The Express.
London, England, 1848-06-09 00:00:00

NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS.

The number of STAMPS issued by the authorities of the
Stamp-othee, during 1847, to the
DAILY NEWS was 3.447.009

This, we believe, is within eight per cent of the number
,sued to the Morning Herald, Morning Chronicle, and
Morning Post, ALL PVT TOOETHEkt.
In addition to the above, issued to the DAILY NEWS,
Morning Paper, there were issued for the Evenin 7 Edition,
THE EXPRESS 778.714

Which was more, we believe, than were imucil either to
the Globe or :Windt:rd. Evening Papers.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
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garti. The bialsslea tram else pollee “port teas MAU! (VOW co partiality
as be Isal we by to-4W. paps.

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LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 9.

AMONGST the new sciences which the progress of
society has, not indeed given birth to, but created a
necessity tor, is the science of police—the art of
managing multitude, of rendering them contented in
their homes, or not dangerous when they do go forth,
and congregate for chance, or for idle and mis-
chievous purposes. We see at present throughout
Europe a vast wreck of thrones and empires, with an
anarchy of capitals and of their populations. The
greater part of which ruin and disorder has proceeded
not more from the misgovernment of the respective
kingdoms than from a defective and ignorant police in
the management of the great agglomerations of men
in each capital.
We are at present in London evidently in a state of
equal ignorance—of equal uncertainty of rules and of
conduct to meet the danger of crowds and multitudes.
Hitherto the means employed by the police have
proved effectual, and given rise to much exultation and
triumph. We ventured at the time to question the
justice of the exultation and the permanent effects of
( the repression. And now, we perceive, that we
were right. For the authorities complain, that the
end of order has not yet been accomplished.
The government, in order to estabAsh complete
tranquillity, seLms to have resolved no longer to trust
to aweing the chartists, but to repress and crush
violently popular meetings of every kind, and to
arrest and prosecute those who provoke or attend
them. This may be well, but if so, it was extremely
wrong of the prime minister to declare in full parlia-
ment, that his reason for refusing all reform was,
that the lower as well as the middle orders were in-
different to such. How are thelowerorders of England
(to prove that his lordship was mistaken? They have
( not money to build halls, or to hire them, or to order
( a banquet that they may have a room to talk in.
The field le their senate-house. If you think fit to
forbid their meeting. don't challenge them as to their
opinions. Above all, do not first accuse them of in-
difference, and then, when they show themselves
zealous, imprison them.
A certain number of arrests have taken place. In
several instances, we think, the authorities were fully
justified in making them. In other instances we see
no grounds whatever roc the arrest and detention.

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The man who speaks bold sedition, incites the
populace to violence, and recommends amasaination,
let that man be brought to trial. But let us not bear
s magistrate, as Mr. HENRY did in the case of
WILLIAMS. talk of a tendency to sedition. A man
is guilty who utters seditious language ; ho is net
guilty, if his language cannot be called seditious.
But the tendency to sedition is a captious, inquisitorial
wresting of the law, which we are sorry to see an
Enjoish magistrate indulge in.
We are not inclined to increase the difficulties of
thetask to be performed by government and the police.
We know the grave responsibilities of managing
such a population as that congregated in London.
But we must express the opinion that the police of
prevettion is far more important and efficacious than
thatof repression. Those best acquainted with Parisare
of the opinion that the fall of the house of OttLesns
was owing chiefly to the relaxation of that vigilance
for the supply, employ,
. and contentment of the
working cla-sea in Paris, which had been the care
of preceding governments. The British government
has the excuse of no cabinet or minister having ever
turned its attention to such eases in London. The
weavers of Spitalfields have perhaps been thought of,
and plans devised for locating elsewhere the depn-
dents on a decayed and evaporated species of in-
dustry. The example was feared, however, and
the project abandoned.
Something has been done, or rather is doing, for
the comforts of the poor. But at the same time a
great deal has been done to curtail their amusements.
One way after another of passing • holiday or an
idle hour has been prohibited to the poor, until they
bare really betaken themselves to politics for
want of any other pastime. Temperance is no doubt
better thin porter, especially of Sundays. Merry-go-
rounds are not becoming a set loaf people. Thimble-
rig is immoral ; and pugilism is disgusting. All this
we admit : but any one of these things is preferable to
sedition.
Decidedly the popular amusement for the moment
is congregating and listening to political spouters. It
is the game in fashion, and has succeeded some other
game, ss marbles supersede peg-top at school. We
will not deny that there is something far from Iran-
quillisiig in the people choosing precisely this pas-
time at this particular moment. But we may exagge-
rate the danger in imagination ; and exaggerating it
in imagination may lead to augmenting it in reality.
We perceive that where the people congregate for
the fixed purpose of hearing speakers and pausing re-
solutions, they are generally satisfied with the per-
formance of what is laid down in the programme.
The play is acted out. They hear the speech, applaud
the resolution, and, when all is over, depart quietly as
they might after the fall of a curtain. The more
turbulent meetings strike us to be those where there
are no orators, no speaking, and where there is
nothing to do but rio'. If so, the leaders are the
very safety-valves of sedition; the actors that amuse
and pacify the public. This, however, can be judged
from what they say. If they talk sedition, let them
he punished ; but it may not be wise to transport the
'chartists for the mere crime of gathering and ad-
dressing an audience.
The difficulty of crowds and riot, is much better
met in local districts. than in the metropolis. For
there the local authorities are the first to interfere.
The mayor and the notable citizens, the employers of
the poor, can come forward to represent the danger of
mere crowding, and to dissuade the well-intentioned
from persevering. Very often this suffices. But in
the metropolis there are no local authorities except
subaltern and detested ones. The poor man sees no
one above him who sympathises with him, and who
tempers love and kindness with authority. He is
distressed; he is fool enough to look f,r a political
remedy : and the first person he finds to rebut his
arguments is the policeman. This surely ought to be
remedied. We are very prone to remind the Irish
landlord that property has its duties as welt as rights.
Has not the owner of a house duties as well as the
owncrof land? Should not the middle and upper classes
in cities look to the welfare of those below them,
as much as the middle and upper classes in the
country ? The peasant ought not to be left solely to
the mercies of the constable and of the poor hou,e

