The Express.
London, England, 1847-01-12 00:00:00

ghe ,'L' prefisi.

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JAN. 12.
Tire resolutions adopted by a body of Irish land-
lords, and about to be proposed in a conference in
Dublin, can be considered as little less than an abdi-
cation of their rights, powers, and duties by this
important body. Ireland, they declare, cannot feed
its destitute poor. The ground cannot be tilled for
the next year's crops, nor seed even found to sow,
provided the land were tilled. The state must do
all, and not the Irish, but the Imperial state. The
labour rate they denounce, the country not being
advanced enough, the proprietors not rich or disinte-
rested enough to spend money on public works.
Private agriculture—the cultivation of each man's
farm and potato garden--is all that can be
aspired to, and this no one can do without
money being advanced to him for doing it.
The landlords, moreover, demand the suspension of
the laws of trade.: They insist that dearness of pro-
visions shall be removed by government, or bodies'
empowered by them, selling provisions under market
price: the necessary consequence of which would be,
that the English government should, of itself, under-
take the amply, not of every Irish market, for a
st market would no longer exist, but of every Irish
poor-house, to be converted into a granary for the occa-
sion. Moreover, they demand money for clearing their
estates by emigration, and by work upon railroads.
Of a poor-law, ever so modified—of waste lands—of
giving leases—of selling their encumbered property,
they say not a word. They come forward, not as
men affected by the distresses of the population, and
prepared to strain every nerve in their removal, but as
a body of persona who have combined for the purpose
of escaping liability, and damage, and expense. They
see Ireland wrecked, and its crew struggling with the
waves, whilst they, the officers, have got into a life-
boat, and have pushed off by themselves, leaving
Englishmen to save the crew or the vessel as they
please.
We are very sorry, indeed, to see the Irish land-
lords thus come before the public and the state. They
have been much misrepresented and maligned. Their
position is a fearful one. We are far from taking the
extreme and unfavourable views of their claims and
merits, that many leading organs of opinion in this
country do. But we must say, that if the Irish land-
lords come forward, as they are about to do in Dublin,
denouncing everything the governmen t has done, deny-
ing. everything that government requires ; allowing
thew people to starve, whilst they. are clamouring
for alms and immunities, pertinaciously
the domains which they cannot cultivate, requiring
England to take away theirsurplas hands and months—
if this be the amount of sagacity, and humanity,
and disinterestedness in the Irish landlord class, their
beet friends will be driven to join their worst enemies
in a unanimous cry against them. Irish landlords
may depend upon it, they will profit more by coming
forward with rational proposals and demands than by
thus entering upon a system of war very much akin
to a repeal agitation, the result of which most be their
being mercilessly and deservedly sacrificed.
Nevertheless, we do think the Irish landlords war-
ranted in claiming that all that is temporary in the
present famine should be relieved by imperial aid.
If a universal blight fell on all produce, corn and green,
in any wide district of England, north or south, the
government would not think of throwing the burden
exclusively on either the poor rates or the property
of the afflicted district. Aid from more fortunate
provinces would be demanded, if not of right, at least
from humanity.
The reliehst-permaname distress should indeed be
*ought from Irish resources andlrish property. And
_ one good room for not pressing too hard upon Irish
landlords is, that this will task their utmost efforts.
, Not only are the poor to be fed through this dread
season, but they are to be guided and enabled to raise
food for future years, and food of another kind,
more certain, and of a higher nurture. Towards
this the landlords ought to come forward. They
ought to proffer something more to the pea-
sant than the old ruinous con-acre, and on
asking government to perride seed and funds
for the employ of the peasantry in agriculture, surely
the landlords ought to explain and pronounce what
they propose to do. If they have no energy but in
complaints ; no ingenuity except to pick boles in the
existing law; no experience, no knowledge, no sug-
gestion, except that lowest kind, which broadly and
impudently asks alms, then, indeed, the Irish land-
lord cannot hope to be listened to. If be come with
fair proposals and average wisdom, he would command

