The Express.
London, England, 1849-01-31 00:00:00

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will he ail ape. the waralaget the 7th Feb.
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LONDON,WEDNESDAY,JAN.3I,

TO-mcoitaow Parliament re-aseembles: Under what
circumstances, and amid what expectation ? The
parliaments of the present generation have mostly
met for great purposes and amid lively hopes
and fears. There was the Reform period, whoa
the legislative body wan assembled to consider
the people's claim to full representation; that
was a time of intense popular anxiety. Time
followed the conservative draggle ; the effort
of cue branch of the aristocratic party for re-
aneudancy in the government, and the attempt of the
other branch to combat it with the people's aid. That
was a time when many out of doors, participating in
the excitement within the walls of parliament, felt
strongly, as the day drew nigh, for each successive re-
assembling. Then succeeded the great free trade
agitation. New interests were then combined;
new parties formed : new views developed. The
perliamect that meets to-morrow succeeds to the
Willifive body which pared that important measure.
It assembles as the food tax drops for ever ; and may
be said to have the opportunity of turning over a new
leaf in political and party history.
Were there only power and ability to mein it, never
was there, since the Reform Act passed, a period better
calculated for real exertion for the country's good.
Party for once may be said to be in abeyanoe. Be.
yond the rusted links of association and con-
nexion there is really nothing to bind a pub-
lic man to the section with which he may
have been politically associated. For the moment
no great Principle is at ions ;we have arrived at a
period when principles have received recognition, and
when it may said that the straggle is as to the
extent to which they shall be severally carried out.
We have now time to turn round and look at
practical measures—at the details of our public
position —at the pounds, shillings, and pence
columns d our policy. We have come to
a time when we may look into departmental won—
when, havinr laid down swivel principles for our
guidance, it is possible to examine how far each sepa-
rate branch of the administrative power deviates

from or mamma to on stehileel Had we bat mw,
what geidsa opportunity MIR here
But bow does the anumble ? Look
around the beaches dhens% andtry to "sleet the
section cempstent nil able to asset the ex-
igencies se the time. Take the high con-
isrvatilepsererfal "glee —tunirkiliall. Net ice% PlirkaPnimi ammoonsi:
Yam st sashed "leading and ability to assume
saw disk fradeakep. Net one man can they put
hersed at lien it possible to say, " Here we may
sepses oar seisidenee and our nose" Look to the
medsrate motion upon the same side of the house,
aril you fled a few able men shrinking back from
pubic.positions— mistrustin' g and mistrusted
resting. their hopes upon the wealmess
others, in comparison with which thq themeless are
chiefly strong, waiting to take the &mess of time
combeiatious rather than able to Mum a went
position for themselves. Look to the ether side et dr
house and you find a still greater ancemely. There
sits a government without power to and what
is worse, without knowing its own or tenden-
cies. Holding their position as rimers, they pre-
sent the aspect of a body fearful of reform ; never
able to point out the path reformers should
pursue, never willing to pursue it when it is
pointed out to them by others. Their beat measures are
but makeshifts; their only movement in the way of
progress assumes the shape of a hardly-won concea-
ls:on. As for the composition of the government, you
will find it as devoid of popular men as it is of popu-
lar principled. It circumscribes office to a family
clique and their immediate connexion It repels the
advances of the more able members of the party
on which it is dependent, whilst, if perchance rt
has afferded a subordinate Raid.= to the
representative of a popular constituency, it forces
him to relinquish his post, in order that he may not
inflict injustice upon those he serves. When any
vacancy occurs, it is with the utmost difficulty that a
qualified successor is found. They seek for him first
in their own incompetent circle, and fail to find him.
Then they hold out the prise as a lure to an
antagonist, and find the bait passed by without
even a snap. At last, with a bad grace, they
enlist one whom they had previously rejected, and
put him forward as a captain, to whom they had pre-
viously refused the position of a subaltern.
What have we, then, to expect ? The hour is here,
but where are the men ? Can it excite surprise if,
under such a system, the people exhibit infinitely less
hope and expectation from the meeting of the par-1
lisment to-morrow than they have done on &haat any
previous occasion ? You hear, at this time, re ger-
tulatory response to the inquiry " What are day
going to do?" No one, indeed, has any clear idea of
what they are going to do. There are all the unsettled
measures of last year—the navigation laws, the
Jewish Disabilities Bill, and others—can any one say
how much nearer we are to their adjustment now
than we were in February, 1844 ? What are they
going to do with them? Re-introduced they proba-
bly will be in modified, perhaps in less acceptable
forms. Some of those about which there is most dif-
ficulty will be" open questions "—a convenient mode
administrations have of treating public questions so as
to enable an official at once to save his place and
satisfy his conscience. But, will they carry mea-
sures when they set about them showing such a lack
both of will and of power ?
The fact is, that the great work of parliament in
the present position of public men must be dune—as it
has been and is still being done—out of doors. The
real legislature of England has been sitting already.
Public opinion, led by men who have been successful
in the last great legislative effort of our time, has
been set at work upon another topic, and, in effect,
the Lords and Commons of England meet to-morrow,
not to originate great measures, not to mark
oat a line of policy for the nation, but
to consider questions which have already
been enunciated, considered, and to a very
great extent decided, out of doors. Concession is the
sole task, the sole duty of parliament; and that will
be in proportion, not to argument from within, but to
re pssure from without. Ask, and be rebuffed; agi-
tate, and win.
We are far from admiring this play of the constitu-
tion. But under our present representative system
we can scarcely hope for better things. With ors
1
half the members' occupying the position of nominees,
and fulfilling the bidding, not of an electorate, bat of
a dictator, who can hope for more legislative wisdom
or authority than that we have depicted—who can
have greater hopes or expectations of the session than
those faint ones we have tried to shadow forth?

