The Express.
London, England, 1846-09-25 00:00:00

1 preso.

MAILS.
The mails for Coronae, Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and
Gibraltar, will be made up on tre 26th inst.
The malls for New South Wales„&e., will be made up on the evening
of the 30th iirt.
The West India trails, including those for Mexico, Honduras, and
!levant', will be made up on the morning of the 2d October.
The mails for British North Atomics, Bermuda, and the United
States, will be made up on the evening of the 34 October.
Tirt overland mails for Gibraltar, Malta,
and Given; the loniaSouthampton,n Islands,
Egypt, Aden, Ceyint, India, Hong-Kong, China, ria
will be made up on the morning of the 3d October.
The mails for Madeira, Brasiot, Buenos Ayres, Monte Video, he.,
will be made up on the evening of the sth October.
The overland closed mdlw, rig Marseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, llong-liong, hr., will be made up oa the
evening of the 7th October.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
We cannot notice, in any way, any communication that la sent to as
anonymously ; but those who choose to address us In oanfidenee will
find thetroonfidence respected. NEITHER CAN WE UNDERTAKE
TO RETURN AN V MAN usourrs WHATEVER.

RUM WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
TICIS DAT.-StCrIIIIIF, 13 MM. pie. 4; Afternoon, 36 mln. put 4.
To-aioasow.—Rora.nt, n tomb past 4; Afternoon, 12 dn. put 5.

LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPT. 25.

THE "TIMES" AND THE "DAILY NEWS."

IN estimating the expenses of its publication, the
Times omitted the cost of maintaining its BRUTUSES
and CATOS. Yet who does not know their value to
the leading journal ? Who does not know their con-
venient and ready uses, when the exhaustion of
British honesty in leading articles requires a supple-
ment of Roman virtue in the shape of a letter from a
correspondent ? We have no notion at present of
setting up a CATO, but we should be really glad to
know the price of a CATO of Cornhill.
The Times has not condescended to notice our
answer to its attack upon ourselves and the solvency
of our proprietors; but it cannot repress its uneasi-
ness, and a correspondent of Curnhill is called in to
its relief. We should have known this correspondent
to be a CATO, we fancy, even had he suppressed his
classic name. There is no mistaking what HORACE
calls the " atrocem animum," characteristic of the
Roman stoic. CATO thus indulges his small spite at
the Daily News, in the Times of yesterday :

But the King (Hudson) has still an eye to business in his
witty sallies. It seems you sell your paper for bd., and
there is another paper, which the King patronises, which is
sold for 2itl.; and he thinks he has a capital hit at you,
because while you advocate cheap fares you do not sell a
cheap newspaper. Where is the analogy ? The King has
obtained a monopoly of the communications of a part of the
country, and people who have to travel to the north must
proceed along his line, whether they will or not. There is
no choice. The coaches have been driven from the roads.
But a newspaper has no other monopoly than that which
arises out of the quality of the commodity. Jack Cade,
indeed, ruled that in England seven halfpenny loaves should
be sold fur a penny, but in general it is supposed that a man
may ask a penny for a penny's worth. No one complains of
a wine-merchant charging more for claret than for black
strap. Any man may establish a newspaper, but the diffi-
culty is to get the public to buy it.
-

Yes, there is the difficulty. CATO touches the sore
place. We have not only established a newspaper :
we have got the public to buy it. We have got the
public to buy it by thousands, where other journals
are sold by hundreds. We have obtained a circula-
tion which competes with that of the Times ; and,
with a public daily enlarging, and comprehending
more and more what a vital interest they have in the
issue of the question between ourselves and our con-
temporary, we mean to continue and improve the com-
petition. We do not entertain a doubt of the result.
CATO does. lie is for cheap railways and dear
newspapers. There must be low fares on all roads
but the road of knowledge ; and to compete with the
Times is Jack-Cadism. We object to the comparison
of CATO. Our crime is not that of Calm. Our crime
is the crime of Lord SAT, whom CADE, like CATO,
would " behead for it ten times." CATO sneering
against the Daily News, and talking of bhickstrap, is
in the position of the hero who indicts Lord SAT,
and may after him, with slight alteration, repeat the
heinous charge.
" Thou hut most traitorously corrupted the people of this
realm, in establishing a cheap journal ; and whereas, before,
our fathers had no other but the high-priced papers, the
Times, the Chronicle, the Herald, and the Post, thou haat
projected and printed a new paper, and, contrary to the
Queen, her crown, and dignity, hut set up the Daily News.
It will be proved to thy face that thou host men about thee
that commonly talk of twopence-halfpenny, and such abomi-
nable wards as no Christian ear can endure to hear."

