The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-03 00:00:00

LONDON,TUESDAEOCTOBER 3.
A CONTEMPORARY congratulates England on the
very small resemblance between a Knot of foolish
chartists, who met at the Orange-tree, and the thou-
sands of the Parisian insurrectionists who were within
an ace of capturing the seat of government and de-
feating the French army. We have the easy task,
it says, of shipping three or four fools to Botany Bay
or Norfolk Island. Tho French executive is, on
the contrary, obliged to transport half the metro-
politan population, if it would at once punish the
guilty and diminish the mass of dangerous foes.
The comparison is just. But the self-congratulation
may be spared ; for the resemblance with Fiance,
which fails in England, is to be found, with many
I corresponding features, in Ireland. There, the masses
are arrayed in disaffection, if not in rebellion, to all
authority; there, the labouring class is firmly per.
ended that the whole frame of society, formed so as
to- exclude it, is inimical to it, and it aims
at righting itself by general subversion. The
(difference, however, is, that the French authorities
have been attacked by the working classes in open
insurrection, and having put them down by soldiers
and by cannon, have proceeded to transport some six
thousand rebels, a mere drop subtracted from the
ocean, whilst some forty or fifty thousand men of the
same opinion and determination remain in Paris.
In Ireland the disaffected mob has not turned out,
but on the contrary refused to listen to the orders to
that effect, given it by a few hair-brained men,
of quite a different creed and political sect from
that of the mass of Irish malcontents. Government
therefore may deal as it lista with the woul'-be
leaders—the abortive conspirators; but the masses
still remain to be dealt with. And how to deal with
them, is the question?
The Quarterly Review undertakes to answer it, on
behalf of the tory party. Its policy, with respect
to the people, is contained in one word, intimidation.
It proposes to call out the yeomanry, to dad Ireland
with fortresses, to change the venue, to as to ensure
convictions—in short, not merely to continue, but to re-
gularise and render permanent the military occupation
and rule of Ireland. In the midst of this iron regimen
there is to be one sample of conciliation, like a solitary
and useless lump of sugar in a cup of bitters—the
Quarterly reviewer would pay the catholic priesthood.
We must own, this appears to us very inconsistent.
If the union between England and Ireland, and the
imperial predominance of the former country, are to
be upheld in Ireland by the sword, why cannot the
church be upheld by the same means? If we go to
the expense of keeping 50,000 men in Ireland, and
go to the shame of making this our permanent mains
of government, why not get the utmost worth of oar
money ? If such means can save the state, surely they
can save the church. If the force of Irish opinion
and discontent can, in despite of forts, troops, yea-
mam7, and gagging bill., undermine and endanger
the church, how can the state be safe ? The Quar-
terly Reviewer, no doubt, considers the church as far
more precious than the state, and would defend the
former both by force and conciliation, leaving the
latter only protected by the strong arm. But does
not this betray a misgiving of our power, and a mis-
trust of the efficacy of force ?:
For our part, we should say—employ force in mo-
ments of crisis, of excitement, of rebellion : but re-
collect that force cannot be the permanent and regular
means of government. Sooner or later recourse must
be had to justice and conciliation. And then there is
no use whatever in conciliating this interest, and
coercing that—in stooping to religious hostility, and
at the same time crushing material antagonism.
If you rule by force, let force rule over
all. If you would rule by conciliation, be
even and fair in the system. Conciliate
religious prejudice, national pride, material
suffering and degradation. It is the error of Sir
ROBERT PEEL and of his school in their Irish policy,
to confine their efforts to moral and religious
conciliation, to the winning the priest and the
professional class. This is not enough, for it
is mere skin-doctoring. The whiffs have shown a
wish to go deeper, and conciliate the peasant by
raisingas him from destitution and insecurity. They
p the poor law, and brought in bills for a veriety
of agrarian remedies. No one did more to defeat
these measures than Sir ROBERT PEEL and hie
friends, whilst Lord JOHN RUSSELL showed him-
self weak and irresolute in the abandonment of them.
In any great measure for the redemption of Ire-
land, it is to the land and to the peasant that the
legislature must look. For with that class a govern-
ment cannot live in permanent enmity, or by perma-
nent intimidation. Forts will not do, and troops will
not do, and paying priests will not do; putting down
rebellion will not suffice, and transporting o'llmM
and MEAGHER is nothing conclusive. No ; nor would
' the transporting of 5,000 rebels be more conclusive
in Ireland than in Paris, where Gen. Csysicesc lives
in just as much alarm since his victory as before it.
Intimidation is but a preface to government—it is
not government. On the contrary, it is an interrup-
tion, and an obstruction, and renders the inevitable
resumption of regular government a greater difficulty
than ever. This is plainly seen in France, and will,
we fear, be equally seen in Ireland.

IN the provinces people may congratulate them-
selves on being able to obtain security against the de-
structive influence of disease through the provisions
of the Public Health Act, but in London it appears
that we are still to be exposed to the decisions of
the bodies that conduct our parochial business.
If the gentlemen who attend to the small matters
connected with our parish affairs decree themselves
free from those influences which produce cholera, we
shall hear little or nothing of preparation for its ar-
rival. What does it signify, that courts, alleys, and
narrow streets are undrained, that hundreds of houses
are over-inhabited, that in the very heart of our great
metropolis, in the centre of its most fashionable resi-
dences, there exists dirt and filth enough to start a
dozen epidemics and decimate the population, it will
net oome near them, and should the fearful disease
really break out, it will serve as a fillip for their piety,
and supply a subject for wonder at the mysterious
dispensation of providence. We have before expressed
our surprise that after all our sanitary talk so little
has been really done to mitigate the evils under
which every town in the kingdom suffers. Whilst
the legislature has been talking about arresting
diseases, and multitudes of lectures, essays, letters,
and papers, have been poured forth from the press,
all this time the very class of diseases which are most
amenable to the efforts of man have been increasing.
Scarcely a week has passed during the last twelve
months but the registrar's reports of deaths in London,
under the head of zymotic diseases, have presented
a larger number than the average of the preceding
five years. We cannot but regard this as an indica-
tion that the sanitary condition of the metropolis is
undergoing no improvement. Indeed, we are not
sure that some of the attempts that have been recently
made at improving the healthiness of London have not
been a chief cause of its present unhealthy state. We
were amongst the Brat to congratulate London on the
appointment of the Metropolitan Sanitary Commission
of Sewers, under the full conviction that in a very
short time the nuisances of which we hsi to complain
in every street of the metropolis woullfl speedily be
removed, at least from the principal thoroughfares.
But in this we have been disappointed. The commis-
sion have left the sewers up to the present %Ist as
they found them, and have very laudably,
their efforts to the emptying and filling np of the
numerous cesspools, which bad bees allowed to
exhale their noxious vapour., and naturals with filth
the soil of London for centuries. This was undoubt-
edly a good work, bat certainly ought Act to have
been engaged in unless the commiadon was ready es
do something with the sewers. Duringalhe exintenon
of the oeurpools the sewers were bad with