The Express.
London, England, 1848-12-01 00:00:00

tibtewwlPrlll teLlii; 41,81 :al hernan4,
Ilimtismiseltd *raid** military "Astorspip and
a nip fattener.
In Italy the Austrians will be fat restoring the old
=the French for modifying they'll the in-
et w modersdo system, which is pd 1 •
nailing 'overprint than the other except that it
wears some specious forms and preteits. Bet. to
Spain, the moderado system is a more shameful end
corrupt exploitation of *country by foreign inflow*
and for foreign pupas than even the old absolutist

Vis
worthy of remark at present, that the organ
of M. Twine, the Constiftasownel, which »prestige
the *mined ideas of the political party_ likely to
reign, at least at first, in the name of Louts NAPOLSON,
is most lavish in its admiration of Austria, and in
hat/arise of Prince WINDISCHORATZ. c
els amuse, the liberal parties in both G ore:anal=
Italy, and shows itself ready to stretch forth the
hand of amity and alliance to every despotic court
and every wielder of martial law. It would give
up Hungary and Tuscany to Austria, all north
and central Germany to Prussia, and Poland,
no doubt, to Russia. Its horror of either
German or Italian liberalism, that is, its di.
like of seeing either a German or an Italian
nation oondituted and independent, is very instruc-
tive and very natural. And it warns us what we have
to expect from the toryism of the French moderates.
But whether France and Austria combine for the
subjugation of Italy, or whether they quarrel and
strive for mastery, let us equally avoid complicity in
their liberticide and selfish designs. We are for the
cause of Italian and of German freedom
and independence. And we shall never fail
to have the larger masses of the people of bot h coun-
tries grateful to us, if we are true to them, and if we
carefully abstain from any attempts to coerce them or
turn them to political or commercial profit of a selfish
kind. Let other governments come forward to enact
conquerors or policemen over thar neighbours; our
ambition is to be neither one nor the other.

-
A PARAGRAPH, which has been going the round o.
the papers, makes allusion to certain bodies, reported
to be now actively at work in sundry of the govern-
ment offices, whose existence at any other period
would be little short of a miracle, and whose numbers
and activity at the present moment, notwithstanding
the obscurity which shrouds their valuable labouie,
are not the least significant among the signs of
the times in which we live. Them several
sets of gentlemen, at present busily engaged
in overhauling, or at lent pretending to over-
haul, the expense, of the Customs, the Ordnance,
the various departments of the Irish executive, &c.,
call themselves committees ; but their constitution
and powers they are regular ro in
yal cmimissions, dit
tering from others only in the very unusual circum-
stance of their being unpaid: a fact for which the
government is not unwilling to take full credit, and
hence the neat paragraphs which have from time to
time kept the public apprised of the movements of
these volunteer inquisitor-.
It is no doubt a matter for congratulation that, with
the habits which long familiarity. with the public
purse has engendered in the governing classes of this
country such a number of disinterested gentlemen
could be found to engage in a task which, if well
performed, will be so onerous and responsible, with
the prospect of no reward but the bare consciousness
of rendering the nation a service.
under such circumstances, be regarded as an act of
no little public virtue in Earl ORANVILLE, Lord
HARDINGE, Sir RANDOLPH ROUTH, and their col-
leagues,
" To acorn delights, and live lahorious days,"
leaving the " sweetest morsel" of the sporting season
" unpicked," and devoting themselves to the Ithada-
manthine task of ferreting out the abuses which lurk
in those vast establishments. With spectacles on his
nose, and " Cocker "at his elbow, and altogether ob-
livious of his " Joe Manton" sad the moors, each
chairman of an unpaid committee, his grimness and
severity trebled by the consciousness that his services
are gratuitous, summons batch after batch of under-
lings before him :
" Castigatqus auditque doles, subigitque fateri."
It is altogether a gratifying spectacle. Who will
venture to say that the government is not economical
and retreaching, when they have, no one knows how
many committees of inquiry, all simultaneously at
work to discover where a penny can be saved, and
one unhappy clerk compelled to do the work of two
or three ?
And yet we have our misgivings. If, as
the proverb says, it be ungracious to " look a
gift horse in t mouth,' it may not be exactly
the pink of courtesy to look with distrait
and suspicion on the doings of these unpaid coot-
miesioners. God knows there is work enough for
them to do, if either their earnestness or their impar-
tiality were on a par with their other qualifications.
Bat the misfortune is, that they, approach the task
shackled and blinded by the associations and habits of
their whole previous lives. They are almost
all either official or professional persons ; mem-
bers of the services or departments, whose neglect
and prodigality it is proposed to restrain. Obviously,
therefore, they will confine themselves to local and
petty reforms, suppressing half-a-dozen of clerks here.
and cutting down salaries or striking off extra allow-
ances there; ordering the sale of old stores; post
polling the building of new barracks ; and initiating or
recommending
.all the other subtle manoeuvres which
are put in requisition when it is the object of a suire-
tary to demonstrate, in a tabular form, that this or
that item in the estimates of his department
is some hundred and odd pounds under the
(admits for the previous year: a ccojercies
trick, which though it has been exhibited in parlia-
ment and drafted into blue books times past counting,
and for more years than any living man remembers,
is still as fresh and potent with our gullible represen-
tatives, as the gambols of Punch are with the little
boys in the streets. The fact is, the government are
alarmed at the spread of associations for financial
reform, and at the overwhelming exposures of the
misapplication of the public money, which those
associations have circulated. They feel that they will
require next session an unusual assortment of those
infinitesimal retrenchments to make a show with ; and
hence the activity with whichthey have set their friends
and followers at work, to do the economical, in customs,
excise, ordnance, Dublin Castle, Dublin courts of
justice, government prisons, dockyards, and all those
departments where a saving of a few hundreds can
be squeezed out, a sinecurist superannuated, or an
office eassolidated, without making anybody uncom-
fortable. Yet, all these sets of disinterested gentle-
men, proud as they are of their voluntary drudgery,
are, if the plain truth were known, nothing better
than knots of amateur coopers, hammering together
new tubs to throw to the British whale!
The time is gone by, however, for tricks of
.his description. The British whale, accustomed
as he is to be made • booty of, has had his
intelligence wonderfully sharpened of late, and is
beginning to intimate intelligibly enough that he
won't be gammonsd any longer by tubs, either
old or new. So that the supernumerary coopers,
who have volunteered their services to the govern-
ment, for sll the good their order will reap from it—
for we suspect it was mainly in defence of the privi-
leges and peculation of their caste that they were so
ready to give their labour gratis—are simply and ab-
solutely wasting their time.
Far be it from us to make a jest of any serious dis-
position to amendment on the part of a government
and a party, who, whatever their other merits, have
uever been remarkable for either the ability or the
economy with which they have administered the
public revenues. The departments whose manage-
merit is at present undergoing examination,
offer a wide field for reform and retrenchment,
in the hands of a government sincerely bent
on enforcing strict honesty and rigid eco-
nomy in both the collection and the distribution of
the enormous revenues of which they annually per-
suade the representatives of the people to entrust them
with the virtually uncontrolled expenditure. The
customs and the excise especially abound in abeam.
But to dues we never expect to see an effectual
cheek administered until the expense of collecting the
taxes is included in the estimates of the year. Let
the goviromeat make that one of their measures for
theenerung session—let the principle be established
of estimating the revenues of the year at the gross
sum levied on the people, and not at the net amount
paid into the exchequer—and we will give them
credit for a sincere wish to turn over a new leaf in
financial matters.

