The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-27 00:00:00

Zht pprtgg.

The mails foe New South Wales, Pen Diemen'. Land, and New
'emend will be made up on the evening of the 30th November.
The Wait India MS; including Bermuda, N•11•Ill, IL
Roudurs., New °dean., Vera Cruz, Tampico, and Porto Rloo, and
excluding there for Madeira, Jamie!, Garth...ens, manta Martha,
Chagrin, Panama, Wee Cast of South America, and St. Juen-de-
Niceregua, will be made up on the morning of the Pod December.
The overland mail. for Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian islands.
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, and China, vie Southampton,
will be made op on the morning of the 3rd December.
The mails for British North America, Berme* and the United
eaten, will be made up on the evening of the 3rd December.
The mall. for the Brazil., the Barer Plate, Monte Video, Permian.
own, Bald; Madeira, and Buenos Ayres, will be tender up on at
evening of the 4th December.
• The mails for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, and Gibraltar
will be made up on the morning of the 7th December.
The overland ekeed eves Plarsellles, to the Mediterranean,
feypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Long, ke., will be made up cm tht
evening of the 7th December.

TO CORILTAPONDE74TS.
Ad/mist...tuts totaoded 'or Th. Ewer,- Lobar abeam{ mot. Nowt
b. at tbd office, 10. Illoovorlo woo. by Toro oclock oo Ur dos of 'Jib:ebbs.

111011 WATIR AT LONDON ■RIDGE.
Tr* DAT— blemb% & aka prt 4; rearannaa. 26 re. rat I.
To-Ilosart Maras& II mi. par ; Ararres. 14 W. pant 6.

LONDON. SATURDAY. NO V. 27.
AFTER an interval of suspense, which was begin-
ning to be somewhat creditable to the discretion of our
eccentric morning contemporary ho has again relapsed
into a desperate mood of didactic melancholy, and most
gloomy foreboding of the future. The very dog-
matical expositor to whom the Times is in the habit
of committing the compilation of its City intelligence
signalised his labours of yesterday by the most ex-
traordinary instance of voluminous digression from
his usual, and evidently his most appropriate, duties
of routine observation, that he has yet achieved.
It may be possible, bat we imagine it would not be easy,
to fully understand the intensity of alarm and astonish-
ment with which the diurnal students of the vicissitudes
of stocks and markets beheld themselves confronted
with nearly half a page of lugubrious disquisition and
terrifying prophecy. Nor was there relief to be found
in a single accessary accompaniment. From first to
last, the whole composition is a homily of the most
disconsolate and hopeless kind, and it is difficult to say
how any man of common intelligence can entertain
so monstrous a belief, or how, if he does entertain it,
he should take so mach pains to exacerbate by con-
tagious fear a calamity which, according to his own
statement, nothing can avert.
Resting upon his own intrinsic merits, this very
ponderous correspondent of the Times might safely be
left to teach the bottom under the weight of his own
dulness; but unluckily the adventitious circumstances
connected with his appearance may give an import-
ance to his opinions in some quarters, which it is de-
sirable to fix at its proper level.
He professes to justify his alarm upon two grounds—
first, that the balance of trade, which has been " ad-
verse" during the last twelve months, will continue to
be adverse; and secondly, that the excess of imports
over exports will be such that we shall have to export
7,000,0001. of treasure.
Now, it is not true that the balance of payments
has been adverse for the last twelve months, unless an
adverse balance of payments is indicated by a strong
influx of the precious metals, such es has been in
operation since the month of September, from at least
four different points of the compass. But, passing
over that inaccuracy, what is the texture of the rest
of his argument? He says that, so far, we have
imported more food, more cattle, more coffee, and so
on, while we have added nothing to the volume of our
exports. Very well, but that is only half the story.
It is true that we have imported more of some commo-
dities, bat it is also true that we have imported
I less of others. We very much doubt whether
there has been so much an increase as a re-distribution

