The Express.
London, England, 1847-10-22 00:00:00

Alt epismig.

The overland eloped mills, Ms Marseilles, to ale Mediterranean,
r ez, Alen, bulls, Hang Kos& km, will be made up on the
g of the 13th October.
The mails for Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Quils, and Gibraltar
Will be made up on the morning of the 2/th Oceotre.
The math foe New South Wales, Ten Diemen's Land, and New
Zestrad will be made up on the evening of the 14 November.
The Writ India malls, including those for Mexico, Her.durak end
the Havarnsh, will be made up on the morningol the Snit November.
The overland nulls for Gibraltar, Malta, °mem, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, sad China, Ms SounnunPtml,
will be male up on the morning of the 3M November.
Tho mails for British North America. Bermuda, and tk• United
States, will be made up on the evening of the Jed November.
The mails for the Brand,. the Him Platt, Moot. Video, Pernam-
buco, tolna, Hodetra, and Buenos Ayres, will be made up on the
tvcolog of the 4th November.

TO CO RRRRR le DINT&
•.• leintiee-se•te Wended /m TMS.T.N.. Leah.wean popsy neve be
uOy Oabe.lo. &wed. meet. by Tyre Vele*. Ito etrablieelece.

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Lr.,!! Pal-010mgma aim Ma 0 : Altaomm.:o /Ma. mat 0.
01.010000*—Nam100.03 m 10.0.1 0: Aftmammo. It .10. put 1.

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCT. 22.
IT is pleasure and interest to see Mr. Mott/. come
forward and deal the Times such a knock-down
blow as he did yesterday morning. Hitherto the
quarrel between currency and credit has been a skir-
mish fought at a distance, each shot striking the air
rather than killing an antagonist. Whilst the
Times abused railways, and the anti-currency men
abused PEEL, of swindling away our money,
there was no chance of chami-,',,,n3 itha
having a tri.-,i, of strength. At last, how-
ever, the Times came forward to brace its op-
ponents. It told the Birmingham people that if
they exculpated railways, and accused PEEL'S bills,
of being the causes of the enlisting distress, it was
that they were interested in railways, furnishing
them, living by them, and that they were high-
priests of the monster idol, feeding on its sacrifices.
We pointed out on Wednesday morning the utter
falsehood of the charge. Mr. MUNTZ has come
forward, and almost in our very words disproves and
contradicts it. Birmingham has as much to do with
rails, as with the herring fishery—nay, the manu-
facturers lose by railway competition, which has
elevated the scale of wages. The Times admits
the force of the blow, acknowledges its utter error,
and then seeks to wriggle out of its defeat by hinting,
that although the Birmingham employers may suffer
by railways, rather than profit by them, still the arti-
sans have an interest in the competition for work
being kept up ; and that, consequently, the employers,
to flatter the workmen who are electors, take the
part of the railways though against their own
interests, applaud and exculpate them. Such a
roundabout way of seeking influences, such a cir-
cuitous search after motives, would probably have
occurred to no one save the Times. Its over-subtlety
refutes and exposes itself too completely to need
further exposure.
After all, why does Birmingham complain more
than other wealthy localities of the wrong inflicted by
the series of currency measures ? Simply because
Birmingham is, of all our cities, most interested in the
home trade. The materials of her manufacture she
draws from the bowels of the earth beneath, and,
when completed, the few millions worth she sends
abroad are nothing compared to the mass of articles
of daily and domestic use required at home. Birming-
ham does not look to cotton crops in foreign markets,
and cannot comprehend being sacrificed to foreign
exchanges.
Perhaps there is no piker way of putting the great
question which divides and perplexes politicians and
men of business than by stating the difference to
be, whether the foreign trade shall be sacrificed to
the home trade, or the home trade to the foreign;
or whether some rational compromise might
not be attempted and effected between two great
interests. . .