TIM decision of the question whether Austria or
Prussia is to prevail over the government and pro- ,
gram of Germany. interests us Englishmen the ,
highest degree.a political, commercial, and in a
religious point of view, it is equally important, free-
dom of principle in all being staked against absolutism
and prohibition in all. Prussia is constitutional in
government, permissive of education and of reasoning
in religion, and all its delegates at Frankfort
decided in favour of free trade. Austria is the
reverse in all, and now more hostile than ever.
Before the revolution we might have had hopes
of trading at least with Hungary, whose supplies of
hemp as well as corn were so much desired by us.
Now we must expect to see Hungary fiscally incor-
porated with Austria, whilst the government of the
country, having fallen exclusively into the hands of
the great landej, which is also the military, aristo-
cracy, must want the liberality even of Prince MET-
marrien in fiscal and commercial matters. As events
progress, Spain falls more and more under the in-
fluence of France, and Italy under the influence of
France and Austria, both prohibitive in their codes ;
whilst North Germany remains our truest ally, in
extending the principlesand fighting the battles of free
trade.
Of our contemporaries some lean to Austria from
traditional alliances and tory sentiments. Others
deprecate in Germany, as in England, any change
that would break up the status quo, and destroy the
old balance and relations between the members of
the German empire. These writers forget that the
change is made—the revolutions, independent even of
those of 1848, already achieved.
Long before that year, Germany had a parliament
far more practical and real than the Frankfort
' t. What is the first essence, what the
duties, of a parliament ? To establish the fiscal
system, the burdens upon the different sources and
classes of wealth, and thus to allot to government or.
governments their quota of revenues. The Zollverein
Con has been doing this for some years. It has
for all German states except Austria its amount
of customs, whilst the law or the Diet fixed its quota
of troops and military expenditure These great and
important matters being disposed of, what remained
to the local states ? Nothing. Their constitution was
a humbug.
Whilst the chief, the vital parliamentary attributes
were thus taken from the local states of Germany,
the great functions and attributes of sovereignty were
alike taken from those who were called independent
sovereigns. Her sovereigns had the bulk of their
budget settled for them almost without their interven-
tion—their military expenses also regulated for them.
Other snationsappertaining to the press, oonstitation,
dynastic and territorial differences, were referred to
federal tribunals. The sovereign even of Bavaria or
Saxony could neither make peace nor war. His dip-
lomacy was a make-believe, his court a mockery and
a sham. If a powerful noble or family ex-
isted in his dominions, this noble looked not to
his immediate sovereign, but transferred his dem-
, tion, services, and presence to Berlin or Vienna. la
fact, no one, possessed of dignity or ambition, would
accept a mown, or deign to wear one, on the condi-
tions which nullify all sovereignty,
.except the
name, in the hands of the mince German princes. From
fifteen to twenty of these voted for an hereditary em-
peror, in the person of the King of PHIINTA. Can
we wonder at it? The King of Wowrzumuto de-
, dared he would rather be Field-Marshal of the
Empire, than such a roi faineant, se the present
federal union makes him. All the COBOUROS, saga-
dons race, are ready. to pitch their duc cape
in the air, well and wisely aware that if Germany
I were really an Empire, their rank, and sagacity, and
position would place them far higher than the gilded
chair on which they now remain motionless, and, as
it were, enchanted. What is, in fact, the Bing of
t SAXONY, the Elector of Hama, the Grand Duke of
BADEN P As sovereigns, nothing ; whilst, am power-
, ful members of a great state, they might be anything.
The conversion of Germany into a united empire us,
• therefore, an immense desideratum—first, for
r the minor
__winces ; second);, for the mist°-
. crag; thirdly, for the civic and commercial
cleans. The people desire it, the whole country calls