„she
ea 0, the to whtiee:i7widonallode
Oroill 01101 to ilieritisimarh' nestrate information ea
ne Os management el? the
ffima any governereoCkes to kri bo•
pee parliament; ad ll.?esat Is sok 'a mere pre-
ebs and satisfactory ' -et As seems% we
Wait that, in its wish movies would be easeider-
lila- -And for anypr lxsidt these commissions
to eel, Ist
are likely the government Om dye
'kWh. But we have laid hold cif the oormiee, ere the
Bowies ops of protesting beforehand sealant the
emomodom el small economies being made the pretext
Waft peat mos. Let the government carry
emir poor milieu to any extent they please, but let
them set hits themselves that Jour( BULL will be
pawl foolish after the fashion of bygone years. When
real retrenchments shall be recommended by govern-
ment committees, none will welcome the novelty more
oordiall than ourselves ; but it is not from committees
esld~over by each men es Earl ORANVILLB and
Cire-7-nt HARDINOS that we expect them to come.
Lord Hasothoz is a man of great ability and high
honour, and it is quite true that when he was in
office the army and ordnance estimates were consi-
derably lees than they at preeent. But will he
come forward now and recommend their reduction
even to the scale of those years P When he does, we
will applaud and thank him, and trust the represent-
ations of the committee over which he presides—but
not till then.
We published yesterday an abstract of the lost pub-
lication of the Financial Reform Association of Liver-
pool. It is a very able document, and does that body
the highest credit. We have seldom seen the results
of a large mass of accounts and figures presented in a
form more compost and intelligible. It states that
for the coming year, the
Army a.rtirlB Moot to ef48111,1186
(Minim
571,109

Total ••• 110,005,213
Upwards of ten millions sterling for military ex-
penses alone!—and that exclusive of the militia at
home and abroad, and the Irish constabulary—in
quipment and efficiency an army of themselves. The
navy estimates are close upon eight millions more.
Other extra charges not provided for in the above
amount to an additional million ; making, with the
charge of militia and constabulary, a sum total of
more than twenty millwns a year, which our people
are forced to pay for soldiers and sailors ; and that at
a time when we are, and have been for 33 years, at
profound peace with all the world, except here
and there a refractory colony or connexion of
some of our colonial dependencies.

