The Express.
London, England, 1847-03-08 00:00:00

ghr Opprow.

overlend chard melts, Ms Marseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, India. Moog Kong, ix., will be made op on the
manias ot the Sth March.
The malls for Also, OporM, Lisbon, Madeira, Wig, and Gibraltar,
will be made np on the morning of the 17th March.
Tbs overlent mails for Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian 1/11104
fsttden, Ceylon, India, Tlong.Nong, and China, .is Southampton,
made np on the morning attire 20th of Marsh.
The mails for New booth Wales. Van Diessenh Lend, end Neiv
Zealand will be made up on the evening of the Slat Marele,
The West India mils, excluding those Sr Mateo, Hoeduras, and
/he Marnmsh, will be made op on the smug of the Slat March.
The walla for Brltielt North Ameritech Bermuda, and the United
Mates, will be made up on the evening of the brd April,
The malls for the Brune, the River Plats, Monte Video, Pernam-
buco, Ruhia, Madeira, and Buena Ayres, will he made hp on the
• ileg of the Sth ApriL

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LONDON, MONDAY, MARCH 8.
Weitz Ireland an independent country, no rational
person can have a doubt that its existing state of
overgrown pauperism, connected with the inability
of the middle classes to relieve or employ, and the
still more helpless condition of the nominal owners of
the land, would lead to the inevitable result.and re-
medy for such bankruptcy and confusion, via., a revo-
.ntion. Ireland in 1847 is, with regard to physical
oonditisn, precisely what France was in the spring of
1789:—a famine throughout the land; the upper
classes nominally rich, but really poor; unable fully
to employ or to relieve; a middle class, hating the
upper class for its monopoly of the laud, and for the
no one which it made both of the land as proprietors,
and of their social I,osition, as guardians and pro-
viders for the interests and welfare of the popu-
lation. No one class of society could duly fulfil
its part or function; no one class could supply the
other with what it wanted. The result of such a
state of things in France was a revolution, be-
cause there was no superior power to stay it.
In Ireland such a power is felt, which is the power
of England. And the task of the imperial govern-
ment is to bring about the best results of that revo-
lution which it prevents, avoiding the bad results. In
undertaking such a task, a government is consulting
more directly for the security and stability
of the upper classes and their property than
for any other, and ought, therefore to reckon
on their support. If, however, the upper classes be
wilful or ignorant,—if they do not see that what is
done is done from necessity, and for the avoidance of
revolution,—such shortsightedness may render them
angry, and fling the upper dames into direct
opposition and enmity to the government, the
necessity of whose interference they will not allow.
This was the case with France in 1789. The
landed interest withdrew from the King and govern-
ment its support, and both were precipitated into the
gulf of revolution.
If,—not in the year 1789, that would have been
rather too late, but in the year 1770,—an assembly
of French notables had decreed a poor-law, and pro-
claimed the right of the poor to be maintained oat of
the property of the country, it is probable that a
revolution would never have taken place; and this,
not from the direct operation of the poor-law in feed-
ing the peasantry, but in the necessity which it would
have imposed on the French proprietors themselves to
go to their estates, part with their encumbered pro-
perty, set their houses in order, and take measures
to employ and give activity to a population which, like
that of Ireland, had been reduced to the lowest and
scantiest degree of aliment in the midst of a rich
soil.
A poor law, that is to act merely as a poor-law,
and provide alms, is a miserable invention, degrading
to all classes, unnecessary in a state where industry is
on the increase, capital overflowing, and where the
labouring class are educated so as to know their rights,
wants, interests, and dignity. If the poor-law for
Ireland turn out to be a mere slaw-distributing sta-
tute, it will fail, utterly fail. To render it not a poor.
feeding, but a rich-exciting law, must be the object
of whoever seeks to derive any greet political benefit
from it. With respect to the cast and north of Ireland,
there is little doubt that an extended poor-law will
work well and produce great benefit. In the west
and south it is most certainly a bold and hazardous
experiment, that will require much wisdom, much
patience, much auxiliary efforts and legislation, in
order to suit it to a state of society of which few have
a correct idea.
There are large districts in the south and west of