functionaries. Neither ought the poor artisan in the
city to be abandoned to the tender mercies of the
police.
At the present period and state of public feeling
great exertions are requisite on the part of the upper
and middle classes of society, not merely in subscrip-
tions and philanthropic speeches, and in arming as
special constables or as yeomen, but in personal
efforts to become informed of the suffering and causes
of comphint of the lower orders of the population,
and in efforts to provide for and redress them. This
is the first and great species of police, that of pre-
vention.
Afterwards come the duties of the police, of re-
pression. And in this we repeat, there may be an
over-nervous horror of a crowd. In several instances
of late, the people have met, talked, passed resolves,
and separated; when the police, secluded all the
time in a church, and ignorant of what was really
passing, rushed forth on the throwing of a few stones,
and knocked down and severely beat boys and inno-
cent promenaders. The church may be a very con-
venient lm king-place for the police. But is it a fit
one? Does not this desecrate the temple, and tempt
stone-flinging against the windows of the abode of
pace? It is well to keep the police out of sight,
but it is not the church that should servo the pur-
pose of barracks.
In other cases when people crowd, they are
tolerated for a time, then all of a sudden bidden to
disperse, and it they do not instantaneously obey, an
attack is made upon them, and a score of heads are
broken, in order to intimidate and disperse the
rest. Surely there ought to be some more
formal distinction made between an innocent
crowd and a guilty mob. The mere caprice,
or humour, of the policemen ought not to make
this difference. The police- especially the metro-
politan police—have become more and more a
military body. They are such in everything but the
arms they carry. So that it really requires that
judicial or magisterial authority should accompany
them, and give, when necessary, a moral sanction and
order to what is a mere physical force. We csuld
adduce a host of cases during the last week,
proving that the lives and limbs of her Majesty's
subjects ought not to be given up to an uncontrolled
police. We say this with more earnestness, from the
conviction that if a strong mutual feeling of irritation
be got up between any large masses of the popula-
tion and the police, this alone, independent of other
causes, will beget and perpetuate disorder, and
fling us into that very gulf which all are so anxious
to avoid.