of the extent of our imports, and whether in point offset
we have taken more in the aggregate or whether we
have not maintained the same total in a different way.
We have leetreht more corn of America, and less of
the products of the peninsula and the west and centre
of Europe. We have taken less of the ordinary
articles of commerce afforded by the Levant, and
more of the cereal supplies of which it happened to
be the entrepot, and the same fact might be illustrated
by other examples. We demur therefore to the first
proposition.
But neither is it true that while our imports have
increased, our exports have decreased. The very reverse
is the fact. The exports of British goods during the
first nine months of 1847 are as near as possible the
same in value as in 1846, and the exports of colonial
' produce from the United Kingdom during the same
period are very mach larger than in the correspond-
ing term of 1846, and is many instances greater than
in 1845. We refer more particularly to coffee, rice,
silk, spices, spirits, sager, tea, and tobacco.
The writer in the Vmes says, we have starved our
manufactures to pamper our appetites—that we have
spent in riotous living the money which ought to
have purchased cotton, flax, hemp, and wool. But is
he quite clear, that our stocks of these raw materials
are reduced to a low point at the present moment, be-
cause we have not had the means to obtain them ; or,
because they were not to be obtained upon Prudent
conditions ? Was it poverty or discretion which pre-
vented the Manchester merchant from filling his ware-
honee with American cotton at Bd. per lb.,
when in three months he might in all pro-
bability (and such has proved to be the fact) buy
it for half the money ? With very few exception',
the same observation applies to all the other elements
of manufacture, which this incautious pleader cites as
instances of demented insolvency. If he will discover
for ni any former period of high-priced raw mate-
rials, uncertain markets, disturbed credit, and the
probability of large future supplies, and can clearly
prove that merchants selected that particular junc-
ture to set no bounds to the avidity of their pur-
chases, his argument mar, perhaps, attain to the
legative merit of respectability.
But we cannot comprehend, how we can have im-
tedall this extra food, exported no extra oommo-
s, and have persisted in the luxuries of diet and
clothing during the last twelve months without
having fairly reached the brink of ruin. We must be
allowed to say that the slowness of comprehension
of the commercial writer in the Times is the cir-
cumstance which will cause the least surprise. But
mawillehrLperwmiet
have exported
seugxporgetedthatsteifsateofqfnanewetirtyraowf
finished fabrics, we have done so by a process of self-
denial. We provided meals, but we did not provide
the usual relays of new wardrobe to the people of Ire-
land, or to oar own poorer alum The penalty, for

which this somewhat flinty personage raises his voice
to its highest pitch, has, in point of fact, been paid.
The whole community have been saving in extra
expenditure the increased cost of their daily bread.
And if the railway outlay, as concerns the great body
of the people, has enabled them to exercise this eco-
nomy upon wages, it has been an almost unmixed
good; because it is quite certain that in the presence of
so extreme a dearth the alternative was amply be-
tween such a source of employment and a resort to
the poor-rates ; and of the two, we leave the Times to
say whether railway labourers or the pauperised
peasantry across the channel is the species of poverty
more to be desired.
The conceptions of this extraordinary critic on the
subject of the circulation and the Bank, are quite in
unison with the rest of his belief. He is most
positively certain that prices rise and fall with the
amount of the " circulation," and that so long as the
Bank remains as it is, it is highly probable that
panics will assume a certainty of recurrence as regular
as that of the seasons. Now, on the first point, we
beg to say, that he cannot point out any six leading
articles of commerce, the prices of which during the
last twelve months have varied in accordance
with the variations in the quantity of the
outstanding circulation. That, at all events, is a plain
and tangible reply. In the second place, we are
utterly unable to conjecture the grounds of his ani-
mosity against the Bank, if, after all and in defiance
of all, the circulation is the grand secret. We pre-
sume that the most conspicuous, if not the moat dis-
tinguished, adherent of the act of 1814 is fully aware
of the impassable barrier which it places between
the branch of issue and the department of banking.
The directors have no more power over the circula-
tion than over the character of the weather ; and the
Times knows it. With what decency of pretext, then,
can it accuse of mismanagement a body of men who,
upon its own hypothesis, are as helpless for gond or
for evil, as the table round which they congregate?

