The Express.
London, England, 1853-09-15 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

A Awed [ALVA of TA* Kapre..." omaiallos the wet ry t r
”Ofigette," Y pdiabel every tooolay sod Vn4y z'abt,
kr pat
Afingtoowsto braided Itsprook" lades Tomi" 4
sari le at Ye US% 1 I BouvorloMinet, by Too o'doca es the
do, el prbilaithee.

RIM WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tuts Des—llorelag. Lb. IS ..... Aftetuosa. lA. Ka
TO•leatalbeir—lbresilse, lb. Its ..... Alteraque. 1L 371.1.

LONDON, TIWRSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

" The C 1 11t rejects the Turkish modifications—
bat abidts by the Vienna note, and prom;ses to eva-
cuate the Principalities if the Porte accepts it pure
and simple." So says • telegraphic note from
Vienna, in which city, we are told, special news has

arrived from Russia. This statement may or may not

betruc, but it bag one strong support—ii is just what

WSA expected. A rapid glance at thepast will show this.
The Cz %WS original demand was fora power of inter-
ference in the affairs or his neighbour, which would
practically have upset the independence of the SULTAN
altogether. The refusal of this impudent request
was made the pretext for seizing upon Wallachia
and Moldavia; an aggression which so roused the
voice of public opinion that the Governments
of England and France were compelled to insist
upon the keeping of treaties. The Muscovite
had not calculated upon any such resistance. He
knew his admirer and friend Lord ABERDEEN was
Premier in England, and he calculated that
the occupant of tbo Tuileries was too
unpopular and too isolated from the Court
of St. James's to dare say much about any
Autocratic interferences with outlying portions of
Europe. In all such calculations the Russian
was wrong. Surrounded by flatterers and parasites
and toadied and supported by more than one power-
ful journal in France and England, he was either too
ill-informed or too lame in judgment for the
occasion. He believed in the weakness of
Turkey, and calculated on the indifference of
the rest of Europe. " They could be either
bribed or bullied" was doubtless his calculation ; but
this notion was clearly based upon an insufficient
appreciation of the force of public opinion in Western
Europe. If the majority of an English Ministry
wish to side with foreign absolutism they are hap-
pily now-a-days too weak for carrying out the evil
intent, and when Lord ABERDEEN'S old leanings
disposed him to look quietly on whilst the Otto-
man Empire was despoiled he evidently soon saw
how next to impossible was any such course. The
journal, too, which enjoys the most abundant share of
t he profi ts of the press, used all its talent, its circulation,
and its recklessness, to support the Russian in his
burglarious attack on a neighbour. But neither the
strength of the journalist, or the leanings of the
Minister, were enough to carry English feeling in the
wrest direction. Beginning with an utterance of
smothered discontent, the voice of public opinion grew
Wader and loader in its honest denunciations of the
coadeet isf the CZAR, Until one general shout of
indignant reproach was sent ringing across Europe
towards St. Petersburg. As this potent sound grew
more and more inconvenient to the despotic ear it
was meant for, the Turks were mustering more and
more strongly under arms, and the fever of the
Danube was taking deadly revenge upon the invaders
who bad approached its bank. Difficulties were
thus bristling across his path more thickly than he
reckoned on. when his dependant, the Emperor of
AUSTRIA, proposed to negotiate the settlement of a
quarrel which the CZAR felt himself not strong enough
at once to light his way through. Making a virtue
of necessity, the expected proposal was accepted. The
bsrglar who broke the frontier on the Pruth would
never have stopped short of Adrianople, had he felt
himself equal to compete with the unexpected obstacles
arising out of European indignation at his conduct.
When he stopped at the Danube, it was simply be-
cause he dared not then creel it. The Turks had no-
thing, and have nothing, to hope from his justice,
nothing from his generosity, nothing from his for-
bearance. For NICHOLAS to intimate his willingness
to listen to the suggestions of Austria, backed by the
Cabinets of London and Paris, was simply for
NICHOLAS to get time to look about him how next
he might best help his own ends. By negotiations he
would have opportunities of judging how far the
troublesome English and French cries of Halt!
were really intended to stop his armies. By the in-
terchange of messages, and couriers, and despatches
days and weeks would be got, in which the Russian
agents mulct work on public opinion, act upon the
Bourse, or even, if need be, get up an Atraetile under
the nose of the CALIPH himself. Since Constantinople
was not this time to be carried by an unopposed coup
de main, to gain time was evidently thought to be a
gain of strength. Into the note, therefore, to be sent
from Vienna was carefully put a few crafty passages
which the SULTAN COUld not adopt in an unmodified
form. The modifications would of course have to travel
for days northward before they could reach the CZAR.
Here again was more delay—more time gained, more
opportunity for fishing out which was the best way
to steer for conquest in the East. Thus we come
to the very point which the news now brought by
telegraph refers to. The requisite elucidations of
the Vienna note ham g reached St. Petersburg,
"The Cain rejects the Turkish modifications—but

