The Express.
London, England, 1848-02-04 00:00:00

To 0011.RESP(ADIENTS.

Tat number of STAMPS lawn.' to tit, DAILY NEWS
by the authorities of the Stamp-offiee, daring the year 1847
was :

From JAN. 1,0 Dec.ll, 3,447,009
we believe, u within ei.pd per tnit of tr.: number
Mimed to the Mosnang Maraffig CA"tale, tad
Morass') Post, •St Pr.T

In eftditile to the %hove. :real to the II k NEWS,
Mentinti Pape*. there we idneed err the Beevue, Edition,
THE EX PEE. 43,
Prom hi. 1. to Der.. 21 778,714
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LONDON, FRIDAY, FEB. 4.

WE confess that oar doubts as to the expediency
of granting Lord GEORGE BENTINCK his committee
have not been entirely removed, even by the masterly
speech of the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCLIE,trEFL Sir
CHARLES WOOD easily set aside, last night, the
whole incoherent mass of rubbish thrown down
before the house by Lord GEORGE. Having
done this, he unequivocally declared that govern-
ment will not allow the great principle of the
act of 1816 to be tampered with. He said they
did not mean to oppose the motion for a com-
mittee, as they considered there were many miner
plints with regard to which much might be
done to ameliorate the condition of the Wed
India proprietors; bat they wished it to be dis-
tinctly understood, that in granting the committee
they had no intention to recede from the principle
laid down in 1846, or to tax the community at large
for the benefit of any particular class. This early
and explicit declaration will relieve the minds of any
free-traders who may have feared that ministers had
been shaken in their faith by the trumpery fallacy,
that protection to sugar was no violation of free-
trade principles. It will prevent the sugar merchants
and planters from suffering by the oscillations
which any uncerta nty as to the ultimate views
of government would have introduced into the
market. So far good. But we fear even this frank-
ness will not prevent some West Indians from che-
rishing fallacious hopes that may induce them to
waste in ineffectual agitation and parliamentary in-
trigue those energies which ought now to be concen-
trated upcn preparations to encounter the unre-
stricted competition of foreigners at an early' day.
We have the word of Sir CHARLES WOOD that
ministers are resolved to abide by their own sugar
act of 1816. In 1851 there will be entire free trade
in sugar, and, in the interim, every year will see a re-
duction in the actual differential duty. The West
Indians may rest assured that, in the existing state of
public opinion, no better terms can be procured for
them. By refusing to accept of these terms they
may accelerate the advent of entire free trade in
sugar, but they cannot retard it.
And no one who has carefully studied the pre-
sent position of these colonies, and their history
for the last fifteen years, can entertain a doubt that,
if they honestly and earnestly set about it, they will
be quite able in 1851 to meet foreign competition on
equal terms. Against all the irrelevant crudities of
Lord GEORGE B ENTINCK —nay, against the more wary
and intelligent statements of the acting committee of
the West India body—we place the important infor-
mation received from Guiana by the mail which ar-
rived the very day Lord GEORGE made his motion.
If there be one of our sugar colonies more likely than
another to feel the difficulties of growing sugar by
free negro labour in their full force, it is Guiana. In
Guiana, as in Holland, cultivation depends upon the
efficient working of a colossal and complicated system
of canals. In Guiana, cultivation has scarce passed
the verge of the illimitable forest, and it is easy for
the negro to withdraw himself from observa-
tion and indulge his indolence by squatting
in a climate where a little desultory labour
ensures the necessaries of life. In Guiana, to a greater
extent perhaps even than in Jamaica, a large propor-
tion of the ei-dernet predial slaves have become small
proprietors, or hunters. Yet even in this colony the
resident planters are contemplating with hopeful fore-
thought the result of the earnest struggle to which they
are addressing themselves. They do not shut their eyes
to the difficulties in their way, but they feel convinced
that with free labour they will yet succes,fully compete
against the slave-ovnurg sugar growers. On this
head the Guiana Gasette—a sober, veracious journal,
characterised by general moderation of tone and dis-
trust of theories—says :
The colony, which depends wholly upon its sugar cultiva-
tion, not only is ins crisis just now, but will have, in ell Fo-
bability, crisis after crisis to go through, till the Sugar Bill
shalt have fully developed itself, and the sugar of the British
West Indies enjoy no favour whatever in the markets of the
mother country. We entertain some hope that things will,
in the end, go right, from a fact which has come under our
observation within the last fortnight, and which proven, to
our mind at least, that the population can and will bend
and accommodate themselves to circumstances. For our
part, we would ask no more, in order to tight the battle of
free labour with slave-labour produce. It was clearly
enough demonstrated to the people, that sugar was
not, at the old rates of wages, paying the planter; and
the alternative was in many districts submitted to the
peasantry either of not working at all, or et working for
wages reduced at the rate of 2.5 per cent. With wonderful
smoothness and pucidity, all things considered, the people
have agreed within the last few days, in the finest and most
extensive sugar district of the colony, the Arabian coast of
Essequibo, to accept the reduced rate ; and the same thing,
we learn, has happened on the east coast of Demerara.
This groat change has been effected without any strike,
without any sulkiness, without any manifestation of ill feel-
ing; and shows on the part of the free peasant of this pro-
vince a degree of manageablewas, which surpasses, we are
inclined to think, say degree of submission, which coercive
discipline can produce in Cuts or elsewhere. This trait—
whic .we own has taken us by surprise—in the character of
our free labourers. though it has diminished their wages 25
per cent , has raised our opinion of the proseocta of the co-
luny at kast 60. - _ -

