The Express.
London, England, 1849-02-08 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, THURSDAY

!it
IlliAllikihe Abel -L.-
= wasuirsAX
as
far it zeal,
as . lit urea Is
races: ems`
bow
abg...
6ai hai
a igh)'ireltilikylimile • bow hear:
led= he
Itail ape glad linwideet allsdism—eisaidedigo eissobst
ins et Mama impertant supparless ef the regent siggsrad
barb basses be Win
ed -that • emegealenelve manse
aside be inisednaa,•he did Mak he yea aotig=sapp.
met In ergesering_ • hope thee the farther vgi
the rpotalid be Azad lee enathes sad ale., deg.
(ll_ inks hem"
Lord J. SMALL —The mega and esseldeentbas se.
idgaed by the km patiemene me, I admit. eadisisat Se
j debt, sae is at dab insestag Se la myna. ;
the
I mat,
on the ,fiber heed, observe did I easidered it the besides
duty et her lidesey's minbline* to less as time in lay-
ing baba do Mai of Osseasse what they lad done and
proposed to de spa this albs! s alemmiss, we Pa-
lave land IS able asemsary to tepelitil the
without aiming to pediment. Regard-
rg the in=l *sic I think the hist. gentleman hardly
sides the qualm Addy, when lie says it amounted to this—
whether the people of Ragland are to pay the pool' rates of
Ireland in sideline to their own. In 1622 a loan sad great
EVrem la die earring pages el Ireland, that belag a
at vibe thems were se pose laws Is that country
MA pans MOS art made its the same parame, and yet
me mil t =me 111.11 MN apes the government for sub-
im to the house. But in this year,
wi=e rehatillijillieleesentaims and other goading.* have
glees their ma to slaw by which 1,600,0001. have been
sessissi in theatre afro, rates, you open forward and
my is thin pardweler year, which has been one of increased
poverty, that Imbue 'Leedom nothing for herself, and now
spires that her par rates should be paid by rui—(hear)—
lbw math* u_seineash which has never ban made before,
seen when lairadertstitl no poor rater, cr very limited poor
rates. That is not taking • very comprehensive
elserelthe enhject. hen this question comes on for eta-
sidlisealhet again, I CM enter Into no such pledge as the hoe.
=lllMmnsie—that this will be the lest grant proposed.
ehmeL) Neither will I say that a comprehensive
meneare b new prepered by which I can do away with the
neemartyetterther grants. I should think it exceedingly wrong
If eiresmstaners of great exigency should arise, involving
the aseassity of saving thousands from famine, that the m-
en** at this government should have pledged and bound
INN to that Went. (Cheers.) I will, therefor •, leave
MEOW IMO WS the sabiect, that I may not be prevented
ken obeying a saw dpublio duty should it prompt me to
ask for a grant at a future time. (Hear, hear.) I will not
pledge myself that this elan be the last iron ; but this I will
say, that having had many propositions urged upon us re
epee-deg the Irith poor law in the course of the last two
years, which we have been reproached for not accepting,
and it having turned out that in many instst.c.a the
authors of those prepositions have themselves abandoned
them, her Majesty's ministers have considered what they
think should be the amemdments in the big poor law,
and have arrived at the couclusion that if such amend-
ments were made, otter consequences would follow which
would Year upon the rating of property in Ireland. When
the poor-law committee meets I shall be pre-
pared to state tatrly to that committee my views
and opinions. I will not say that those views and opinions
may not be modified by the opinions of the Irish member,
who may be better acquainted than I am with the working
of particular provisions of the measure. I confess that there
is no more difficult subject than a poor law in any c 'witty.
(Hear, hear.) The various amendments made in the Eng-
lish poor law from the time of Elizabeth era ample proof of
that fact, even in a flourishing and wealthy community like
that of England. But in Ireland, where the law has been
only recently in.rodueed, I must say that the difficulties of
the question are increased. I will not say that lem now so
fully muter of the details of the law se to be prepared to
submit to tte hoses a proposal for its amendment. Heine
may think It the part of a wise government to be prepared
to offer a reassure on every subject in all its details, and that
unless it can do so it is not worthy of the name of govern.
ment. I metros I do not pretend to such wisdom. I will
state the views I entertain, and which I have derived from
all the reports I have seen on the nbjeet, and from the study
I have made of the law itself and its general principles,
to the eammittee when it meets ; and after my mind shall
be nmileup, notwithstanding the opinion of that committee,
I will the propose to this house what I consider advisable
on the 'abject. I will now say no more. I think this vote
ateesity to prevent the direful effects of famine in the
most liberated parts of Ireland. I think that the poor law,
although ft las succeeded fully to my expectations generally,
Whet dew so fully in certain parts of Ireland, and in others
has bees And quite unequal to the distress. But the
annendmante I mean to suggest I would prefer stating to the
commilese than to this hones. I ant now quite ready to
the further consideration of the present question
till ay next; bat we shall then have no other proposition
to make.