It is not we who rule that seven halfpenny loaves
shall be sold for a penny, but it is CATO who would
rule that twopence-halfpenny worth of newspaper
shall be sold for fivepenee ; and it is for the people
of England, whom the latter question interests the
most, to decide whether or not they will sub-
mit to such a rule. It is most true that a
man is entitled to ask a penny for a penny's
worth ; but it is not less true that a loaf, or anything
else, ceases to be a penny's worth from the moment
it can be had for a halfpenny. And this is the
pinch of the matter between ourselves and the Times.
Hence we have CATO'S hints as to quality, in the
marry-come-up, or Slipslop vein. Hence, too, his com-
parisons of drink. No one complains, says CATO, of a
wine-merchant charging more for claret than for
blackstrap. Certainly not; but neither will rational
folk consent to pay more for their claret than it is
worth, or decide what is claret and what is black-
strap by the opinion of either Times or CATO. They
will taste for themselves. It is possible they may
now and then find the difference to be, not between
blackstrap and claret, but between claret fresh and
stale. In that very Times of yesterday, for example,
illumined by the light of CATO, appears a flowing
comment on the proposed elevation of the Duke upon
the arch, which they might remember to have quaffed
before. Let us place the two beverages side by side :
Daily Nora, Sept 16. Times, Sept 24.
The forty horses which are to Forty of the most elephantine
draw the Duke are a contribution beasts that the breweries can sup.
from Mesas. Goding, the patriotic ply are employed in drawing his
and enterprising brewers Grace by inches towards his airy
Never, since the time of the Teo- pedestal. The progress of a eer-
Jan horse, has such an equestrian tan celebrated horse of antiquity
monster paraded the streets of • is nothing to it. In vain does
capital. The infatuation, how- Inocoon, represented by nearly
ever, which in the talc of Troy all the artists and men of taste in
fine a whole population, is In this the kingdom, remonstrate against
case, we would hope, confined to the portentous elevation. Fate
a small section of subscribers. urges the omen. The victimised
But, if limited in numbers, they designer of the arch protests
are great in obstinacy. In vain loudly against what in every sense
Woods and Forests, the Trea- bids fair to be an unequal burden
miry, the architect of the arch, on his work. The sculptor is
the voice of the press, urge Priam's silent. The moat distinguished
questions The mischief is architects of the day proclaim it
done for the present. Up begoes. a diagracefel solecism. Onward,
Scandit Wahl, machine mu- however, is the word.
roe, Accingunt omnes operi„ pedibus.
Fe to ands; pueri circum in- que rottrum
nupterque puettm Subjiciunt Japans, et stupea au-
gurs eanunt, funemque menu rule collo
con Ungar gandent : Intendant. Scandlt fatalis ma.
Lila Butt, alediseges =inane UM- china mums.
NW mid. Feria armis. Paeri circum in.
We wosil Mrsl6l7o L2O- nuptreque puellie
coos, to sass eat Mew Lon- Sacra canunt, funemquc mans
dooms of the coseetiseeees of this contingere traudent
atrocious citation of all artistic Ilia subit, medixque minans
principle. dlabitur urbi."
Now, which is the claret, and which the black-
strap ?

