The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-29 00:00:00

ght eportoo.

MAILS
The malls for New South Wale., Van Dienien'm tend, sad Nefet
Seethed will be made up on the eveninn of the 31et January.
The mails for the West Coast of Afriea nod Madeira will be made
up on the evening of the Slot January.
The Wert indm Math, melding Bermuda, Nemo, HaranaN
Random; New Orleans, Vera Cruz, Tampico, and Porto Rlo and
excludlog thorn fur Madeira, Jacturh Girths:eq., Santa Mart*
Charm, Panama, West Cont. of South America, and St. J uan.de-
Nicaragua, wit he made up on the morning of the :ad February.
The overland malts for Gibraltar, Matto, lirecoo, the lonian Wood.,
MtAden, Ceylon, In t* Ilona-Kong. sad China, ere Southampton,
made up on the morning of the 3rd February.
The mails for the Brazils, the River Plate, Monte Video, Pernam-
buco, Bahia, Madeira, and Buenos Ayres, will be mad. up on the
evening etas 4th February.
The mile fur Vigo, Uporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadiz, end Libretto,
will bs motto u a on the leamint of the 7th February.
The overiand chive.' mada, alarselltaa, to toe Merliterraness,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon, InAia, Hoop KONG Be., will be made up es the
evening of the 7th February.

TO 00IRIBPORDINTO.
••• ANerOmmost• 1•10.4.1 Sr • no Ispre..• Loodon ••.1. rare, an.
nt the eflo.. W. Sago.O.aunet. hf Tvre u'Ourh ea t.. daj m imalwatwa.

111619 Wing AT LONDON PleitKlN.
non DST— Morm,a& 91 09..11.1 Aft••••••• 19 ail,. p 97.
To-tio•••••—llar•INg.30 Ws. NO • I Worm.. 11.••• •.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JAN. 29.

Tim histories of old times, and even of not very
distant. ones, acquaint us with the wondrous effects of
eloquence upon whole multitudes, carried away to
far crusades, by the oratory of a het mit ; and even upon
grave political assemblies and parliaments which an
able speaker could twist, turn, arid persuade, accord-
ing to his fantasy, so that majorities hung upon his
words. There is no such thing now-a-days. Audi-
ences are neither so pliable, nor so soft; and elo-
quence, however mighty, tails in carrying convictions
by storm. Perhaps this is the reason why. so few
public men of the present day fall into the mistake of
striving or affecting to be eloquent.
Persuasion, in fact, is now a long-winded and
tedious task. The winning of an audience, of a party,
the inculcating an idea, the disseminating it, the
winning conviction first, and getting up the enthu-
siasm after, is now a slow work, almost like the
dropping of a seed, and patiently waiting till it
grows, in order to foster it, water it, protect its
growth, and enjoy its expansion into the stern and
the flower: such is the political eloquence of modern
times. lie who discovered it, and who practises it, is
—RICHARD COBDEN.
A speech of COBDEN'S, therefore, starting and
developing a new idea, a new principle of po-
litical action, is a very important event ; for,
although the new idea may be very startling
at first, as corn-law repeal was —so startling,
that the tories welcomed it with a smile and
a curse, half derision, half execration—yet even
tories can grow accustomed to the most unpalatable
of things, and find sense and nee: ashy. at last iu what
at first seemed mere paradox. Thus is it, thus will it
be, with the new dogma of peace broached by COB-
DEN, at Manchester, on Thursday last. Peace may
be no new theme. No divinity has had more homage
paid to it in prose and verse. And statesmen, even
when in office, always begin by scattering a few
grains of incense on its altar. . But this is mere
form. For the whole spirit of international policy
of Europe has ever been one of rivalry, over-reaching,
and hostility, open or concealed. Even friendships,
when they existed, were but alliances for the spolia-
tion of a third power. Courts led the way, with
their piques and their jealousies, their love of expense
and distinction, and of soldiers, anxious to reap re-
nowns from out the ruins of smoking cities, arid the
reeking glories of the battle-field. With all our
philanthropy and humanity, no public man or party
has ever had the courage to extricate themselves
fully from this political creed. This is the state of inter-
national opinion, which is by too many considered in-
evitable, and by pretending to destroy which Mr.
COBDEN is, no doubt, looked upon as a visionary and
a fee! prophet.
We feel confident, notw ithsts nding, that the scheme
is quite possible to be realised, and that the feelings, or I
rather the habitudes of mutual hostility, which r xist
between the different countries of Europe, have their
foundation in sentiment and idea rather than in
solid interests or in reality ; and that if the people of
France were made fully aware that the people of
England wore imbued with those sentiments that Mr.
COBDEN put forth, this conviction would be quite
enough to create in French minds a reciprocal feel-
ing, and that jealousy would give way to a mutual
amity, which it would not be in the power of king
or minister to gainsay or to abuse.