The debate was accordingly adjourned till Friday nut.
The house resumed, and again went into committee to pass
the usual formal vote of supply.
The house resumed, and adjourned at 5 minutes before
8 o'clock.

the Orpreoo.

The nib Mr liithit North newton end the United Mahn
will be Brie op ea the evening et the PA
The =Me Mr the We Omit of Aides end IMledeira adii be made
tip on the min. of the 11th fib.
lits Weil India Manta andsdlng Ilasilads, Nassau, Havanna.
Nye Odom, ant Km." sad laoludin than kw
Medelrn /t .lemde•Pleereane, Mew oragada. Chin, and Perft. .in
be.de up emir istenleg eT A. iTMI Pen
TM masks 111" m . Z elendee, GNU; and Cllhreltar
will be nab wpm fie emenlnist tbe 111 b 1141 h
The =Me let NM% Oeeen the le elma Wands, Fink
Aden. *An. bias. Natiase.s
Olime. of. Southampton, -11 W
be smienkenx.the emweleArel the 21Mb Feb.
,Ibe els ite, le tbs liellnnunan, Supt. Ad"
Ilseo4lang, be., witt be wade ay on the mobs
15.121.1" - - -

-11 w imilular Vora Sow& W. Vas Dispair's Lasit, awl lfute
SWAM will to %Wm; lio swabs et lir Mk Tab.
Thu t Ilis liewilu awl Bum area, will to
Node Was *1 emir Ur 46 Muzelp.

MGR WATILII AT LODON DEM
Sa DBT —Metbag, IT WA. paut IN,
At wan, Se O'.W. wt
To-Waskrw —H.idag, LW. put I Afeww 40 W. wit I;