Ireland where the number of paupers far exceed the
number of pounds sterling annually paid for rent, and
where any other kind of revenue or produce than land
does not exist. Let fate send a bad crop or no crop to
such a district, and what can a naked poor law do
for it ? Such regions must have aid either from the
whole empire, represented by the government, or
from other districts, this aid to be given in emigra-
tion, or the i'relamation of waste lands, or fisheries.
Let it not be supposed, then, that it will be enough
to vote a poor kyr and wash oar hands of Ireland.
The poor law machfnc, t be set in motion, will re-.
quire extensive efforts, in greasing the wheels, re-
moving the ruts, and repair:ng many a break-down.
If the non-existence of property, form the
difficulty in some districts, whet* a population has
sprung from the soil unnoticed, ;Ae the AUTOC-
'MOSES of old, the want of suthocity and con-
cord is the difficulty in wealthier district.. The
misfortune of those districts in the south of
Ireland is, that whilst the legal authority
is in the hands of magistrates and men of property,
irresistible power, by the great law of number and
intimidation, is in the hands of the people. If there
be middle cleaves, they side with the pc, nper and the
priest, and a feud exists, for which boar de of guar-
dians, and elections for them, will be battle • ground°.
The Irish party, as the landlords call thermal% 'es, were
very proud and puissant the other day a t their
place of meeting. The delegates of a hos-
tile and anti-landlord faction have, however, also
reached London, and sought interviews with in-
fluential people, with the Premier himself among%
others. We much mistake their language, if they do not
consider and hail the proposed provision for the poor
as an Irish agrarian law. Were government to foster
such a spirit, what would become of the Irish party
.?
Even as it is, we fear much that this party and Uir
feeling will predominate in the south of Ireland ; that
boards of guardians, even with the augmentation of
ex offieio members, will prove unable to strive against
it; and that the Poor-law Commiesioners themselves
will require all the aid of moral and physical power
to prevent the Irish lower claws from construing
and converting the poor-law into an effective con-
&cation. _

We certainly regret that the machinery of an Irish
poor-law should be largely and effectively pat in mo-
tion for the first time in a year of famine. Admitting
all the evils of the labour rate, anything is preferable
to an extensive system of out-door relief, commenced net
undera provisional enactment by temporary machinery,
but as part, parcel, and result of a permanent system
' and law. If there exist at the present moment an im-
mense difficulty of changing from the labour rate to
the relief committee, the future return from the system
of general relief to that of little or no relief will be
more difficult still. The legislature should have
voted the poor-law first, and then left the landlords
of Ireland to deal with the poor. But to establish the
system of half a million of able-bodied paupers to be
employed on public works, and then vote a poor-law,
is severe.

The amended clauses of the poor-law, however,
give to the landlord and the commissioners all the
authority requisite for maintaining their influence, and
restricting the undue extension of the law. But will
they be able to exercise it ? Have Irish landlords
the energy, the activity, the fairness? Will they not
throw themselves, in despair of physically regene-
rating their country, into clubs for obtaining political
power ? Will the screw of the poor-law have the
effect of fixing them to their duties, or of nailing
them to impttissant inaction? We must own that we
can no more answer these, than we can a hundred
other questions of a similar kind, and must frankly
consider the Irish poor-law as an experiment, a
necessary and a bold one perhaps, but still an experi-
ment, of which it would be very unsafe to prognosti-
cate the results.

