The Express.
London, England, 1847-08-05 00:00:00

Macteeett and COWAN'S agents in the registration
courts, and a protracted canvass from this tune till
after the meeting of parliament. The supporters of
COWAN will be irritated by the unhandsome means
taken to nullify their votes into fiercer partisanship.
The quiet inhabitants of Edinburgh, sick of the daily
brawls between the electioneering Montague* and
Copultta of Auld Reekie, will avenge themselves on
the party which began the strife, by throwing their
weight into the enemy's scale. The tottering ascen-
dancy of the whig party in Edinburgh will be for
ever prostrated if they attempt such a game.
The movement would be injurious to Mr. Meese
LAY. Along with the less reputable influences which
have been at work against him, a common weakness
of the popular party has had its influence. In moral
as in physical perspective, a comparatively small ob-
ject near at hand often shuts out from view a much
greater object at a distance. The excise laws are a
great nuisance, not only to the dealers immediately
under their pressure, butte the whole community ; they
constitute, however, only a small part of the numerous
economical abuses which, within the last twenty
years, have been redressed, are now being assailed, or
speedily to become objects of attack. In the great
enduring warfare which has been, and still is, waged
against these abuses, Mr. 3leeauene has been no ob-
scure or inefficient champion ; but the magnitude
of his services is, owing to the feature of our
human nature above alluded to, obscured to
the perceptions of those over whose head the
excise law is immediately suspended by that
nearer though smaller object. So with the volun-
tary question. It is of importance merely as ameans
towards the ensuring of religious liberty, sincerity,
and equality. But there are many other ways in
which these great objects can be promoted, and of
these Mr. MAC.ACLAY has approved himself a etre-
nuoue supper ter. In their zeal fbe an swam the
voluntaries have for a time forgotten what they owe
for hie effective support, and what they have to expect
fromhis effective support of many others. The injus-
tice which has thus been done to Mr. MAC kI'LAY can
be but for a time. Mature reflection will bring back
many who have opposed him now to a fairer esti-
mate of his services. We believe the day may
come—we believe that it will come—when many
of those who have deprived him of the office
of their representative will be amorg the
most urgent to entreat him to resume it. But
I Mr. MACAULkY'S honour requires that this menta-
-1 lion be spontaneous and sincere; that the reversal of
the late judgment of the Edinburgh constituency on
his claims to their confidence rest upon the merits of
his case, not upon some miserable quibbling point of
form. Gratitude to Mr. MACAULAY for his distin-
guished services in the cause of civil and religious
liberty prompt kl 3 to wish that reparation should be
made to his injured feelings, but it must be in a way
consistent with his honour. It is not now, while the
mistakes and prejudices which have driven
him from the representation of Edinburgh are
unshaken and unallayed, that we can expect
to have his case dispassionately re-argued. In
every appeal from PHILIP drunk to PHILIP sober, we
must be contented to wait till PHILIP has really slept
himself into a state of sobriety. Mr. MACAULAY
cannot be long without a seat in parliament: it is not
consistent with his honour to take any active steps
for the reversal of the unjust decree spoken against
him at Edinburgh.
As for the other Scotch elections, their resnitaare of a
chequered complexion. Greenock has degraded itself by
electing, in preference to an independent and clear-
headed liberal. a young gentleman whose only recom-
mendation is that of being a lord, and intimately
connected with parties who have it in their power
occasionally to reward a supporter with what in the
north is called " a bit poetie." To this worthy
end the whig and tory magnates of that
egregious burgh have combined their forces; yet even
their holy alliance might have been defeated, had the
election net taken place at that dead season of the
political year when, by the admirable provisions of
the Scotch Reform Act, all the electors who have
changed their place of residence at the lost term are
(qua electors) in a state of suspended animation.
At Aberdeen. however, a similar combination of
whig and tory against the liberal candidate has been
signally defeated. As with Mr. Dimmer in Greenock,
so in Aberdeen with Captain Foenree, the ostexsible
ground of opposition was the candidate's free-church
propensities. At both places, the real ground of
opposition was cf that kind which cannot bear
the light of day. In Greenock, as we have seen,
it was anxiety to keep the burgh magnates and
their families within the pale of government
patronage: at Aberdeen it was a rank railway job,
the work of a knot of railway solicitors in London,
to which both the tory and liberal leaders unblush-
ing avowed their subserviency—the one by nominat-
ing, the other by seconding, the unknown candidate
shipped to them " as per invoice" by these parties.
The independent electors of Aberdeen returned the
bale on the hands of the shippers es unsaleable, and
thereby did dou'.le service; counteracting a bare-
faced attempt on the purity of parliamentary repre-
sentation, and an insidious attempt on the part of the
Leadenhall-street government to smuggle one of them-
selves, unnoticed, into the parliament which will, in
all probability, hare to decide on the renewal or non-
renewal of their charter. It is strange, considering how
mach reason the trading interests of Great Britain have
to complain of the erroneous policy of the East India
Companyin respect of the cultivation of sugar, indigo,
and cotton, of its narrow-minded adhesion to obsolete
opinions in respect of the salt and opium trades, and
of its continuing to throw cold water on the introduc-
tion of railways into India when even the POP,:
favours them in Italy, that so little notice should he
taken of the number of Indian ex-employes and India
ofenstcootfe htßoerlicaltetiislhfrolinesdniiirs.
directors in ease or in posse, who are seeking seats in
burghslegislatureothfefr
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ootz theafncooldutnei witheoofhn ourfetttir
thrure
parliament with a view to bias the decision of the
congratulationsy e
re govmt
reiwe retuegre'fsormosthte efficient allies
in the Council of the League, and in the Manchester
Chamber of Commerce-1%1%1011N BENJAU IN I".3IIITIL

