The Express.
London, England, 1853-08-05 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST b.

WE English were loci ago declared to be essen-
tially an eating nation—end for proof our neighbours
point to those charming facts, our dinners : our birth-
day dinners and wedding-day dinners, our PITT 1
dinners and Fox. dinners, our Conservative dinners
and Reform dinners, Cabinet dinners and parish
dinners, almshouse dinners, hospital dinners,'
benevolent dinners, presentation-of-testimonial din-
nem Lord Mayor's dinners, Criminal Court din-
ners, Speaker's dinners—and illitebail dinners!
A tolerable catalogue truly, of which the last is cer-
tainly once a year the most memarable. It is this
feast to which the Ministerial heroes—the tried vic-
tors in the great fight of St. Stephen's —hurry by a
threepenny steamboat to Greenwich, to enjoy. To an
English Minister the Whitebait Dinner is a sort of
North Star, shining brightly to his mind's eye during
the turmoil of debate—a kind of far-off sign and
token of a pleasant and possible future: a something
in the distance, towards which he must strive, and
which, once gained, shall ass..re him at least some

hew,: of rest. A race-horse at the winning-poet—a
poet in his second edition a soldier gazetted
K.C.ll.,—may ppreciate the feelings of the Treasury-
Bench-man on his way to cat the annual whitebait.
Like a genuine English Minister, he is then about
to prose himself safe through the session—by eating
upon it. He swallows whitebait in proof that his
work is done. He is independent of division lists;
he fears no awk ward questions, is innocent of evasive
answers, cares nothing for votes. The work is ac-
camplished, and—he dines.
This gustatory seal is about to be set upon the
labours of the Session, and though war may threaten
and nations be at loggerheads, the whitebait is
ordered and the feast shall take place. To those
absent, as to those present, this Greenwich fes-
tivity is marked as a reckoning day. It
is the point whence a look back is given to see
what has been achieved ; a resting point whence a
reckoning-up of the Session may be made. The cal-
culation this year will not be altogether unsatisfac-
tory. The long speeches and longer nights have not
been altogether fruitless. The session 18.2-3 has
had its triumphs as well as its failures. The
campaigns of St. Stephen's vary in their re-
nits. Some display the mere struggles of fac-
tion, others exhibit the conflict of principles; that
now waiting its masticatory ratification will rank as
one of financial reform. A Coalition Cabinet was
capable of nothing better. It could not deal with
broader subjects with success : it has, therefore, done
well to labour on the details it was best fitted
to grasp. The battle of Reform and the struggle
on'Education have been postponed ; the lofty needs
of foreign policy have been unmet ; the realities of
Romish encroachment have been truckled to—in the
Board of Education in Ireland, and on the Charitable
Trusts Bill. But on financial, on social, on colo-
vial subjects, we have had sensible, business-like,
and ju:-.icious action. Whilst some of our more
Liberal friends have melted away into the silence,—if
not the oblivion—of place, ono placeman has stood for-
ward in a very distinct and unmistakeable way to
do good service. His measures have been the
financial ones, and he therefore has done the
most successful work—almost, indeed, the only
work possible in a Cabinet of compromises.
The chief of these Minya done, are worth
recapitulation, now that the Whitebait Dinner indi-
cates the season for legislative stock-taking. We
have got rid of the tax on cleanliness—the soap duty
—long complained of, and very justly complained of
as injurious to health, to comfort, and to the deve-
lopment of a branch of industry in which England
may now fairly hope to excel. We have had a par-
tial clearance of the Tariff calculated,—as far as it goes,
—to simplify our trade, and to permit the importation
duty free of many useful things heretofore taxed, to
the very small profit of our revenue, and the very
considerable clogging of our commerce. We have
secured a Ministerial admission of the very important
principle that all national taxes levied upon the
people should he paid at once into the National Ex-
chequer, without any previous deduction—a rational
proceeding, hitherto practically outraged, to the
great injury of the national puree. We have
Cat a law abolishing the iniquitous exemption
from legacy duty long enjoyed by the landowners.
Though the bill that establishes the future liability
of real property to the imposts borne by personalty
may not be quite what it should be—and what it
assuredly will be made—yet to pass such a bill at
a and thus to abolish practically one of the relics of
feudalism, must be ranked as a very great step in
the direction of financial improvement; and must
be taken also as a proof that a majority
even of an unreformed Parliament are wil-
ling to cars great fiscal inequalities when a
Ministry can be found, fair enough and bold enough,
to insist upon such justice being done. Then, again,
we have secured a legislative recognition of the pein-
.