LONDON, THURSDAY, FEB. 8.
We perigee that the ill-used Spanish bondholders
have resolved to entrust the me of their interests in
Madrid to their Dutch brethren, and that their ex-
postulations and petitions to General Nenverz, the
supreme arbiter of their fate, are to be forwarded
through Amsterdam. Humiliating u this may be, it
cannot be attributed to the absence of a British
minister from Madrid, for we well recollect that, at
a time when we were duly represented at Madrid,
the English bondholders went over with an address
to Louis PHILIPPI to interfere in their behalf, as
the prince who had most influence in the Spanish
capital
We doubt if the bondholders will gain more by
Dutch than by French mediation. And notwithstand-
iag the honeyed and mendacious letter of NAPNAZZ,WO
do not believe that anything will be ever got from a
Spanish government constituted as at present, except
by an appeal to its only union', its furs or its va-
pidity. General NARVAI2 declares that if the interests
of the bondholders have been forgotten, it has been
owing to late events, to the diplomatic squabbles and
the Carnet insurrection, which have allowed him no
time to think of anything else. Bat had not General
NAIIVAP2 ample moments during his loag hold of
power, undisturbed by insurrection P And when were
these visited by one thought of justice to any of the
creditor, of Spain P
We think, however, that the Spanish bondholders
in Lyndon might find some more direct representative
than a Dutchman to learn the sentiments of General
Maven, or spur his honest inclinations. For we
believe that, notwithstanding the gross insult inflicted
by the Smith government on this court and its re-
preauftdie, nevertheless, Englishmen, holding
at least semi-diplomatio positions, have opened nego-
tiations with the Spanish government on the subject
of this insult, and of the breach which ensued.
Now, we do think that the conduct of Colonel
WiLsos or of any other English diplomatist, in thus
acting, his been either mast reprehensible, if volun-
teered, or, if each conduct has been sanction d and
ordered by the Foreign-office, there has been
a very gross forgetfulness of its own dignity
and of the country's honour by that clam
No one can know anything of Spain without being
aware that the impunity and encores of the military
dictator of that country to expelling the representative
of QlllllVicroni. from Madrid has lowered England
beyond all calculation in the eyes of Spaniards ; and
not only lowered England, but all the political ideas
and principles peculiarly identified with, and patron-
tied by, England, such as a representative
form of government and a free commercial system.
For England to recover even a certain degree of the
esteem and respect of the Spaniards, it was absolutely
neomeary either to avenge the insult by violence
(which towards so weak a country and so contemp-
tible a government was wisely avoided), or at least to
show a proper sense of dignity, in demanding and
awaiting that Spain should make the first reparation.
But whoever knows the Spaniards, must know that
the worst way to obtain this reparation was to send
envoys to crave for it, or to get expectant diplomatists
to negotiate for it.
Seven or eight thousand a year is, however, too
good a salary to be left in abeyance. And as soon uit
was evident that it was beyond Lord Pautseseon'e
power to force Sir Hu= Blum= upon NAP,
vase, supported, as the latter war, by Lord
&UNLIT, great anxiety and efforts would
r infallibly be felt and made to procure the

;NINO, FEBRUARY :11549.

new eppointainet. For this thi &ego task was ro-
llie ef solisiOng Tsolon aid intriguing at Ma-
d,• is as doubt the candidate who could Wag to
libredgereilles Clensral NW/ie. testimony that
he wadi be
.acceptable, and that he *mid obtain
amen 00110,11•101111 than another—each a gentleman
could not but establish a great etaleh-
We ire truly marry that parliament did not long
sines latish's. If Kr..Bsitiess wore really so chary,
as he pretends to be, of the hoarser sad dignity of his
°Ninny, he would have limed sa bids= to her
Ma j. paying that the post of sayoy to the court
of ipsia be suppressed. It wsuld be 7,0001. • year
saved to the country, and would be the doing
away with a place which is of so sort of use
to our influence, interest, or dignity, bat
very mush the contrary. The doing away
with the =lazy would homiest a stop to the Intrigues
and to the underhand treating with Ntaverz,which
we take to be one of the disgraceful phenomena of our
time.

We perceive it stated in the nines that Sir
HINRY BuLwza has been appointed British Envoy to
Washington. We heard this rumour, but we did not
credit it ; for it is patting Sir H. Burman into a post
inferior to that from which he was ignominiously ex-
pelled. And Lord PALICZINTON' by thrusting his
own envoy into this inferior post, does in fact coun-
tersign the vindictive sentence of Nhay.in, and hum-
bles himself and the country before the all-powerfal-
=Xl of the Spanish general.
We warn the Spanish bondholders that such truck-
ling can sever conduce to their interests. And we
advise them to petition, that in any negotiation with
Spain for a renewal of diplomatic intercourse, the in-
terests A the bondholders should be specially put for-
ward. This is what the American creditors of another
nation would ask from their government, and what
their government dund not refuse them.
But, for our own part, we see no need at all of an
English envoy at the court of Spain in jeopardy as it
is, and almost certain to perish. as indeed it deserves,
in no distant convulsion. A chargé d'afaires is quite
sufficient, and one thousand a year an ample
price for any influence which we are ever likely to
have, or which is worth wielding, at a court like that
of Queen ISABELLA, or with a government like that of
Neaverz.

