The Express.
London, England, 1847-10-07 00:00:00

TREK!,
.*tter'lst
to tit do.nyir.itie
recruited 7

surprise that the slate,
the.plague, it is a
trying *mantic vagraney, should
permit the • . importation of tribes of foreign
beggars, recru, in a manner offesaive to humanity,
living, es we have seen, so as to threaten witha plague
the places where they congregate, and earning their
keeper's gain at the expense of the daily comfort
of hundreds and thousands of individuals, whom their
intolerable grinding and twanging incessantly afflicts.
The system itself, we say, is hateful. At the head
of it there are a number of Piedmonteee and Italian
rascals, who buy the use of these children from
their parents for a stated period, keep them miser-
ably, treat them harshly, and turn them out daily
to prey on the patience of the quiet parts of the
town. All day they grind, gesticulate, and beg. The
pence they have collected, which are either given
to get rid of an intolerable annoyance, or be-
stowed by idle servants from the little stores of the
children in their charge, are handed over at night to
the head ogre. If the day's stroll has produced little
or nothing, the children are apt to get roughly I
treated. The best usage they meet with is a supper
of some cheap and filthy mess, and after it a lair of
rags or straw, shared in common by soma dozens,
heaped together—a mass of filth, vermin, & we&
nees.
The infliction which the noise of their instruments
causes in all the better parts of the town is no trifling
one. It is hateful to those who love music, and weari-
some to those who do not. In the squares and streets
of the West-ead there is hardly a minute free from
their disturbance, from ten in the forenoon to a late
hour in the evening. To many persons their grum-
bling. and squeaking is a grievance of no common
severity—a distressing, monotonous, importunate
that renders reading, conversation, or writing, ma Ea/-
pleasant, at times an all but impossible, effort. Then
is not, we are persuaded, one oat of every hundred
householders, or inmates, in the quarters infested by
these hardy-gurdies, that does not hate the aniseneo,
and heartily wish it were abolished. Quiet, stadia=
people, whom it disagreeably interrupts in their occu-
pations, the sensitive, and, above all, the sick, may
well ask why they are not protected from this plague,
which is a torture to them and &pleasure to nobodyouod
may deem it unjust that the homes of peaceable natives
of this country should be rendered at times nearly un-
bearable by the operations of these foreign mendi-
cants—worse, tenfold, than our own street beggars,
whom the police will not tolerate; because these ply,
and far more quietly, in the street only ; from the
other you cannot escape, he plants his noisy machine
before your window, the din pierces into every corner
of the house, nor ceases to " make day horrible "
until it has moved off a street's length, by which time
—non deficit alter—a new grinder has usually begun
to strike up the eternal polka, or massacre anew some
air from the Sonnambula.
This of itself may by, some be thought but a trivial
grievance; although it does seem hard that num-
bers of persons should be expceed, without a
remedy, to this kind of daily torment, the iteration
of which makes up in a MOM what it may want in
intensity. Were any equivalent pleasure given, or
good done by. it to others—were it an incident of the
necessary business of life in large towns—nay, were
the system to which it belongs not bad in itself, and,
as we have seen, the cause of other evils, the mere
personal matter of complaint might not be thought
sufficient to deserve the notice of a journalist. But
when the true state of the case is the very opposite in
all these conditions—when it is known that this form
of foreign vagrancy is the fruit of a vile cupidity,
kept up by means offensive to natural feel-
ing a kind of slave dealing, in fact, at-
tended with many incidents of cruelty—that the
system is not only a moral but a physical pestilence—
it may well be an additional reason for complaint that
it is also such a nuisance to many as we have been
faintly describing. In times like the present, too,
when our own poor find it hard enough to live, and
are punished if they beg, the permission of this worse
kind of begging, by a tribe of vagrants deliberately
imported to extort alms by tormenting our ears, we
do take leave to think an injustice to the English
vagrant, as well as an infliction on the dwellers in
London.
Let it not be said that this is the " poor man's
music"—that we are pampering the sensitiveness of
the rich at the expense of those who have few re-
creations. There is no such case whatever here. The
hurdy-gurdy does not play for the poor, or in the
poorer streets, in general. The quarters it infesb
are chiefly the residences of those who have some-
thing to give, and ears that the noise may torment to
the giving point. The contributions are raised is
Belgrave-square or Baker-street ; the charity or huh-
money, as the case may be, on which these strollers
depend, is not sought from the humbler classes at
all. The nuisance, therefore, is not redeemed
by any sentimental circumstance whatever: it
is an annoyance, founded on a vile traffic, and
adds, as we have now seen, a noxious element to
a class of evils which it is the duty of all good go-
vernment to uproot. The process in this instance
would not be difficult. It may not be easy to dispose
of our own mendicants, in times of general distress :
but it is surely in the power of this country to prevent
the continuance and the contagion of a trade which
lets loose upon its shores the noisy nuisance of this
Italian beggary.