resticet:
One of the great difficulties with respect to Ireland
unfortunately, to get instruments to carry out
Illf MUMS of salvation and reform. 'Mose of the coun-
try are xeiclom to be trusted; yet what blunder. are
every day made bluargolpirs ? The adventures of the
unfortunate overseen nil sFseyors of public works
. •

ludicrous and humiliating. English writers are every
day clamouring for the extension of the poor-law to
Ireland. They should first look into the histories of
Irish Unions, of the poor-law boards of guardians in
that country, the impossibility of reconciling the
upper and middle classes, the guardians elect ejecting
their ex-o
fficio colleagues, and, in boards met for the
relief of the poor, engaging, not in pauper business,
but in the strife of repeal and no repeal. Then,
again, look at the presentment sessions ; the mise-
rable failure of the attempt to open the grand jury,
and get the tenants and the landlords, the
priest and the parson, the upper Irish nation
and the lower Irish nation, as MADDEN says,
to act together. The same difficulties start
up in the way of whatever may be devised.
And if we are now to follow the suggestions of such
writers as we see, for example, in the Times, and
enter upon a war ad isternetioneti with the Irish
landlords, the only mode of carrying. out even the
smallest reform will be for the Imperial Government
to take the entire management of public and private
property in that country, and convert it into an
Eastern region consisting of a ruling power, function-
aries, and slaves.
One of the things looked to by government is the
sole of some of the embarrassed and unimproved Irish
property. Such a measure is indispensable. Yet
even here what difficulties are to be encountered ?
The English capitalist will never venture his money
in the shaking bog of Irish tenure. The Irish alone
will buy. And thus will be materially accelerated
the revolution in progress, by which the lower Irish
nation is by degree! ousting the upper Irish nation
from its supremacy in land. The change is inevitable.
Rut connect it with the quarrel of Repeaters and no
Repeaters, with the leaven of religious inequality still
fermenting, with the unavoidable rancour and im-
patience of the losing side, and see how utterly im-
practicable will prove these essays at local manage-
ment and self-government, which form the wheels of
our system, and without which poor-law, emigration,
reclamation, or any form of improvement, cannot be
worked.