Two parties have combined in the opposition to
the government plan of education! those who, like
Mr. Bt IN ES, oppose all state interference • and those
who, like Dr.ITAUGHAN, object to the specific plan
described in the minutes of council. We might, per-
haps, add a third party, who, in the vagueness of
vituperation, leave it all but impot-sible to discover
what it is they oppose, or what it is they recommend.
To the section of opponents represented by
Dr. VAT:GHAN we are anxious to address ourselves

with those feelings of brotherly kindness, not impos-
sible, we trust, between those who agree in principle
and differ only in details.
The question they have to decide is not " whether
the plan of national education is tho best that
can possibly be devised," but " whether it is
the beet attainable under existing circumstances."
If an architect is obliged to build on ground
already occupied to a great extent by edifices which
cannot be removed, it would be a great injustice to
demand from him a building as perfect and harmo-
nious in all its proportions as if he had been free to
select an unencumbered site, and to frame a plan in
perfect independence. The objections urged against
the minutes of council by the Morning Chronicle, the
Manchester Examiner, and other moderate journals,
would have much weight if the government had now,
for the first time, to devise a plan for the elementary
education of the people. In such a case the entire
management, control, and administration ought to be
confided, as in the United States, to public and rapes-
sible bodies, both local and central, and the it stern ell
national education should be assimilated to the aye-
tem of national police. But the Educational Com-
mittee of the Privy Council did not, on their appoint-
ment, find an open field before them for action ; it
had been almost wholly pre-occupied by school socie-
ties connected with the great religious communities;
these societies had done, and were doing. much good ;
it would, therefore, not have been desirable, even if it
had been practicable, to remove them; and thus the
interference of the state was almost necessarily confined
to assistance instead of direction. The state had to
ask content before it could give aid, and the condi-
tions of this consent could only be fixed by. the
mutual agreement of both parties—by the receivers
as well as by the givers.
The Educational Committee of the Privy Council
wisely made inspection a condition of assistance. We
could wish that the appointment of inspectors had
been confided exclusively to that body, and that in
making such appointments nothing should be taken
into account but the educational qualifications of the
candidates ; we disapproved of the National Society's
demand that the inspectors should be clergymen ; of
Lord BROUGHAM'S proposal. that they should be
barristers of five years' standing ; and of Mr. G. P. It.
JAMES'S recommendation that they should be literary
men of established reputation—all such limitations
savoured to us of the " Nothing like leather! " in the
old fable- But when the original scheme was only
saved from shipwreck in the House of Commons by a
narrow majority of two; when it was actually con-
demned by a large majority in the House of lords,
when an education, or rather, an anti-education,
clamour was rained for the vilest purposes of faction,
we thought it the part of wisdom and the part of
justice to offer such modifications of the scheme as
would calm the exaggerated fears of the timid, and
the hollow pretences of the factious. Fear
=7:tion have been silenced in the church ; it only
remains to inquire whether this great good has
been obtained without any unworthy conces-
sions justly calculated to excite the alarm of the
dissenters. There are two great educational associa-
tions in England. If we were asked, do we approve
of the entire system, and of all the regulations
adopted by either or by both of these societies?
we should unhesitatingly answer in the negative ;
but, at the same time, earnestly deprecate their
dissolution in the existing state of the country. The
course then which circumstances pointed out as most
expedient, if not absolutely necessary, was to make
the existing church schools and the existing dissent-
ing schools as good as possible, by bringing them
under a system of efficient inspection with their own
consent.
The National School Society demanded that its
representatives, the prelates, should have a concurrent
voice in the appointment of inspectors of national
schools; the British and Foreign School Society made a
similer claimfor a shareinthe appointment of inspectors
of British and Foreign schools ; the Committee of the
Privy Council complied with th requisitions of both.
We are sorry that such compliance was necessary ;
we should much rather have seen inspectors appoint-
ed by the board of education, as in Ireland and in the
United States, but we should much rather yield on a
point of such minor importance, than lose the benefits
of inspection altogether.
The inspectors of both classes of schools are prohi-
bited from interfering with the organisation, disci-
pline, and regulation of the school, and they cannot
even attempt to examine the religious instruction, ex-