The first and mated step towards the pre-
paring and establishing such a mutual feeling
is precisely such a declaration of opinion as
that enounced by Mr. Cott D Ev, and wel-
comed as its own by a great meeting of men,
at the head of free trade and of popular opinion, in
the town of Manchester. The sentiment, we have no
doubt, will be re-echoed from abroad ; and we do
not see why war repeal should not progress as corn-
law repeal did, especially when preached by
the same voice, and diseemioated by the 64111 C energy
and perseverance.
_ . _

In another column we publish a letter addressed by
a resident in Paris to the gentlemen of the Bristol
meeting. There is no one better placed than the
writer for forming a judgment of the sentiments of
persons of influence in Paris. And yet, we think,
that if there be in France rivalry and animosity to
England, this venom lurks more in these influential
persons, and that it but partially, if at all, animates
the industrious classes. There linger a, no doubt, some
tradition of the empire, some old songs of the camp,
and the few sparks of old rancour ore kept olive by
the accounts, true or false, of English rivalry with
France in foreign countries. But all this is the off.
spring of their ignorance, or of our error. And it
gives birth to an hostility which se should employ
the schoolmaster to combat, instead of forging
bayonets to resist it.
We scarcely know what might not have been the
fatal consequences had a war-pan is sprung up here simul-
taneously with that of the Irench. But, fortunately
for us, the French led the way, and tho consequences
are fully laid before our eyes in the power-
ful speech of the great war-champion, M.
THURS. The augmentations in the French budget
for the last five or six years have been on an average
66 millions of francs, or two millions and a half
annually, which makes above 15 millions aug-
mentation; and M. TRIEB9 complains that there
is not disposable capital in the country to fill up the
loans necessary to complete these 64 millions sterling
of annual expenditure. The French are sick of it, of
the cost of steamers, bayonets, guns, and fortifica-
tions. We have but to read their debates to see it.
And certainly Mr. COBDEN, were he ten times the
patriot and philanthropist that he is, could not have
started up to address the two countries at a fitter time,
when France was weary of war expenditure, and when
England, pausing at having spent in augmcntatien of
military expenditure those very five millions
squeezed out of the country by the income-tax, stood
hesitating between idle panic and sage economy.
The meeting at Manchester, and the opinions pro-
pounded there, form, in our opinion, a new era in
foreign policy. It is, as we before said, but the
dropping of the seed; but that wed will grow, and
he who lives to watch its development will see it
covering England and the continent with a foliage of
peace.

