The Express.
London, England, 1849-09-28 00:00:00

the cargo la i,,wsssesion of flat barges, drawing
very little water, sad towed by • steamer •And,
after: the fashion practised In the awe el the belle*
punts in the Clyde. It is also necessary that • provision
shoats be made for getting the steamer off or over shoals,
is the mane preatnd in the steemers plying es ware of
the continental rivers. With these adaptations, bemorms,
it will be preetkable to navigate gene thesvamie doffs@ of
rivers in India, whereby coma, sew, latilse, end Misr
rich products of the interior, will be eaniel preoptly Ind
cheaply to the pens el et, mi HAM tineashakeres
will be carried bola th mustls lb* kiwis/ Ida
i facility. The =gaited, of the sesehe whidtel"Zabde
ariieved by tide innovation it is seam to ram. to spe-
cify, but it will march to the British nwitelasheree such a
market es met be afforded by 160 minims el
_pee* willing
to szcheage with u their prodactions, and =change
Is now betertlieted by the diMculty of the operation.

THE lONIAN ISLANDS AND ''THE TIMES
NEWSPAPER.

TO TOT TIMOR 07 TIT =TIM.
Bta,—ln these times of cholera and distress, I
should not have ventured to trouble you on the matter
of a community so little cared for in Loudon as the
lonian Islands, did not the Throes, on the 17th of this
month, avail itself of a potty outbreak in Cephalonia,
confined to 200 riotous sailors, out of a population of
80,000 in that island alone, to libel and calumniate
the whole of my countrymen in the most unjustifiable
terms. I have lived 28 years in this country, and have
seen and heard of many local outrages during mylong
residence, but never remember that the na-
tional character was charged with the fanati-
cism of Thom and his followers in Kent, or
that the Eaglish were pronounced rebels because
of Mr. Frost's outbreak in Monmouthshire.