WI EN the debate on the Navigation Laws was re-
sumed las. night, the discussion for some time turned
principally on the alleged necessity of these laws to
ensure the maritime ascendancy of Great Britain.
The vague common-places to which Sir JOHN %Vaultt
gave vent upon this topic were conclusively refuted by
Mr. NIAMREGOR. The member for Glasgow, by an
overwhelming array of facts and of general princi-
ples, established that neither in the case of Great Bri-
tain nor of any other country has maritime ascendancy
been acquirrd cr retained by h gislative enactments.
The only nation that has seriously endangered the
maritime ascendancy of England, since the naval
power of England has been fully developed,
is Holland ; and no one acquainted with history
can be ignorant that Dutch enterprise and energy
transferred to the United Provinces the maritime
power which had formerly been possessed by Spain
—that the naval strength of Holland rose on
the ruins and through the downfall of that of Spain.
Had stringent navigation laws, and the possession of
colonies held in a chain of strict dependence, sufficed
to keep a nation powerful at sea, Spain would have
remained a great maritime power. But Holland,
whose infant navy enjoyed nu such artificial fostering,
snatched to itself the ascendancy at sea which Spatn
had once possessed. The secret of the transfer is ob-
vious. Shrewdness and perseverance in mercantile
undertakings made the Dutch rich; valour and a
passion for naval adventure induced them to turn
their wealth to account in a struggle to obtain power
at sea; and their self-reliance, untrammelled by arti-
ficial restrictions, beat down the bloated seeming
might of Spain, at once inflated and enfeebled by
protective laws.
The disappearance of Spain from the seas left
Holland and England to contend for the ascendancy
it had abdicated. The characters of the rival
powers had much in common. With both
Dutchmen and Englishmen the love of maritime ad-
venture was a ruling passion; in both countries a
steady and intelligent prosecution of mercantile
enterprise had calla into existence a wealthy and
independent middle-class; courage, aell-reiiance, great

pecuniary resources, were common to both. It is not
in our navigation laws that we are to seek the cause
which left England, after a protracted and often
doubtful struggle, the mistress of the field. BLAKE
and his brave colleagues had more than once driven
the Dutch from the seas, if not before the navigation
laws were passtd, before their influence upon oar
mercantile navy could possibly be felt. And the
Dutch fleet burned, without any availing re-
sistance, the English ships of war in the
Medway many years after these laws had
come into full operation. To understand how
the naval might of England continued to increase,
while that of Holland dwindled away in comparison,
we must take into account all those circumstances