..... _
It is manifest that the currency champions have all
along had their views directed towards our foreign
trade, which they confider all in all, and their prin-
ciple is that no currency shall be allowed within a'
country, that is not at the same time the currency of
the world at large. For this they are certainly able
to adduce a mass of very powerful reasons, and
they are able to show a multitude of the very
greatest inconveniences, inevitably flowing from a
currency exclusively fitted to the domestic interchange
of the country.
These inconveniences are so great that they have
bad every reason to seek to obviate them by legisla-
tion. Every facility, support, and approbation should
be afforded for the attainment of that aim, provided
the measures proposed did not necessitate the sacri-
fice of still greater interests. One has, however, but
to look into any of the pamphlets of Mr. TORRENS,
in order to ace, most fully admitted and demanded,
the necessity of sacrificing every branch of the home
trade to the forcing back of gold from foreign coun-
tries in order to keep up a currency, at par with that
of other countries, for the solo convenience of the
foreign trade.
No matter under what circumstances, or for what
reasons, this currency is drained from the country ;
whether it be from the overtrading of the merchants,
or the failure of the agricultural crops, or from the
discovery of a new commodity for which a sadden
demand has arisen—in all cases there is but one re-
medy proposed, viz., the putting a forcing screw
upon the produce and manufacture of the country,
and reducing them to a price so low, no matter
whether it be remunerative or not, as to tempt the
foreign merchant to take the depreciated produce, and
give us back gold.
This puts one in mind of those scientific weighing-
machines for bulky commodities, in which tons of
an immense load without are measured and balanced
by a few ounces of metal within. In the same man-
ner, not only the whole internal trade, but the
whole internal wealth and produce of the country are
sent up and down in the balance artificially by some
ounces of what is needlessly and perniciously made the
exclusive and indispensable standard of value.
This extreme and heartless pertinacity of a certain
class of theorists has very naturally begotten the
other extreme of theory, which says, in answer to the
demand, that all the produce and commodities should
be lowered in order to bring back gold : if all pro-
duce and commodities are to be lowered, let the cur-
rency which measures them, and acts as the medium
of domestic interchange between these commodities,
be lowered too. Let us have two currencies, one for
home p one for foreign interchange. And let
the latter be the affair of the merchant who trades
with the foreigner. If he want gold, let him get
it. But let us not, as producers, who can
find a sufficient market at home, be sacrificed at
every crisis, brought on by the elements, or by man's
folly, to his wants and caprioes.
We do think that it is the duty of legislators to
tend towards a compromise between these antagonistic
parties. Sir ROBERT PEEL, drageng parliament
after him, has done everything that the foreign
trader required. He has gone the whole length of
sacrificing the home trade, and as it has proved,
without serving or benefiting in any proportion
those interests with which he sided. The immense,
the universal, the vital interests of the country,
are those found to suffer distress, depreciation, and
bankruptcy. His theory has been fully tried, and it
is quite evident that, however it may work well when
the country and its trade are in a normal state, it only
aggravates the sufferings of a crisis, and deprives the
country of its natural freedom and power for repair-
ing any sudden difficulty or lees, occasioned by
seasons, or other supreme and irremediable causes.
It would be quite as dangerous to go to another
extreme, and indulge the opponents of the prevailing
theory by erubetituting an inconvertible paper cur-
rency for a convertible one. But that the law of
1844 can be persevered in, gold maintained at a fixed
rate, and the price of all produce and commodities
wade to fluctuate up and down, for the sake of letting
bullion out and fetching it back into the country—
whoever hopes for that, is as mad as Mr. TORRENS
of " immaculate conception," who stigmatises as
" misconception " every view and every idea not as
narrow as Die own.
What is wanting, what is imperatively called for,
is some measure of immediate relief to counteract the
suicidal effects of the bill of 1844, and to enable the
country to get over the temporary difficulties and
nullification of property, occasioned by extraordinary
causes. Ministers are said to be divided as to the
necessity of interfe= But surely the failure of the
Newcastle suffice to stop Sir C.
is poor, will not do,
with his drawers
t he is a beggar
indigence is only
improvidence of the
poverty of