We hope the old Roman will consent to enlighten
as. We know he professes to retire into privacy with
his letter of yesterday. He shoots his bolt and runt.
. But we shall have him in some other shape. He may
disappear as the CATO of Cornhill, but he will pro-
; bably reappear as the GRACCIIIIB of Gracechurch-
; street. These aids and appliances are indispensable to'
. our contemporary. They are the straws thrown up.
. They are hints of what may not openly be chal-
lenged. We cannot float with the tide or
sail with the stream, till we have ascertained
' the strength and direction of the current. But we
are stumbling on a somewhat stale subject. Let us
turn to one more novel and surprising. Let us illus-
trate consistency. Leaving CATO to enjoy his claret,
let us show with what steady zeal his favourite mer-
chant has taxed the vintage.
The Times says it is now published at a mini/nun
price. Admitting this to be the case, we proved the
other day that its wealth and power were amassed
by a price below the minimum. The Times was pub-
lished at sevenpence when the stamp duty was
within a fraction of fourpence, and it is published at
fivepence when the stamp duty is a penny. We leave
the reader to work this sum. He may find it worth
his while to work another with it, and calculate the
advantage, on a yearly sale of (say) twenty thousand
copies, of having brought up the minus-minimum to
a minimum. Would an offer of ten thousand a year
be taken ? Would an offer of fifteen thousand ? We
doubt if either would satisfy the Tunes' zeal for high
prices.
But we have undertaken to prove consistency in
this matter. Fifty-seven years ago, in 1789, the
Times, then a single folio sheet little more than a
L fourth of the size of our paper of to-day, was pub-
lished for threepence. But on the 12th of August in
that year, the seventy-seventh anniversary of the day
on which the HARLEY Administration first taxed the
press, an additional newspaper duty of a halfpenny
was imposed by Mr. Perr. Did the Times raise its
price in the same ratio? Oh dear no. Just
as, being relieved of a tax of nearly fourpence,
it now relieves the public to the extent of threepence
so, in those earlier days, being taxed to the amount
of a halfpenny, it laid a penny tax on the public. We
call this consistency.
It was a little more difficult, however, to take this
comae fifty-seven years ago, than it is now. The
monopoly of the daily press had not grown to be so
formidable. Intruders on the favoured few were not
infrequent, and they dared to side with the public
occasionally. They gave, instead of taking, the odd
halfpenny. Hence they were treated with infinite
scorn. They were called halfpenny papers, low-priced
prints, goods of inferior quality. It was proved that
their proprietors must be " playing a losing game at
the beginning in order to take in the public at last."
In short, all the arguments were popular that have
been revived against the Daily News ; though, until
the necessity for that revival, nothing could have
been easier or less disturbed than the quiet ap-
propriation by the newspapers of our own day,
of the relief intended for the public. The papers
had but to be unanimous in agreeing to the 5d., and
to pocket a clear additional profit of four-fifths
of a penny on every number sold. A correspondent
asks if this was not the effect of combination. Of
course it was. How else could the uniform price have
been kept up? The price of everything else hat,
fallen, in which there was no monopoly. There has
hitherto been a virtual monopoly in the morning
papers, or they would have been more than five in
number, and the price would have varied. There
would be a similar monopoly in calico, in iron, in
glass, or in silk, if there were but five master-manu-
facturers of each ; and if, with no provincial or foreign
competition, their manufactures could only be carried
on in London.
We do not blame our morning contemporaries.
Their conduct has been perfectly natural. They have
taken what may be thought a not unfair advantage of
position, of prestige, of preoccupation. But they
must not complain if, in open and honourable rivalry,
we break down that circle of exclusion. We say that
we offer to the people, and bring for the first time
within their right appreciation and enjoyment, a paper
equal in all respects to the best of those existing at
one-half their price. The people are to decide if this
is true, and we gladly leave it to them. We appeal
with some confidence from the judgment of CATO.

