The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-03 00:00:00

Ztte Orpregg.

MAILS

The malls for the Brazils, the River Plate, Monte Video, Pertivm.
busy Beige, MUM'', and Buenos Ayres, will bo made ep on *0
rooming of the 4th Jenuory.
The malls for Vigo, Iporto Llebor, Madeira, Cadiz, and (libretti.,
will be made up on the morning of the 7th January.
The overland closed rude, we Marveilles, to the Mediterranun
fyypt, Aden, Ceylon, India, Rang Kong, Mc., will be made up on the
evening ot the 7th January.
The math fur British North America, Bermuda, and the Belie.
vtates, will be made up on the evening of the 14th January.
The Wed India Mafia, including Bermuda, Noun, Benue,
lionduna, New Orleans, Vera Crux, Tampico, and Porto Rico, and
excluding thou for !Madeira, Jac.ntl, Cartlingena, santa Martha,
Chagrin, Panama, West Coma of South America, end tK Jums-de-
Nicaragua, will be made up on the evening of the 17th January.
The overland mails far OM/altar, Malta, Orrece, the lumen Is!ande,
Demi, Aden, Ceylon. lathy Hong-Kont., end China, eM tmemespeo,,,
I .e 2. 1.4; mark; up on we Muhl°, of tie suut January.
.The malts for New South Wales, Van Diemen 's Land, and New
Zealand will be made up on the evening of the 'Mat January.

TO CA)ItiIterONDLNTS.
• .—The .if of AS note "In W. the plan for rent-elan to
donne. to
Ltelaad. adopted b the Itee.U. litleler," ken beea wen., and that ato.
ona 11•• b• 011 wrltten to remeetlott I. eltnn.,-
otlto tanned. fee "T.
Two
Looclon eve.. pap, tout.
be et os.. NOUvelleatnt, 11 Two o'clok uo tee Jo, el pullleattos.

MOB WATER AT IA)011)0,4 0.11)CIA.
Tu. Ilu—Slorelars 14 =lc past II ; Atteraaan. role. put 0.
10-Muusow—ilanaug. NUL put a kfteurans. 46 tam. past O.

LONDON, MONDAY, JAN. 3.

THE accounts daily received from various parts of
Ireland vividly describe the difficulties which beset
the task of carrying into practical operation the pro-
visions of the recently extended poor-law. In a vast
majority of cases that task has been undertaken with
earnestuess and sincerity by the local bodies upon
whose steadfastness and zeal so much of its success de-
pends ' • and we are confident that they will in all re-
spects be efficiently sustained by the central authority
to whom large discretionary powers have been con-
fided for the enforcement and general guidance of the
whole system. But in justice to all parties it must be
owned, that never was a more perilous task com-
menced under circumstances more unpropitious and
perplexing. Out-door relief, in any form and in any
country, is a measure requiring every aid which the I
prevalence of remunerative employment and general I
habits of self-reliant industry can supply. 1111
Ireland, unfortunately, these have both been wanting;
yet such is the emergency, that no means have been
resorted to, to palliate the evil of such:deficiencies,
there having been, indeed, little time to devise
or attempt them. So long as there was room in 1
the workhouses, the reluctance to enter them formed
an efficient check upon the spirit of pauperism—
that social leprosy, of which the infection is
but too easily communicated in every commu-
nity, but which, among a people for genera-
tions fluctuating between the lowest means of
sabeistence and absolute want, it must under any
circumstances be difficult to combat or check. Hence,
as the season has advanced, and the inadequate stock
of food has gradually been exhausted, aversion to
the restraints of indoor relief has yielded
to the goading sense of destitution. During the last
month, throughout Connaught and the western die-
tricts of Munster, the workhouses have been filling
fast. Many of them are already full ; and round the
gates throng an importunate crowd, whose numbers
will the more readily increase as the fact becomes
universally notorious, that there is no longer any
accommodation to be offered them within the walls.
In most instances a rate equal to three shillings in
the pound has been struck ; and in many unions con-
siderable progress had been made in levying it. But
in others, and more especially in those desolate re-
gions to which we more particularly allude, not half
the new rate nor even the arrears still outstanding
have been got in. Just in proportion as the
produce of rates is required, the possibility of
realising it is small. As the catalogue of claimants
for a distributive portion extends, the list of defaulters
in contribution extends likewise. The multitude have
in some cases grown clamorous and violent, believing
that their new right to outdoor relief was about to be
denied or evaded. Tumults so occasioned are seldom
difficult of repression ; but the difficulty and danger
cannot be so easily got rid of. They remain, and
threaten hourly to became greater. Boards of
guardians look aghast at the prospect before them.
Additional wards have in many places been hastily
erected, to be more rapidly filled up. Out-door relief
can no longer be postponed. At Nenagh the resole.
tions that it should be given in food to those for
whom there is no accommodation within doors, have
been accompanied by circumstantial statements show-
ing that the probable if not inevitable result will be
the imposition of rates to the entire amount of the
value of property in the union; yet the commis-
sioners have not felt justified in refusing their
sanction.
In one of the northern unions it is said that the
somewhat rash resolve has been adopted to give out-
door relief in money, possibly under the idea that
both givers and receivers will be thereby kept in
mind more vividly of the nature of the perilous gift.
Throughout the eastern and central counties gene-
rally, vigorous efforts are making to increase useful
employment of all kinds, and by promptly meeting
distress when it arises, preventing as far as possible
its becoming chronic and contagious. What has been
done in Wexford, Westmeath, and Monaghan, in this
respect, is deserving of all praise.
Elsewhere there has unhappily been found less
energy and fortitude ; and already nine or ten of the
elective boards in the western district have unrelue-
tantly.given place to paid guardians appointed by the
commissioners. Far from being surprised at this, we
own our apprehension is much excited lest many other
bodies, similarly beset by destitution, and, as we are
compelled to believe,betrayed by the selfishness and folly
of a certain section of that class whose manifest duty
and true interest, as possessors of property, it is to
support and sustain them, will follow the example
already set by the boards of Cahirciveen and Galway.
From far and near comes the ominous cry of whole-
sale and indiscriminate eviction. The brief interval
that has occurred between the termination of one
famine and the approach of another, has been occupied
in too many districts with the desolating work of dis-
sossesaion and dilapidation. In several care
. •