::~~

for it; sad if the intrigues and rivalry of the great
courts urerant the Frankfort Assembly from effecting
the asdoa of Germany, we feel smallest that not
even this failure, nor any ether. influence, can pos.
slily Woes the Germans to return contented to the
aboard state of nullity and division from which 1818
promised to relieve them. If the revolution of the
yaw be completely abortive, the result will
net be the sass as in Franco for ex-
am" where the public mind is sick and weary
at revelation, and would tolerate anything rather
thimi rename it. The Germans, on the contrary, are
Crin that career. The freaks of democracy may
egdisgasted them for the moment, but that they
should return and live under the administration and
management of the hierranmens, the MUNCH
Buxusonausiurs, and that Prussian polios minister,
whose name we forget—this is what the Ger-
mans will never be made to do. The failure
or the dissolution of the Frankfort National
Assembly would thus, instead of proving, as hoped in
some quarters, the closing and obliteration of one revo-
lution, in fact but open the door to another. And
that other would not be a mob or a street insurrection,
but a general rising of every enlightened class is
Germany, aristocratic u well as civic. Nor would
such a moral insurrection want • prince to head it,
even if the King of Faustus, with his proverbial
fickleness, were to sink back into the old character of
an absolutist sovereign.
We should therefore strongly recommend the lovers
of peace and settlement in Germany to prompt and
aid the Frankfort Assembly in coming to some deci-
sion, to some vote other than a stultification of
itself and of all that took place in 1848. Germany
cannot retrograde to what it was, and if its freely
elected parliament cannot extricate the three-fourths of
Germany, that are at present nullified, from their in-
tolerable and untenable position, it will only leave the
work to be done by a more lawless and dangerous
movement of a more irresponsible character.
We have all along iusisted that these revolutions
would have worked their own remedy, and worked
that remedy sooner and surer, for not being violently
arrested or put down. We have a striking example
of the truth of this in the Prussian elections. In towns
each as Breslau, where the democrats ran most riot,l
and were most unchecked, the popular choice for the
Electoral College has fallen exclusively on royalists
and conservatives; whilst at Potsdam, which has for
the whole year been occupied by the court and the
troops, without a single imente, club, or harangue,
the elections have gone all in favour of the democrats.
Can anything be more staring ? or need we draw a
condo/eon from such speaking facts?

