The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-21 00:00:00

down upon U. It is the duty of the driver to blow the
whistle when he perceives a signal calling as him to stop.
Me. J. T. Fireebse, eargess, of Waking, was sent ihr
ea the eveeing of the aosidest, and west on to town in to.
Madame upon some of the passeagare who had been injured.
Saw the body of Marklsnd on Saturday morning. The
skull was fractured in almost every part. It was oompletely
smashed. There was one injury, a blow through tbe edit
into the brain, which was of itself suMeleat to eases WOW
death. The left arm was also severely fractured.
The Coroner, previous to adjouralag the
repeated his intention to apply to the Secretary oll=
an outer for the attendance of Jones and Flemming. It was
alao desirable, he mid, that the inquiry should not conclude
without the evidence of Porteous, supposing that he should
recover so far uto be able to attend. Calvert, the fireman,
wasroo much injured to attend at present, and it appeared
it night be a mouth or flee weeks before he would be able
to do so.
The inquiry was then adjourned to Tuesday, the let of
February, at ten o'clock.

THE DAILY NEWS.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
(From the Doily Nam)
IT is now two years since we first ventured before
the public, and undertook to record the news, and
elucidate the opinions, of the day. The task was no
light one, success in such an enterprise being neces-
sarily the labour of years, from the very laudable ten-
dency of the public to prefer old friends to new ones.
We were emboldened, however, by thinking that the
revolution which had of late years taken place in
politics and party, and even in social life, had not yet
had its influence on the press, which retained all its
old characteristics, addressing the people rather in the
name of some political, or aristocratic, or ecclesiastical
class, and seeking more to cram them with opinions
from above, than develop, in their own sphere, their
wants, interests, and reason.
We must confess, however, that the epoch ahem
for starting such an enterprise was by no mane a
favourable one. The great struggle which had axe-
pied the country for several years, had best
just brought to a close. The victory had
been achieved by the untiring energy and
talent of a few leaders, who bad roused the publio
mind from its absorption and apathy, and
galvanised it into an earnestness and an activity, as
irresistible as it was extraordinary. The great struggle
past, there was naturally a collapse, a truce of attack
and defence, an evaporation of political zeal, and a
dispersion of political party. The public resembled a
disbanded militia, each wending his way to his quiet
home, the call of duty and the hour of danger over.
Even the old journals scarcely held their connexions
at such a time. The new one, notwithstanding
the tranecendant claim of one name connected with it,
came before a public desirous of repose, and satiated
for the time with political novelty and agitation.
The idea suggested itself of selling the paper at the
very minimum of cost, on the simple principle that a
large circulation must bring that crowd of advertise.
meats, which of themselves would constitute a suffi-
cient element of profit. Such an idea so fully
harmonised with the plan of founding a great popu-
lar organ, which would break up old monopolies, free
the press from family and party influence, and fulfil
the hopes so widely and warmly entertained of a
daily oman„, of cheap knowledge, that it was eagerly
and boldly put in operation by the proprietors, and,
we may add, enthusiastically received and supported
by the public.
The attempt very naturally aroused the fears and
redoubled the activity of the old and high-priced
journals. They all forthwith combined to share
amongst them, and thus lighten, the tremendous ex-
pense of procuring not only the intelligence from
India, and from the several points of the old world
and the new, but even from the different parts of this
country. Whig, Tory, and Weathercock clubbed, if
not their principles, at least their means, to swell out,
by competition, the expenses of the cheap paper
beyond what any rational amount of capital and
patience were likely to bear. We met the combination
with increased energy, and exerted ourselves, by the
most liberal expenditure, to compete with and anticipate
our rivals, in the procuring of prior intelligence.
In that struggle, at times defeated, which is inevitable
against such odds, we were still often signally vie-
torious. One of our rivals, the nearest to us in politi-
cal opinions, soon showed symptoms of discomfiture,
and lowered his colours, though certainly only half-
mast high. to the cheap price flag. Our tory rivals,
suffering as severely, but not so frank, still hold t n
their course, in hopes that the cheap flag may one day
cease to float.