UNLESS the law be thoroughly revised and
amended, the formation of a General Registration
League is absolutely necessary. We deprecate that
necessity. The cost implied is a tax which ought
not be imposed. The numerous agents who must
be employed, might fled occupation more profitable
for the public, if not for themselves. The espionage
implied in systematic objection is a mischief in
society. The trouble, bustle, and excitement, are
equivalent to those of Annual Elections. The an-
noyances inflicted, and animosities engendered, are
beyond calculation. Party spirit is sustained and
inflamed, without regard to any principles by which
the demarcations of party are dignified. The Money
Power is made most unduly pre-eminent. And after
all, the result must partake largely of a capricious-
ncas the most preposterous. Still there is, under the
present plan, no alternative ; no other mode of pro-
tecting honest voters is the possession of their
rights.
In Mary-le-bone there is a sort of battue. The
collector died on the 28th May. His successor was
not appointed till the 10th July. No person had
authority to receive assessed taxes in the interval.
The inhabitants had notice, by circular, of the appoint-
ment of a new collector, just seven days before the
law requires that the payment should be made. The
result may be easily guessed. There are 1500 objec-
tions for non-payment in time. Unless the Barns-
ter's decision be reversed on appeal, the whole are
disfranchised. It is a massacre of the inno-
cents. The injustice and absurdity are more glaring,
but not more real, than if only IS instead of 1500
had been affected. The collector has always a good
chance of disfranchising any person whom he wishes
to put off the lista, by simply postponing his cus-
tomary and expected call for payment. And this is
only one means out of thousands by which that object
may be gained. We know an instance in which three
votes, for the same holding in the City of London, are
objected to every year, for misdescription. The pre-
mises have a double frontage, extending from one
street to a parallel street. When the votes are
claimed far them in one street, it is objected that they
are in the other street. When the claim is made for
them as in the latter street, it is objected that they
are in the former. But the great reliance of ob-
jectors is on absence. That is their battery
for wholesale slaughtering. While, on the
other hand, the facility for new claimants in
counties, and the difficulty, for the opposite party,
of obtaining the requisite information to support an
objection, with the liability to costs if they fail, afford
the means of manufacturing votes on a large scale,
whenever it serves the purposes of a faction.
The suffrage is in the hands of the lawyers. It is
a new market for their acuteness. Everything turns
upon technicalities. The professed object of the
Reform Act is the last thing thought of. If we
understand the spirit of that measure, it was to
ensure a constituency of the degree of intelligence
and respectability supposed to be requisite. A ten-
pound householder was presumed not to be altogether
dependent and uneducated. No mysterious influence
was ascribed to the tenement, or its number, or its
latch-key; the (supposed) best overt evidence was
taken, of the needful intelligence and condition for a
voter. The decisions of the Registration Courts tell
us that those qualifications are often not found in the
judges of the land, in high functionaries of the state,
in able ministers of the church, and in representatives
of boroughs, counties, and the metropolis. To which ;all
we can say is, that the decisions of the Registration
Courts tell us lies more monstrous than those of the

renowned fat knight. The reductio ad absurdum is
complete; and, what is worst of all, the only eflici!nt
mode of defence requires retaliation. It is a cheating
game. You play with sharpers, and are beaten un-
less their tactics be adopted. They will demolish
your absentees ; you cannot afford to spare their
absentees. The practical tendency is to political
demoralisation. It throws all the higher and nobler
qualities of political straggle into abeyance. It only
patronises the petty and the dirty. " Reform it
altogether," we my; at the first possible moment.
If not, the Registration League must arise from the
ashes of the Anti-Corn-law League.
Local efforts for defence are insufficient They
lack both the requisite funds and the requisite firm-
ness. The magnates of a locality will not be bearded
with impunity. A village tradesman might as well
go to law with the Squire as thwart him in this mat-
ter. Barristers are said to make strange decisions in
some cases, when not watched by competent agents.
An objector-general has practically been found neces-
sary. He must be a man of straw, or he would be
utterly demolished. You can only find at a distance
any adequate control upon the domineering powers of
a thinly-peopled locality. The Registration Club must
be National. It must be the League again ; but the
League,without its important knowledge to communi-
cate, its high principles to assert, or its mighty anta-
gonists to combat. It must be a great warfare against
the reptilism of politics. A national crusade against
vipers, gnats, hornets, and spiders. We beseech the
Legislature to spare us this degradation.
A continuance of the present system must either
pervert the political character of the people, making
it tricky, petty, and unprincipled ; or hand over the
government of the country to organised factions,
alternately purchasing it by outbidding each other in
their registration outlay. Which would prove the
meat intolerable evil, it is d'illealt to my. Either
must be loathsome to the contemplation of a great
statesman. There is no semblance of a need for laws
accommodated to imperfection or depravity in the
public mind. The registration system has never
pleased anybody but sharp lawyers and unprincipled
partizans. The aim of legislation should be, not to
debase, but to raise and dignify, the political spirit.
The people are capable of those better influences.
They recoil with scorn from the petty formalities, the
technical difficulties, and the capricious results,
through which they arc compelled to pass, if they
pees at all, to the exercise of their rights of citizen-
ship. In whatever way the law be amended, it
should regard those simple, frank, and noble qualities
which inhere in the national character. The English
people are born politicians ; and Institution, like
Education, should consult nature, harmonize with its
tendencies, and aim at their safest, purest, and most
complete development.

