The Express.
London, England, 1851-08-23 00:00:00

ale erpreols.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
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LONDON, NA 7171D.11, AUG CST 23.

TttEnr. is no denying it. The country is threatened
with a most prolific harvest. Not a chance of food
being dear or scarce. Protectionism is in despair.
In the southern districts, both of England and
Ireland, the sickle is already moving; and the
brilliant weather which bhls fair to last, holds forth
to the more northern zones of the kingdom, the pro-
mise of a similar blessing. No appreciable dimmu-
lion is perceptible in the breadth of wheat sown this
year; and owing to the manifold and varied im-
provements in the mode of cultivation the yield will
be considerably greater on an averai,a; than in like
seasons formerly. This year, too, we have burrowed
a hint from our transatlantic competitors. The
reaping machine has been used in many places al-
ready, and its success is generally acknowledged.l
Competent judges of economised labour aver their ;
belief that the existing model is in itself, erompara-
lively /flunking, but a rude contrivance, upon which
many important improvements may easily be made.
Hut in the present and probable condition of the
agricultural labour market, in the tout and cen-
nal counties of England especially, there cannot
be a question as to the benefit of achieving a rapid
and inexpensive method of securing the crop when
ripe. 'rhe immigration of strangers has always been
a heavy drawback on the satisfaction with which
the farmer viewed his early maturing grain. It
entailed not only a heavy cost at the best of times
with many incidental evils of minor note, but these
were often greatly enhanced by uncertainty of wea-
ther, and all its gloomy train of partial damages
and losses ; and these were always heavy in
proportion os the expense of " harvest hands
was great. A machine which may now be
daily men, with the aid of two horses
and two non, cutting down an acre of,
wheat in the brief space of an hour, and which we
may probably lahold .we improved by next year as
to do the same wondrous work with the assistance
of a single horse and man,—is surely worth a host
of Ilt.ntie and I fizzy devices fur the re-establishment
of gambling uncertainty in the price of corn.
What the farmer wants is a nearer approach to
certainty in his outgoings and in-comings. Every
physical improvement tends to give hint the
one; every legislutiee reform tends to secure
him the other. Protecting duties confessedly
tended to make all sober calculations of price impos-
sible. They sometimes insored filk. or Tns. a
quarter, 'tis true; but they did not, for they could
not, prevent the very frequent recurrence of prices
as low as those we have been blessed with for the
last three years. The landlords fixed their rents at
the former, and the occupiers of land were compelled
to lose the ditferenta when wheat fell to the latter.
On the other hand, every landlord iu " a close
parish" made it an additional pretext for exacting
exoereive rent, that Owm were few labourers resi-
dent, and that the rides were low. Hut just in
proportion as this system was carried out, the coat
of harvest work was heightened. and the hazards of
lima, when the. crop was ready for the sickle, were to
be fennel. A steady prier an Mark•lane' with the
knowledge that there is hardly a chance of its vary-
ing beyond a given range of moderate fluctuation,
takes away the excuse for extraeagant, 1. e., far
gambling rents. And each new invention which
renders the agriculturist less dependent on the
weather, and on the casual supply of wandering
labour. nets us the mist reliable and least (seq.,- of
insurances against
This, however, dime not suit the landlord view of
affairs. Increased yield is no warm of consolation
to the bankrupt squire, if it does not contribute to his
direst gaits. Nay, it rather aggrivates his sense of
despair; for tlw fanner fields in it minimisation for
dimmished price, and bo•ins to be reconciled
more easily to a state of" things that lessens
his outlay in wages. in rates, and in domes-
tic expenditure -above all, which every year ,
furnishes him with a more plausible claim
for an abatement of rent. These are the how-
nn. of 'dewy, and it is only right that they should
be clearly understood. At the return of tail season
of calamitous abundance, the groans of moribund
monopoly may be beard at agricultural dinners, cattle
rhos.. and matt,- meetings in honour of respected
representatiees who have voted in the past session
that a parliamentary pitehfork must he found
to bale out the title of free imports. Talk
not fii politicians like Mr. Muttonhsad or,
lord lAneoster of the advantages which'
somety at large derives from a plenteous harvest.
What is society at liege to them ? be suffered to
Mini ul large through society, and to play the part
of gentlemen at large on a grand settle at moiety's
cayenne,---these are the hereditary pursuits of the
privileged orders ; but as for society in the mass,
what s it hut a dumb, dirty. indefatigable serf, made
to toil and strive- to play and perish? Wluit does it
signify to "a gruthnum by birth and breed-
ing - what the loaf of fancy bread may
cost, of which at his Lite breakfast lie
nibbles a morsel or two ?-- Hunger of the
million who greedily clutch the unstinted meal at
dawn in plentifill tiwos, and gloomily dole out to
each child its frugal share when the Wane harvest
fails, I bread is dear? The hereditary monopolist
knows not what you mean; he was never hungry, I
and truly he is alike morally and physiealle
pubic reslising what duo; most momeniuus of
political terms signifies.
Let the protectionists thin order court mourning,
fur a heavy attlivtion is nigh. There will be, please
Providence, an unusually large and well-saved crop
of wheat and burley in England, of oats and
flax in Ireland, and, we trust, a fair average crop in
bur li countries of potatiwil also. Let not Lord Iblenv
forget in his own well-paid Lancashire high rents,
the sorrows of his dismnsolate adherents who share
in the compensations afforded by the neighbourhood
of manufacturing towns.

Tire: cast- of •• F.ge•rton r. Itrowulow•," in which
Lord Uttax wontit. Viee-Chancellor, gave judgment
on Wednesday. is a striking illustration of our law,
as applicable to the settlement by entail of landed
property, and as such deserves something more than
a I'a ring notice.
The questions in the cause arose upon the will of
the late Kirl of IlminiEwartia, by which, after en-
tailing enormous estates, and money directed to be
laid out in the purchase of land, producing, it is
said. an income of 70,0000. per annum, upon the sons
of his niece. lady linowNLow. he imposed this fan-
ciful condition on the existing takers of tho estates—
that they should, in order to transmit them to their
children. acquire the title of Duke or Marquis of
Bridgewater. This large property had originally
belonged to the Duke of littincxwarra„ and the
one much desired object which the inheri-
tor of his property, the spoiled child of
wealth, found unattainable: fur himself, and
hoped to acquire fur his successors, was the
dignity of Duke or Marquis. How it was
to be accomplished through the agency of such
a condition does not seem very intelligible.
Was the minister of the day to be corrupted into
advising the Crown to confer the coveted title? Or
was the life-owner of that property to be incited to acts
of greatness, or subservience, and be rewarded with
the dukedom f Or was an appeal ail miserirordiam
contemplated? Did the testator imagine that the
Crown. out of mere pity, and in order to prevent a
noble family from losing such a vast inheritance, would
make an eleemosynary grant of a marquisatc ? Pro-
bably no very detined notion of how the object he
craved for was to be got through this condition ever
entered into the teatator•s mind, and it appears
to be one of these dreamy desires often expressed in
wills, which ought to be treated, for aU legal and
practical , as simply inoperative.
Lord enw•oarn, however, has decided other-
wine. He holds that it is a valid condition, that it
is neither lisped* nor opposed to public policy; sod