The Express.
London, England, 1846-10-27 00:00:00

7u-ht olt i prOg.

MAILS.
The overland clewed malls. via Marseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt. Aden, Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, fic., will be made up on the
evening of the 27th October (this day.)
The mails for Comma, Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, end
Gibraltar, will be made up on the morning of the 27th October (this
day.)
The mails for New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, will be made
up on the Slat October.
The Wed India mails, including those for Mexico, Honduras, and
Havana, will he made up on the morning of the 2nd November.
The overland Mali. for Gibraltar. Malta, Greece, the lonian Islands,
ran*, Aden, Ceylon. India, Ilene- Kong. and China, via Southampton,
Will made up oft the morning of the 3rd November.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
We cannot notke, In any way, any communication that la sent to as
anonymously ; but thaw who choose to addrem no in confidence will
find their confidence respected. NEITHERCAN WE UNDERTAKE
TO RETURN ANY MANUSCRIPTS WHATEVER.
00 Advertisements intended for The Express, London evening paper,
must be at the Othee by Two o'clock on the day of publication.

MOE WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
TM DAY. Morning, 8 min. past 6; Afternoon, 33 min. mat 6.
Ifteennuiow.—Morning, 7 min. peat 7; Afternoon, 41 min. put 7.

LONDON, TUESDAY, OCT. 27.

IT is satisfactory to see that the present India
Mail contradicts the warlike rumours of the last. At
least, it holds forth the prospect that no imminent
outbreak on the part of the Sikhs is likely. Mooltan,
the most refractory province beyond the Sutlej, has
come to terms. GOOLAB SING was said to be recruit-
ing, but showed no signs of actual forwardness. The
fears from Lahore are no greater than are naturally
ingested by the position of so wild a country, so
lately subdued ; whilst on the frontier the gathering
of armies has been contradicted.

Accordingly, events of lesser magnitude than the
conquests of kingdoms or the insurrections of pro-
vinces, occupy the Indian press. Sir ClttatEs NA-
PIER falls in for his usual share of obloquy ; but if the
report be true that he is to exchange Scinde for the
command of the Indian army, the bitterness of his
foes will receive new direction; and they will at least
be furnished with what they seem to want—a new
topic.

WITH the sublime of extravagance, BURKE de-
picted the French democrats "pricking their dotted
lines" on the carcases of great empires and great
lords, in order to carve them into joints and sirloins.
What would he have said to the Americans of our day,
who, having devoured the better part of the Oregon,
and all Texas, are "pricking their dotted lines" on
Mexico, and driving the United States, uncontrouled,
through the midst of that once puissant empire.
Not only has Commodore BLOAT taken possession
of California now and for evermore, declaring it part
and parcel of the United States, but General KEAR-
NEY has done the same with Santa Fe and New
Mexico, compelling alcaides and cures not only to
submit, but to swear allegiance to President Pot.R.
" It cannot be supposed," says the New York Morn-
ing Courier, " that these two officers of the United
States military and naval service would have ven-
tured upon issuing proclamations such as these, with-
out express instructions ; and then arises a question,
(which will be warmly discussed among ourselves) of
the right of the executive thus to stipulate without
condition, the annexation of whole foreign countries
and foreign populations."
American commanders, indeed, seem little restric-
ted in their grandiloquence by instructions from
Washington. Yet the plan, if it be one of con-
quest, has not been ill-conceived. Well-concerted
measures appear to have been taken by the
generals, for becoming masters of all that portion of
Mexico east of the mountains, and as far south
as Tampico. General KEARNEY has conquered New
Mexico, General TAYLOR has taken equal pains for
the occupation of Monterey and Saltillo. If General
GAINES or General JESSUP succeed, at the same time,
in the attack on Tampico, the Americans will have
already carried for themselves a point of the Mexican
empire, with Potosi and its mines within their reach,
from which even Mexico is menaced.
We cannot believe, however, that their purpose is
conquest,withthe exception of California and of Santa
Fe, which is eastward of their proclaimed boundary
line, the Rio Grande.
The government of Washington and the naval and
military commanders certainly counted on the power
and the will of SANTA ANNA to make peace. He has
not been able to do this ; but it is evident that he is
eager to do so, and that he will have the power, if
the Mexican General AMPUDIA and his force should
be driven from Monterey. General TAYLOR'S success,
however probable, is by no means certain.
Am ruDIA is a good artillery officer. He
seems well supported. And General TAYLOR has
given his foe advantages by changing his policy to-
wards the invaded country. At first he paid, and
promised to pay for all provisions, and, like the
British army in Spain, scattered dollars for the
food of the army, But the Washington treasury has
grown weary of such generosity; and orders have been
given that the general and his army are to live upon
the country.
This severity will have the effect that the Mexican
commander desired. AMPUDIA has issued terrible pro-
clamations to deter the Mexicans from supplying the
foe. Gen. TAYLOR'S new plans of living by plunder
will be more effectual than AMPUDIA'S proclamations
in driving off the Rancheros with their provisions and
cattle beyond the reach of the invading army,
"If Am rrptA wui 'oui stay to be beaten," writes
an American general, " all will be well. Should he
merely retreat, he will baffle TAYLOR, and render his
force and his expedition utterly useless."
Every thing will depend on what takes place at
Monterey. If General TAYLOR receive a check, we
may reckon on the war being carried on with the
greatest vigour against Vera Cruz and Tampico.
Should the Mexicans, under AMPUDIA, be defeated
and dispersed, SANTA ANNA may be expected to step