abides by the Vienna note, and promises to evacu►te
the Principalities if the Porte accepts it pure and
simple." He wants still more time. He cannot yet
decide. He dare not defy England and France
—at least, not yet—by refusing altogether to
draw back from the invaded soil. He will not bring
m►tters to an issue by upsetting altogether this
Vienna note. So he simply rejects the modifica-
tion, and gets time. What next? It may be that
his calculations involve a speculatioa upon the
,chances of England and France not continuing to
stand firmly to their declared policy of support-
ing the SULTAN ; it may be that he de-
sires to get opportunity for strengthening his
armies of invasion, hitherto decimated by fever
is the Principalities; it may be that be waits
only for winter to push forward towards
Adrianople.
Should it, after all, come to real blows, it will be
a charming illustration of Biter Bit. These artfully
contrived delays, these craftily-considered schemes,
prove more awful to the invaded than to the invader.
It is quite likely to be so. In June the CZAR had
everything prepared for war—the SULTAN was
taken completely aback. Now the latter may
not unfairly be considered the etrorger of
the two on the Danube, when we take
into account the relative disadvantage under
which an army labours when having to overcome
well•manned fortresses. Then again, the Russians

But the Turks are defending their own soil, whilst
the forces of the CzAa must contribute an army for
Circassia, another for Poland, and a third to watch
on the side of Hungary—to say nothing
about the disaffected in the interior, who at
times have shown themselves ready for mis-
chief. The supposition 'hat winter would necessarily
stop active campaigning is a mistake. Some of the
fiercest battles between Gauls and Muscovites have
been fought—as history bears witness—on fields
covered with snow.
Amidst all the doubts about the Russo-Turkish
difficulty, at least one thing is certain. It is,
that the Cz is sure to push forward if he feels
strong enough, and he will feel so unless England and
France are true to the SULTAN, and to the interests of
peace, commerce, progress. The CZAR, who began by
war, is still for war ; but happily the duty and the
interest of the other powers are alike bound up in
peace—and peace wo may yet have if St. James's
and the Tuileries do their duty.