AMONG the asylums to which oar attention has
recently been so much directed, there is one of a very
peculiar character. We refer to an institution of some
standing, which has hitherto had its establishment on
the other side the water, and which is known to the
publics as the " Philanthropic."
The " Philanthropic" was instituted towards the
close of the last century, with a very excellent object
and intent. Attention had begun to be directed to
the causes of crime, and it was found that a great pro-
portion of the adult criminals who underwent the
various penalties of the law had commenced their
career of wickedness at very early ages, and had been
led to it by the persuasion and example of companions
but little older than themselves. It was found also
that in most cases the punishment of imprisonment,
usually awarded to juvenile offenders, served but to
corrupt and deprave the child more rapidly ; whilst
the execution or transportation of convicted criminals,
left, every year, a large number of helpless children
—orphans in the most painful sense—plunged into dis-
tress and destitution, and too often with no other alter-
native but to follow in their parent's steps.. In the hope of
alleviating these evils the " Pnilantbropic" was esta-
blished for the reception, first, of juvenile offenders
of whose reformation there was reasonable hope, and,
second, of the offspring of convicted felons left desti-
tute by their
.parents' death or exile.
Laudable in its design, the " Philanthropic," as
occurs with almost all institutions of its class, dege-
nerated in the course of years into a mere " job " • in-
stitetion. We have before us now some of its past
reports, containing the usual " appeal," " laws and I
regulations," "list of governors," and "form of
legacy." Its balance-sheets were no better than
those of its tribe. One-fourth of its in-
come nerd to go in "salaries and commission
to collectors;" another fourth, or rather more, in the
maintenance of the establishment ; and but a minor
proportion upon the real objects of the institution.
The children it was wont to receive numbered about
twenty a year, and these for the most part were what
is termed "interesting cases"—(i. e., cases in whili
some committeemen, or officers were interested).
Well do we remember, some six years back, the
young ladies in mob-caps, I lue monitorial ribbons, I
and long worsted mitten., who used to represent the
" orphans" of the " Philanthropic" upon important
public occa,ions. They were all ejected in by " ginner
men," and it turns out now, we understand, that
the greater proportion of them had never committed
crimes at all, but were the children of convicts whose
friends had sufficient influence to obtain their election.
Under the " guinea" system the " Philanthropic" in
fact degenerated from a public institution into a psi-'
rate seminary—from a reformatory establishment
into an " orphan " school.
All this, however, is undergoing change. The sub-
ject of juvenile delinquency has recently forced itself
upon public attention. We have got orphan asylums
rearing their stately fronts at every turn, boasting
of their thousands in the funds, and cramming you
with lists of their presidents and patrons—
tont juvenile crime increases. It increases not slowly
or steadily, but at a hand gallop. Its rapid pace alike
sets at defiance the calculation of the statician and the
vigilance of the police. At this very time one-eighth
of the offences which occupy our courts of justice are
committed by children (yes, by the proper. objects of 1
the asylums which are receiving half their inmates at
a hundred guineas each), and nearly one fourth of all
the crime of England is brought home to transgres-
sors under twenty years of age ! We have orphan
asylums indeed; vast they are, magnificent, and rich;
they receive their inmates at " one hundred guineas"
a head, and the young, the ignorant, the helpless souls
whom it is their duty to assist, and whom they might
train up as the benefactors and the blessings of their
country, are left to become its curse.
The "Philanthropic" has taken under these cir-
cumstances, a bold and most important step. It has
recast itself, and has come out of the mould in a new
and striking form. It has thrown overboard its
" guinea men r it has pecked off its " interesting in-
mates" to more appropriate places. It has taken the
character of purely a reformatory institution.
It is endeavouring to provide a cure for
that which the orphan asylums ought to
prevent—and do not. It has remodelled its
working committee. It has placed upon it all the
police magistrates of the metropolis, and a few tried
and proved philanthropists. The children in future
to be admitted within its walls are criminal boys.
They are to be admitted upon a police ma-
gistrate's certificate, or at the recommendation of the
Home Secretary. And the relatives of such boys as
are not upon the free list, are to contribute towards
their maintenance—not at the rate of "one hundred
guineas down," but by payments of 6s. 2d. a week,
or an equiva'ent.
Under the system operating in this way, the " Phi-
lanthropic" rteeived last year seventy six boys from ten
to fourteen years old, all of whom had been convicted
of various petty crimes, some many times before,whilet
with others it VMS a first offence. It admitted also
twenty boys from Millbenk who bad been sentenced
to transportation, and twenty-eight boys from Park-
hurst on the recommendation of Sir GEORGE GREY.
The object of the society is to reform these boys, to
teach them trades, and to apprentice them out into
situations in which they may obtain an honest liveli-
hood. In the report of the institution for the present
year a TETI curious account is given of the present
position of all the boys recently sent out, and the
general result establishes that the new system is
working satisfactorily.
In addition to all this,the "Philanthropic" has adopted
a step which the secretaries to the Orphan Asylum
will doubtless think excessively shabby, but which
we most approvingly commend to the consideration
of the managers of those institutions. It has
absolutely curtailed its "salaries and expenses"
very considerable, and it is going to take
measures still further to promote economy of
management. The present directors of the "Philan-
thropic" feel that the existence of their asylum in Lon-
donare
nitnis theTshiet le' tell
costlyy sto andnw their
h disadvantageous.p
op ot wt
to arrange-
ment. removernn y
very shortly, "Weir wages and salaries will be lower,