After this we may dispense with any laboured answer
to Lord G. BENTINCK'S speech. Who can argue with •
speaker who gravely proposes to the British legisla-
ture and government to seize upon Cuba in order to
enable us to put down the slave trade, and stop when-
ever we please the communication between New York
and New Orleans? It is but justice to the West In-
dians, both those who are resident in this country and
at home, to add that Lord GEORGE disclaims all con-
nexion with them. Ile denounces the col onists for daring
to ask the relaxation or repeal of the navigation
laws. And he announces that he makes his motion in
defiance of the remonstrances of the planters and mer-

chants here, because in 1816 only five of them con-
sented to walk through Coventry with him and vote
in his minority.
The concessions offered to the West Indians by the
CHANCELLOR OF THE ExcliequEit are as follows:
He will admit molasses for distillation, but not for
brewing. He will admit cane-juice for distilling and
brewing if a duty can be fixed by which the revenue
will not lose. He will facilitate the immigration of
free nerves by means of a loan. The removal of
captured negroes to the West Indies is to be effected
almost wholly at the expense of this country. He
will grant a prolongation (for five years) of the term
for repayment of the hurricane loan, and will accede
to an advance upon loan for the relief of Tobago.

At the late hour at which this intelligence reaches
ns we cannot be expected to enter into a minute scru-
tiny of these proposals. Some of them are no more
than just; while to some we demur as scarcely sum-

emit, to others WI perhaps too much. The pro-
longation of the term for repaying the hurricane
loan, and the new loan to Tobago, are unexceptionable.
Ws do not see any valid reason for excluding
molasses from brewing, and the " if" which accom-
panies the promise respecting cane juice reads
wondrous like an evasion. On the other hand, we
have a well grounded mistrust of all such loans as that
for promoting immigration. They are sure to turn to
Rifts in the long run. As to the captured negroed,
at is a long and ravelled chapter upon which we
will not enter at present.