understand the

List reduction of their minimum rate was an-
nounced, their private securities were 16,600,000 L
They have permitted these securities to run
off to the extent of two millions sterling,
without taking any steps to improve the business of
their discount office by a nearer approximation to the
rates current in Lombard-street for the same descrip-
tion of securities. This very large reduction in so
brief a space of the volume of the private securities
is the clearest indication that the alteration of Thurs-
day is not premature, and the best proof that it has
been neither hastily nor selfishly adopted. In point
of fact it is quite notorious that accommodation for
some days has been easily obtained on terms much more
favourable than even the present official minimum—
in some cases we believe at less than 31 per cent.
The grounds upon which the reduction of the
rate of interest is held to justify alarm or at
least disquietude, appear to resolve themselves
into apprehensions not very clearly expressed
that it will open the facilities of the money
market to the second and third rate classes of traders,
and that it will release the railway companies from
the difficulties which have beset them since the
summer. We are exceedingly inclined to thiuk that
these are the precise reasons which will render the
alteration not a source of further embarrassment, but
' a source of relief. What have been the actual symp-
toms in Lombard-street during the last four or five
weeks ? There has been a palpable and rapid fall of
the rate of interest on what are called first class bills,
that is, bills drawn, accepted, and endorsed, by houses
of the most assured solidity ; but there has been
a compar,.tively small and partial relaxation in
the onerous conditions imposed originally by
the discredit of October upon the mass of ordi-
nary trade acceptances, which, with few exceptions,
are every way as bonii fide and secure, but not so well
kr own, SI the paper of the BARINOS and HOTIISCIIILDS
of commerce. And, concurraitly with this retrocession
of the rate of interest on the ono hand for first class
bills, there has been an evident diminution of such
bills, arising out of the contracted transactions of the
country, on the other. The tendency has been that
which is inevitable under such circumstances. The
funds which could not find employment in the highest
channels have gradually betaken themselves to those
next in degree, and a disposition has diffused itself,
to afford a more courteous reception to the applica-
tions of the leas eminent class of borrowers. In
fewer words, there has been a general relaxation of
the rate of discount. _ . .

~Now it is this relaxation which will receive
some impetus Irom the example of the Bank ;
and so far as we can understand, the party
who are dissatisfied with the directors, point
to this impetus as the strongest justification
of their complaint. With all possible deference we
presume to think that the alarm and the discontent
are alike without foundation. We should at once
concur in the reasonableness of the fear, if instead of

being at the end, the country was at the outset of a
career of excitement. We could have no difficulty in
joining in the strongest deprecation of any measure
which extended the facilities of the money
market in the face of sue '+ events, and in the teeth
of such • tendency of the public mind as
marked the latter part of 1844 and the commence-
ment of 1815; but we submit that there is the greatest
possible difference between that time and the present.
We are not suffering from an expanding and danger-
ous spirit of speculation; it is precisely our best-
founded complaint that we find considerable difficulty
in keeping up an ordinary state of activity. We are
in the condition of a man who is slowly recovenng
from the excessive debility occasioned by a stroke of
apoplexy, or violent paroxysm of spasmodic disease.
We are as anxious as any that there should be no ap-
plication of artificial excitement, but, in the name of
common sense, do not prohibit the return of the
patient's natural appetite.
It certainly appears to us that the fall which has
taken place in the value of loanable capital is a phe-
nomenon which the Bank can neither counteract nor
prevent. We regard it as the result of the inevitable
re-adjustment which has taken place between the re-
sources and the obligations of the country by the re-
moval of the feelings of alarm and insecurity so
widely disseminated by the severe shocks of April
and October. We never accepted without most mate-
rial curtailment the doctrine, so prevalent in the
summer and autumn, that the country was perishing
from a dearth of means, and that we were the victims
of panic purely and solely because we were first the
victims of poverty. We were much more disposed to
reverse the antithesis, and believe that we were
poor because through the operation of an absurd
law we were first panic-stricken. And without plac-
ing too much reliance on a short experience, we may
safely claim the events of the last three months as
more confirmatory of the last than the first hypothesis.
If under present circumstances it cannot be re-
garded as an evil that the manufacturers of Lancashire
and Yorkshire should be relieved from a stringent
rate of banking accommodation, neither can it be re-
garded as an evil that the access to a wider field,
which is granted on the one side to the borrowers of
money, should be extended on the other to the lenders
of the same commodity, or, to drop the circumlocu-
tion, if the whole extent of Lombard-street is opened
to the applicants for discount, there is no reason why
the whole extent of the railway debenture market
should not be opened to those who keep the coffers of
Lombard-street replenished. Every person, we pre-
sume, now understands that the question of railway
expenditure is a question of degree. We cannot
spend a hundred millions a year, without reducing
ourselves to the greatest straits; but we may possibly
spend twenty millions, and not only (under reason-
able legislation) feel no inconvenience, but experience
a positive relief. Latterly, there has been a disposi-
tion to deny this very reasonable proposition, and
to decry the railway demand—unless upon a most
diminutive scale—as a most dangerous aberration,—
certain to lead to a derangement of the exchanges
and produce a panic. Now there is the strongest
grounds to suspect that the imputation against this
species of outlay, of deranging the foreign exchange,
is purely gratuitous, and cannot be sustained either
by argument or fact. It is quite true that railways
are not exportable commodities, and that if we
expend through the wages of railway labourers
fifteen millions in the course of a twelvemonth
upon extra importations of foreign articles, sugar,
coffee, cotton, and so on, we mast either counterbalance
this extra importation by an expansion of our usual
exports, or excites drain of gold. Now we contend
that in point of fact we do counterbalance these addi-
tional
imports in the ordinary course of trade—that
sufficient time intervenes between the manifestation
of the demand and the necessity for meeting it to
permit our foreign trade to rectify itself upon the
true mercantile principle of an exchange of commo-
dities. If this view of the facts be the correct oue, it
is manifest that within reasonable limits the absorp-
tion of capital in sound railway undertakings is alike
beneficial to all the parties concerned. It provides an
object of investment to the lender, a brisker trade to
the merchant, and more work and better wages to the
moat numerous and important class of all, the labourer
and the artisan. . .