forward and make peace; on terms, indeed, not so
favourable as if he could have concluded it at once,
but still on conditions not absolutely destructive of the
empire.
Should the war continue, fatal as it may prove
to Mexico, it will scarcely prove less disastrous
to the United States and to its government, whose
financial discredit and distress will be laid bare. This
would be not unlikely to produce a crisis, and either
compel some new and rigorous taxation, or induce a
vote of the Legislature reprobating the war and its
author, the President.

WHATEVER the results of the present registration
on the electoral strength of pat ties, one consequence
seems to be certain, that a larger amount than ever
of disgust and impatience with the system has been
produced in the public mind. Its absurdity and vex-
atiousness have risen to a pitch beyond endurance.
The inconsistency complained of, in a letter from a
correspondent which the reader will find in our co-
lumns of to-day, is only one instance out of thou-
sands ; and with a better termination than is generally
arrived at. it is quite necessary that this nuisance
should be abated. .

Every element in the system contributes its quota
to the chaotic result. The claimant is so perplexed
by technicalities, as often to incur disfranchisement by
a (legally) false description of himself or his property.
Or he is forgetfulof the effect of a change of residence
which has nothing to do with his qualification, ex-
cept to forfeit it. Or he lives at a distance ; or has
travelled to a distance, from the registration court ;
and is struck off for non-attendance. The overseer

blunders in his list. It includes the disqualified, ex-
cludes the qualified; or fatally errs in describing the
property. The agent of a voluntary registration
society, sometimes well paid, and sometimes out of
pocket for his pains, discharges his functions in like
intermittent manner. Now, he sleeps over the inser-
tion of fraudulent claims, till the faction that fabri-
cates them is on the high road towards universal suf-
frage for its retainers. Anon ha puts forth a
vigour beyond the law, objecting by wholesale
to the most unexceptionable votes, pouncing
especially upon probable absentees, and act-
ing on the principle of an agent who told the
parliamentary committee, "I thought I would have a
sweep against all who voted against us." Both sides
agree in accusing the revising barristers of frequent
caprice and partiality. And notwithstanding the
occasional guidance afforded by appeals, which often
is only the striking off one head of the hydra for ten
to sprout in its place, the whole process begins,
continues, and ends, in "confusion worse confounded."

Registration is not what it professes to be, an auxi-
liary to government by representation. It is only a
roundabout way of putting up legislative honours for
sale by auction. It is one mode of working the money
power. We do not allude merely to the
multiplication of votes by the purchase of
40s. freeholds. hat certainly never was contem-
plated by the legislature in the extent to which it
has been practised. It was never dreamed that Peers
would create no inconsiderable class of county voters
by 40s. annuities to their decayed serving men ; or
that Manchester manufacturers would divert a portion
of their capital to investments in rent charges in
agricultural districts. The Houses of Lords and
Commons were not aware that they over-rode the
Splitting Act by the Reform Bill. Nor was it
intended that 401. should be a market price for politi-
cal enfranchisement. Still, all this is legal. The

votes thus manufactured are manufactured according
to law. Registration is not supposed to be a judgment
on the title to vote so obtained, but merely on the fact
of such title existing, which its province is only to re-
cognise. And it does no such thing. It forms no sure
connecting link between the legal title (rea-
sonable or absurd), and the list of voters in the
formation of which it terminates. As we have
said, the money power interposes. Suppose two
parties possess each a thousand legal votes in a dis-
trict, either may obtain a large majority on the regis-
tration by a more liberal outlay of cash, and by the
prying and spying, the trickery and impudence, which
that outlay will purchase. Thus peers and million-
aires, clubs and leagues, can, whenever they please,
command or conquer counties. There is less occasion
than formerly to bribe persons, for corruption is thus
created into an institution. A seat is purchased by
the salaries of agents and objectors. It is a farce to
connect such a process with any theory of repre-
sentation.