In this, we can affirm, they are most egregiously I
mistaken. What can be done with a cheap organ
of the press is no longer a mystery or a conjecture.
We have tested it fully, and though we have tested
it under the great disadvantage and the most
trying circumstance of bringing to it the full ma-
chinery of a journal, newly founded, yet on the old
system—both elements of expence —still the feasibility
of a cheap paper has been so fully proved by us, that
our example has been widely and successfully
followed.
Yet there is no denying that the obstacles are great.
Not the least one is the absence of political differences
and that fusion of political parties, which render the
public in general careless of the colour or tendency of
the journal it reads or patronises. The Times has
taken skilful advantage of this state of the public
mind. It stands, as one may say, astride of
the whole breadth of the political world, makes in-
direct appeals to the prejudices of every party,
flatters in a breath the churchman and tory, the whig
and the moderate, the radical and the economist, the
chartist and the anti-poor-law tribune. It can laud
at once Mr. DISRAELI, Sir ROBERT PEEL, Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, and Mr. OASTLER. Although the
whole strength of its real support is given to high
church and to what remains practicable of toryism, it
still takes a stand remote from that which it would
protect, redeems its attachment to illiberal principles
by personal attacks, meant to prove its independence,
and by an affectation of tortuousness and wilful
caprice, which defies any rational man to detect its
motives or appreciate its justice. The great anxiety
of the limes is to allow no other journal to take a
popular position; and no matter what may be its own
first professed opinion on any subject, such as National
Defences at home, or the Esparterist party abroad,
it no sooner espies a rival going in between it and
public opinion than it veers round in a trice,
unsays, with unblushing effrontery, what it
said the day before, and relies upon the
now prevalent contempt of the public for consis-
tency, to reap not only pardon, bat applause for the
adroitness and agility of its conversions. The Times
has long made a character and a practice of this with
great questions and with small. Such was its mode
of dealing with corn-law repeal, and with the origi- ,
nators of that repeal ; it began. with holding COBDEN
up to contempt, and ended by inditing hie apotheosis.
The sanction and the patronage given by the
public to such a line of conduct in an estab-
lished journal certainly gives it an ascendency and a
force difficult to shake, jest in the same way that the
worship of suppleness and inconsistency in a statesman
would give him a power calculated to render him
superior both to principles and parties. We believe,
however, that this arises more from the indifference
than from the deliberate judgment of the public.
Nor can the Times itself hope long to continue play-
ing this variety of parts on the political stage. With
the first great question that divides the forward and
the backward parties of the country, that journal
must take its side, it must show its true tory colours,
and mast abandon the disgraceful sham of pretend-
ing to supply the place of liberal organ to a liberal
• ministry and party, when its whole heart is set on
crushing mercantile interests and commercial develop-
ment, in order to rebuild the old edifx in England
of a high priesthood, and a government from above,
not from below.
A minor difficulty with a cheap paper, though a
very serious one at first, is, that advertisements and
advertisers, on which principally the success
of such a paper depends, seek in this coun-
try to appeal to the wealthy and the higher
classes. The wealthy classes are supposed to patronise
dear papers, and tory ones. Tory papers, indeed, live
by this, and prolong their existence after the extinc-
tion of the principles which they profess, and of the
doctrines which they preach. They fill their columns
with news of fashion, for which really fashionable
people care not one fig. But it impose! on the public,
which imagines that an advertisement in such a paper
comes instantly under fashionable eyes. The same
mistake is made by venders of all kinds, who appeal
not to the thousand eyes of the public, like them-
selves, but to the more gullible and wealthy few
Thin is an error, the most grievous of obstacles to the
success of a cheap and popular journal, of which the
public itself cannot fail in time to see the fallacy.
Another great obstacle to a cheap paper is the