The Express.
London, England, 1846-12-01 00:00:00

Power of representing the first commercial community
in the empire, if he could have done *43 with effect,
with permanence, and satisfaction. Let the
COBDEN'S
Manches-
ter people take care, lest the MUSS Of MT.
declining their offer be not in them ratherer whicht
in I
him, and in that wavering and vulgar temp
does not recognise friend from foe; and whn
cold from
ich ere the
ashes of the Corn-law League hve grow
the glow of their last triumph, can
or pto the second
put up the eon
of the Duke of NEWCASTLE as comps
of Conn( himself.

THE Chronicle, of yesterday, uttered some very
regular dicta, d propos of the recent case of death

from starvation.
"Privation of thinys that purnal, "is not an ailment that
like paeans, short tune after meals:"
Amongst all the aphorisms of Jos Mate lit there
is nothing more true than this. People certainly do
not die of starvation shortly after a meal,oßD AUN unless it
be such a meal as that of poor LOUI SA MT,
amotuitlias to half a split pea.
Miss MORDAUNT, however, after a Very long Course
of preparative starvation, did, it seems, eat something
this something the
on the day, before she died. On
author of Medical Jurisprudence declares she should
have lived t she did not do
en days. And because
so, the journalist assures us she could not have died
of starvation.
"The immediate same of death was opium of the lower intestine,
soused by eseeesive privation."
Starvation had nothing to do with it ; and to prove
it, we have a long list of persons who lived three
weeks or four weeks without food ; one of them, a
lady, who sewed and knitted during this long process
of inanition. We should strongly recommend to any
of the living female cases of starvation comma gong on
in Marylebonc, where the experiment is on perma-
nent trial, not to let the relieving officer of that union
catch a glimpse of the sewing and knitting. De-
self-
cidedly he would refuse a crumb to intercept the
sacrifice of the patient.
We crave pardon for employing a tone of levity
upon a subject so harrowing, and must plead in
excuse the nature of the arguments which ptovoke
We know not which is more pernicious, that exube-
rant zeal which would palliate every fault, and slur
over each gross act of inhumanity springing out of
the new Poor-Law; or that Indian yell, raised by cer-
tain parties, whenever the functionaries under this
law can at all be descried or aimed at.
The ease of the MORDAUNT family was one of
the most culpable neglect on the part of the
parish officers, and too much zeal could not be
spent in their exposure and punishment. But we
meat own, that in other cases, since got up, the proofs
are not so complete, nor is the inhumanity so appa-
rent. The infant of JOSEPH 'WOODWARD, the inquest
on whose body appears in to-day's paper, did certainly
not die of hanger. Nor is there by any means the
same proof of inhumanity or neglect. Publicity is
the true cure for a repetition of such cases, that pub-
licity provoking the due exercise of their authority by
the Poor-law Commissioners. But we can see no
advantage to be gained by the coroner or his deputy
undertaking to scold the overseers, or by the proceed.
ings of a court of justice being turned into a war of
partisanship.
We referred the other day to a rule laid down in a
circular from the Poor-law Commission, that all such
cases of death from destitution ought to be the subject
of special inquiry by the Board of Guardians, the
public not being excluded from that inquiry. If such
a rule had been acted upon, the overseers and reliev-
ing officers would be more alert in their duties of
humanity, and less so in those of sparing their own
time and the union money ; and we would not now have
this series of inquests adding to the unpopularity of a
law which is made the scapegoat of all suffering.
That a metropolis like ours ever could or did exist
without frightful instances of destitution and suffer-
ing is not to be expected. No poor-law, old or new,
ever could or did meet all such cases. But, when
they do come under the cognisance of the proper
officers, for the unfortunate victims to be repelled
with such rules, as the being under age or over age
for charity, is a most revolting aggravation of inhu-
manity. If there be a person or a class in our
streets to whom a pittance should not be refused, it is
certainly the young and virtuous female. Yet to such
the relieving officer of Marylebone would turn a deaf
ear. He would tell her she was too young for charity,
and should bring her youth to a more profitable
market.
But all these cases and investigations prove, that
the Poor-law, or at least the administration of the
Poor-law for the metropolis, requires rules and
machinery more flexible than those employed in
rural and thinly peopled districts. The most doughty
champions of the Poor-law admit, that the work-
house test, admirable in the country, must give way
to the labour test in the manufacturing towns. There
are indigent classes in our vast metropolis to which
neither can be rigid/ applied, without producing
such acts of cruelty, injustice, and suicide, as woulil
weigh down any law proved to lead to them, or to
-eider them as natural and tolerable results.

Tun only true test of the comparative merits of the
French and English systems of railway management
is to be found in their results. Which of them has given
the greater amount of railway accommodation to the
public, and enabled the railway companies to develop
the more extensive traffic ? The following tables will
be found to throw some light on the question. They
present the number of miles of railway actually
worked by the leading companies in England and
France at this moment, and the weekly receipts about
the middle of last month
ZNOLIEN.
Miles.
!oath Eastern
London, Brighton, it SouthConst 112
London and South Western
Great Western
London and North written 3B9i
Mid Lind, York and Newcastle
Eastern Counties .
Manchester and Leeds ll7
Newcastle and Carlisle 63

7:141
7,026
6,042
16,704
35,654
22,325
8,636
8,108
2,335

1,9601 MILL £113,991
260

Northern .................
Paris and Rouen
Paris and Orleans
Orleans and Tours .....
Stroaburg and Bala

8,816
5,792
7,915
1,718
2,558

Total 561 136,399
The excess of mileage affords but a faint idea of the
superior development of the English system of rail-
ways. London, the great centre of monetary opera-
tions, has an unbroken line of railway communication
with Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield,
Leeds, York, Hull, Newcastle, Bristol, Southampton,
Brighton, and Dover. Birmingham, Manchester,
Sheffield, and Leeds, the great centres of manufacturing
activity, have an unbroken chain of railway commu-
nication with Liverpool and Bristol, Hull and New-
castle, and London, the principal ports on the east
and west sides of the island. The manufacturers
and traders of Birmingham have, for some
years, been able to transact their London
business in person, instead of subjecting them-
selves to the delay, uncertainty, and expense of
correspondence or intermediate agents. Within these
few months the same power has been conferred by
our railways upon the inhabitants of Liverpool and
Manchester. To such an extent are they now conveyed
more expeditiously and cheaper than formerly from
place to place, that slight local variations in the price
of teas have rendered it worth the while of dealers to
make the same lot of goods perform the transit from
London to Liverpool and back again more than once.
As yet the railway system of France has only con-
nected the metropolis with the great trading towns of
Rotten, Orleans, and Touts, and, a part of the manu-
facturing districts towards Belgium. Strasburg enjoys
a railway communication with Switzerland, but
Lyons is yet unconnected by railway with any great
port, or with the metropolis. Havre, Nantes,
Bordeaux, and Marseilles are not linked by rail-
way to any great centre of productive in-
dustry, or to the metropolis. In Great Britain,
there is not a branch of manufacturing industry
or commercial enterprise that has not received a fresh
impetus from railways being brought into general
use ; in France their influence in concentrating pro-
ductive industry and rendering it more effective is as
yet scarcely felt.
Looking to the comparative prosperity of railway
undertakings in the two countries with a view
to draw inferences as to the probability of their
immediate extension, the more favourable pros-
pects of this country are equally marked. Labour-
ing though they have been under the disad-
vantages of extortionate prices for land, exorbi-
tant expenditure on the legal forms of transfer, and
heavy taxation, the great companies we have named
are steadily extending their ramifications through the