which, is the one country, led to general prosperity,
in the other, to general decadence. The revolution fif
1688 gave England a great accession of personal
liberty, retaining, however, a firm central govern-
ment. Holland never had a completely organised go-
vernment; and hence her whole history is notning
but a succession of inveterate factious contests, and
administrative makeshifts, in which the resources of
the country were squandered away. England con-
tinued to grow in wealth, while Holland, compara-
tively impoverished, was crushed beneath a load of tax-
ation. England could afford to maintain eh pi, while
Holland could not to the sameextent; flushed with the
ooafldence which prosperity inspircs,England's seamen
were every where triumphant, while even the dogged
hardihood of Dutch mariners was chilled and pa-
ralysed by the cold hand of adversity. It is because
in England since 1688, the general community 'has
remained in a healthy and robust condition,that Eng-
land has possess-2d and used its ships as history
shows; it is because the prosperity of Holland was at
the same time continuously declining that it ceased
to be able to cope with England at sea.
The might both of the commercial and royal navies
of England has been the consequence, not the cause,
of the general prosperity of the nation. And every
measure that tends to promote our national prosperity
must of necessity tend to increase our naval power.
Increased wealth, when linked with civil liberty, in-
spires every people with increased confidence in
themselves and greater spirit of enterprise. The
necessity of our insular position compels us to
make the sea the great field upon which our enter-
prise is to display and make itself felt. The iustinc-
tire sense of the community, that all artificial regula-
tions of comm. rce tend but to retard and enfeeble the
development of national resources, has instigated it to
break the links in the chain of restrictions and pro-
teetions never to unite again. Sonic of these broken
links still cling to us, but one by one they will be
flung off; and the rapidly increasing resources of the
nation, and the jubilant spirit of exertion which the
consciousness of possessing them will inspire, will
be a far better security for our maintaining the start
we have got of other nations at sea, than such
miserable enactments as those under which the once
colossal power of Spain dwindled away.
At a subsequent stage of the debate, Sir
GEORGE CLERIC ably assailed that superstitious
faith in the navigation laws, which still induces so
many, in other respects reasonable men, to attribute
to them some myste, ious talismanic power to pro-
mote national prosperity. Sir GEORGE called atten-
tion to the fragmentary and contradictory character of
these lass—to the incessant patching and tinker-
ing they have received year after year, ever since the
first statute among them became law—a process which
has only succeeded in rendering confusion worse con-
founded. In the course of a century and a half these
laws had become so complicated, the parties affected
by them had to hunt their provisions through so
many unknown and half known acts of parliament,
that the necessity of codifying them in one or two sta-
tutes was at last felt. And ever since this step has been
taken we have been assailed, on the part of the very
men who clamour for upholding them, by complaints
of provisions that are wanting, and provisions that are
hurtful in the navigation laws. Sir GEORGE showed
that extensive changes are required in this part of
our national code, and that these changes have been
demanded by all classes. A thorough revision of the
navigation laws is needed, and the necessity is ad-
mitted even by those who wish to keep them strin-
gent. This position being established, a consideration
pointed out by Mr. MITCHELL on an earlier night of
the debate must also be kept in view—that the
system of navigation laws which, if not beneficial,
might be harmless when English commerce was
comparatively in its infancy, when I lolland was our
only serious rival amot'g European states, and when
all the world but Europe was occupied either by
barbarous and semi-barbarous peoples or by weak
dependent colonies, is utterly inapplicable to the
circumstances of the present age, when the extent of
our commerce has been so immeasurably augmen'ed,
the complexity of its international relations so incon-
ceivably multiplied, and when—to say nothing of the
growth of other states—a mighty, independent, and
jealous republic has taken the place of our then in-
fant colonies. It ought also to be kept in mind that the
growth of new independent states around them, con-
curring with the adoption of a free trade policy, has an
influenced the position even of those colonies, both in
South and North America, which remain annexed to
the British crown, as to render the abolition of the
navigation laws indispensable to their economical
well-being.
These points, as also the detrimental influence ex-
ercised upon the character of our merchant seamen
by the sense of security from competition with which
the navigation laws inspire them, and the groundless-
ness of the apprehensions entertained by the shipping
interests of their inability to compete on equal terms
with foreigners, were handled with considerable abi-
lity by Sir GEORGE CLERK, and with still greater
breadth of view and mastery of details by Mr. CARD-
WELL. The speeches of both gentlemen, however,
although perfectly unequivocal, in so far as
principle is concerned, were marked by a hesi-
tating and half-hearted advocacy of the measure
contemplated by government. They evinced great
anxiety to make it perfectly clear to the house that
their arguments only went to show the propriety of
going into committee on the navigation laws. They
virtually protested against being suspected of hay-
ing made up their minds to support the bill which
ministers are about to introduce. Both cavilled at
the manner in which it was to he submitted to the
house, and Mr. Cartowittr displayed considerable
acumen and critical skill in detecting flaws in its
provisions so far as they are known. Thisalternate
blowing hot and cold naturally called up the CHAN-
CELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, the main object of
whose remarks seemed to be to controvert Mr. CARD.
WELL'S proposition, that if by repealing the navigation
laws the British ship-builders and ehipowners are
exposed to the competition of foreigners, justice will
require the repeal of the timber duties in order to
enable them to meet it with success.
In this argument we need not say Sir CHARLES sig-
nally failed. It was not conviction, it was not sound
or even plausible principle, that spoke out in his
speech, but the reluctance of the CHANCELLOR OF THE
EXCHEQUER to let any tax escape him. The eager-
ness of the financial minister to keep his receipts at
the highest ebb got the better of the political
economist.
Th;s, as well as the other discrepancies between the
whig and the cons,rvative sections of the free traders.
there will be time to discuss during the farther pro-
gress of the measure. But this halting between those
who profess to have the same end in view, in the
actual balance of parties in the legislature, forces a
grave apprehension upon the independent supporters
of free trade. A strong, and, we fear, a wea-
-1 grounded impression prevails that the Lords
only seek for a plausible pretext to throw out
the ministerial measure for the relaxation of the navi-
gation laws. Any marked difference of opinion be-
tween the two sections of free traders above-named,
will be sure to be made the excuse for doing so. The
tactics observed last night by the protectionist party
prove this. During the whole evening—after Sir
JoHN WAt.sn and Mr. MILNES had said their little
say—the protectionists sate in solemn silence while
one free trader after another rose to assail the navi-
gation laws. But no sooner was the difference be-
tween ministers on the one hand, and the PEEL party
on the other, incontrovertibly established, than up
rose Mr. DISRAELI to move the adjournment of the
debate, in order that he might have time to
p-epare one of his brilliant improvised satires
—some of his impromptus
.faits d
Joisir—
upon their mutual contradictions. Now, really, when
men are so much at one upon the principle at issue, ae
they are—when, in addition to this they have been so
palpably approximating during the whole session—
some little previous consultation might have been ex-
pected from them in the face of the hostility known
to be entertained by the House of Lords to their
common views. That this is not the case—that they
are prepared to go to bullets in the House ot Com-