The Express.
London, England, 1848-04-22 00:00:00

Vitt Orpreso.

MAILS.
The overland ahead cis Marrillea, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Aden, (hyloa, India, Hoeg-Kong, dre., will be made up on the
eersing of the 24th April.
She mails for Vigo, Oporto, Lisboa, Madeira, Cadiz, aid Gibraltar
wit be made up on the morning of the I/ th
April
The mule for New douth Wales, Van Dlemanla Laid, sod Saw
sealed will be made op on the everting of the Mb April.
The made for the Meet Cana of erring sad Madeira will be made
ap on the ereningof the :loth April.
The West India Mails, It including Bermuda, area. HavitnaN
Honduras, New Orleans, Vera Cruz, Tampico, and Porto Rico, aria
eleluding thine for Madeira, Iscmel, Carthagena, State Martha,
Charm, Panama, West Coea4 of South America, and St. Juaa.do.
Nicaragua, will be made up on the evening of the 2nd May.
The overland mails for Gibraltar. Malta, Greece, the lonise Wanda
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, liong-liong, end China, ries Southerly.
toe, will be made up op the morning of the 3rd May.
The mails for the Brazils, the River Plate, Moats
be made Video, Perusa
l/aro. Bahia, Madeira, and Buena, Ayres, will ap re the
erstuog of the 4th May.
The mails foe tirith North Ameries,
will be rude up ea thecae
ening of the Ith My. the

NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS.
The number of STAMPS issued by the authorities of the
Starup-othce, daring 1847, to the
DAILY NEWS WAS .......... 3,447,009
This, we believe, is within eight per cent. of the number
issued to the Morning Herald, Morning Chronicle, and
Morning Post, ALL PVT TOOLitiBIL
In addition to the above, issued to the DAILY NEWS,
Morning Paper, there were toned for the Evening Edition,
THE EXPRESS 778,714
Which was more, we believe, than were issued either to
the Globe or Standard, Evening Papers.

111011 og.♦TER AT LONDON BRIDOZ.
Tate Daa—oralog.ll tam past 4 Afters., sia. vast 4.
To-not ow —Worsts& 4: We. past 4 Altoreara. .1) lat. peat 3.

