The Express.
London, England, 1851-04-16 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL 16, 1851.

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isentative system of government, reasonable beings
for governors, and permission to take care of them-
selves at their own expqmse. They are proud of
English citizenehip, and wish to retain it; but
they feel that the true link to unite the colony
and the mother country is to be sought in mutual
good offices and common interests ; not in a system
of government that keeps them in a perpetual poli-
tical nonage.

TO COIiItESPONDENTS.
A Freund Edhlon .f " The }levees," e ultsming he some e• nines
Gcurtte." Is published every Tociday sn I Enday night. Is dos
for pod.
Adverueeraenta Wended for '• The Looks teesbee paper,
mtpit b, the mike, io, louverse•street, by Two o'clock co eke
eloy d pub.untiou.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tem tr.e--)ternien. 7h. 7.. Anemoe, 2b. MIA
Turoaa•v—Monty, 2A. Sles .Alum, Sw 12•2.

IT is no part of the duty of a liberal journal to
explain away, to make light of, or to gloss over,
faults and errors committed by individual members
lof the liberal party. What is censurable in their op-
ponents cannot, by any perversity of logic, or conve-
mency of morals, be commendableorexcusable in them.
So of St. Albans, as we did of Aylesbury, we must
say that Mr. BELL would have been much better
away at the last election than present at such a scene
of electoral corruption, venality, and scandal, as then
occurred, if not with his sanction, certainly at his
cost ; or, if resolved to contest so notorious a place,
he might, iu the interest of his party, have, at least,
taken a lesson from the conduct of Mr. ROBERT

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16.