THE prospect of destitution in Ireland was at first
absolutely paralysing. It looked like something with
which it was vain to attempt to grapple. This feel-
ing of despondency has not altogether passed away,
but the progress of events is gradually dissipating it.
Men begin to conceive the possibility of snatching
the Irish people from the jaws of famine. The vessels
of the royal navy which are establishing and storing
depots of food on different parts of the coast, reassure
the peasantry. They know that there is food in the
land. They are not in danger of being driven to moody
desperation by the fear that, do what they may, in
a short time there will not be provisions for them
all. They know that since last November stores of
Indian corn, meal, and oats and biscuiti, have been
accumulating, in consequence of the provident care of
Government; and that they are now being placed within
their reach. The extraordinary presentment sessions
convened by proclamation of the Lord-Lieutenant,
have hitherto worked tolerably well ; on the whole
better than we were entitled to anticipate. There

has been grumbling remonstrance and recalcitration,
but presentments have been made. These will be
work for the poor, and wages wherewith to buy the
food which is in the land. _

Asa plea to repose for any time, however brief
from the exertions required to meet the pressure of
the coming winter, all this is nothing. But in so far
as it relieves those who are engaged in the task from
hopelessness, and, with a prospect of success, lends
additional efficacy to their labour, it is much. This is
not a time for reflecting on bygone delinquencies, but
for hearty co-operatio% At this moment every hint
from individuals possessing local knowledge is worth
attending to. It may suggest some peculiar feature
of Irish distress that has been overlooked; something
inapplicable in the means taken to relieve it, that re-
quires amendment. We care not from whence it comes;
under what suspicion of bias or sinister motive; or in
what style of language it may be couched. The words
of the least wise may be suggestive to men of reflec-
tion, by opening new trains of thought; and every
man of average common sense, who knows the Irish
peasant and his condition, from having lived in actual
contact with him, ought to be listened to at present.
While we believe Government will adhere to the
principle of the plan of relief they have adopted, we
believe that they will do so in no churlish or pedantic
spirit of adherence to mere forms. But there is one
point that all our Irish countrymen who have to pro-
pose changes or modifications in the Government
measure, will do well to keep in mind. That mea-
sure is temporary : to meet a passing exigency.
No applications can bo listened to for under-
taking operations under it, which are calcu-
lated to last for years. Such operations are
required to remove or alleviate the destitution
at present existing in Ireland: but part of
that destitution is permanent, a chronic social disease :
Government only undertakes to assist in relieving
the surplus of distress arising from the immediate
and anomalous visitation of the potato blight. The
regular, enduring distress of Ireland, the Irish must
alleviate or remove by their own exertions. The
English and Scotch have raised themselves above
the perennial pauperism which still clings to Ireland ;
the Irish, if they will sincerely and earnestly exert
themselves, can do the same. England and Scotland are
in such a condition that one, two, or even three failures
of their harvest, would not reduce their population to
such a wretched condition as the failure of one and
prospective failure of another have already reduced
Ireland. England and Scotland, with partial but
extensive failures of their own potato crops,
are able to extend assistance to Ireland. The
Irish ought not to rest satisfied with being the needy
members of the national family. A decent pride
should stimulate them to exertions to raise themselves
above the necessity of applying at frequent intervals
for assistance. Extensive public works and private
improvements arc the means by which Ireland is to be
raised to an equality in point of wealth with their
countrymen on this side of the channel ; but they
must not count upon the supplies advanced to them
in a year of famine, for carrying through such lasting
and extensive operations.
The aid which England extends, is to relieve the
additional distress among the Nish population which
results from the failure of the potato crop. More will
not be given and more need not be asked. England
will not commit itself to works that may last for years,
under the delusive idea that it is contributing to
relieve the incidental distress of one year. Even
though the potato crop of 1847 should prove the most
plentiful Ireland has ever seen ; even though some
new vegetable esculent more nutritious and hardy may
have been introduced; there would be in Ireland a
large amount of destitution in that year. And this
can only be alleviated, and gradually extirpated, by
the industrial exertions of thelrish themselves.

....
The population of Ireland, at the time the census
was taken in 1841, amounted to 8,175,124. The rural
population, the growers of food, amounted to 7,039,639.
The undue proportion of mere growers of food to the
followers of other industrial pursuits, is still more
apparent when we look to the classification of the
productive class. The adults actively employed wero