BATII has adhered to the metropolitan protest
against the window duties. This was to be expected.
Lord DUNCIOI and Mr. ROEBUCK had made the
window duties their own question, and Lord ASHLEY,
after stepping into Mr. ItoEauce's shoes, has accepted
the task of seeking the repeal of this obnoxious tax as
one of the incumbrances of the estate. Bath is the
natural focus of an anti-window duty agitation, for
few pls:es feel more heavily the weight of its une-
qual pressure. In 1844 Bath paid 21,722/. of window
duty, while Birmingham, with twice its wealth and
more than twice its population, only paid 10,713/.
The window duty is one of those taxes which are
neither direct nor indirect. It is not paid by the
dealer in a commoeity and charged in the bill to the
consumer, like a customs or excise duty ; it is not an
immediate appropriation of a certain proportion of a
man's possessions, like an income or property tax. It
isa fine paid by the owner for being found with the
article taxed in his possession. The rationale of such
taxes—the reasoning upon which the tax-imposer
proceeds in laying them on—is nearly as follows :
The man who can afford to indulge in this luxury
or comfort must have SOM.: property ; he will indulge
in it in proportion to the amount of his property ;
taxing him in proportion to his indulgence is equiva-
lent to taxing him in proportion to his wealth.' In
short, window duties, and all taxes of the same cate-
gory, are, or are meant to be, a property tax in dis-
guln general it may be remarked that taxing amanita
proportion to his enjoyments is never found to answer.
A Chancellor of the Exchequer, with respect to such
taxes, constantly feels the ground giving way be-
neath his feet. They have the effect of sumptuary
laws; they make people retrench their private ex-
penditure, and curtail the national revenue at the
same time. It is very fine—there is a tragic pathos
in the sound—to declaim about letting the necessa-
ries of life, which even the peer must consume, pass
untaxed, and laying the load on the superfluities,
which only the rich can afford. The superfluities'
will not allow themselves to be taxed ; they shrivel
up and disappear at the touch of taxation, likedeli-
cate exotics at the touch of frost, leaving nothing to
be taxed. Purr laid a tax upon hair powder, and the
returns were almost entirely confined to the return of
gentlemen's and ladies' hair to their natural colours.
The tax on armorial hearings had the effect in Scotland
(a nation of gentlemen true GEORGE IV.) of limiting
the claimants of hereditary coats of arms from the
whole to about one-fifth of the population. The win-
dow duties are said, when first imposed, to have re-
sulted
in long ranges of blocked-up windows, on
which wags wrote, " Pitt's Works, vol. i. ; vol. ii.
et peg:" Should the authenticity of this anecdote he
questioned, an experience of our own day may be
substituted. In 1839 a re-asessment of premises,
subject to window duty, was decreed under the
auspices of Mr. 11 MING. The re-assessment in the
course of one year had the effect of raising the re-
venue from windows from 1,298,000/. to 1,661,000/.
But the very next year it began to creep down again,
and in 184 t; had fallen off 60,0001. Windows are
again being blocked up.
The window duties, in common with others of their
class, do nut become more productive as a nation
increases in wealth and numbers, but rather retro-
grade. And they have this peculiar bad feature, in
addition, that the special object upon which they are
imposed is nut a reliable index of the value of the
property which the tax-payer possesses, nor even of
that which his vanity would be thought to possess.
The comparative value of houses is not dependent
upon the number of their windows.
An instructive table, with reference to this point,
is published in the report of a committee appointed
in 1843 by the metropolitan parishes to collect infor-
ma'ion on the subject of the window duties. The
first column of the table designates a number of houses
in different parts of the metropolis; the second states
the number of windows in each • the third
the amount of window duties assessed ; the fourth,
the rental assessed to the property-tax ; the fifth, the
per-centage borne by the amount of the window
duties, to the rental as assessed to the property tax.
We here fled a house of the annual value of 24!.,
with 18 windows, paying 5!. 4s. 9d., or 21; of the
rental for window duty ; a house of the annual value
of 1801., with 12 windows, paying 2/. Os. 2d., or 14
of the rental for window duty ; and one of the annual
value of 2,000!., with 129 windows,paying 37!..'5. Id.,
or 1; of the rental fir window duty. These facts,
taken at random from a long list, demonstrate that
the weight of this tax increases exactly in proportion
as the ability to bear it diminishes.
There is a circumstance connected with the reten-
tion of the window duty on our list of taxes, that
cannot tail to render it doubly odious to all persons
of moderate or scanty means. Previous to 1834 there
was a house-tax as well as a window-tax. The house-
tax was really proportioned to the value of the houses
upon which it was imposed; the window-tax if to
anything was proportioned to their salubrity. It
became a question in 1834 whether the window-tax
or the house-tax should be repealed, and parliament,
in its wisdom, decided that the house-tax should be
abolished in preference. The effect of this decision
we will illustrate by reference to the table we have
already noticed, and another which appears in the
same report. From the first table we 'earn that the
house of a certain nobleman is assessed to the property-
tax at an annual rental of 1,0001. and hasl2s windows ;
that the house of a respectable plasterer is assessedto the
property-tax at a rental of 32/., and has 20 windows.
In 1833 there was paid on the house of the nobleman
33/. 188. 3d. of window duty, and 1231. 199. 2d. of
house tax ; on the house of the plasterer, 51. 12s. 3d.
of window duty, and 31. 12s. of house-tax. By re-
pealing the house-tax in preference to the window-
tax, the nobleman had his public burdens reduced at
the rate of 363 per cent., the plasterer at the rate of
64 per cent. And this relief to the law-making class,
at the expense of the law-obeying class, was afforded
while the latter were compelled by the corn-law to
pay a tax to the farmer in the form of artificially
heightened prices of agricultural produce.
The window duty, besides being an unequal tax, an
unreliab'e tax (inasmuch as it may diminish while
the means of pa) ment are increasing), and an un-
wholesome tax (as unfriendly to the due lighting and
ventilation of houses), is an irritating tax—the very
worst quality a tax can have. The movement against
it in the metropolis and at Bath is but the first indi-
cation of a wide vortex of agitation. The legislature
would set wisely in getting rid of it before a pro-
tracted struggle has disseminated hatred and dis-
affection.