the nation, as the suspension of all exchangeable
value is construed, is a phenomenon of the same kind.
Government and parliament are bound to break the
spell which they have cast upon a country intrinsi-
cally wealthy and energetic as England.
In addition to the temporary measure of relief, must
be a permanent one, in the nature of a compro-
mise between the great interests of the country.
A parliamentary committee should take this mat-
ter in hand. Legislators may depend upon it that
it will not do to go on simply deriding the Birming-
ham school, without attempting to remove the hard-
ship and absurdities of which Birmingham complains.
We do not say that Birmingham points out the fea-
sible way to do this. But we cannot help thinking,
that if currency doctors persist in their extreme,
the paper extreme will one day crush them, and in-
stal itself in their place.

THE news from India is, that the influences which
govern at lAhore have found it necessary to remove
the young Maharajah's mother from the palace, and
send her into confinement at some distance. Her
corrupt life and habits, which, by example and pre-
cept, she sought to inculcate in her young son, and
her bursts of feminine vengeance, threatening to the
life and insulting to the dignity of the statesmen of
the empire, amongst others, of Tar SING, the prime
minister, aro the causes assigned for this step.
However remote the Punjaub from the Peninsula,
the obstacle in the way of good government has been
found to be the same in both, viz., the influence of a
laorher. The Banco of Spain, kaig given to
obscure connexions and amours, could not be near
her child without making the sovereign power sub-
servient to her own narrow and selfish purposes of
avarice, of vengeance, or of licentiousness. Yet in
Madrid things were not bettered by the exile of
the queen-mother, who, on departing, left her ex-
ample behind her—an example that ISABELLA was too
naturally induced to follow.
France and England, when they recognised the
sovereignty of the child Issiin.L.4, virtually under-
took the task of her moral and political education.
We regret to say, that both those powerful tutors
have executed their task badly, owing, no doubt, to
their conflicting and varying influence. One year
the young Queen was reared in the midst of the little
MCNOZES and the camarilla of her mother; the next
she was handed over to ARGUELLES and Madame
MINA. LOUIS-PHILIPPE furnished a /risen," and
French waiting-maids ; the English party in Madrid
employed a philosopher. Madame MINA and
ARGUELLES laughed at the priests. CHRISTINA, until
Very lately, was the contrary of devout, so that the
secular education of the young Queen may be consi-
dered, however dissatisfactory,to have been at least su-
perior to her religions instruction. The young Queen
has, however, much natural talent, strong will and
impulse, covered by the dissimulation for which her
father was so famous. She has a strong sense of the
comic, and ispronc to enjoy prodigiously, and to laugh
outright at, the crowd of low, ignorant, and greedy
men, whom, though but the mere scum of party, she
is obliged to accept as ministers and officers of state.
Were Lorrs Pnrciere a Mephistophiles, endowed
with power to destroy the innocence, the candour,
and happiness of the young Queen, he could scarcely
have taken other steps than he has done, or given
other advice. He has made her life almost inevitably
a licentious one, and his effort now is to cover
it with a cloak of decorum. Let - us, however,
not interfere with premature censure. The first
acts of French policy towards ISABELLA have
certainly prepared us to look forward to fearful tra-
gedy and ruin. Whether the present reconciliation
will lead to this, or else to a melodrama with a deco-
roue reconciliation finale, remains, but will not long
remain, doubtful.
The tutorship of the Prince of Indus is not so
difficult a matter, being altogether in our kande.
Unfortunately it is not a genuine independent prince
that we have to rear, but the image and shadow of one.
To teach him spirit and greatness, in order to feel more
deeply by-and-by that his empire has passed away,
would be cruel. All we can do is to instil common
sense, teach prudent conduct and decorum. But,
were it possible, we should like to see an Asiatic
sovereign reared with all the lights and advantages of
a European education. Hitherto, eastern despots,
whenever so enlightened, have merely borrowed or
imitated the skill and power which free nations
have employed for military purposes. PETER the
GREAT studied shipbuilding at Amsterdam, to make
himself a formidable fleet. RUNJEET SINGH enlisted
French officers to organise for him a formidable artil-
lery. All that Turkey or MEnEMET ALI have as vet
borrowed from us are the arts of drilling and killing
by rule. Whether we can inoculate a DHULEEP or a
Goor.An with anything more, is very doubt-
faL We have, indeed, had Indian princes
much attached to us, and to our policy, as well as
imbued with our ideas. Bat somehow or another,
the more they came to fraternise with as, the less in-
fluence
they had over their own native subjects and
what was chiefly aimed at as a source of mutual
strength, turned oat but an element of mutual weak-
ness. We build little, therefore, upon the future
Maharajahs of the Indus, and fear that, in despite of
every wish to be tolerant and self-denying, a British
resident or colonel will be found the only permanent
authority upon the Indus, as upon the Ganges.

