The Express.
London, England, 1848-09-15 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 15, 1848.

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LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPT. 15.

lug suffice, betrays that the volcanic psalms of
noman =tare have been gathering from secret India-
genceseeruntratad heat and power.
Tel a greater or less extedtrft appears that th's will
Mobably always be the case *while man remain, what
These sett-regarding impulses which generate
will always be too Woo; in some individuals
ustsalissi by the moral and religious midi-
men% or counteracted by the maxims which reason
frames foe the guidance of conduct. But the
=tent to which the experience, even of our imperfect
and comparatively skin-deep civilisation, shows that
they ma be subdued and brought under, warrants the
home that hereafter they may by the appliance of
means be yet further subjugated.
lavery such incident as the Essex or Norwich poi-
sonings is a proclamation that men need more and
better education. Mere instruction is not sufficient.
Knowledge is power ; and superior knowledge, like
superior strength of any kind, is as likely, where
there has been no steady and continuous discipline in
the practioe of duties,. to be made by its possessor an
instrument for injuring his fellows as for benefiting
them. Of knowledge it is not desirable to deprive
any one, for know es though not necessarily the
road to virtue, is the only one through which the
discipline which makes men virtuous can be attained.
Nor is it possible to debar men from knowledge ;
wherever it exists it spreads through society se by
contagion. It is caught up from conversation, or from
transacting the business of common life. In a country
like ours, where the most common processes of in-
dustry are based upon scientific principles, and where
everything is publicly discussed, schools are na re-
quired to impart knowledge. And too large a pro-
portion of society has with us been left to pick up the
knowledge which it cannot be denied to possess, in
this scrambling and desultory manner. The power of
knowledge has been imparted to the whole of society;
and this only renders it the more nece•sary that train-
ing should be super-added, to prevent individuals
from abusing this power. We cannot take from the
most wretched wayside beggar the knowledge that a
pennyworth of limiter matches, or yellow orpiment,
renders him powerful ; we must counteract this von- 1
scious power, by training all in the knowledge and
practice of reciprocal duties.
The church cannot do this in our country. The
discipline of the church is and must be based upon
faith in its doctrines • and a largo proportion (no
matter what it be) of ;he population have not faith in
those doctrines, and will not allow their children to
be trained in them. All our multitudinous churches
cannot do this, ter the condition of their co-existence
—full liberty to every man to choose his own church
—necessarily leaver a number of waifs and strays,
who hang but loosely on any church, or stand aloof
from all. The state alone can do it, for to the state
all, whatever their creed, owe obedience. There are
social and public duties which are incumbent upon
every man, whatever be his creed—dui() recognised
by all churches—duties which the state may undertake
to instruct and train the youth of the nation in,
without trenching on the peculiar domain of any
church. And in these duties the state ought to see
that all children are instructed and practically trained.
It ought to see to this u a matter of common justice
and humanity, for it is little less than cruelty and
tyranny to exact the penalties of laws from those who
never have been taught to know them, or accustomed
to conform to them. The state ought to see to this as a
measure of precautionary police, fur such training is
the surest means of reducing amount of crime in
society to a minimum.

IT ie & BOOM of satisfaction to have at Ines a
solemn debate of the French National Assembly
marked by talent, eloquence, and by the manifesto*a
of high intellectual powers. Hitherto it was a scares
of triumph to thosewho believe that genius,
political genius, is a matter of birth and bra ' =lllll.
point oat the empty and tumultuous debates of the
several popular assemblies in France and la
Germany. Unfortunately, their early debates
ran upon personal questions, for which new
and young legislators were not endowed with
sufficient temper or habitudes of restraint, or
else they were subiects of foreign or financial
pulley, on which it is easy for novices to imagine
themealves well informed, when in fact they are
Ignorant se babes.
The disunion now in progress, and kept up with
ewe se matiss and eloquence by the Foes& mew
hip le the lid that has divided that body (ads two
narked palish the one abetting the old veselved ideas
of political esesomy and governmental eseessity, the
other enthusiastic for new ideas, eager to
establish a theory at lead that the people have some-
thing to gain, morally as well as phlititalty, by a re-
volution. What gives terrible interest to the argu-
ments on both sides is, that each appeals to different
classes of the population and of the electoral body,
the one to the proprietorial class, the other to the
proletarial class—classes, too, that have lately fought
one of the most fearful battles that ever occurred in
civil war—a battle, too, which in vanquishing and *-
*sating the prolitaires, has neither crushed, nor
harabled, nor silenced, them.
It is a m2lancholy thing to find this civil strife
which has but just ces.sed in the streets taken up
is the legislature, and fought, with words in lieu of
swords indeed, but with words powerful and keen
m any material weapons. And the difference,
though in the present state of exacerbation it is one
of life and death, is not so vital or so profound after
alltin, ifr. treated with temper, and discussed with
eWhat
the popular party proclaim is, that
all men have a right to subsistence—a right
to labour. Few, even of the most rigid
political economists, would be inclined to
act Rigidly on the principle contrary to this. The
danger of the universal right to get labour lies in the
proclaiming it. There can be no denying that when
any number, small or great, of the population have
been thrown out of bread, and of the ways of earning,
it is the duty of the state to look to such a condition
of misery, and endeavour by all means to remedy it.
Bat the admitted danger lies in proclaiming to the
labouring class before hand that they can rely on the
state or the law, not on their own exertions.
For this in fact would deprive the lower class
of the great spring and incentive to industry and
activity. All classes above them feel this spring
and motive, in the fear of descending, of losing sta-
tion, comforts, and the distinguishing characteristics
of their class. That portion of the population which
can descend no lower in the social role is the one
most difficult to endue with motives of industry
and habits of prevision. To render their existence
certain, independently of exertion of mind and
conduct, were at once to demoralise them. The
right to labour, therefore, were it in truth
• right, is one of those truths that must be held
folded up sod concealed in the beneficent hand, to be
practised not promulgated, acted but not expatiated
upon, and having a de facto not ade jure existence,
because the latter would render the former an im-
possibility.
It is almost beyond the power of the pen to enume-
rate or depict the ruins and the evils that have been
inflicted on the cause of liberty in Europe by the enun-
ciation of the doctrines of the Enoch communists. In
France they have jeopardieed not only the interests
of freedom, but have rendered doubtful even the
maintenance of oonstitational government. They
have deluged the state with anarchy and the streets
with blood. They have made the second capital of
civilised Europe half a camp, half a horde of banditti.
limy have caused the independence of Italy to be
lost; have thrown disgrace and doubt upon the young
efforts of liberty, even in lands most try-
ingly and outrageously in want of the first
elements of that liberty. In short, if there is II MU
or a school that have proved curses to humanity,
M. Louts BLANC and his friends form that school.

