The Express.
London, England, 1849-12-29 00:00:00

gite y,oo.

OUTGOING NAILS.
She West Las Nail% iasladds. Beriands,
Name, Holmium, Now Orissa% sad sad *Randal'
Iwo for If Juardo-Nioaregue, Now Granada,
OW, end Peru, will be made up ea Os rowans; of Jaa. 2.
Tho nails for tint linals, and Gamma Ayrothwill
ba made up an the ad Jas. 4.
Tba wails he Lisboa, , wad Gibraltu will be nada
up ea Jan. 7.
The oath and Nasseilles, as the Mediterraneaa, &opt,
Ceylon,
.India, Noariong, to., will be sada •up on
the evasion of Jon. 7.
TM walla for British Math Asesies sad Gie llaibd
Mates will ba made up ow the owning al Jan. 11.
Tie nails for Gibraltar, Who, Greta*, tb• lank. blonds,
Zgypt, Cryloa, India, and Chios, via iksathivaptca,
ha =ads ap the avoids; of Jan. 19.

MOM WATT AT LONDON =IDOL
TolMl—atoulag. %Au& Ailanom. I h. SM.
Tu-smaasw-41aniaa. 1 ii. 1e..........a1bm5e5. 11.116.

LONDON, 84TURD4T, DBCBMBER 29.

PEOPLE said that Mr. COBDIN was too confident,
too defiant, and that his trumpet note from Leeds
was calculated rather to lull free trade in security,
and exasperate the too powerful reactionists, than
the sure elements of tree trade triumph'.
at, lo! the circumspect Sir ROBERT PM SCAB In
a tone quite as confident sod determined as t mem-
ber for the West Riding. He, too, looks on the repeal
of protection as irrevocable, and bids the world abandon
ivory idea of relapse either in the present or any future
parliament. And having settled this as confidently
as the Cul Nicnous himself issuing an ukase, he
proceeds to arrange matters with his farmers, as coolly
as if there was not a protectionist storm brewing,
or a cloud of that colour in the horizon.
We asked but the other day foe some respected
votoe to make itself heard to the excited squires and the
misled farmers, and to bring them to reason and to a
aeon of things as they must be. Although Sir
ROBERT'S be no longer a respected voice, it is one too
well worthy of credit in declaring a fact or announc-
ing a probability. And he must have a stout heart
and a Lot head who would venture to hope what
such a prophet declared to be impossible. This is
the great value of the ex-Premises letter :—the one
vatiornatory sentence which he writes over the fold-
ing doors of protection, in the same sense that
DANTE inscribed over his Inferno, Abandon every
hope, ee that become members of this club.
We cannot speak too highly of the excellence,
utility, and ma-onablenees of this political advice.
We are worry we cannot my so much of the agricul-
tural wisdom developed_ in Sir ROBERT PEEL'S letter.
There is nothing tbsolutely wrong in it, bat it is
small, and gives no very high idea of either landlord
or tenant ; and certainly offers no great panacea or
palladium to save one class or the other.
When Sir ROBERT addressee his tenants, even hy-
pothetically, as producing from 18 to 20 bushels an
acre, he gives them but a poor character for farming I
and when he promises them a reward for :raying
their Michaelmas rent and arrears in January, ha
gives a low idea of the agricultural management eft
prosperity of Staffordshire. Then 201. spent out of
every 1001. rent in draining, what is that? Why,
twenty pounds would not more than drain seven acres.
And what a tenant, of whom high farming is
expected, ought to demand, would be either a long
lease to remunerate him for effecting such an im-
provement himself, or that the land should be given
to him in a perfect state of drainage. A landlord owes
his tenant either one or the other of these things.
And Sir ROBERT seems not quite prepared for either.
The statesman agriculturist offers for himself what
he thinks might s.rve as a good example, and be ge-
nerally imitated. We doubt, however, that tenant
farmers are likely to be satisfied with the maintenance
of rent at its presont rate, qualified merely with the
proviso that one-fifth is to be laid out in permanent
improvements, and with the information that the
time has not yet arrived for a final adjustment of
what is due on both sides. The time may not be ar-
rived for that final adjustment, but in the mean-
time a temporary reduction of rent would
give the farmers more heart to apply themselves
to tag through a period of transition, and prepare
for one of improved and higher cultivation. Mach of
this, however, dep..nds upon the rent at which farms
are already let. Some landlords of course have
margin that others have not; and without the pos-
session of this key, we can scarcely tell how far their
conduct to their tenants is beneficial or fair.
Sir ROBERT PEEL, however, declares quite enough
to suow that he is not prepared tobreak up old routines,
or to adopt frankly those sound commercial principles
that are required in farming contracts. The tenants
are still to be supervised by the agent and patronised
by the landlord when " cld or improving." Though
rational, and perhaps kindly landlordism, this is land-
lordism still. A lease, or a tenant-right agreement,
is offer d in exceptionable caws, and with much
reserved discretion, not as a put of the system of
management of the estate. One might have hoped
that the same prescience which enables Sir ROBERT
PEEL to declare that the days of protection are
gone for ever would also have made him
aware that the old system of a tenant's
thriving on favour, living by sufferance, and getting
fat upon patronage, wuequally over. The landlord's
profession and the ter ant farmer's trade, he may de-
pend upon it, are two. And if the former has need
of independence for his dignity, the latter has oval
need of it for that vigour of action and intellect by
which alone a man can thrive in the "good times"
that are coming.
However, Sir ROBERT has spoken well and nobly
out as a landlord politician; let us not cavil with
all he says as an agriculturist. There is wanting ano-
ther man, another voice, another intellect, to come
forth, and to speak forth for farmers : for they are
not represented, and neither their ideas nor their in-
terests expounded. They may shrink from trusting
the civic reformers. They would do well to be equally
shy of protectionist landlords, and to get some one, or
some man of themselves, to speak out for their class.
For what they want is precisely that which Lord
FirzwlLLux deprecates, a good class advocate.