OP all our colonies thole which compose the West
India group are in the least promising circumstances.
In an economical point of view they are badly off; but
this is the least alarming feature of their case. Per-
severance .ind industry, if government would only
leave them alone, would restore them from their pre-
sent depret•sion in time, and meanwhile the means
of comfortable subsistence, if not of wealth, are within
the reach of the whole population. There is no such
destitution there as we witness among our home
paupers, and there cannot be. Bat there are elements
of strife and contention among them—animosities of
clams and opinion•—that prevent cordial co-operation
for the redress of common grievances, and suggest
perverted views of measures by which their condition
is to be bettered.

There are eighteen British colonies in the West
Indies, occupying an aggregate territory of some
18,000 square miles (if the cultivated part of Guiana
be alone taken into consideration), and having a
population of about a million of souls. In 1842 the
proclaim of these colonies imported into Great Britain
was valued at six millions; the exports to them from
Great Britain at five millions and a half. These data
do not warrant the impression that these colonies are I
deficient in wealth. The declared value of British,
and Irish produce and merchandise exported from
this country in 1842 was forty-seven millions. This
was rather below the average of the years immedi-
ately preceding and folio% mg, which may be taken
at fitly millions. The million of residents in the
West India colonies produced for exportation
six millions' worth of property; the twenty-four
millions of the mother country fifty millions' worth.
Between the imports of Great Britain and those of
the West Indies there are no data for instituting a
comparison: the imports into the latter from the
United States and the British provinces in North
America are not stated. But when we see that com-
modities to the value of five millions and a half were
imported from Great Britain alone, and take into
account the extensive provision and lumber trade
which these colonies carry on with North America,
there can be no doubt that their import trade bears
a fair proportion to their export trade.
Still, that the economical condition of the West
Indies is in a very deranged and depressed condition
is unfortunately' beyond a doubt. This is mainly
owing to two otroumetanoes—the peculiar tenure of
property and involved circumstances of the proprie-
tary class; and the difficulty felt by that class of
adapting itself to the new relations between the capi-
talist and the labourer introduced by negro eman-
cipatioa.
The social revolution to which the West Indies
were subjected by the sot emancipating the negroes,
and, perhaps to a still greater extent, the legislative
interference limiting the quantity of slave labour of
many previous years, have done much to aggravate
the embarrassments of West Indian proprietors and
capitalists, but they have not caused them. The
jealous restrictive and protective policy of this coun-
try in respect of its =gar colonies, gave rise to a ooun-
teractieg policy on the continent. It called into exist-
ence the beetroot sugar manufactories of France and
Germany,and the exclusion of tropical gagers for their
protection. The market of our West India planters
came thus to be restricted to the British islands. But,
conennectly with this narrowing of the market for
their produce, Great Britain went on increasing the
extent of country from which that market was sup-
plied. Guiana, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Mauritius, and.
other sugar-producting colonies, were wrested from
France, Spain, and Holland. The production of East
India sugar was encouraged. The sugars of the
Brasil and Cuba were allowed to be refined in bond in
England for exportation. Under such a system the
value of sugars in the British market—the only
market open to the West Indies—could not fail
to dlaioish rapidly and continuously. Bat the slave.
awnsrs of those colonies attributed all their losses to
the interference of the home government with slave
labour, and, engraft(' by the inveterate and hopeless
warfare they persisted in waging against emancipa-
tion, aver dreamed of attending to the infinitely
greater danger which threatened them from the grasp-
mg and selfish commercial policy of the mother
couTnheretry.
was a circumstance in the social position of
the proprietary clam which aggravated greatly the
mischief of this oversight In the earlier period of
British sugar speculation, the value of that product
was enormous, and immense fortunes were ra-
pidly acquired by West Indian proprietors
and planters. The aristocratic English fami-
lies who had obtained extensive West Indian
grants were thus enabled to draw large
revenues from their properties, under a lax and
irregular system of management that allowed their
agents to grow soddenly rich and become proprietors
in their turn. No person of English race, who can
affard to live indolently on his income in England,
will remain to play the part of an economical manager
within the tropics. The great majority of the West
India proprietors became, as a matter of course, ab-
sentees. A few of them were, by
.birth and con-
nexion, members of the English aristocracy : all of
them affected the expenditure and pursuits of this
class. At London, Bath, and Cheltenham, the West
Indians were noted as profuse votaries of pleasure:
early in the course of last century Governor
ThlrON wrote to a Barbadoce planter, " The loose and
extravagant education of your youth is a sure indica-
tion of calamity and misery to your country, for in a
few years they come to govern the public affairs."
Among other aristocratic luxuries the West Indians
did not fail to indulge in the purchase of seats in
parliament, and the rxords of the Pirr-made peerage
attest what sedulous and successful coronet hunters
they made.
The habits contracted in the first flush of West
Indian wealth have been persisted in throughout the
decline occasioned by the narrowing of their market
to Great Britain, increased extent of the British sugar
colonies, and other causes. The result has been that
almost every West Indian property has been mort-
gaged to the teeth. In some oases the English
merchants who have advanced loans have foreclosed,
in others they have oftpelled the proprietors to em-
ploy themes sole agents on their own terms. In the
latter case, stores and other necessaries have for a
long tract of years been supplied to the plantations
at exorbitant rates, and the produce, when remitted
to this country, carried to amount for the reduction of
debts previously incurred. In the former case the
mer _haute, ignorant •••f the peouliar modes of West
India cultivation, ignorant of the booms of sugar-