IT is perhaps a fortunate thing for metropolita
sanitary reformers that, unlike reformers in other
departments, they have not put upon them the neces-
sity of a laborious investigation into facts which
may occupy weeks or months before they can
present a satisfactory array of figures. Week
after week does the Registrar-General punctually
bring out his broadsheet of figures, which infallibly
points, by the increase or deer( i.e of mortality
amongst us, to the causes of disease and their reme-
dies. The year 1849 was ushered in by a week of
unusual freedom from disease. The number of deaths
recorded was 1,131, being 38 below the average of
the week for nine preceding years, 233 below the
deaths of the same week in 1848, and 489 below that
of 1847. The low temperature, however, that prevailed
during this week—the mean temperature having been
two degrees below the freezing point—told upon the
two subsequent weeks, and the mortality rose to
1,448 and 1,345, being 309 and 229 respectively
above the average of deaths of the corresponding week'
of the preceding 10 years. The increase of mortality
was chiefly amongst diseases of the lungs and those of
an epidemic character, as cholera, small-pox, and
scarl trim The report of the week ending last Satun
day shows a considerable diminution in the number
of deaths, but still 39 above the average of the corre-
sponding weeks for the last five years, and 121 above
the average of the last ten years. It is, however, 249
less than the deaths in the same week last year. This
statement will show that, whatever cause
there may be for dissatisfaction at the sani-
tary state of London and its neighbourhood,
there is no ground for alarm. The average of deaths
for the last month is, in fact, much below
that of the two previous year', 1847 and 1848.
Bat however satisfactory this fact may be, it should be
recollected that the amount of death this month is
greater, with the two exceptions stated, than in the
same period of any previous year in which the re-
tester has been kept. Disease has increased, and is
increasing amongst us. This is not beyond human
remedy. Man cannot prevent the east wind and the
cold, but he can so clothe and feed his body as to pro-
tect himself from their influences. We look at cholera
in the distance, and regard it as a fearful poison from
whose attack none can be delivered. Bat what is the
truth? Why that cholera only visits those who are pre-
disposed from removable causes to its attacks. Of all
the people who lived at Tooting, equally exposed to
the choleraic poison, it was only the" innocents," im-
mured in their unventilated prison-house, under-
clothed, under-fed, and badly fed, who fell victims to
this disease. Let us look at the last week's bill of
mortality, and inquire in what districts the deaths
have been greatest, or most above the average. We
shall find that the increase is in those places where
the sewerage and drainage is most imperfect, and
where moisture and animal and vegetable exhalations
together corrupt the air, and thus fan the flames of
disease in two ways : first, by depressing the
human system and predisposing it to disease,
and secondly, by offering the most fitting
medium for the rapid conveyance of poisonous
matters. As we have often before observed, the
increase of mortality in London daring epidemic
disease is not in the densely populated cities of Lon-
don and Westminster, but in adjacent places. It is
around the suburban retreats of our London men of
business that disease is constantly most rife and most
fatal. The registrar divides London into five districts,
the east, west, north, south, and central. Now, if
there was one of these districts which would be
thought more likely to suffer from disease than an-
other it would be the central, which includes St.
Giles and St. George, the Strand, Holborn, Clerken-
well, St. Luke, East London, West London, and City
of London ; yet, during the past week, these districts
exhibit only one death above the average. Whilst
it is in the south district comprising St. Saviour,
St. Olave, Bermondsey, St. George Southwark,
Newington, Lambeth, Wandsworth and Clapham,
Camberwell, Rotherhithe, Greenwich and Lewis-
ham, that the real increase of mortality above
the average has taken place. Now it is in precisely
these places that there is the greatest amount of de-
fective drainage and sewerage. And what is the class
of diseases that have increased the mortality of the
week ? The zymotic cholera, typhus, and wariest
fever. These are the diseases that are first bred sad
then nourished and propagated by the moisture sad
filth which defective drainage produces. Lest it should
be thought that as Tooting is amongst the south dis-
trict the special condition of the asylum there would
account for the increased mortality of the district and
of the week, we may add that only two deaths from
cholera were reported from Tooting during the seven
days.
From this report, then, it would appear that were
it not for these zvmotic diseases London would be un-
usually healthy for the time of year. The number of
deaths from zymotic diseases was 329, whilst the ave-
rage has been bat 221, giving 108 above the average,
which. deducted from the mortality of the week,
would leave it 64 less than the average of the preced-
ing five years.
If we examine the registrar's account with more es-
pecial reference to the disease about which there is
moat uneasiness at the present moment, the same re-
sults come out. The whole number of fatal cases of
cholera in the metropolitan districts, from Septem-
ber last to the present time, amounts to 74L
Of them 39 only have occurred in the central dis-
tricts whilst 470 took place in the south districts.
From this it does not appear that cholera, on the
whole, is on the increase. For the four weeks in
January the numbers are as follows:

Ist 2311 bed 4*
61 I 94 I 61 I —l3

It must, however, be recollected, that in the three
first weeks 168 cues occurred at Tooting, which leaves
69 for other districts in the metropolis, whilst in the
last week only two deaths are reported from Tooting,
which leaves 43 for the rest of London, a larger
number than has been reported linos the irst three
weeks of November.
It has been supposed that many of the cases called
cholera are nothing more than the usual deaths from
diseases of the bowels that occur at this time of the

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