The Express.
London, England, 1849-09-06 00:00:00

Vie etrpretso.

OUTGOING HAILS.

The mails for Vigo, Oporto, Lisboa, Madeira, Cadiz, and
Gibraltar, will be made up to-morrow morning, Sept. 7.
TM, malls lee &Welt North Animism and the United
States will be made up tomorrow evening, Sept. 7.
The mails, via Marseille, to the Mediterranean, Egypt.
Ceylca, India, Hoag-Kong, die., will be made up to.
morrow evening, Sept. 7.
The West India Mails, excluding Bermuda, Havanna,
Nauru, Honduras, New Orleans, and Mexico, and including
those tar Madeira, St. Juan-de-Niearegua, New Granada,
Chili, and Peru, will be made up on the evening of Sept. 17.
The mails for Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Ceylon, India, and China, oia Southampton, will
be made up on the morning of Sept. 20.
The mails for Madeira, the Brasile, and Buenos Ayres,
will be made up on the evening 01 Oot. 4.

MOR WATIIII AT LONDON RILIDOZ.
Tim Das—lAaretvg 41k. 11... Aftemenn, 4 1.. MA
Tu-seasow—MarelAg, 4 lk. 4tok. Attempts, 416 11.4.

LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6.

Tim growth of Parliamentary and Financial
Reform Associations in all our great cen:res, their
gradual knitting together, and extension to lesser
localities, covering thekingdom with one vast net, is
certainly the most remarkable fact cf the epoch.
Hitherto political associations were considered incapa-
ble of existing or enduring unless they wok up the
frenzy of the moment, and spre.id their sails to the
popular breeze that happened to be blowing. When
this was wanting, such societies sere apt to de gene-
rate into one of two extremes, Either int, the
puerile or dilettante, or into the treasonable
and the criminal. They either veiled them-
selves under the innocence of the one. or
sought attraction in the melojramatic interest of the
other. For the first time in British annals we have
now a great essociation, formed in the first instance
from the middle and the industrious classes, and gra-
dually rallying to it the liberal and the well-inten-
tioned of all other grades, and this without frenzy,
or froth, or excitement, and without any of the clap-
trap considered necessary for such gatherings and
such asacc:ations. Sulf in fact is in nowise necessary.
The government of England has arrived at that pitch
that it takes from the pockets not only of the rich
but of the poorest eviler such an erormous portion
of the daily fruit of his industry—from one-tnird to
one-half at least—that finarce end financial reform
has become every one's concern, and as the hope to
combat expenditure by brawling, without having a
vote to influence or to give, is preposterous, parliamen-
tary reform and the suffrage is every one's concern,
as the only guarantee for not being robbed and
starved.

It is the oldest political maxim of the land that
none should be taxed, save through his representative.
But tho representative system, in the mater of taxa-
tion, has become a mere humbug. The camera cf the
nation have been taxtd lime out of mind by the en-
joyers not only of the fruits of the land, but of the
taxes in addition. And it is, and it has been, the in-
terest of a majority of them to add to taxation, in
order to have the larger share for themselves. What
the people want then, is a true peril 'meet oftax-
payers, to control that yayliament of tax-leviers and
tax-spenders, which sits in Westminster.
This new parliament can be no less and no other
than the country itself, meeting, suggesting, inter-
communicating, consulting, devising legally, consti-
tutionally, and peaceably, the best means of being
really and honestly represenud, and, at the same
time, of gathering wisdom and ideas for members
to entertain and represent, instead of, as under the old
and the yreaent ►ystem, the indu•triou. classes aban-
doning their interests and their influence blindly to
the very class, and the very men, most interested in
making dupes of them, and in idly frittering away the
Rational property with the same reckless and ignorant
prodigality that paternal pr iperty is spent by those
who have been merely born to it.
Nor, indeed, has this dominant class been, hitherto,
so much to blame. For prodigality has been in Eng-
land, if not a virtue, at least a popular vice. England,
though the freest of nations in name, has been that
in which there prevails the most dependence. In no
country have the poor and industrious many been
kept in such ut'er dependet ce on the few, the
powerful, and the rich. And the many did
not dislike this—did not grumble, like surly
foreigrcre, at social inrquality. On the contrary,
the more wealthy and more toirerful tho spending
class, the more was it liked by the gaining class, for
thereby they reckoned upon easy gains. Why do
farmers lament the repeal of the c ma laws, and those
high prices which were lelgh and low to them only
according to the rent they chore to pay? It is be-
cause the farmers like to have landlords rich and
easy, and thus above driving a hard bargain. Why
are City tradesmen so often torics? Because they
like to have to do with purchasers in equipages.
Both are caterpillars, that like the rich
leaf to feed on, instead of the honest
portion gathered from the frugal multitude.
But this division of society into lords and serfs is, so
far as property is concerned, disappearing. When
monopoly and privilege, those two crutches of igno-
rant wealth, have been struck frtm under it, it must
fall to the ground, or walk like °flur people; and
farmers and traders must be content to have relation,
with men of business like themselves, which will be
all the batter for both.

