The Express.
London, England, 1849-06-23 00:00:00

The cast of the navy in 1818 was nearly double its
cost in 1833: it cast 4,099,430 in the latter, and
7,922,2 rd. in the former yeu. With three figures
staring them in the face ministers can only be lis-
tened to with contempt and indignation when they
talk of their inability to curtail expenditure and re-
duce taxation.
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER did not
escape the cartiptlon his Fitiful extAbition so richly
merited. For sumo hairs after he sat dawn rebuke
and exposure poured in upon bim from all quarters
" quick, this k, and heavy as &thunder shower. Mr.
RUNE protested against the profUgate icele of milt.
tery and naval expenditure; %sue. HODGES and
FIU relicted Mee of revenue from the maiute-1
mance of the hop tax; Meters. WG RECOIL, COWAN, and
COBDEN denounced the excise ; Mr. MILNER GIBSON
taunted ministers with their apostacy from the prin-
ciple of untexing knowledge ; Lord ROBERT
GROSVENOR had a word ti say against the attorney
tax. The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER winced
under the pelting of t' M pitiless storm, but he drew
his official gabardine atoned him, aid sat obstinately
there, resolute to wattle; it out.
The truth is, that the break-np of the Lincolnites
hes inspired ministers with the conviction that they
need make no concessions. They are confident they
can retain effice, because there are none to take it from
them. So long as the country admits them to be
official necessities, they are quite oanteired to be
considered nrceasyy evils. Perliementery critics
may rail at their financial policy so long as they can-
not rail them off the Ternary bench. There is no
hope fcr the country except in the movement out of
doors for financial reform and the increase of 40e.
freeholders.

THE gamc-keepers, game-preservers, and magis-
trates who per,ecuted NlanY ANNE CROsEI, were, at
least, eiviliqd barbarians. They were refined enough
to torture their victim cruelly, without, by iufiic'irg
ph, sical pain, making themselves objects of disgust.
But the game-keepers, guile-preserver., and m
trate* of Yorkshire appear to be atid eureelaiethel
savages.
About a week ago, we are told is a paragraph
which we transferred on Thursday from the columns
of the Yurkshiretnan t our own, that a game keeper
of the nem! of JOHN Si',A appeared at York Caatie to
answer a charge of assault. The complainant was a
woman, for advanced in pregnancy, whose broken
bonnet and discoloured e) o bore testimony to the
truth of her tide. She had gone, on the 6th instant,
with Lcr husband, who deals in nuts, timber,
and other odd articles, to view some wood which a
111 r. I.orrltouse. proposed to sell them, and their
cog followed them, us dogs will its. They went with
Lot-mouse upon a neigliir,ur's ground to view the
wood, and some how or other it came that the woman
was for a time lett alone, the men going one way upon
bueiness,and the dog, in search of aumeement,running
off another. While thus left alone, Mrs. Rawmos
for that is her name —heard a shot, and soon after
eaw the gamekeeper, Mt. Jour; Steins. How the
suspicion came across Lte we know not; but she forth-
with taxed him with hat ing shot her dog. Mr. Sinus
was ton polite to contradict a lady ; on the confrary,
he frankly told her, and with a hearty oath, that he
bad Lot only shot her dog, but would shoot herself too
if she did not quit the ground.
But the woman wee roused within Mrs. RAWLINGS,
and leave the field s"‘e would not till she had sought
for and found her dog. The report says not, but we
can e telly imagine, that, under such aggravating cf r-
comstances, Mrs. ItewLteas gave free vent to fur
feminine objurgatory elequenoe ; whereupon Mr.
JOHN SIGGS stepped delbrattly to the hedge, cut a
stick, and best her with it, about bonnet and free,
till the one was broken and the other adorned with a
black eye. So far the conduct of this sullen boor was
in admirable keeping. ll ithout provocation or hesi-
tation, he shot au humeri t dog that crossed his path;
when the dog's mistress (eked him if he had killed it,
ho told her, with an oath, bat he would shoot her
too; and when she gave vent to her anger in words,
he cut a stick, and re,gstrdie.s of her advanced state of
pregnancy, beat her savagely with it. His conduct
was in keeping to the claw. When RewLises re-
turned and learned how his dog and wife had been
treated, he in a fit of natural exasperation, threw off
his coat and challenged the brute to fight him. But
the murderer of dogs, and beater of women, shrunk
from the rightful wrath of a man, and declined the
iavi'ation. So true is it what SIIERID.tN KNOWLES
has said of the animal in man's shape, who could
strike a woman, "to call him coward were base
flattery."
It is less with this brutal, cowardly bcor, however,
that we have to do than with the worshipful magis-
trates who adudicated bet Run him and Mrs. RAW-
Limas. Mr. Joint Steles, after the complainant had
told her tale, admitted that he had struck her. He
then pulled out his purse, ;asked " what he had to
par," and said he wowed " pay and Lace done with
at.' And finally, he produced a witness to give him-
self the lie, and prove that he had never struck
the woman at all. One would have thought this al-
ternate assumption of the craven and the bully—
this attempt, fir,t to carry Coo matter off with a bold
face and a parade of his money, and then to shuffle
out of the scrape by getting some convenient knave
to tell a falsehood fur hint —might have enlightened
t'ue bench as to the fellow's character. And
then there were tho atoieen bonnet and black eye
to testify to his brutality. But Mr. JOHN &COS
is a gamekeeper, and gainekeeepers belong to the
privileged classes. Tho worshipful bench could not
indeed deny that an :.esaalt had been committed; but
they opined that it was "not so bad as the woman
represented," and inflicted a fine of 7s. and costs,
amounting in all to 1/. le.
This, then, is the lase c 1 the land—the game-law
of the land:—Mr. JOIN Stecs, gamekeeper, 'may
shoot a dog, and beat a woin tn fir advanced in preg-
nancy with a stick, and flourish his well-filled puree
in defiance of the rangietratee, and be let off with a
statement that his eon lad has not been " very
b".d," and a fine of 1/. 1 Whereas if MARY ANNE
CRO•ItY lifts a game trap, though she avers that she
meant to carry it to the gamekeeper for whom she
chard, no extetuation is tittered in her behalf, and
having no purse, empty or full, she is fined 21.10 e.,
and, in default of payment, sent, with an infant at
her brea't, across half a county, to a felon's gaol,
leaving her unemployed husband and two helpless
children to starve. Verily these game laws do per-
vert men's sense of right and wrong, and make
brutes of all who hare to do with them. How much
longer will the men of England submit to see their
wom-n thus treated?