growing and making, have persisted in managizetrleied
estates from a distance that would have r
profitable management even by the most skilful and
intelligent, impourdbin In addition to these draw-
backs, the monopoly of the West Indian trade
has settled in a few large, and in most
oases bug-established, bosses, who long clung
with desperate fidelity to antiquated and unfitting
modes of °manning business, amid all the revolutions
which that trade was undergoing. And when
awakened to the change that had taken place they
rushed precipitately into measures which made bad
worse. The revelations made to the creditors, on the
recent radars of one of these houses, show that it had
endeavoured to retrieve its West Indian losses by em-
barking largely in speculations in the Mauritius, at-
tempting to conduct its business both there and in the
West Indies without increasing its capital. Bach
e gambling—throwing double or quits—
could
eariave only one result; and this is but one
example of what has, in different ways, been done by

many.
The social revolution effected by negro emancipa-
tion would have tried the stability. of West Indian
resources in the most favourable mrcumstanses ; and
It hes been brought to bear upon a bankrupt pro-
prietary upon a proprietary. who are in
many instances only the nominal owners or
their plantations. They are reluctant to relin-
quish for a time their aristocratic habits—the
reputation of a wealth they no longer possess—and
to set themselves to work by economy and industry to
make the most of their still highly capable posses-
sions. Like drowning men they catch at every
straw. They ally themselves to the corn monopo-
lists, hoping that if the corn monopoly can be re
established theirs may be preserved. They appeal to
the opponents of slavery, and try to colour their
monopoly with the fair pretext of a discouragement
to the employers of slaves. They delude themselves,
and allow themselves to be deluded by interested poli-
ticians, with vain prospects of re-establishing a state
of things which has passed away for ever.
These are unpalatable truths; but they are a bitter
medicine, which the West Indians must swallow it
they would escape rain. The great body of the
people of this country will sympathise with and
aid the West Indians in their' struggles against
the ignorant and vindictive despotism of the Co-
lonia' office; in their straggles to obtain self-
government and economical government; in the as-
sertion of their claims to procure frco labour wherever
they can find it at their own cost; and in their de-
mands to be allowed to trade freely with all parts of
the world. Bat the people of this country will no
longer be saddled with a monopoly of English sugar-
growers; they will not plunge into Quixotic wars
against countries yet unconvinced of the evils of
slavery and the slave trade; they will not be juggled
into paying more money on account of emancipation to
communities two-thirds of whose members have gained
the power to dispose of their own labour and much
money by emancipation. The occupants of our West
India colonies have ample sources of wealth in their
own soil if theywill set to work in the right way, and
they must do this if they would prosper, for JOHN
Batt's pocket is finally and hopelessly buttoned up.