MANY of our more ardent advocates of social pro-
gress see in the laws and customs by which the suc-
cession to land is regulated, obstacles to improvement
of the most formidable kind. They say, and with
much force, that the aggrandising one member of an
aristocratic family enables him to quarter upon the
public service his younger brothers, whose bringing
up has made them disdain industrial occupations ;
and thus the most powerful, if not the most wealthy,
class of our community, have a direct interest in pro-
fuse public expenditure, which they seek to maintain
at all hazards.

At the late free trade meeting in Manchester, the
recent outcry about our national defences was by
more than one speaker traced to this source. For in-
stance, Mr. BRIGHT said—" I think I can give you
the secret of all this. In this country it is the'custom for
men, the larger property they have, generally the less
they leave to the majority of their children. Now, an
honest cotton-spinner or calico-printer down here, if
he makes 20,000/. or 30,0001., he generally divides it
tolerably equally among his children. But the more
property a man gets, and especially if it is in green
fields, he thinks it necessary that the oldest should
get it all ; and I believe Colonel THOMPSON gave a
right explanation of this when he said, " It makes
one hand in the family so strong, that he can force
the public to keep all the rest of the family." Well
now, bear in mind this—that, among aristocratic
families, there is a natural increase as there is in
families of other sorts of people. All these children,
for the mot part, are brought up with an idea that
it would be lowering to their dignity if they were to

be seen offering anything for sale, or offering to pur-
chase anything on your exchange. They don't go
to trade : they go to the public departments. Well,
the pasture Is getting rather bare ; in fact,
they must have a wider scope for their energies,
those energies being principally employed in doing
nothing and eating taxes." Now it cannot be denied
that there is much colour for such imputations. Few
of the younger sone of the landed gentry engage in
trade; not many of them engage in earnest in the
laborious pursuit of the law ; but they rely mainly on
the church, the army, the navy, and the civil service
of the public; or they live as mere annuitants, on
ncomes paid out of the family. estate in the hands of
their eldest brother. This is a national evil of no
slight importance ; nor has been now noticed for the
first time; but the scrutiny to which the tenures,
devolution, and transfers of land hare of late
been subjected, shows that the social and political
inequalities: complained of co-exist with, and are
derived from the same source as the economical dis-
advantages which result from the aggregation and
settlement of large estates in the hands of one mem-
ber of the family. And it is this system of settlement
which all the efforts of the improvers of the law of
real property cannot get over. They try to evade it,
but it reduces all their plans of reform to mere pallia-
tives. There is and can be no free, cheap, or speedy
transfer of land so long as entail, that is, the settle-
ment of land on an unborn generation, is permitted
by law.
- - - -