WHOEVER may have acquired, either proftwsionally
or by reason of personal interest, any knowledge of
the evils of copyhold tenures, will not be surprised to
learn that a " Copyhold Enfranchisement Society"
has lately been formed, at Willenhall, near Wolver-
hampton. The report of the proceedings of the meet-
' ing at which that society was formed, appeared in
our columns, and will be read with interest, not only
by copyholders, but by that numerous and increasing
class of persons who believe that the time is come
for emancipating land from the remnants of feuda-
lism. copyhold tenure has long been a standing op-
probrium. It was originally a " villein tenure,' that
is, the bare right to hold the surface of the soil at the
will of the lord of the manor ; the bolder was a serf,
who might be at any moment ejected on the mere mo-
tion of the lord, and, consequently, might be subjected
to any exaction which the lord in his caprice might
think fit to impose. This tenure, in its original state,
still exists in Hungary and some other countries of
eastern Europe. The tenants, as well as the land,
are the absolute property of the lord, and, therefore,
however he may, in the exercise of his will, think fit
to deal with them, or their possessions, he is legally
justified. In this country the villein tenants gradually
acquired the right to hold their lands subject to the
" will of the lord," that will, however, having become
regulated and controlled by the " custom of
the manor." So certain is it that no cultiva-
tion can go on unless the cultivators have
some degree of security of possession, that even
the very serfs were everywhere secured by a custom.
But these customs varied in the most arbitrary man-
ner. Ever7where the villein tenant had no legal
title but his admission as tenant by the lord or his
steward in the Lord's Court, and his evidence of title
was the "copy of the court-roll," wherein the admis-
sion had been recorded. His heir was usually, and,
as custom became strong, by custom admitted. He
could make no lease of hie land, beyond one year,
without the lord's special license, unless a custom
authorising longer leases existed ; he could dig no
minerals ; he might plant, but he could eat down no
trees ; and whenever he improved the property, he
did so as much for the lord as for himself. Each
copyhold tenant paid a fine cn his admission. In a
few manors the amount of this fine was limited and
defined by custom, but in most the fine has always
continued to be " arbitrary." Sometimes the lord has
a right, by the custom of the manor, to seize, upon
the death of the copyhold tenant, the best beast or
best chattel which may be found at the time upon
the copyhold property.
To illustrate the modern operation of such a custom,
the case of the late Sir CHARLES Bt SIBERT maybe men-
tioned. Sir CnkriLes was the owner of a copyhold
property, upon which, at the time of his death, the
celebrated race-horse Smolensko was kept, and this
horse, then worth several thousand pounds, was
claimed by the lord of the manor for a heriot, as the
beat beast of the copyholder. Let our breeders of
high-priced horses and prize cattle beware how they
keep their stock upon lands of villein tenure. The broad
mark of serfdom still remains uneffaced on such pro-
perty. Until the year 1815 copyhold property would
not pass by will unless the owner had previously sur-
rendered it to the uses of his will in tke lord's court,
and at this day the copyholder cannot grant a lease,
in the absence of a custom of leasing, without the
lord's license. The real property commissioners long
ago recommended that copyholders should have
power to grant leases at rack-rents for twenty-one ,
years, without the license of the lord; but that re-

commendation has not yet been adopted. It is true,
we haves copyhold commission to assist in the execu-
tion of certain acts of the present reign for commut-
ing manorial rights, and for heilitating the enfran-
chisement of oopyholds ; but as all proceedings under
these acts must be the result of voluntary agreement
between lords of manors and copyholders, it the has
been done, nor is much likely to be done, under them
for the correction of the crying abua of copyhold
tenures. .