niple of a modified Income Tax. That impost is now I
placed upon a footing which is to insure a diminn.
tion of its pressure. We have gabled also a I
'reduction of the tax upon Tea—with a prospect
that increased consumption of this necessary of life
will secure hereafter a further mitigation of the impost
upon it. Publicity has likewise escaped from the
etutches of the Inland Revenue officials. The man
of business no longer has to answer the tax-man's
query, " Have you such a thing as eighteen-pence
about you ?" before getting leave to say what he has
to sell or to let, or what he wants to buy
or to hire. Henceforth our tradesmen and
our workmen—our producers and our consumers—
may make their mutual wants and desires known
through that universal medium, the press, without
taxation. The impetus thus given to business—or
rather the clog removed from its action—will be far
more beneficial than the public have yet a full con-
ception of. All this—if nothing more has been
done—makes up a very satisfactory sum total of
financial reform accomplished in one session.
And at any rate, on comparison with the
doings of the previous Administration, puts utterly
is shame the ministerial work of the I)erbyites. We
may declare it to be a fair basis for is gyin!rot7l,YTy
speech at the Whitebait Dineen
But when the enumeration of its financial results
is complete, the good fruits of the session are nearly
all told. True, the Cape constitution has been ar-
ranged, and the Canada Clergy Reserves irritation
been thus allayed—both good things done. True,
also, that customs and shipping reforms have
been advanced somewhat, and pilotage grievances
been listened to,—the social nuisances of open
City graveyards and ill-regulated City cabs
have been dealt with ; and the Parliamen-
tary absurdity of turning out the reporters dur-
ing divisions has been abolished. True, moreover,
that " long-shore fencibles" are to be got ready to

guard the coast—a step towards naval reform, and
trait that a bold and well-meant, though unsuccessful
attempt, was made to reduce the interest of the
National Debt. And true, lastly, that we ought
perhaps to accept these things done and things in-
tended as a good session's work. And
so they are, and so they very generally will be
admitted to be. But national satisfaction with these
sessional results must be modified by the knowledge
that they are reforms rather fiscal than national,
when national reforms were needed. The Coali-
tion which has been sufficiently united to obtain
the happy passage of such neutral benefits has been
too divided in its councils to secure that needful unity
and promptitude of action which could have kept
Russia honest, and Europe out of the costs and wise-
, ries of threatened war.

TttE Agricultural Meeting at York, like the meeting
at Glouceater,of the Royal Agricultural Society, seems
_ .

to have been one of unusuallnterest. When Farmer

GEORGE could not keep alive his pet project, the
Board of Agriculture (anxiously as he watched the
passage of the annual parliamentary grant), he could
not understand the failure ; and he persevered till he
was withdrawn from affsirs,when the parliamentary

grant dropped, and the institution perished. The
KING raw its importance, and he was quite right in
persisting in trying to make something of what he
knew to be a good idea. The mischief was, that
there could in those days be no results
that could repay the cost and trouble cf
Agricultural Associations. The farming was
desperately bad; and the farmers were taught
and trained to put their trust in class legislation ra•
thee than in the improvement of their art. Mr.
SHAW, having the same sense of the need as Farmer
GEokoz, but having no power over parliamentary

grants, tried the power of the pen, and made out a
cue ready for Lord Spann to take in hand. When
the Reformed House of commons was fairly at work,

and Lord SPENCER could turn to what ho always de-

dared to be hie proper occupation, he proposed at the

Smithfield Club dinner the foundation of a National

Society for the Advancement of Practical Agricul-
ture. That was at the end of 1837, when the Liver-

pool and Manchester Railway, and an awkward one
in Scotland of seven miles long, were our only intro-
duotion to a system which now bears a close relation
to most of our social interests. When Lord SPENCER

instituted the Agrieultcral Society, some landowners
were beginning to apprehend the liberties that the
railways would soon be taking with their park
walls, their cherished lawns and secluded flower-