Thus we find Mr. JAMES STEWART, in his Mat
lecture before the Law Amendment Society, " On the
means of facilitating the transfer of land," after
recommending a public register of titles, with refer-
ences to a general map, on whicheaeh property should
be numbered and distinguished, said " There would
be more difficulty with our settlements, for, V course,
I propose no restriction as to them. The charges
under them remain a long time as burdens on the
land. The portions of children are not always paid
off; they often show them to remain as charges, and
they are settled on marriage, and perhaps three gene-
rations must pass away before all traces of this de,d
must be wiped out." But Mr. STEWART has here
omitted to state the real difficulty which settlements
and the power to entail create in the title to landed
property. Charges for portions and so forth are
doubtless serious evils, and, as abiding ineumbrances,
greatly interfere with the free transmission of land ;
yet they are simply charges—active, interest-bearing
charges—subject to which land might be sold with of
course a proportionate reduction of price. But the
real obstacle to the easy transfer of land is the possi-
bility that some person who may be apparently
owner of the fee simple is only tenant for life, or foe
some other limited period. The fact to be proved--
Ithat on which the purchas is safety depends—is a
negative one, namely, that there is no subsisting set-
Cornea derogating from the power of the
vendor to dispose of the property. Now
this cannot be presumed, for proved it cannot
be, until two generations—mercifully fixed by
lawyers at sixty years have passed away ;
and unless the legislature shall declare that the
ac-
tual bodily possession of au estate for some defined
period shall of itself form an absolute title—a declara-
tion which would be fatal to settlements—we do not
see how a less title than sixty years can be safely ac-
cepted by a purchaser. Nor would any register of
deeds, even sixty years after the registration of all
deeds had been rendered compulsory, prevent the ne-
cessity of investigating the title for the same period
as at present—viz., the average duration of human life,
though it might perhaps occasionally prevent losses
from fraudulent or accidental concealments. But
such losses are really very rare. Mr. STEWART in
the same lecture gays, " I have heard it stated by ex-
perienced professional men, that for ninety-nine good
titles there is only one bad." And Sir EDWARD
SCGDEN, in his late edition of his work on " Vendors
and Purchasers," says, "that the present expense as
to titles is, in 49 cases out of 50, superfluous." Never-
theless, we say distinctly that, with or without a re-
gister of deeds, and the adoption of all the other
improvements recommended by our real property law
reformers, there will be no material diminution of ex-
pense or increase of facility in the transfer of land
while the power to entail land on an unborn genera-
tion exists.
Let us put the case practically. The Lancashire
newspapers a few weeks ago contained long accounts
of the meetings and festivities on the occasion of the
Earl of STAMFORD and Watuteseyos attaining his
majority, which took place in the various localities in
which Ins estates lie ; and it appears that this young
nobleman " comes into the possession of estates stated
to yield a gross income of 100,000 t. per annum ;" and
his lordship s agent said " the estates were unencum-
bered, and free from entail." Now his lordship may
of course sell or otherwise dispose of any part of his
land at pleasure. He is in possession of the title-
deeds, and could there be a present registration of his
title, and there was no power by law to limit land
to unborn children, any transfers of his vast estates
might be made with the greatest facility. But sup-
pose his lordship, now twenty-one years of age, should
upon the occasion of marriage or otherwise make a
settlement of his estates on his unborn child, either by
a conveyance of the whole or a part of the property,
or by a covenant to settle the whole or a part,—which
settlement as the law stands need be known only to
the family and the family lawyers,—and some
forty or fifty years hence should, forgetting
or disregarding tho settlement, sell some of
his estate absolutely, how is the purchaser to
ascertain the title he will receive except by in-
quiring—first, whether his lordship succeeded to the
estate as absolute owner; and secondly, whether he
has himself made any settlement of the property?
Such inquiries, if truly answered, would disclose the
fact that he had a qualified and not an absolute inte-
rest in the property affected to be sold.
Or to put another case : Suppose, on his marriage,
his lordship should settle one portion, perhaps an in-
considerable portion, of his large landed property,
upon his unborn son or sons, but should remain dur-
ing a long life absolute owner of the residue, and fifty
years hence should sell part of that to which he re-
mained absolutely entitled; the purchaser knows by
repute or from information that there is a settlement,
and he must inquire for, see, and inspect that settle-
ment to ascertain that it does not comprise the land
he has bought. Here we see the inquiry and inves-
tigation must extend over the whole period of a long
life.
Again, suppose the nobleman referred to, having the
power at the time, after the birth of a son to settle his
estate upon that son as tenant for life, giving interests
in remainder to his son's unborn children, but instead
of so doing should let his estate descend to kis son,
who being owner in fee might sell, yet the purchaser
must ascertain that the father during his whole life
made no settlement that would prevent his son from
selling the property ; and a variety of other possible
ways of dealing with land might be stated, as plainly
showing the indispensable necessity, of a lengthened
title so long as one generation can settle property on
the succeeding generation.
Nor do we urge this with any view to damp the
zeal of our real property law reformers. On the con-
trary, we believe that in points of detail they will do
much good ; but we would show the real nature and
full force of the main difficulty which prevents the
free disposition of landed property.

MALTA, J kN. 25.
Since my last of the 16th upwards of twenty ves-
sels, mostly English, have been compelled to bear up
and return to Malta in consequence of the heavy
westerly gales, some of them after being a fort-
night at sea. The Flamer was to have gone on to
Corfu on the 16th with the mails, but was too much
shaken by the late gale. The Locust proceeded in
her stead. The Tartarus, having had a thorough
refit, started on the 17th for Constantinople, on sta-
tion. The Peninsular and Oriental Company's
steamer Euxine did not leave for Constantinople
until the 1 ith. It is said that her consumption of
coal is enormous—upwards of forty tens per diem.
She took in 450 tons at Southampton and 40 more
at Gibraltar, yet before arriving at Malta in 12 days,
her coals were all gone, and they were burning all
their spare wood. Oa the reception of news from
Naples on the 17th Admiral Parker immediately
ordered the Gladiator to get up her steam and start
for Messina, and the Vengeance to proceed to Palermo.
Early on the morning of the 18th the Gladiator
towed the Vengeance oat, and both proceeded to their
destination. The Vanguard, which was to have sailed
on the 16th for Athens, did not start until the 19th,
the day on which the Governor of Malta gave his
first public ball.
On the 19th, the English brig Lord Lambton,
which sailed from hence for Cork, when in company
with the English schooner Sapphire, Perry, master,