What la wanted is an enactment that all copyhold
tenures shall be at once converted into freeholds, the
owners paying an equitable compensation to the lords
for their manorial rights. This the landowners have
hitherto strenuously resisted, and public opinion has
not been suMeiently expressed upon the subject to
enable any minister to force it upon them. The fact
is that all the disadvantages of this tenure are on the
side of the copyholders ; and especially in districts
where improvements are going on ; or where the
value of the property consists in its minerals. Hence
the origin of the movement in the Wolverhampton dis-
trict, where the manorial rights of the lord appear to
have been made to operate with singular oppressive-
ness. The chairman of the meeting at Willenhall,
Mr. HARTILL, stated that he had paid a fine of 391.
on admission to copyhold property which had actually
deteriorated since his father's admission, when the fine
was only 251. The fines on mining property had
been even more enhanced ; " some time ago the fine
was five guineas an acre, then it was gradually in-
creased to eighteen, and now the lord demanded fifty
guineas an acre."
So a copyhold house was bought forty years ago for
1801., and the fines and fees on admission amounted
to 171. 15s. ; some additions were made by building,
and in 1816 the whole was sold for 3201. On that
occasion the fine and court fees amounted to 1141.!
During the interval the property had been four times
surrendered by way of mortgage ; and on th' •z„.x.a.
sions sums of 211. 45., 221. Its., 23/. 10s., and 251. 198.
had been paid for fines and court fees. Thus, the
copyholder had paid to the lord and his steward no
less than 221/. 195., on property of the original value
of 180/., and which sold, after 400/. had been expended
in its improvements, for 3201. Who shall pretend
then to estimate the value of copyhold property?
It may turn out to be valuable or valueless just as the
conscience of the lord or the steward is hard or other-
wise. Mr. BOLTON, a solicitor, mentioned a curious
instance of the way in which, while lords of manors
stand upon the custom of the manor when profitable to
themselves, they do not omit to avail themselves of
advantages our piece-meal modern legislation may
throw intheir way.
By the late Wills Act of 1838 it is enacted, that
where land is given by will to the heir of the testator,
the land shall pass by the will and not descend by
heirship. Before that act the will would have been
deemed inoperative as to the gift of land,and the heir
would have taken by what the feudal law called his
superior title of heir. This was found to be produc-
tive of much practical inconvenience, and was pro-
perly altered. But the effect of the act upon certain
copyhold property was this : the heir, though also de-
visee of the copyhold property, was admissible as
tenant in the character of heir, without fine; butwhen
the Wills Act declared that he must take under the
will and not as heir, the lord claimed a fine IS if the
devise had been made to a stranger. This shows
that even improvements in the general law of real
property, being partial, may operate injuriously upon
such anomalous tenures as those of copyholders.
There could be no difficulty in ascertaining the fair
measure of compensation to which lords are entitled
for enfranchisement, a"d which copyholders would
most readily accord ; but that antiquated claims of
right, so capricious, uncertain, and unequal in their
operation as those designated manorial customs,should
be permitted to stand much longer in the way of
improvement, the most ardent admirers of obsolete
feudalism can scarcely expect.

Newcastle Union Bank ought to unlike to
WOOD'B throat. To say the nation is poor, I
any more than it will do to tell a man, with I
fall of stock and Exchequer Bine, that he i
and must go to the workhouse. His indigez
owing to the incapacity and improvidem
government and the legislature. The p
•
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