?" Now, lest
such objections, coming from a quarter apparently
friendly to the West Indian interest, should have any
weight, it may be as well to pass them in review.
1. " Can you obtain free labourers as cheaply as
slaves are obtainable ?" No doubt we can, if
we set earnestly and seriously about obtaining
free labourers. The cost of obtaining slaves is
very considerable indeed; and ninny of its heaviest
items would not appear in the expense of free
immigration. There is first, the cost of vessels,
especially built for the slave trade; then there is the
expense of especially manning them with crews of
highly paid pirates and desperadoes; next there is
the cost of sending the slavers light, so as to avoid cap.
ture under the equipment article of the slave-trade
treaties, to the coast of Africa, and of sending in
other vessels the fittings of the slave-ships, and the
commodities against which the slaves are to be pur-
chased: there is then the expense of delay in procur-
ing a cargo ; next, the money cost of the living cargo
itself ; the dreadful loss of the middle passage •, the
capture of the ship, and the consequent failure of the
adventure ; and the heavy rate of insurance paid in
any event. All these are charges peculiar to the
slave trade, from which free emigration would
be exempt ; and it is not too much to add
that these charges make up half the price obtained for
the slaves landed in Cuba or Brazil. Undoubtedly
the cost of free emigration will be considerable, but
that cost can bear no comparison with the million
sterling which we now spend uselessly on our African
squadron and mixed commission courts. All that is
desired is, that a part of the expense of an useless ser-
vice should be applied to a service of demonstrable
utility.
2. "Can we make free labourers work under the
lash fer eighteen hours out of the twenty-four ?" The
inquiry is absurd; but it shows the animus of the
writer who ventured to make it. Labourers working
under the lash would be no longer free labourers,
but slaves. Labourers really free, need only the in-
ducement of their own necessities, of their acquired
tastes, and of reward, to induce them to work ; and
when they can maintain themselves and their fami-
lies in ease and comfort, as they now do in the West
Indies, by working four, five, six, rarely eight hours
a day, there is no need of a ten hours law to preven
their working 18 hours out of the 24 ; still less
forbid the application of the lash. It is, however, w
admit, for the purpose of bringing down the wages o
labour, and of increasing the working hours of !labour-
ers, that free emigration to the West Indies is wanted;
and it is for the real and perman• nt interest of the
liberated negrees now inhabiting those colonies that
they should work longer and receive less remunera-
tion than they now do : for experience has demon-
strated that the total extinction of capital in the West
Indies is involved in the continuance of existing high
wages and short hours ; and, by the extinction of
capital, the negro race there must be reduced to a
state of, humanly speaking, hopeless existence.
The present position of the labouring class in the
West Indies is quite unexampled in history; they are,
by the operation of the simple economical law of sup-
ply and demand, ruining their employers, and, though
temporarily prosperous, are also putting in extreme
i and mminent jeopardy their own future welfare and
gresitmg:ogirie7; areefiththineanincolnici:thnaf:avf
altiiiteproolu? dounhfc:hithghoeg:hrn eapaereeruis cot:az nethaseqihdanoufunEoethrnutlreeloayfsb:eulampu:blelnuryinhd,
one-third at least of wages involves an extinction of
capital to that amount, As soon, therefore, as capital
is extinguished, wages will MOO) and the ruin of the