.—...—.
For all these reasons we see no cause to regret the
line of conduct adopted by the Bank Directors.

THE severity of the cold, which, as we write, is
gradually covering the surface of the Thames with
ice, might of itself well excuse a reference at this
moment to the subject of the casual poor of the
metropolis.
But the contrast which winter enforces between
the comforts of the housed, warmed, and fed, and the
miseries of the naked, hungry, and houseless, is not
the only reason for our present choice of this subject.
The sight of streets more infested with beggars than
we ever remember, even at this period of the year,
the daily cases before the police courts of petty crimes
committed to secure the ignominious shelter and
bitter bread of a prison, the announcement of the
opening of the various refuges for the houseless, And
a memorial recently addressed to the poor law com-
missioners by the guardians of the City Union, pray-
ing the establishment of district asylums for the elms
now accommodated in the casual wards of the differ-
ent metropolitan workhouses, are so many pregnant
texts for present comment on the destitution of
London.
The evil to be encountered, if grappled with in its
totality, is set about with difficulties, each of which
carries at its root a social problem. We cannot pre-
tend even to state these, much less solve them.
But without attempting to compass in an article
the subject-matter of a science, we may point out cer-
tain evils which demand, and are capable of receiv-
ing, instant remedy, and we may indicate in so doing
certain distinctive features of the different climes po-
pularly included under the title " Destitute," though

Ws must own that we cannot understand the
profoundail 0E inmg rine ‘dsiooon
Thursdayvbic tohfeitsrmediuLtiounm oraftethoef
discount to 4 per cent. appears to have produced in
several quarters. There is nothing in the surrounding
circumstances which, on calm consideration, affords
any countenance to the apprehensions of permanently
cheap money, or of the rate of interest being artifi-
cially and mischievously forced below its natural level.
On the contrary, we are disposed to think that there
have been few occasions when a downward movement
of the cardinal index to which we have become accuse
tomed to attach so mach importance, has followed so
obvisusly and naturally upon the changes which hay
grown out of the spontaneous adjustments of supply
and demand in the general market. Without at pre-
sent considering whether, under the weight of its
former responsibilities—that is, its responsibilities
before 1844—the management of the Bank would
have taken the present step at the present time, it is
-Only an act of justice to point out that, subject as they
are to the injunctions of " unresOicted competition,"
imposed with so much emphasis by the framers of
Amu present charter, the directors coSi..l scarcely have
nxelcused a greater degree of forbeara'ce than has
=OW their conduct in the present instance. On the
! 23rd 2:laptanber (1847), the day on which the