The Theses decline us to be a people who "com-
bine Italian crime with Greek cunning; strangers to
public virtue and private honesty; remarkable for
strong passions, dark superstitions, ignorance and len-
ness;" and that we have been "bandied about from
Italian to Turk, and Turk to Russian;" finishing the
picture by declaring that the "upper class of my
countrymen are parasites, and the lower classes have
been thieves and pirates for 600 years, to whom as-
sassination is an every day octurrenos," &c., &c.
I will restrain the indignation merited by such en
infamous string of calumnies, and merely assure ou,l
Mr. Editor, that every lonian, or foreigner resident
in those islands, must observe with ridicule so mon-
strously false a statement, which, if any part of it
were true, could only reflect a double discredit on
Great Britain, under whose government
eeu and protec-
tion those islands have for now mealy
one generation, thirty-four years having elapsed
sine the treaty of Paris. But the real feel-
ing and condition of the lonians are known to
thousands of your countrymen. During thirty years
we have supported a garrison of several thousand
British troops, changed regiment by regiment about
once ire every four years, and, were those islands the
hell upon earth depicted by the Times, and their
natives the fiends in human shape described in its
column, could they so long have been re-
gardedthe most desirable of all foreign stations
ett as
the heal hful recreation of your soldiers, and the
peaceful retirement of your statesmen ?
But I fearlessly defy the writer in the Times to give
me a single exempla of the many crimes which he
has charged on the lonians. Where is the Corfiote
Grommets? The Cephalonian Rush? The Ithaion
Burke? Of crimes against the person and the pocket,
the lonians are alike ignorant. Robbery and house
breaking are unknown in the islands, nor is the last
resort of vengeance ever heard cf, except in those
rare instances in which even in this, and all civilised
countries, private honour, outraged] beyond the com-
pensation or patience of the laws, bursts into passion,
and seeks its own satisfaction in a fatal revenge.
The Times tale of pirates, let him quote one single
instance of piracy in the lonian Islandme. Surely
the writer, in his ignorance, must; mistake the
lonian sea, the coast of Asia Minor, for the lonian
Islands on the coast of Europe.
The population of the whole islands is little more
than 200,000, sad they are everywhere an example
of mildness and resignation, of agricultural happiness
and rural content, with the exception of a portion of
Cephalonia, which being as it were the Wapping, or
seafaring part of our islands, in which every, man,
oven in the mountain villages, is a sailor, has afforded
lately a nucleus for turbuleoce and the abrupt mani-
festation of disaffection, should any exist.
That such diaaffictioa sprang up under the despotic
rule of Sir Howard Douglas, bat disappeared under
Lord Seaton's paternal goverment, is well known to
her Majesty's ministers. That such disaffection has
re-commenced, and is increasing at the reported an-
nulling of the liberal acts of his administration by
his successor, it is also impossible to deny.
For the last twenty years the enlightened portions
of the lonians have been peacefully and constitution-
ally endeavouring to obtain the more liberal institu-
tions guaranteed to them by the original constitution
which formed the basis of the protection of Great
Britain. These endeavours have been always un-
successful, but during Sir Howard Douglas's High
Commissionership were responded to by contumely,
outrage, and a vituperation, of which I imagine I can
trace a much exaggerated refiexion in the article of
the Times.
In corroboration of this, I may refer you to the
papers on the lonian Islands, published by order of
the House of Commons, June 22, 1840, where will be
found the Promemoria of the venerable Mustoxids,
the libellous despatch of Sir Howard Douglas, ia
the reply of Lord John Russell, where he enumerated
the demands of the lonians, and fairly states their case
es follows :
Yet I cannot omit to observe that I should yield with
much regret to the conviction that the time is still unripe
for conceding to the lonian people, to at least soma mats%
the advantages of nester freedom of the press, and amen
complete system of representation. It would not be to the
honour of this country to bare occupied the lonian States
for so many years without having advanced the inhabitants
towards roest qualification for institutions awn liberal than
those which were granted to them, avowedly as a mere pre.
petition for such a change. It would be painful to acquiesce
in the belief, that in a country placed under the immediate
protection of her Majesty the Queen, the government an
tumble to confide with gaiety to the people at large the pri-
vilege of more freely dimming their own social interests
than they are at protest enabled to do. Neither could it be
otherwise than painful to consider that Great Britain is
c Impelled to withhold a more full participation of her own
litical freedom from a people to whom she looks for •
Page mania:" contribution towards the maintenance et
one of the most important of her torsi's garrisons.
This was written ten years since. It has been may
within the last year 'that Lord Seaton, the retiring
Lord High Commissioner, expressed the intention of
conceding more liberal institutions and allowed
liberty of the press. For it is a fact that up to that
period there had been for 30 years only one penile,
press in Corfu for all the islands, where only the
government Gazette was printed, and that no other
newspaper whatsoever was allowed in the islands.
What books or pamphlets were ventured upon by the
lonians were sent to Venios or to Malta to be printed.
Nevertheless, in spite of these notorious facts, the I
Times, atter falling into the egregious error of saying,
that the lonian were subjected to the Turkel, goes ants
say, " Before we had extended to them civil rights eel
ample as those they have recently enjoyed, we gavel
them unlimited freedom of the press. A free presets I
Corfu and Cephalonia was very like what it would
have been in Connaught under Cromwell, or what it
would be among the lesaroni of Naples in our own
day. It was given to a people who bad never
known freedom of opinion or expression, who bad
been disciplined by corruption, coercion, and fear ;
whose religion was superstition, whose sentiments
were undisguised passions, and whose only law was
the stiletto. thus given, it became an additional
weapon in the hands of party hatred or personal
spite. Such uit was, it was used most freely against
ths power by which it bad been bestowed. The little
education that was in the islands was devoted
to libelling the British authority and name. This
went on fur years and years goring all which time
Eoglaad was building schools, repairing roads,
erecting bridges, hospitals, &c., among these malig-
nant little states."
This bavardage of the Times is put before the
world, although there never was any free press or
even press at all in the islands until within the lest
twelve months !
Comment on such statements is unnecessary ; but
in justice to my countrymen thus maligned, I may
be allowed to quote an extract from e letter addressed
by me to Sir Howard Douglas in 1842, and distri-
buted top allul the ministers at the time and many mem-
bers himmt.
As lo ford WO earemifirfineer of the Queen of Eogl-ad you
presided over a people, fsw indeed in numbers, bat charm.
Seised by taint, names, and energy, and who, without
reference to their beta° or historic taws, can show, within
the last oratory, a longer catalogue of eminent men, in pro-
portion to the population of their country, than an other.
other
nation is Barope, or indeed all the rest of Europe toge
Yes, dr, the lonise blends, which hardly equal in nimbi-