Mr. ADDERLEY wants a royal commission to pro-
ceed to South Africa, to inquire on the spot into the
actual relations between this country and the Kaffir
tribes, and the relations which it would be most ex-
pedient to substitute for them. Lord Jolter Res-
SELL prefers the appointment of a select committee
of the House of Commons to inquire into the rela-
tions between this country and the Kaffir and other
tribes on our South African frontier.
In so far as Mr. Aoneniet's motion and Lord
Jonsi's amendment alone are concerned, the former i
is unquestionably to be preferred. In tho recent
debate on Sir it W. BARRON'S motion for a com-
mittee of the whole house on the state and prospects of
Ireland, the value of committees (and commissions
too, by the way) was illustrated in a very striking
manner. According to Sir WILLIAM SOMERVILLE,
in the course of the last ten years II commissions
and fi3 parliamentary committees have inquired into
and reported on the state and prospects of Ireland.
What good has come of all their labours ? What has
Ireland been benefited by them ? Each and all of
these committees and commissions have presented
to parliament their blue books. and under the accu-
mulated mountain of colossal folios, the means of
benefiting that unlucky country have been buried
far out of sight of mere'human intelligence.
The experience of more than twenty years ought
to have taught earnest politicians by this time that
In minty-nine cases out of a hundred, a committee
Is a mere substitute for action. It is a device for
gaining time when a ministry is pressed to do what
It has no will to do, and cannot decently refuse. The
Ceylon question was sufficiently complicated,
ana obscure before the appointment of the
committee of lust session, but the labours'
al that honourable body' have introduced
each admirable confusion into it that the most san-
guine have ceased to hope that the " mysteries of
Ceylon" can ever be unravelled. When the Anti-
Corn-lawdelegates first came toLondon the ministers
of the day kindly offered them a select committee.
The delegates knew better than to accept the otter.
Had they done so, they and their cause would have
been witldrawn from public notice ; it was by keep-
ing both constantly in the public gaze that they
were enabled to accomplish their mighty tusk in
little more than seven years.
For such a purpose as ascertaining the true cha-
racter and merits (or demerits) of our South African
policy in relation to the Kaffir tribes, a royal
commission to act on the spot is a shade better,
and only a shade, than a select parliamentary
committee. The committee must examine such
witnesses us are on the spot, or such us
they are advised to send for to the colony. When
it has got these witnesses before' it, it lacks that
knowledge of local circumstances and personal rela-
tions that is required to enable it to estimate aright
the value of their evidence. If there is anything
suspicious about the evidence, supplementary or op-
posing evidence must be sought tar at hazaid, with
much expense and considerable loss of time. A com-
mission on the spot can see as well as hear, and
judge in some IlleaSUM for itself, and can convene
witnesses with less of expense and loss of time. But
even a commission labours under this disadvantage ;
it' its members are residents in the colony they arc
liable to local biasses and partisan prepossessions; if
strangers, they are liable to innumerable misappre-
hensions of a state of society with which they are
previously unacquainted.
If', tlarefore, it were absolutely ircumbent upon us
to give a vote in favour of Mr. Aotmeet.ee's motion,
or Lord JOHN iII",sELC, amendment, we would give
it for the former, but with great doubts as to the ex-
pediency of either plan of prixavding. And seeing
that theree is no cull upon us to take part with either
the one or the other, wo frankly contiss that both
proposals appear to us little likely to lead to profit-
able results.
The truth is that action, not inquiry, is called for.
The numerous blue hooks on Cape attitirs that have
heel) issued since Ifi3s contain all the information
that committee or commission can elicit, and more
than is necessary to guide the legislature and govern-
mut to a sound decision on the policy that ought to
Ibe adopted ut the Cape. In these voluminous and
tumid collections arc to be found full ac-
counts of our various Kaffir wars ; full description
of the various tribes of aborigines in South Afric...,
their migrations and actual position ; ample insight
into the composition of the European society at the
Cape, Dutch and English; information respecting the
missionary operations among the natives, and the
relations of the missionaries to the colonists and go-
vemment ; and a fair picture of the consequences of
the manner in which the colony has been adminis-
tered. What more can committee or commission
tell us ? It' upon these data government and the
legislature do not feel themselves in a condition to
act, they will be equally irresolute and undecided
after committee or commission have tried to illumi-
nate them.
One thing is clear, that the system of tying up
the hands or the colonists, and leaving a local gover-
nor uppointed by u distunt imperial government to
negotiate and fight with the uncivilised tribes or their
bands on their border has lamentably railed.
Under this system a Kuffir war has been sure to
recur at intervals varying front three to five years.
And these wars have each of them cost the mother
country a suns varying from a million upwards. The
colony could not be moreprecariously circumstanced,
more exposed to the inroads of manniding barbarians,
if left to provide for its own defence. And the
mother country would thereby be relieved front au
ever-recurring source of bootless expenditure; for so
long us it takes the defence of the colonists into its
own hands, tying up theirs, and compelling them to
look idly on, it incurs the responsibility of the ex-
penditure incurred by its own and its agents blunders.
And the colony is fully adequate to its own de-
I fence against any aggression from uncivilised neigh-
bours. In the event of a war between this and any
other civilised country, the colony may be exposed to
attacks, and as these attacks would be made upon it
as a part of the empire, it would be entitled to look
for aid from the mother country, and would nerd it.
But the attacks of barbarous neighbours mire
prompted by. different feelings from those which impel
civilised nations to war; they must be evaded by a
different policy; they are more desultory and leas
dangerous. It is only in unforeseen, first attacks,
that uncivilised tribe; ever pig' an advantage over
civilised men. The knowledge, resources, and orga-
nisation of the latter, always ensure them the
ascendancy in the long run. The attacks of bar-
hams neighbours can only be averted by the watch-
fulness and prudence of those who are liable to them.
The colonists who have to deal with them know
best how to avoid giving them provocation—they
have the strongest motives to avoid giving them
any. A remote • government, or its agent sent
to the colony for a few years only, have neither the
same opportunities to learn the characters of the
tribes nor the same motives to watch them closely.
The history of European settlement iu New Zealand
places this in a strong light. The first settlements
on Cook's Strait were straggling communities of run-
away sailors and escaped convicts engaged in bay-
whaling. These men, few among many savages,
rude and ungovernable though they were, felt the
necessity of keeping on good terms with their way-
ward neighbours, and of watching their deportment
closely. The consequence was that they lived in
perfect security among these cannibals. Since New
Zealand has liZen blest with Colonial-office governors
and English troops, there has been more than one
bloody war between the natives and the settlers.
We have occasion to know that this is the view
entertained by the most intelligent and most nume-
rous portion of the community of the Cape Colony.
There are jobbers there as well as here, and that
amiable class wish the policy hitherto pursued to be
continued, as it tills their pockets. But the honest,
industrious, intelligent colonists. to a man, when
asked what measurts are best adapted to insure peace
and security to their settlements, and whether they
wish for numerous troops, or committees, or COTIIMifF
Ilions of inquiry, reply, that all they need is a repre-

(.71tAWFtntn--. at Harwich, and confined his expendi-
ture to what was lawful and proper: that at Har-
wich, in Mr. CRAWFORD'S case, not exceeding

