The Express.
London, England, 1849-11-16 00:00:00

gat erproo.

OUTGOING MAIL&
The West India Mails, excluding Bermuda, Baranna,
N. Honduras, New Orleans, and Mexico, sad including
OM lee iamb ire, Sc. uan•de.Niearagua, New Granada,
Mad Peru. will be made up to-morrow, Nov. 17.
welt mails f r Spas, and Gibraltar will be
lode sp to-morrow, Nov. 17.
Ths mails for Gibraltar, Malta. Orme*, the lonian bleeds,
llopr, Ceylon, India, and China. via Southampton, will
ha made up on the moraine of N•iv. 20.
The mall. for Brish North America and the United
States will be made upti en Nov. 23.
The mails via Marseilles, to the Mediterranean, Egypt,
Ceylon, India, liong.Kong, Me., will be made up on the
'vestal of Nov. 24.
The mails for Madeira, the Brszlle, sad Buenos Ayres,
will be made up on Des. 4.

DION WATER AT LONDON FIZIDOIL
Tu. D.l—Monatsc Altman, b. In.
To-usasoo—Noralsa. 104. AMMONS. a CU..

LONDON, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16.

IT is impossible not to consider in some respects a
nation, however diversithd in class end creed, as form-
ing a unit in the eyes of tie Almighty, as a oorjorate
mass, of which guilt or innocence, mental apathy or
activity, charity cr its contrary, philanthropy. or
selfishness, h;gh-mindedners or grovelling tendencies,
say tot be predicated. There are judgments fee
nations es for met`. It is, therefore, fittinz that at
certain times not only individuals or members of a
coegregation, but the whole body of a nation should
perform a solemn act, deprecatory of ill, or thanks-
giving for good, besides the general recognition one
day in the week.
Worship, however, and religious observance have
become by degrees so much an act of the will and
heart, and so very little an act of form, that compul-
sion has become impossible and useless. People must
be now won to religion, not driven to it. In the
olden times the great std extraordinary solemnities
of the church more easily attained universality. Was
the cause a great public infliction, there were few
of the community not alive to it and
ready to provrate themselves in sorrow or
in thanks before the throne of mercy. If a holiday
wee announced, it was one in which not only
the upper classes joined with gladness, bat the lower
too, for these, whether serfs or slaves, born to com-
pelsory or annual labour, enjoyed cessation from task-
work without the drawbaA of cessation from earning.
But in the midst of a conglomerated population of
two millions of human beizga, the greater part not
merely Livia' on tbe.r daily sweat, but on the
money actually paid for old roles and old
hali.ta are quite astray, and the pastors as
much perplexed as other people. That religion
and religious feeling should loss their hold of such a
mass, so situated, and with a worship which speaks
to the intellect and &muds a mind, which neither
dazzles the sense nor app-ale to the eye, but hides
itself in the closet—nay, cats up the church itself into
so many closets, in order to e.tablish privacy of
prayer even in the midst of community of feeling—
all this, right and fit as it may be, still raises obstacles
to two millions of people (we limit our observations
to the metropolis), or • great majority of them, taking
the part they ought in a national solemnisation.
There can be no questitn, that •laige and heathenish
zees of people are growing up amongst us, of men
not living by home. industry, or living so precari-
ously on it, that in thought and in recklessness these
casual earners are as dargerous and as immoral as
the very thieves on whose confines they touch, aid
with whose habits :hey intermingle. Of what nee
or virtue in the eye of heaven is the small well-clad
portion of London praying in their small and decent
churches, whilst myriads of the ragged, the ruffianly,
the untaught, the uncured for, roam outside in a
state of corrupt and artificial nature, which defies all
description or imagination ?
Strange to say, en the eve of this our solemn
Thanksgiving of yesterday, a sample was shown of
the lower stratum of London population. They
gathered on Tuesday morning, within a narrow apses,
to witness the execution of • guilty pair. Such •
crowd of such a class seldom collects, or is allowed to
collect. They are too closely hunted and mina=
sad indeed all the popular scenes of festivity
the metropolis have sec •ssarily been put down, frees
the heroes of this awful and festering population that
alight upon any spot open to amusement.
A erowd of these congregated before the lail,
bivouacked through the cold air of night, and, excited
by mutual presence end members, gave way
to violent and horrid *Agendas at sash a
moment of excitement. An 'admit Revell*, who
witnessed the scene, has strut* depicted such
a gathering, and would eves remove the
cause. But would the removal ohmage or reform
the population ? That hideous mug chase, and minds,
and thoughts would exist, if there bed bees no ere-
cation and no jail. These did bat esilat thms,
draw the curtain, and display their eating sod
thinking aloud. It is, perhaps, more meal, that the
moralist and the painter of manners should me what
his countrymen are, than that the veil of decorum and
of gleam should be drawn over a permanent, a self-
perpetuating, and horrid reality.
- Bat the men who assembled there, and so behaved
sato shock every human feeling, were still a portion
of that English, or of that London community,
supposed to offer up the trayer of Thanksgiving for
delivery from a fatal pestilence. We repeat it, if we
address the Deity, not as lad ividuals, nor as members of
a creed, bat as part and Dottiest of a great nation, the
Dad count will the good, and the character la
ranted by the nature of the majority. It
Wards are made to nations in accordance with,
or is consideration of, the aggregate merits of
its people, such a population as we have described
most gully detract from the valise of the whole. And
not only in charity and philanthropy, but even in a
more mash and patriot.c point of view, the rich
should tarn their sagacity and attention to the re-
moval of that more terrible plague now raging in
the capitol, than ever cholera was or an be. Nor
will it be enough to preach religious belief to this
degraded population. The first argument must be
applied to their physical condition, their surety and
regularity of life. The Bishop of LOanon said wisely
aad well, where there is much filth there is little re-
ligion. Bat filth means destitution. And we must
learn to combat berth by some better means than the
blind charity which aggravates it, or the shallow
decorum which would thrust it out of eight or varnish
it over.

Ir the working men of this country possessed the
provident forethought, and wholesome stlf-desial
which distinguish so many persons of the middle
class, there is no doubt their condition might be
vastly improved. But it is not to be denied that
there are fewer inducements to providence and self-
restraint operating upon the working than the middle
class. The tradesman whore business is on the
smallest scale, knows well enough that by itdustry
and rigid parsimony, he may increase his capital and
extend his trade t but to the working man the objects
of saviair are not so directly and immediately profit-
able. Let a man earairg his 12i., 155., or 20s. a
- week, save his 51. or 101. a year, and accumulate his
401., 501., or 601., what is he to do with it ? To cease
to live solely by his ialpur and embark in some small
way of business, is terFoften a hazeirdons speculation
for the working man. Besides, the number of work-
! log men who could thus advance themselves in any
diatriet, must necessarily be limited, and such an ob-
jest, thereto*, cannot be offerel to the whole clear.
pieblein is how to find means of insesteneot for
sail savings, sufficiently at ractive to the working
ma to lead him to forego immediate enjoyments.
Now, the two objects which most forcibly attract
the .fiee intelligent of our working men are the