A portion of the following appeared in part of last
evening's issue.
The news from Italy is important The Austrians
gave up Ferrara on the 25th to the pontifical troop,.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany has changed his mi-
nisters, substituting statesmen of well-known liberality
for reactionaries, and has abolished the arbitrary
power of the police. The leaders of the Calabrian in-
surgents have made a proposition to General Stratclia
to lay down their arms and to return to their allegi-
ance, on condition of an amnesty and an assurance of
political reform. Such are the heads of the intelligence
which has reached us under forms more or less en-
titled to reliance.
The letters from Rome are to the 28th ult. The
fact of the evacuation of Ferrara is positive. The
circumstances which preceded it are lees cer-
tainly given. According to a correspondent of
the C-onstitutionnel, writing from Rome, his Holi-
ness tried, without effect, mild and conciliating
remonstrances to induce the Austrian cabinet to with-
draw the troops. He then informed Count Lutzow,
that if human means failed to enable him to preserve
the trust which had been confided to him, he would
have recourse to divine means. He would first address
himself to the whole Christian world, and ask their
prayers for the deliverance of the church, and that if
after that Austria should persist in keeping her troops
in the city of Ferrara, he would be compelled to resort
to excommunication. Before this threat Austria re-
coiled ; an order was expedited for the retirement
of the troops from the city of Ferrara, and this
measure was carried into effect on Saturday,
the 25th ult. It is not correct that any compromise
was consented to on the part of the Pope, in virtue of
which the city was to be occupied by Swiss troops,
and that the civic guard was to be excluded from that
service. The guard-houses of the town were surren-
dered by the Austrian troops to the National Guard.

The edvices from Florence give a full report of the
circumstances which led to the ministerial changes
in that cabinet. Some time since, the Marquis Corium,
the governor of Genoa, had been nominated by the
grand duke, minister of foreign affairs. This noble-
man, the head of one of the oldest and moat illustrious
families in Tuscany, had acquired immense popu-
larity by his conduct during the popular movement
of which Leghorn has lately been the theatre, and
by his well-known liberal and enlightened opinions.
On assuming hie office as a cabinet minister, he
found himself associated with men of retrograde
doctrines, who were disposed to check the p
of reform rather than promote it. Upon this he resolved
to make known to the sovereign his opinions,
which he did in the form of a draft of a project
of a new constitution, such as he was prepared to
advise, and finding alter this that he continued to
I have beside him the same reactionary or stationary
colleagins he resigned and retired to Rome. This
event produced a sensation in Tuscany too strong and
too universal to be either overlooked or misunder-
stood by the sovereign, who at once decided to re-
model his cabinet, so as to bring it more into
harmony with public opinion. M. Bologna, the head
of the police, was dismissed, his office abolished, and
the Ministry of the Police made responsible to
the Minister of the Interior. The general direction
of the police, subject to this control, was con-
ferred on a citizen of unquestioned probity
and capacity. The Marquis Ridolil and Count
Seristori, both men of the most liberal opinions,
and well-known friends of reform, were nominated

We congratulate the members of the meeting at by certain Italian vagabonds, which, on more than event proauceu a sensauon
Birmingham, and the commercial world at large, on one account, wo think would be prohibited in any too universal to be either
the tone observed in their discussion of the currency well ordered system of police. The naimance is a stood by the sovereign, w
question. Men of various opinions respecting the double one. We have reported one instance, amongst model his cabinet, so as
best organisation of a national enrreney—opunons on many, of the pestilent matter it brings into the spots harmony with public opinic
which some have staked professional success, others where these hired mendicants are huddled together of the police, was dismuse
literary' reputation, and all a greet portion of a labo- in their owner's sty ; and only those who are de- the Ministry of the Pot
none life devoted' to observation and study of the priced of hearing can be ignorant of the annoyance the Minister of the Intel
subject—agreed to waive each his peculiar notions of their daily performances inflict on all who reside ii of the police, subject to
the remedy, to joie in a unanimous declaration as quarters of the town which they haunt with incessant ferred on a citizen of
to the cause of the disease that has involved us discords. The whole system indeed, bad in its origin, and capacity. The Ma
in our present calamities. This is as it should and uopleasar.t in all its effects, seems to deserve pro- Seriston, both men of t
bc. Men who are in earnest in their desire to effect hibition ; and, under all the known circumstances of and well-known friends o