The Express.
London, England, 1849-03-07 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MARCH 7, 1849.

or attempled with ea immense eteribee of life,
especially when the ndisnee is on the bull-dor courage
of European soldiers, which the genersl is slwsys in
haste to employ, before the enemy is prepared, and
before he himself has had time to reconnoitre.

We are sorry to add that she amounts received in
private letters of Lord aim's military proceedings
are even more serious and menacing than those which
were destined fir the public. It appears that the
army has lost all its camels, which crew the roads,
per shin from want of water end provender. The
place where the army encamped is quite naked
of every ras:.nrce, and supplies had to be
brought at least one hundred and twenty miles
from Lahore. What Sir Casein NAPIZIL lately
wrote of the difficulties and inctunbranes of Indian
bairssie and amp followers Misbecame dreadfully in
point. The great hope is, that Lord Oouon may be
sufficiently in force, widths S:khs sufficiently crippled,
to render the communication with Lahore oonticsous
and safe. But this is what those acquainted with the
localities and with Indian warfare scarcely hope.

Tun Liverpool orators in behalf of the navigation
laws declare they have no faith, save in the Hones
of Lords. What they hope no more from justice,
argument, or fairly weighed interest, they expect
from faction. Protection forms the emence and the
bond of a certain political party : to keep it together
is the great aim of a majority in the House of
Lords. In the navigation laws this party are de-
fending their last ditch, and they will die in it.
Consequently, the effort to overcome must be vigor-
ous.

And yet the builder, and all concerned in the
framing and the sailing of ships are, after all, a little
concerned or affected, would they fairly examine the
case. Let us state this in the language of their chief
advooata :

It has been already proved (says Mr. Toting) that there is
an unseal production of 260,000 to of altipping, together
with en expenditure upon repairs and oloipana that mug
obviously give employment to a vest swat of British
ob=taleedand labour, the displeoneent of which ought to be
spinet what I einsider the hypothetical advantage
to be obtained by a reduction of freight from the employ.
meat of cheaper skips. The capital invested in trades con-
nected with the building and equipment of ships has leen
proved to exceed 16,000,0001. sterling ; the annual cost of
ship-building is upwards of 3,000,0001 ; the yearly expeadi.
tare in repairs and outfits, 8,000,0001.; and 80,000 workmen
are calculated to be employed, whose earnings amount to
l
6,000,0001. sterling per annum.—Lords' 3rd" Report, Qs.
8337.
On the face of it this seems a great :and wealthy
interest. It bears some impress of the energy, enter-
prise, and capital of England; and looks as if the
people had a special spirit of maritime enterprise.
No other nation in the world, and scarce all of them
together, have so much capital afloat, or can muster
such a commercial marine. Yet the same witness
goes on to say :
That if ship-building be discouraged in this opus' ry, be is
at a km to know from whence we Gould derive a supply of
carpenters for our chips--the most indispensable part of our
crews ; or where shipwrights could be obtained from to sup-
ply, as they frequently do, the :ova dickyazds la cases of
emergency.

Doubtless this very statement will be produced
again and again in the coming debate. The nolod
proleetionists, one after another, will stand up as the
champions of the shipwrights, and will have it that
if Englishmen may buy ships out of Englaod, no
more ships will be built in Englaod. And yet, with-
out going into details, the answer is easy enough.
Nearly every otter nation has navigw.ion laws.
More or less, they have all sought to increase their
own conunerrint marine as we ours, by imposing
restrictions upon foreigners, and we have helped
them.

The sixteenth section of the Navigation Act de-
clares:

That no ship shall be admitted tobelong to any particular
foreigneountry sinless she be of her build and ownership or
of Xliglish build, and be navigated by a native captain, and
a crew, three-fourths of u loom are natives.