THE rumour in Paris—where everything of im-
portance soon transpires is, that England and
France are going to be once more the best of friends,
that ministerial rivalries are to be forgotten, diplo-
matic trickery passed over, and even the great act of
royal jockeying at Madrid excused as a venial and
unimportant sin. The very Bourse has caught
the whisper, that the Duke De BROGLIE has restored
the entente cordiale, and speculators, both monied and
political, are equally busied in the task of building
chateaux en Eepagne.
Whatever be the absolute truth or immediate cause
of this—whether it is owingto Lord PALMERSTON
being tired out, or Louts PHILIPPE having had a
compunction that to leave England a decided foe to
his dynasty was not the best legacy he could leave
to an infant grandson, or whether Queen ISABELLA
is in a way which promises to Five a direct heir to
the throne of Spain, certain it appears that a
change, and a very sudden one, has come over inter-
national relations within the last fortnight, and a
commencement has been made for putting an end to
that diplomatic antagonism between France and Eng-
land which has for us led to eo few satisfactory results.
Rejoiced as we are at such prospects, it is impossi-
ble not to experience some misgivings as to the price
to be paid, and the sacrifices made, to the renewal of
the Anglo-French alliance. The most desirable of all
results, the very eutlusnasia of French and English
rivalry, would be the total abstinence of both from
further interference, leaving the courts of Madrid and
Athens and the political world of Berne and
Lucerne to carry on their own struggles, un-
abetted, unprovoked, and even unattended to.
But, we fear, this is not to be hoped for.
The French will be for making the good better, ever
synonimous with making bad worse; and we are to
sit by, and either allow them thus to meddle, or,
which is worse, approve of their doing so. Such an
entente cordiale or alliance of sympathy between
French and English courts would certainly lead
to a schism between the English government and its
liberal supporters at home, who are most anxious in-
deed for amity with France, but who are not prepared
fo sacrifice to that country the liberties and in-
dependence of either Switzerland or the peninsula.
We will do Lord PALMERSTON the justice to say,
that his treatment of Swiss politics seems hitherto to
have been adroit, liberal, and successful. Without
going the length of identifying England with the
extravagance of the Bernese, our representative has
preserved a friendly and respectful attitude, very
different from the fretful, sophistical, and illiberal
conduct of the French envoy, who has urged the
Sowlerbund to resistance, tried to arm them for the
fray, and acted as a spy and a foe in the very
camp and capital of the government, to which he
was accredited. The last act of this French
envoy has been to assert that he was sent
to each of the cantons and not to the con-
federation, which is pretty much the same as if the
French ambassador in the United States were to assert
that he was accredited to the states of Maine and
Texas, not to the executive at Washington; and that
he had therefore a right to plot and intrigue with any
state against the President and his government. We
can imagine the answer of Mr. POLK or General
JACKSON to a French envoy who should put forth
those arguments, which M. Bois LE Cohere had the
insolence to employ towards M. Oenezeseee.
The English government has avoided these follies,
and has assumed that fasts milieu of moderate
liberalism, which LOUIS PHILIPPE in the frenzy
of his declining years has altogether abandoned. By
keeping this attitude in Switzerland, Lord PALMER-
STON has succeeded in adjourning that intervention
for which France and Austria were clamorous, at
least until the liberal government and Diet have had
fall opportunity for putting forth their strength and
humbling their enemies. The French and Austrians,
who so long incited Lucerne and Friburg to resistance,
were reduced to recommend these parties and towns
to submit. An armed intervention, undertaken at
first to uphold the Jesuits and the Sonderbund in
their resistance to the majority of the Diet,
would have been the annihilation of the republican
government. An intervention undertaken later to
restore the Sonderbund to independence and the
Jesuits to supremacy, after they had been crushed by
the superior and legitimate force of the Diet, would
be equally subversive of any principle, on which a sys-
tem of government could be carried on in Switzer-
land. But an intervention, and merely a diplomatic
one, which should restore peace, and maintain the
existence and just superiority of the Diet,
whilst it prevented the Swiss executive from
abasing its victory, or making use of its advantages
to overwhelm and destroy the foundations of cantonal
independence—such au interrention as this, maturely,
weighed and considered by the protestant powers of
England and Prussia, as well as by the catholic ones
of France and Austria—such an amicable and fair
intervention as this, if it restored peace, suspended
hostilities, and brought about the establishment of a
practical and wise federal constitution, might prove,
what such interventions seldom are, a blessing and a
regeneration to Switzerland.
But this depends altogether on the spirit which
presides over this destined congress. If England join
such an assembly of the representatives of despotic
courts, previously agreeing to be bound by the
rule of their majority, and aware that in the asser-
tion of great liberal principles, and especially that of
Swiss freedom and independence, the English envoy
is to be alone in the minority, then it will
be merely the congress of Verona played over
again, from which issued the edict for over-
coming and treading down Spanish liberties,
England's influence being reduced to a vain and soli-
tary protest. A good understanding with France is
the moat desirable of results ; but let it be obtained
by no sacrifice of principle. We tally
.join with the
member for Mid&ux in deprecating the repetition,
with respect to Switzerland, of that policy pursued
towards Portugal last year, of which policy the state
of things in Lisbon now offers the miserable and
disgraceful result.