entire villages have been swept away, and their
inhabitants driven into the small and struggling
towns to seek relief by mendicancy, or to swell the
fugitive and famishing crowd that besieges the thresh-
hold of the union shelter. Is it to be wondered at
that men who, in their individual spheres, have *been
hitherto discharging their duty—employing to the
utmost of their ability those who could work, and
administering with frugality public relief to those
who are helpless—should regard with despair the
reckless conduct of those to whom we allude ?
The system of clearances, as it is termed, is not new
in Ireland. Locally, and by individuals, the practice
has always prevailed, and seldom have its bitter fruits
of increased crime, insecurity, and destitution, failed to
follow. Even as a cooperative scheme, the idea of
weeding estates of surplus occupants is not novel. It
was tried on a great scale about the middle of the last
century. Thousands of families were driven off
tho soil, which was re-partitioned into large
holdings. Its chief result was the kindling of that
fearful spirit of agrarian violence which, under the
name of Whiteboyism, began to manifest itself in
1760, and which under varying names and upon
varying provocations has ever since distracted and
disgraced the land. But within the space of a few
years the soil was gradually re-distributed as before.
And so it has, notwithstanding many desperate at-
tempts at forcible expulsion of tenants and consolida-
tion of holdings, ever since remained, the excep-
tional cases being those where wisely and gradually
a peaceful change has been introduced and prospe-
rously maintained.
We are conscious that upon the subject generally
of the comparative merits of the two systems of large
and small holdings, there is in this country a vast
diversity of opinions. For ourselves, we arc not
bigoted in our attachment to the exclusive creed of
either school. We rather incline to the opinion that
as there are some pursuits of agriculture for which
large holdings are well suited, so there are
many others which can be more economically
earned out on minuter divisions of the soil.
And we believe in this, as is most other things, that
truth is dual rather than singular ; that if land were
free, instead of being monopolised, it would be found
in masses of infinitely various extent, because capital,
whose diffusion is equally varied, would appropriate
it as it was able to use it ; and that labour would
find thereby the greatest conceivable demand for
employment. To each of these brandies of
the "abject we may again more particularly
recur ; but whatever be the accuracy of such
abstract views, one thing seems to us beyond the
reach of argument, and it is thin—that this is not
the time, if ever there was a time, to try the perilous
experiment of a general change from small holdings