This is precisely the description of a British ship
given in the fifth section of the Ship Registry Act
and the thirteenth of the Navigation Act, and from
the repeal of which, so far as it concerns the place of
build, such ruin is to come upon us. It must have
encouraged and increased the shipping of all foreigners
tradingcie with us as much as it encouraged and in-
re our own shipping trading with foreigners.
And yet with all this help, and all that their
own special—restrict'otut could do for them,
tho only competitors we meet at sea worthy of the
name, are a people of our own land, ein;grants from
our own a nl, not nursed into naval greatness by pro-
tection, but impelled 0 it by the earnest cnterpr a ng
spirit of their race—that spirit that sent them out as
founders of the transatlantic world, and made them
free there.

The shipping of England is not the offspring of
sarigation lawn—protection never nursed it into
greatness. It has sprung from the inherent impulse
of the people toward a seafaring I fe, and has been
reared to its present greatness by the commerc:al in-
tegrity, the perseverance, industry, activity, inventive
power, and wondrous maeh'nery, of this country.
" Your very language," said a German, "is of the
sea, your short, full-sounding words, your clear, load
voices, and hissing l's and ss. sound like the roll and
roar, and rash and splash of the sea, and as if you were
born to be heard in storms."

" IVt shook, be savages (said Mr. COBDEN) if we
were nog sailors." But s e are sailors—a sea-born and
sea-loving people; shipbuilders by instinct and in-
herited aptitude, and therefore free from all risk of
being driven from the seas or from building ships by
any sailors or shipwrights in the world.
Before the committee of the House of Commons,
Mr. RICARDO, who has made the questi m of repeal
of the navigation laws his own, brought abundant
evidence to prove that ships can be built cheaper in
England than anywhere else in the world. Wit-
nesses were called thoroughly well acquainted with
the shipping of Europe and America, and no amount
of cress-examination was able to disprove their state-
ments that England is the great storehouse of all the
raw material of first-class ships, tom English oak to
copper sheathing, and that all other ship-building
countries bay the greater part of their iron, copper,
Zda, sails, chains, cables, nails and anchors, from
'rie cheap foreign ship fallacy was thoroughly
sifted and cap wed. It rested on tho words " oak"
and" ship;" whatever timb:r bore the name of oak
was set down by the chairman of the Shipowners'
Association as of equal strength and durability with
the oak of England and Afrioi. His Prussian ships
had oak in them, and were therefore called equal to
English ships—the fact being carefully kept out of
view that from the first they were not so safe, and
would not last half so long. Even the fir-built ships
of Finland were set side by side with ships of British
oak, and splken of as if they were equally valuable
property simply_ because they were both called
ellipse. Bat Mr. RICARDO was not to be
misled or driven from his point. Ho was
determined to get at the truth, and he did
get at it by forcing the witness to confess that the
selling value of ships has reference to their classifica-
tion to " Lloyd's List "—that a higher price is paid
for a ship in proportion to the number of years she
can stand A 1 a' Lloyd's, and that • contract would
therefore not be good which furnished a seven years'
ship instead of a nine.
It came out, too, that Lloyd's classification is
neither random nor arbitrary. It forms the basis for
the calculation of marine insurance by the under-
writers, and is admi tad throughout the world as the
best test of the actual value of ships.
The claudication is the result of long and carefully
investigated experience of the strength and dura-
bility or every kind of timber, in every part of a ship,
of fastenings, sheathing, and in short, every particu-
lar, however minute, that is known to add to the
soundness and longevity of a ship. In all the
random statements of the infinite cheapness
of foreign ships, this simple item of the length of
time they will last is kept out of sight. Our ship-
owners have, however, found out its great import-
ance, for, although anadian fir-built ships are the
cheapest in the world they will not have them at any
price, but so much prefer the dearest vessels that the
rate of increase of AI twelve years' ships is much
than that of any other clam ; proving clearly
greaterl practice the ships which cost most are the
most profitable.
Before the committee of tho Lords, however, the
fallacy, so exposed in the Commons, was revived, and
not being met there by such sifting cross-examina-
tion, the witnesses proved too much, and have left the
evidence to answer itse!L
Mr. B. Malan, of New York, states the eon of an
Amorists *ass el about 1,460 teas of our mesousensent to
be 141. gut lest, IMt is, for the hall, span, sells, all the
riggings, andiels, sable, &o , in short, everything bat the
caspimse, *orb, &roams:en, and nautical lastramente,