Tux Morning Chronicle has "heard from autho-
rity, upon which reliance can be placed, that the con-
templated reduction in the army will be to the extent
of ten thousand men ;" but the Chronicle adds that
"the details of the manner in which it is proposed to
effect it have not transpired."
The details may not have transpired, but past expe-
rience enables us to give a shrewd ;rums as to the
manner in which this promised reduction will be car-
ried into effect. .

Early last session government held out a hope that
the army enrolled in 1848 should be reduced by
10,000 men. This appears to be the statutory
number which government promise to dispense with
when affecting to be in a yielding mood.
But when Mr. Fox MACLZ rose on the 19th of
March, in the committee of supply, to move the
first vote in the army estimates he proceeded to pre
down the 10,000 much sf:er the fashion of Lear's
knights. Government, he protested, had most sin-
cerely intended to make a reduction of 10,000 men in
the army, but news received from India a few weeks
before had obliged them to send 3,300 men thither, and
they had consequently been obliged to limit their I
good intentions to a reduction of 7,000. Misfortunes
never come single : just as government had made up
their minds that 7,000 should be the number, came
fresh news from India which showed the necessity of
sending out 2,000 more. Most reluctantly therefore
they arrived at the conclusion that 5,000 was all the
red uetion they oould afford to make. The new Xenophon
Sound it impossible to effect the retreat of his ten
thousand.
It will be the same story over again this year.
Some excuse 3r another will be Sound for melt-
iti,r the 10,000 men promisee to be disbanded
to 7,000 or 5,000. The attitude assumed by the
colonists at the Cape—the cry for annexation in
Canada—the necessity of sending out troops to
Western Australia, row that it is to be made a con-
vict colony—anything will serve for an excuse. And
the disbanding of these 5,000 men will take place as
follows :—As Mr. Fox MAMA told the House of
Commons last year, 5,000 more soldiers were required
in India than had been anticipated. And it appears
&,,m the army estimates of last year that the East
India Company had 3,000 more of our soldiers in their
pay on the Ist of January, 1849, than on the Ist of
January, 1848. We shall be told in a month or two
t:.at the Aa'e of India is such as to admit
of the numb r of Queen's troops there bring
rtducitd to tits' motel average. Some 8,000 men, or
as many reghaintm as would make up that number if