The constitutional principle, so far as there is such
a thing, we take to be this : living in a 10/.
house, or holding a 40s. freehold, is presumed
to indicate so much property or stake in
the country, as is again presumed to indicate the
mental and moral qualities which fit a man for assist-
ing in the choice of a legislator. The mental and
moral attributes are the real qualification. In default
of better proof, the house or freehold is taken as
evidence of their existence. As we are not on the
subject of the suffrage, the question whether better
evidence of qualification might not be obtained, may
be altogether passed over. The Reform Act has de-
fined the legal evidence. We only reason upon that
definition. The essential blunder of the registration
system is, that it makes the legal es idenee paramount
to the moral qualification. Men of the largest un-
disputed property and attainments, dignitaries of the
Church, ornaments of the liberal professions,
chief magistrates of cities, members of Par-
liament, the judges of the land, are all,—
some of all have often been,—disfranchised on
the score of the pettiest technicalities. The very
same property, with the very same title to it, which
gives them a vote one year does not give them a vote
another year. The law is a) administered as not to
take its own selected proof of qualification. A Lord
FITZHARDINGE, or a Manchester League, finding or
not finding the funds to work the registration, may
make all the difference. The evidence itself (of the
personal qualification) is uncertain enough ; but the
evidence of the evidence raises the uncertainty to the
highest power.
Houses and grounds are palpable realities, which a
Government might register, with tolerable complete-
ness, by its own agents. To register rent charges, and
similar qualifying claims on freehold property, is an
onerous, but by no means impracticable undertaking.
As property is made by law the test of personal
fitness for the suffrage, let the qualifying property be
duly taken account of. In this operation there would
be no arena for registration battles. The human ap-
pendage to house or field, who in its virtue gives the
actual vote, must usually be indicated by the property
itself. The proprietor, in most cases, and with suffi-
cient accuracy for the purpose; the occupying tenant
always and infallibly. Such a record would super-
sede the registration courts, with all their quibbles,
their uncertainties, their factiousness, their partiali-
ties, their vexations, their expense, and their corrup-
tion. The fact would be determined, independent of
party; nor would it signify if, in the intervals of revi-
sion,property changed hands. Suppose persons should,
in that interval, come to the poll who have parted with
their property qualification ;—they have not thereby lost
the moral qualification to which that property testi-
fied. Electoral wisdom in A.B. was proved by his
living in a 101. house. There was legal evidence of
his wisdom at that time. The fact cannot be destroyed
by his removal into an 81. house. The personal qua-
lification, once ascertained, by whatever means, re-
I mains, unless the man falls into fatuity. We see no
great harm in such persons continuing to hold the
franchise until the period for revision comes round.
And this is the chief exception that can be taken.
There are mach more questionable exceptions in the
present system. What we desire to see is at least a
consistency between the professed objects of the
Reform Act, and the results of the machinery by
which, at present, those objects are as often neutra-
lised as they are accomplished. To this the public
have a right. It is imperatively required for the

safety and ease of honest voters, and for the existence
of real representation, the great bulwarks of our
national liberties.

" FREEpost of the press" has been a theme ibr un-
measured glorification and unreasoning abuse. It
may not be the safeguard of liberty, the security
against class-encroachment, the breath of constitu-
tional life, which its advocates maintain it to be; but
it certainly is not the spring of anarchy, irreligion,
hasty change, and intolerable despotism of the major-
ity, which its opponents would make it out. The
good and ill of it are mixed ; the good largely and
necessarily predominating. How far its essential
benefits exceed its accidental mischiefs, depends on
the spirit in which it is asserted and exercised.
Fearlessness in the judgment of public characters,
and the comment on public matters, is one
necessary character of an influential and healthy
free press. Respect for the seal of pri-
vate confidences; caution in accepting information;
scrupulous abstinence from subjects, which, however
tempting, can only become matter for newspaper
comment by theft, treachery, or accidents, of which it
is dishonest to take advantage; are other features
which should mark the journal, not less than rever-
ence for the truth and a daring utterance of it on all
occasions. Journalists of all parties have a common
interest in insisting on the observance of all these con-
ditions.