TREES is a closer parallelism at present between
the conditions of the Cape of Good Hope and New
Zealand than of any other British colonies. It is
only in these two that the question, how to deal with
a pretty numerous and intelligent, though uncivilised
native population, is practically urgent.
The latest accounts from both colonies are, so far
as warlike movements are concerned—if that phrase be
not too grandiloquent to express the exertions of due
ciplined physical force required to repress savage ma-
rauders—not disquieting, though they can scarcely be
called satisfactory. In both, turbulent chiefs and their
rapacious followers have been made to feel their
inability to cope with the British government.
In both, however, there appears to have been
a degree of remissness that threatens to render
the impression of this useful lesson less per-
manent. At the Cape of Good Hope, the governor,
instead of pressing home his advantages, had allowed
himself to be drawn into protracted discussions by
the artful savages with whom he had to deal. In
New Zealand the British troops appear to have been
kept in the background, and their commanding officer
to have gore to Wellington before the campaign was
ended; thus leaving its result to the chalices of the
dilatory Mead mode of proceeding, and incurring
the risk of oar native allies flattering themselves that
they have put down lIANOiHAEATA, and that the Pak-
ahi (white men) could not have done it. Whenever a
civilised government is compelled. as ours has been at
the Cape of Good Hope and in New Zealand, to en-
gage in hostilities against uncivilised subjects or
I neighbours, true humanity consists in making them
feel their inferiority as thoroughly and as speedily as
possible.
From any blunder, which have been committed in
military matters, however, we apprehend no more
serious evil than a little prolongation of such an un-
settled and uncomfortable state of affairs in certain
districts of the two colonies, as prevailed in Scotland
along the Highland line, before the abolition of here-
ditaryaudicatures and Marshal WADE'S roads put
down terans. We are more alarmed by sonic
indications which seem to augur a stormy political
future for these colonies. The symptoms are as yet,
perhaps, inconsiderable, but the proverb says " the
mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's egg."
In so far as the Cape of Good Hope is
concerned, the symptoms to which we allude
have shown themselves in the eastern districts.
These districts are the scene of the most
active industrial enterprise in the colony, and the
seat of the keenest political feeling. Or, what is the
same thing, they are the most essentially English
part of the colony. In the districts more closely con-
nected with Cape Town, the settlers of Dutch origin
appear to have inherited much of the phlegm of their
ancestors; and the settlers among them, of Anglican
race, to have acquired it. They go on prosperously
and steadily, but without striking out new hues of
business, much after the humdrum fashion of old set-
tled countries. In the eastern districts, on the contrary,
the inventive energy of the English colony, which was
planted as lately as 1820, has already made, what
was then little better than a desert, almost as produc-
tive and wealthy as the neighbour settlements, which
are its seniors by some two hundred years. Leave
the western districts of the Cape Colony to plod on in
their old accustomed fashions, and they will give little
trouble ; but the men of the Albany districts are of the
same race as the men of New England, and have
much in common with them.
The formation and growth of inveterate factions
among such a community is to be deprecated. At
this moment, even while a yet unsubdued enemy is
restless on their frontiers, there are strong indica-
tions of party spirit being at work. The unsuccessful
campaign of 1846 has given rise to recriminations.
There are some among the settlers who do not had-
tate to attribute its failures in a great measure to Sir
ANDRIES STOCKENSTROM. They accuse him of
having used his local influence in such a mannner as
to have attached the greatest number of the burgher
levies to hie own person, and secured for his own
party an unduly large share of the supplies collected.
They charge him with having withheld supplies of
men and provisions from the officers of the regular
army, in order to obstruct their operations, that
his own movements might show off to advantage.
in comparison. On the other hand, the partisans of
Sir ANDRIES STOCKENSTROM are not slow to charge
the English officers with having thwarted Sir ANDRI ES,
64M1 jealousy of his superior abilities, and with
having used low language. in the hearing of some
d kis commandants, against the burghers. This is
aft a quarrel of races. Sir ANDRIE-', a man whose
lams shows him to be ambitious, and capable of
leaking himself all things to all men, to suit his pur-
poses, has given deep disgust to many of the Dutch ,
settlers, by the manner in which he once obtained the
appointment of lieutenant-governor, and is supported
by the English of the missionary party. On the
other hand, his opponents at present seem partly to
consist of independent settlers, and partly of military
officials, who, from professional pedantry, may under-
value the services, and exaggerate the defects,
of the burgher levies. It will require mach
judgment on the part of the new governor to avoid
blowing these sparks of faction into a flame. Of the
evils which ensue when two races come to constitute
I antagonist political parties, we have recent warning
in Canada; and of the danger incurred by allowing
officials, civil or military, to adopt an habitually super-
cilious tone towards colonists, the American revolution
ought to be a lasting warning. Even the stamp-act
and the blockade of Boston could not have brought
about that event, had not the affections of the FRANI.
LINS, WASIIINGTONS, and ADAMSES been previously
alienated by the systematic affectation of treating the
colonists as an inferior race.
Our fears in respect to New Zealand have bees
excited by a disposition evinced in certain quarters tol
criticise rather captiously the New Zealand Chit. ter.'
It is received with cold wishes that it may work well.
Flaws are hinted at ; technical omissions, and verbal
inaccuracies critically exposed. It would be better in a
manly and candid manner to state the real cause of
the misgivings which have been rather hinted at than
expressed. They appear to have their origin in the
probable distribution of political power under the
charter. The nucleus of New Zealand colonisation is
a body of intelligent, educated capitalists, of good
standing in society, some of whom have gone out a
settlers, while others remain in this country. Around
the settlers of this class have gathered not only a'.
comparatively numerous population of labourers, bat
a heterogeneous assortment of adventurers from the
neighbouring colonies. The originators of New Zea-
land colonisation on one hand, and the home govern-
ment on the other, feel alike that in the political institu-
'