WHEN proceeding, in conformity with the recom-
mendation in the royal speech, to revise the navigation
laws, parliament will do wel to remember that timid
and paltry tampering with systems of national policy
only does mischief. The evil effects of the navigation
laws do not arise from incidental details, but are the
necessary consequence of the system. It is sot by
modifying, but by abrogating, the navigation laws
that the injury they do our commerce is to be re-
paired.
The truth is, that, even though the principle upon
which the navigation laws proceed were less erorneous
than it is, they are inapplicable and out of place in
the existing circumstances and policy of Great
Britain. The navigation laws were, from the
beginning, merely part of a great system of cola-

nial and general commercial policy, v—Thlel7--`, • en
other respects has been abandoned, or is in the coin%
of being abandoned. When the nav4ation laws -
we
framed, the legislature was impressed with the
that the general commerce of the country entiTe
rendered more prosperous—the c•untry itself ewe
wealthy and powerful—by each department of iodise
trial enterprise consenting to waive a part of d.•
natural liberty in favour of the rest. Gee slit;
another, almost all other restrictions upon or in fnr.
of other branches of industry have been relisqairhed.
the community will not, and ought not, to cobs ti
the perpetuation of those which relate to ship
after the others, which, by compensating, halacki
alleviated their pressure, are gone.
It is pedantry to trace the history of the nevi
laws—for any practical purpose—beyond the era d
the Commonwealth. The statute of CHARLES IL it
merely a reprint of the legislation of Caomweit
and
the long parliament. It was the natural mistake 01,
the first English government, which, feeling itielf
part of the people, legislated in the smite of the
people against the exclusive assumptions of a cotet.
Ile parliamentary party was strong in its eh&
racter of antagonist to the prelates of els
school of LAUD, but still stronger in he
character of antagonist to the trading monopt,
lies 'of the court. The courtiers of that day loow
upon the mercantile class much in the ewe
way that some capitalists within the memory of rare
now living looked upon the operative class—se
trious drudges who ought to be encouraged by Ihry,
log them a portion of the fruits of their toil, bet she
were bound by their allegiance to surrender the
greater part of them for the enjoyment of the hiet
the nobles, and their retainers. Monopolies were th;
legal instruments employed to squeeze the moister,
from the poor sponges. A monopoly of
wines was granted to this courtier, end me,
nopolies of plantations to others. The holden
of these monopolies farmed them out to inter.
ligent and enterprising members of the industrid
class, or associated such parties with themselves in
the management of them. Against this system of
courtly plunder the strenuous efforts of the first fees
parliament of England were directed. It fought for
the great principle that the fruits of industry were
the just and exclusive right of the industrious on.
munity.
But the instinctive sense of justice awakened by
the peculiar relation of the industrial classes all
powerful in parliament to the court, could not emanci-
pate them from misconceptions, the pressure of which
was not practically felt. The want of faith in the
power of the selfish instincts implanted in every ;eh.
vidual to keep in check those of his neighbours—the
want of an adequate perception of necessity of fan
power of his earnings as an allurement to each indi-
vidual to exert himself to the utmost—led the state&
men of the Commonwealth into the same mistakes
which have bewildered most political theorists, from
PLATO down to ROBERT OWEN, and which hue
always appeared so plausible to the unreflecting sad
the indolent. After emancipating the commerce of the
country from the exactions of the court, they bona
down the individuals engaged in it to pay tribute
to an imaginary public. And with regard to foreign
communities, they conceived the impracticable idea of
adopting towards them the same extortionate policy
against which themselves had rebelled when en-
forced by the English court.
The navigation law was the result of these miscon.
ceptions. It was the colonial code of Great Britain.
Parliament, having wrested the colonies from the
King and courtiers, conceived the idea of adminie
tering them so as to make their trade a substitute for
the trade of all other countries, and to try an arbi-
trary and artificial arrangement to distribute its ad-
vantages equally among all classes of the English
community. To this end a monopoly of the mother.
country's products was established in the colonie,
and a corresponding monopoly of colonial produce is
the markets of the mother-country. And, to con.
plete the work, a monopoly of the carrying trade wu
attempted to be established in the shipping interest
of England.
The theory of this system, plausible at first, eve
though indefensible when clearly examined, we,
never carried into effect. It was, in fact, unworkable.
Previous to the American war of independence, the
trade of the North American provinces was the
most flourishing and advancing of all we ear.
vied on ; but that was because the universel
smuggling from Georgia to Nova Scotia rendered the
navigation law a dead letter. One after another, all
the characteristic features of the Long Parliament',
commercial policy have been obliterated, except that
which presses most heavily upon the industrious
producers both at home and in the colonies—the re-
strictions which bind them to employ exclusively,
however imperfectly the service may be performed, or
at whatever excess of cost, the native oceanic-
carriers of Great Britain. The producers at home
are now loud in their complaints against the mo-
nopoly enjoyed by the shipping interest, sad the
producers in the colonies still louder. This might
have been expected, for many years ago a leading
member of the West India interest, a stout advocate
of restriction and protection, told the minister and
parliament of his day that the monopoly enjoyed by
colonial produce in the markets of the mothercoantry,
and the monopoly enjoyed by the imperial shipping
interests, were correlative parts of one bargain. The
former are gone, or going, and the latter must follow.
We cannot remain where we are. Either the old
colonial monopolies must be re-enacted, or the
shipping monopoly must follow them. We cannot
revert to a system which was only perpetuated by
incessaat connivances at infractions of it. The pre-
sent generation has indeed been confirmed in the
faith that colonial markets are the most profitable;
but that for this very reason they may be most safely
exposed to general competition. And the further in-
ference necessarily follows, that if our home traders
are to concede no exclusive privileges to the colonies,
no class of home traders have any right to exact ex-
clusive privileges at their expense.
At all times, the best way to deal with any proved
nuisance is to abolish it at once. Gradual processes
and half-measures are only concessions to ignorant or
interested opposition, or the price paid for the main-
tenance of other nuisances. In the present case there
is no complication of interests to plead for delay; as
question of revenue le involved in the proposal to ab-
rogate the navigation laws ; as a means of supplying
the royal navy with seamen, they are known to be a
dead letter, and the fresh impetus their removal
would give to trade would at once increase instead of
diminish the employment of ships already bent
Nor is the question one that will admit of math de
lay. The home merchants and manufacturers might
submit to parliament, and bear the preemie cedilla
laws formoatelidtellpee
dependencies
?ft
; ,bat
not
latt urehoeinhabiropeuird,tante
of our remote
the navigation laws will henceforth be in the
colonies as they were in New England the
revolution, if indeed they do not produce the ewe
results as the colonial stamp act and tea duty of
famous memory. The best course for the ausilute
of the navigation laws is obvious—to follow the
example of the Anti Corn-Law League, and demand
their total, immediate, and unconditional repeal.