We have never been wholesale objectors to the new
poor law, but there are some parts of it so unjust, us
manifestly injurious to those whom it professes to re-
lieve, and so opposed to the welfare of the community,
that we have never failed to raise oar voice against
them when occasion occurred. We publish to-day an
account of a meeting of respectable medical prac-
titioners at Matlock, assembled from various parts of
the midland counties, from which it will be seen that
those parts of the Poor-law Act which refer to medical
relief not only fail to provide this necessary to tho
poor man in tames of sickness and accident, bat by
the semblance of the thing withdraws his attention
from seeking for it from other sour es from whence
he might obtain it, besides that of the board of
guardians.
The system of compelling a poor man when he is
ill, or, perhaps, his wife or child, to procure an
order from the relieving officer before he can obtain
the aid of a medical man, we have before commented
upon. People may die, nay, they frequently have died,
before the order could be obtained. Relieving officers
live sometimes ten miles on one side a poor dying
man, and the doctor ten mile* on the other, so that
forty miles of ground mast be gor.e over, and this
nearly all in most cases on foot, before the medical
man can see his patient. The medical officers of
unions have sometimes under these circumstances at-
tended to an accident or a case of emergency without
an order ; and what has been the consequence ? Have
the boards of guardians passed a vote of thanks for
the prompt and humane attention of their medical
officer? No, not in any instance that we have yet
beard of; but we have known cases in which they
have refused to pay the medical man his usual fcc for
attending an acknowledged pauper without an order.
At the meeting alluded tethers was brought forward
a case in point, in which a medical man attending
upon the mother of a child -
for reducing a dislocation of
because, forsooth, he had
relieving officer. If such
slave owners we should -
of the debasing effeets
otherwise reputable men.
occur in a christian

its humanity, every
The rate of pavmen
is shamefully low.

itCKildwas---reiict;edthe usual fe;
ation of one of the child's limbs,
he had not an order ••• the
If such things w -
muld point ts •,z
eels of Blare •
men. That • l'j,:"
country and a 14
Englishman mull --„jstjg •
Nat of our un:o • • -nr'"o3. t.s
We have reef • eirsi • .;".