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 22.
THERE can be no doubt that we are entering upon
a year, if not a period, of extreme uncertainty and
anxiety, and that there exists in the aspect of affairs
abroad and at home the possibility, if not the proba-
bility, of a conjuncture of circumstances likely to try
severely the wisdom of our rulers and the solidity of
our institutions. is, at
Our commercial and manufacturing classee;it
too clear, had not recovered the terrible strain and
distress put upon them by the paralysis of credit, so
much aggravated by, it not altogether proceeding I
from, our aboard system of monetary legislation. I
The immense catastrophe of European revolution
has fallen upon English industry, when in but a con-
valescent state, and the effect has been to produce some-
thirg in the nature of a relapse. The condition of Europe
is such,that all customary commercial orders have been
suspended—that business, if done at all, must be done '
for ready money—and that trade assumes more and
more the nature of lottery and rash speculation, in-
stead of established and regular interchange. No won-
der that the mills of our manufacturing districts are
closed, or open but to short time, and that 100,000
operatives are left to that leisure and distress, which
is the fruitful parent of politieal-hallucination.
Nor is it in manufacturing -districts and classes
alone that capital is either wanting or unproductive,
shrinking from the risk of employing labour.di-
The railroads have stopped progress; the expen
cure, the wages, the active arms and proportionally ac-
tive consumption, are all suspended—no doubt to the
great satisfaction of those who accused railroads of
consuming capital too fast. Yet the stopping of railroad
construction does not seem to have left us a more
ample store of the great necessary of labouring life.
In addition to this, we have before our eyes a wet
spring, an unusual demand for gold upon the conti-
nent, and an unusual slackness of production through-
out the same vast region. Poland is in a state of
inchoate insurrection—the Germans are drilling for
war or clubbing for political change, instead of har-
rowing or sowing. We might complete the picture
of these dangers and drawbacks to private prosperity
and wealth, by describing the prospects of the state
revenue and of our public finances. It is needless :
we have said enough to show that the peace and
welfare of England through IS4B require the most
wary, wise, and temperate management.
And yet the danger of such a state of things does
not arise from positive distress or positive disaffection,
but from the impatience, intemperance, and designing
madness of those classes and those parties which oc-
cupy the two extremes of society. It is in such times
of fear and of distress that the more rabid fanatics
of the tory and of the democratic party start up simul-
taneously to alarm, to animate, and to impel the
several classes more immediately under their influ-
ence against each other. The agitator then collects
and harangues the mob, supplies it first with cry
and sophism, and then successively with bludgeons,
pikes, and fire-arms. However few, however
contemptible, such maniacs may be, they serve
as a pretext and an opportunity for mad-
men of the antagonist class to bellow in reply, to deal
alike in cries and sophisms, to arm, and to carry mea-
sures and compel a policy of repression, placing tory
principles and tory statesmen for the time in undis-
puted ascendancy.
We are at present and throughout this year
menaced by the two dangers : and we *hall never
cease to warn the middle classes, in which are to be
comprehended the more intelligent of the working as
well as of the better-provided population, to keep good
look out and active heed against both dangers. Al-
ready we see the effects of the late stupid chartist
demonstration in the tone and the legislation of
parliament, as well as in the attitude of parties. The
power and the tongues of influential liberals are pare-
ed. The needle of power already oscillates from
the liberal to the tory party.- The whig ministry dis-
owns and shakes off the members for the manufac-
turing districts and liberal constituencies to replace
them in office and in influence by tories ; and there
is every prospect of the present panic endowing the
country with a SIBTHORE parliament in lieu of a
COBDEN one.
One thing alone can correct and prevent this. It
is the coming forward of the middle ranks in one large,
unanimous, and peaceful cry for those reforms, calcu-
lated to put an end to class influence, and class
legislation. This alone will pacify the operative and
the industrious man, who, seeing no hope for him in
the crawling pace of whiz ameilration, is driven by
despair to crowd and to clamour, to listen
to an applaud seditious language, and to
attempt foolishly to awe the legislature
by numbers and intemperance. Such conduct on the
part of the people is precisely what the old tory aris-
tocracy would desire, for the folly of one extreme
always helps to build up the power of the other. In-
deed, the only chance of the old tory aristocracy
again recovering power lies in the turbuler.ce of the
people, and in that turbulence creating a panic in the
middle claes such as was created in the time of the
first French revolution—a panic which forced the
entire people of England to abdicate all freedom, and
calmness, and dignity, and influence, into the hands of
its insidious enemies, the tortes. These again are now
at work to bring about the same results. Every move
of these misguided people, the physical-force chartists,
is exaggerated ; every foolish expression held up in
terror ; the hundreds at their meetings are multiplied
into thousands: a garnishing of pikes, guns, and
bludgeons is added ; and the worthy shopkeeper is
t.dd that the working classes of England arc fast
failing into m re Irishmen, bent en riot and greedy
for plunder.
These are the representations, this the every-day
theme of those servile flatterers of the aristocracy, who
seek to grow big by exciting panic; and it is for the
operatives to disappoint them by remaining tranquil,
and by at least venting complaints or doctrines in
some other way than turbulence or menace. It is for
the middle class to defeat the efforts of the insidious,
by remaining self-possessed. by discrediting panic, and
by not suffering itself to be deterred by such brawlers
from coming for ward with calm and peaceable demands
for liberal measures, eqnitable taxation, and electoral
reform.

IT would greatly puzzle many of the agitatota
against the "centralisation" of Lord MOREETIr'S
Health of Towns Bill, to give their meaning of that ,
formidable word, and to point out the nature and de- .
gree of the centralisation embodied in Lord Mort- I
HMI'S measure. There is nothing so dangerous in
politics—no fools money, as HOBBES calls words,
with which men, interested in deceiving, may make so
much mischief—as abstract political terms. " Cen-
tralisation" may mean any and every form and degree
of central authority, from a mere central guide and
educer of local action, to as all-engrossing central
despotism. But those who use the word do
•ot stay to measure the conditions of its ap-
plicability—much less those who heat it used.
A swallowing up of all local responsibilities,
a suppre,sion of all local energies, are the ideas most
naturally suggested by the term. This gives it what

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