ONE of the most recent freaks of a board of Irish
guardians is too well calculated for the amazement
and amusement of the world to be passed over with-
out notice. Our readers will remember that the Earl
of CLARENDON suggested to the Irish AgneolOorel
Society the propnety of sending lecturers into
the rural districts for the puree of instruct-
ing farmers in the rotation of crops, &c., but more
especially in the preparations made for tillers before
the setting in of the winter's Ergots ; which are, es
practical men know of the highest importance to the
cultivator, but which, being little understood, are
very imperfectly practised in Ireland. The noble-
men and gentlemen composing the agricultural
society eagerladopted the proposal. The example
LIEUTENANT'S
of the LORD liberal donation was 101-
lowed by some of the principal Irish proprietors, and
the services of some of the best practical agricul-
-1 turista in the empire, as lecturers, were secured.
Mr. Smvorr, one of the gentlemen thus engaged,
visited the district of Killarney, in the county of
Kerry, and sought the aid of the board of guardians
to assist him in carrying out the designs of the
Agricultural Society. Had he been a collector sent
to claim the payment of out-standing debts, his
appearance could not have produced greater excite-
ment among the guardians of the Killarney team.
Mr. SHINE LALOR, a magistrate of the county, wu
quite indignant that any connexion whatever should be
supposed between the ignorance of the cultivator and
the productiveness of the soil. In his peculiar eco-
nomy, money and idleness were represented u fir
preferable to inatraction and work, Ignorance