It is indeed wholly incomprehensible how so
respectable, and intelligent a man as Mr. BELL
could have been induced to go to so wretchedly
venal a borough as St. Albans. There is some-
thing ofkitsive and even insulting in the very
notion of liming anything to do with the place. Mr.
Alderman Sheriff CARD EN is not an over-sensitive,

delicate, or scrupulous person. But even he purged
his mind, buttoned up his pockets, and read a homily
on purity before he started for St. Albans. Yet there
he seems to have found a much better man than Mui-
r self—a successful London tradesman—a scientific

chemist, a patron of tine arts, and a member
of the Society of Friends, at high
,finks with
corruption hand in glove with the dealers
and chapmen in votes; surrounded by a set of scamps
who would sell their country, and thank their stars
that they had a country to sell. What could have
persuaded Mr. But to go thither, to have tolerated
such a band of electoral ruffians, to have dirtied his
hands by coming into contact with them, to have
yielded to their ways, and to have begun his public
career on such a foundation, is one of those strange

occurrences that altogether puzzle and defy ordinary
observation or common-plate solution. One feels that
it can only be explained by some secret piece of his-
tory ; one hopes that Mr. BELL ignorantly fell
amongst thieves as he travelled along the highway of
life, and, like Aannx SMITH, became so thorunglily
the victim of these land pirates us to appear to pass-
ing gaze one of the party.
Mr. BELL, we are willing to believe, is rather the
instrument of the traffickers in elections at St. Albans,
than he was the chief actor in or stimulator either
of what occurred during the contest, or at the very
audacious attempt made during the recent inquiry to
defeat the ends of justice. In all that has Own
place, there is an amount of experience, tact, and in-
solence, courage and skill of a bud order, that cannot
belong to a person so new to politics as Mr. BELL.
His fault appears, then:Coe, to have been
that he got into hands from which he could
not escape ; that one false step led on to an-
other ; and that with him as with 21/arbeth, "re-
turning were as tedious as go o'er." His position is
not, however, an enviable one; his return was secured
by means that are indefensible, that strike at the very
root of representative government, that are a scandal
to the country ; and his return has been protected by
practices which, if submitted to, would render the
administration of justice a mockery, and reduce the
authority of parliament to a point below that of a
small debt court. Mr. BELT. remains member t'or
St. Albans ; but in all probability he will he
the last of its representatives, for so little Met
• has even the late disclosures had on the bo-
rough-mongers of that town, that it is under-
stood that, in anticipation of a general election, they
have already sold the seat, at least in advance, to a
notorious tructarian, whose chance of being again re-
turned for his county is nought.
Whilst, therefore, uniting cordially in the animad-
versions that are mode on the electoral corruption of
this borough, we cannot, however, join with Mr.
CannEs's friends and relatives in the Tithes, in cen-
suring the committee for not voiding the election.
For, though there was a moral certainty that Mr.
llEtis Success was owing to bribery and treating,
there was little legal evidence Mom the committee
of facts whereon to reach a judicial decision to that
etfeet. Suspicion there was in abundance—ample
testimony, too, of the abduction of the witnesses
who were expected to prove acts of bribery—
confident assurances that if the absentees could be
procurod the case would be made, and every reason
to believe that such would have been the result of
their capture and production. But when it is con-
sidered that grave doubts had arisen whether the
committee had not, by an unauthorised adjournment,
voided and terminated the powers under which it
sat; that there was no reasonable expectation that
the efforts of the petitioners and their agents to
secure the lcvanting witnesses would be successful;
and above all, when it is eousidered that, under
the provisions of the late statute, the com-
mittee have moved the House of Commons
to direct a larger inquiry into the electoral
condition of the borough, the conclusions to which it
came were, we must think, right and reasonable.
No doubt that result gives Mr. ISELL a seat to which
few can think him entitled; but either the proceed-
ings of a committee, whose legal existence had be-
come doubtful, 11111.4 have been indefinitely pro-
longtd, or an inadequate, hasty, and insufficient in-
vestigation have taken place.
As it is, the committee, by the course they have
pursued, have terminated an inquiry that must have
been uusatistiwtory ; but only to originatcunother that
in all probability must, from its sufficiency, termi-
nate in the disfranchisement of St. Albans ; and by
its disfranchisement lay the foundation of its future
prosperity; for when the electors of small boroughs
arc corrupt and venal, they are also indolent, idle,
and worthless inhabitants of a decaying town ; and,
until deprived of the casual means of living which
the representation gives them, it is hopeless to ex-
pect their mural or material improvement. '