ON Tuesday we expressed our conviction that the
Cholera, having reached Newcastle, would pay a
visit to London also. We wore behindhand with our
prophecy : Cholera was already among us. The
Registrar's lit port on the health of London for the
week ending 12th inst. records two deaths by Asiatic
Cholera in Bermondsey; and it appears from the
proceedings before the Southwark coroner, reported
in our paper of yesterday, that on Sunday afternoon
• man died of the mime disease in the parish of St.
George the Martyr, Southwark. It is instructive to
dwell upon the state of the localities in which these
deaths have occurred. The two deaths in Bermond-
sey took place in the same house: one on the 3rd,
the other on the ith of September. The Registrar
of the district observes : " The above is the second
fatal case of cholera I have had in the same house,
which is in a very filthy condition : there is a very
offensive smell from the cellar, which I examined,
and found to contain ordure and vegetable matter in
a state of decomposition. I may add that Turner's
Retreat [in which the house is situated] is a narrow,
close, confined court, containing 13 houses, and only
16 feet in width." The nest of apartments in which
the man who died on the 11th inst. re-
sided, is described by the surgeon of St.
George's parish as " totally unfit for human
habitation." He adds :—" They are
fever, if not attended by Cholera. A great number
of families have been destroyed in that very place,
There is no ventilation, for they can get no free
current of air, as there are no windows at the back."
Of the houses he says :—" Putrid fluids and maggots
are constantly coming through the ceiling." Other
witnesses (whose evidence was fully borne out by the
surgeon's report) described the building as under a
bone-button manufactory, and close beside a foul
and offensive drain from a water-closet. There are
knackers yards and bone boilers in the immediate
neighbourhood. The ceilings were damp—" from
the taking the bones out of the water in the copper
above, and placing them on the floor, so that the
water leaked through." There are from 200 to 300
tons of bones in the immediate neighbourhood.
This wretched locality is, it appears, the same in
which the Cholera made its most fearful ravages in
1849. But Bermondsey and St. George the Martyr
appear to be not one whit worse than many other of
the low-lying districts south of the Thames. On the
4th instant a child of four months died of diarrhea
in the sub-district of Waterloo, Lambeth. The
neighbourhood is thus described in the Registrar's
report:—" Since the period of the Choler", when atten-
tion was strongly drawn to thi s locality, Windmill-row,
the privies in front of the houses have had pans put
to them, but as there is no supply of water above,
the effluvia from the open doors is highly offensive;
and ever since this has been done, I have seen the
night soil oozing out between the stones. The house
where this death took place has four rooms, and the
informant told me they contained as follows :—ln
one room a man, wife, and two children ; in the next
three females; in the third a man, wife, and child;
and in the fourth room himself, his wife, and the
dead infant."
We have not yet done with the revelations of the
metropolis on the south bank of the Thames. In the
same number of the E.rpreal which contains
the Registrar's report, and the report of the inquest
on the third case of Asiatic Cholera, will be found
yet another report—that of an application made by
a surgeon in Trinity-street, nearly opposite the
Police-office in Southwark (in his parish of St.
Mary's, Newington), for the removal of an India-
rubber waterproofing establishment, which contami-
nates the whole district. Mr. Eusworrit, the sur-
geon to whom we refer, stated that the stench of the
manufactory was so noxious that sickness bedspread
widely among the surrounding population. The war-
rant officer of thecourt stated that a butcher next door
to the factory had incurred great loss from the taint-
ing of his meat. The magistrate recollected that a
similar application had been made some time ago,
and that the proprietor of the establishment had
attended and promised to put a stop to the nuisance.
This has not been done ; and when, on the present
occasion, the warrant officer was sent to inspect the
premises, the door was shut in his face.
, When we cross to the north of the Thames, we
find matters quite as bad. At the first meeting of
the City Court of Sewers since the holidays (reported
like the foregoing in our yesterday's paper), their

medical officer repotted that the practice of slaugh-
tering in and around Newgate Market has of late '
greatly increased. Mr. SIMoN says : "It appears
that in 22 slaughtering places of this locality there are
slaughtered annually about 141,800 animals, and, to
measure the evil accurately, it must be remembered
that this slaughtering comes unequally in different
houses and on different days. Thus, for instance, in
one particular slaughter-house, which is much com-
plained of by its neighbours, there had been killed
250 animals in • day, and 'he ventilation of this
place can only be effected through a sort of
shaft, which is bounded on the south side
by the backs of the houses in Paternoster-
row. These houses, therefore, cannot but receive
the entire effluvia of the shambles." Mr. SIMON
suggests remedies or palliatives, which may be imme-
diately adopted, and concludes with the remark:—
" I deeply regret to apprise your honourable court, as
an ample justification of whatever strictness you may
II think it requisite to apply in sanitary regulations,
that at the precut time then is great reason to ap-
prehend a renewed •isitation of Asiatic Cholera
through the country; and I hove already received
official information of the di-ease prevailing in an
epidemic form at Neweastle-upon.Tyne."
It will be seen, from our prtcciltog remarks, that
while Mr. SIMON was penning this emphatic warn-
ing, Asiatic Cholera was already rearing its head
among us. That it will spread further no man can
doubt.