Bat we are wrong to use the futu-e tense, the
transition we indicate being present, palpable, and
imm, diets. We observe it in the transactions of
private life, and the Financial and Parliamentary
Reform Association show that it is extending
to public life. The monopolists of power have, in
fact, shown their incapacity to monopolise wisdom.
They have recklessly spent in war a mass of capital,
without calculating or caring for the ability of future
generations to boar the burden. During a (palter of
a ccrtury of peace they bare taken not the least
troub'e to lighten the burden, end they have ruled,
as t'ey rule, living from hand to mouth, reckless of
the future, and scarcely able to get through the pre-
sent. No private firm would be tolerated or trusted,
that went on as the great political firm of England is
msnaged. And accordingly the sleeping and deeply-
interested partners of that great firm, hitherto micron-
suited, nay, excluded from practising control or giving
advice, have determined to do both one and the other,
not tumultuously or menacingly, but with quiet, with
reflection, with determination. The parliaments and
the g :vernments of the last half-century have most
grossly mismanaged the resources of the country,
and each session both confess their utter inability
either to retrench, or in any other way than retrench-
ment to provide for the difficulties of the future.
When such a man as Mr. GURNEY speaks out, it is
time for every man to look about him, and see that
he is not precipitated into the abyss of bankruptcy
and anarchy by those ruling parties which have
brought the country to the brink.
Such is evidently the sentiment which presides at the
fjrmation and spread of thew associations, now felt
everywhere to be a neceesity. The aristocratic party, in
pretended and false fear of revolution, may refuse ex-
tension and freedom of the suffrage, but in peraistir g
tn retain power exclusivi ly, whilst showing and an-
miming the want of wisdom to exercise it, they are
actually producing what they would avoid, the direct
partie'pation of the country in the management and
consideration and control rf its affairs. That the
country will so participate, is evident. It will be for
parliament next session to decide whether this shall
be granted I gaily or whether the power and practice
shall be quietly, naturally, and irresistibly assumed.
What parliament could oppnse the wishes of a hun
dred thousand associations speaking the one thing
with one voice from every part of the land ?

ustOLHlsoNGlikthea the
likely
to
produce governmentbeneficial
has
doneappears
effect.a: to
the
publication of the Registrar-General's report. It
is the weekly record d the walk of pestilence,
and the amount of death and wretched -ess closed by
our neglect, brought before us in un-rring num-
bers. Up to Saturday last there had died in
London of cholera swing thousand one hundred
end twenty-nine persons, and, since then, we mast
add nearly another thousand. These are figures
which express, in the strongest possible manner,
the degradation of some parts of our axial
system. Were these figures alone published they
might serve to dishearten and dismay. It might
appear that cholera was a mysterious viaitatiou of
providence, not a result in a krest degree of
natural causes. Bat with his fearful array of figures
indicating death, the Registrar-Gmeral publishes
an account of the districts in which death has occurred.
This revelation of the condition of parte of our
metropolis should be known to all. Had it