Undue control of opinion, as expressed in the
journal, is impossible in this country. Our utter
freedom from it binds us with a double obligation to
the observance of our own self-imposed re-'
straints. That the unfortunate broadsheet of Madrid,
weighed down by fines, its impressions seized weekly
by the police, its Editors imprisoned, its existence tole-
rated only on condition of daily falsehood, should,
when it gets the opportunity, revel in private imputa-
tion, and find in personal spite some compensation for
public nullity, is intelligible enough. In France,
also, the severity of state control over the journal has
borne its fruits in the reckless readiness of attack, the
wilful and systematic misrepresentation, and the per-
sonal bitterness, which mark the Opposition prints in
that country. Despotism over opinion engenders
innumerable basenesses in the exponents of it.
The English journalist has no such tyranny to
complain of. The absoluteness of his freedom binds
him to a scrupulous use of it. Even in his utmost
latitude of comment, it becomes him to remember the
dignity and self-restraint of the free man. Above
all, he is pledged to respect the sanctities of private
correspondence and domestic life. He can only vio-
late these at the price of his character. It is not
necessary to descend to the impurities of the Satirist
to earn a portion of its reputation. The private
letter should be as sacred as the marriage bed.
Holding this theory of the journalist's duty, which
becomes, if possible, more incumbent as his pro-
fession rises in public estimation, and in the character
of its representatives, we have felt at once shamed
and shocked by the publication in a morning con-
temporary, of two private letters; so obviously con-
fidential, that the communication of them to the
newspaper in question can only be accounted for by
treachery or dislonesty. The person who furnished
them, may have found them by accident; he may
have rummaged another's writing desk ; he may have
broken a seal, or picked a pocket. The degree of ras-
cality, on any of these suppositions, is very much the
same. But bad as the original perpetrator may be,
the publisher of his stolen information is worse.
The law supposes an equality of guilt between the
thief and the receiver. But who does not feel
that FAGIN is, in the eyes of a higher
jurisdiction, more guilty than BILL SYKES?
The paper which publishes these private letters, which
it must hare known were surreptitiously or criminally
procured, makes a parade of "omitting some passages
that are evidently private." The honour of such a
proceeding is much like that of the receiver who re-
fining from circulating plate with a cypher on it. He
sweeps it into the smelting pot, and disposes of it in
ingots. " Our object," says the journal in question,
" in giving the letters, is simply to avail ourselves of
the information they convey on political matters."
Few persons would suspect otherwise. The de-
tails of purely private scandal, or the first easy
household talk of intimates, can hardly have much
attraction for the public. Had the case been otherwise ;
had the readers for whom these letters were printed
been as eager for the tattle of May-fair as the whis-
pers of Downing-street; we have no doubt their pur-
veyor would have shown the same alacrity to cater
for them in the one way, as he has already shown in
the other. He would have expunged the politics and
printed the small-talk. But we cannot recognise the
virtue of his distinction. The violation of private con-
fidence is the same in either case ; the means used to
get at the information as dirty and as despicable.
We are glad, for the honour of the craft, that this
unscrupulous IKEY SOLOMONS of the daily press has
found no imitator. A contemporary, as bitterly
opposed as the offender to the Government which
these revelations are intended to annoy, had the same
letters offered to it. It refused to avail itself of them
on the grounds which would at once have suggested
themselves to every gentleman. " These docu-
ments," it remarks, " are very tempting to a
newspaper; but, as we understand them to hare
been obtained in an irregular manner, we will
not dishonour the Herald by giving them a place
in its columns, though we are informed that co-
pies have been also sent to certain of our con-
temporaries." Thus, it will be seen, the irregularity
of the channel through which these letters passed to
the newspaper office was no secret.
At this time, when public opinion has acquired a
power unknown to earlier periods ; when the rapidity
of communication carries the expression of that
opinion with lightning speed through the length and
breadth of the empire ; when its organs are acquir-
ing a development and an importance commen-
surate with the resources they employ and the
means they set in operation; the character of those
organs is a matter of public concern. As that cha-
racter has risen, not less by a bold use of authorised
and fair weapons, than by an abstinence from under-
hand arts and dishonest arms, we have felt it our
duty to protest energetically against an act which,
without such a protest, reflects an implied dishonour
on ourselves. The feeling which has excited us to
this expression is, we are proud to believe, common
to our brethren of the daily press. We should not,
until yesterday, have excepted a single accredited
journal from the compliment.

All minds in Paris are engrossed by, and all hearts
filled with affliction, at the results of the terrible
disaster with which it has pleased Providence to
afflict those districts of the country traversed by the
Loire, its tributaries, and the other rivers which have
broken or overflowed their banks. We learn from
our Paris correspondent that the reports on Suuday
in that city were generally to the effect that the
waters were subsiding. Painful apprehensions never-
theless continued to be raised in many minds by the
constant rain which prevailed in Paris throughout
Saturday, Sunday, and the intervening eight. The
confusion and dismay, and the heartrending spectacles
of distress exhibited everywhere throughout the vast
theatre of the calamity, appear to have paralysed all
activity, so that it was difficult to obtain clear and
intelligible accounts of the actual state of things,
and impossible as yet to form even the most
distant approximation to the amount of the
' loss which has been incurred of life and property.
There is too much reason to fear that in and around
many of the farm houses and buildings which have
been suddenly and totally submerged, whole families
will be found drowned on the subsiding of the waters.
Accounts are arriving hourly of the vast loss in cattle
of every description, the carcases of which are seen
floating on the waters, or resting on those points left
diT by their subsidence.
fhe Minister of Public Works, with a view to acce-
lerate the rescue of those who are surrounded by the
water, sent from Paris on Thursday, by railway, 80

=EIM