. -
gardens ; but it probably entered nobody's head
that the permanent fortunes of the whole agricultu-
ral body of England would be built up in a consi-
derable degree by the wide extension of these
dreaded railways. Now we begin to see that it will
certainly be so. For years we have been experienc-
ing the effect of railway facilities on the markets, and
in reciprocating and uniting the beneths of town and
oountry ; and now, these York and Gloucester meet-
ings present a new aspect of the mighty boon. New
districts are opened to the observation of the agri-
culturists of England, and secluded residents and

observant visitors have met to excellent purpose.
Small as our island is, there are still many districts

to be opened up to agricultural study when there
are railways everywhere to convey men, stock, and
implements.
_ _

A very interesting feature of these meetings
is the exhibition of implements. Nothing like
it was ever seen before. It has been a sort of
dream in many mirds for some years that w,
must, in the natural course of things, be destined either
to understand, and therefore foresee, the weather
better than hitherto, or to mike ourselves less de-
pendent on it than man has ever been; and now, the
time seems really to be approaching. We are not
getting to understand the weather better yet—as the
lottery of the present baffling season sufficiently
puma &bolero are of opinion that the ancients,
vibe were led by their superstition about thunder to
watch meteorological changes with the closest atten-
tion, were more weathcrwise than we. An old
Augur might beat, in such prescience, not only our
MERPUTS, but our philosophers, stationed in their
observatories here and there all over the
globe. And we do not take readily to
the South African practice of keeping rain-
makers in psy—taking care that they are
duly shut up, within four walls, to say their prayers
without disturbance. But we have our own ad-
vantage over both the ancient and modern mumbc-
jumbo. If we cannot make out when the rain will
come, we are learning to predetermine how little
damage it shall do. If we cannot cover the sky
with clouds at will, like wise Hottentots, we can
shed water over the surface of field and meadow,
and send fattening showers down upon our tallest
fruit trees. We can all be cloud-compeller. and
clod-compellers in our own way, if not in Homes's.
We can water the earth, in spite of sun and wind ;
and we can so comminute and shake up the soil as
that it shall drop the surplus rains through it, and
be open to the air, and defy the sun to bake it into
anything worse than dust. When the summer storm
is hurrying up, we can dry our hay and whisk it
away in a trice, and leave the bare sward to
turn the malice of the rain into a bleep-
ing. We can strengthen our groiring grain
against levelling winds and slanting showers
by timely measures with the moil and the sowing;
and when we want to reap it, we need not scour the
country for reapers, nor sit up at night to watch
over the quarrels of Irish and local labourers, nor
Niggle about wages. With our submissive automaton
reaper, we can cut our crops when and how we
please, and be very happy to hear of the Irish from
Bathurst or the Mississippi valley. After seeing the
show of implements at York and Gloucester,
a thoughtful men would be slow to say what
desire of the farmer's heart may not be
Wiled in time, now that he hu fairly en-
tered into negotiations with science. Science must'
en her part, enter into negotiation with handi-
craft : agricultural machinery must be made conside-
rably cheaper ; and then the farmer of the latter
half of this century may be as a magician in compa-
rison with him of the first half—be he Farmer
GEORGE himself.
Some needs, and very pressing ones, remain. Im-
prove machinery as we may, we cannot dispense
with the labourer. There was a time—there is no
occasion to tell how long ago—when the farmers
liked dull labourers, who would go the round of their
work like horses in a mill. It is no longer so. It
io found that the slowness, the prejudice, the dulness
of the labourer are most serious obstacles to agricul-
tural improvement. He cannot read, and does not
know of anything new : what be does not know he
cannot care about : what he does not care about he
cannot believe. In the dreariest part of the rainiest
day a bright sunshine breaks over every agricul-
tural meeting where the members agree, as many did
at li:oaceoter, that farm labourers must be better
taught and traineti--that is, educated. The mem-
bers can carry this point if they set their minds
upon it. The factory operatives disclose the finest
specimens we yet have of an educated working
class. This happened through the wisest of the
employers setting their minds upon the project of
making their poor neighbours men instead of
■aehines. The farmers are now rapidly rising into
a position of intelligence, oculence, and steady pros-
perity, almost corporate, which :163` rival that of our