Those of the liberal party who object to state edu-
cation appear to labour under a contusion of ideas.
They confound the state with the central executive
government. In a free country the state is the whole com-
plex of tree citizens in the aggregate, no: the officials
in whom the power of central administration is lodged.
A system of state education—of national edu-
cation—does not necessarily imply the intrust-
ing of the central government with extended powers
of patronage, or of casting the minds of youth
into an arbitrary mould to sutuerve its own
purposes. The advocates of national secular educa-
tion only ask that what is a public concern should be
conducted by the whole public, in concert and ssste-
matically. National education in New England has
been conducted by the incorporated townships, guided,
superintended, or aided by the central legislature,
without any addition to the patronage of the executive
or any attribution to it of the power of drilling men's
minds into a pre-conceived shape, that can infringe on
the utmost liberty either of thuaght or action. May
it not be so with WI ? Be u jealous as you please of
encroachments on individual liberty by the executive:
retain as much power as may seem expedient to
local communities in carrying into effect a
system of national education. But do not wil-
fully shut your eyes to the fact that regard to
the peace and stability of society, and the duty which
the community owes to every individual, alike
demand that every one of those who are barn to be
citizens be instructed and trained in the duties of
citizens.

We have admitted that the best training conceiv-
able will not altogether prevent occasional burst. of
passion into crime. The completion of our police
organisation ought not to be overlooked in our
asulee to attain the better discipline of the indi-
vidual mind. There are some circumstances con-
noted with the investigations now in progress in
Essex which remind us how lamentably deficient the
pollee organisation of the country is. It appears that
be the course of the inquiry the justices have
been obliged to transfer it to the coroner, because
they have no authority to order the exhuma-
tion of bodies ; and that the coroner has been obliged
to desist from the scrutiny of ono case because he has
not authority to go into secondary evidence. Here
we have two authorities whose combined powers
would be adequate to the detection of crime, but who,
each possessing only a portion of these powers, are
both together inadequate to the task. Some noisy and
rather indecorous squabbles between the coroners and
stipendiary police magistrates of London respecting
the limits of their respective jurisdictions, whim must
be fresh in the memories of our readers, show that a
similar mal-arrangement prevails here. Coroners,
justices of the peace, and stipendiary police magis-
trates are parts of three distinct systems
for the detection and repres don of crime,
which have been introduced at different pe-
Hods with a view to local and peculiar events. It
is high time that they should be fused into one effi-
cient system, instead of being left by their squabbles
respecting their respective 'pities and powers to
obstruct instead of promoting the enforcement of law.
Again, a systematic registration of deaths, properly
carried into effect, would materially aid a rightly
organised police; but it appears that the Elacrueflcui-
ters are eo kept that many deaths cannot be
Among the causes frequently mentioned as incen-
tives to recent cases of poisoning, there is one that
cannot be passed over without notice. We allude to
what are called " death clubs." Were these associa-
tions limited to efforts to ensure decorous burial to the
parties subscribing or their families, there would
be a delicacy in suggesting any interference with
so decent and prudential a precaution. But it would
appear that in some of these clubs the subscriber may
nominate any person he (or she) please', and becomes
entitled, on the death of the " nominee' " to a certain
sum. This comes pretty close to speculating upon
the death of a person for whose health or life the
subscriber may have no motive to care, and giving
him an interest in that person's death. It may be
fairly questioned whether such "sweeps" on death's
race ought to be tolerated.

And yet we think that all the harm and all the
evil have been augmentedby the rigidity with which
this school has been treated, and by the exaggerated
importance bestowed upon its influence and its
power. As we said long since, communism,
if treated merely as a philosophic theory, is
not so dangerous ; but persecute it and it becomes
a raglan, and then it is dangerous. To this rank it
has unfortunately been raised. The power of cannon,
of bayonets, and finally of a state of siege has been
employed spinet it. And we see, what is so deplor-
able and natural, that however it has increased in
odium it has also become more formidable and more
dangerous.

Ms elements of human depravity are the same in
all the individuality of character which distin-
the crime of one age from that of another is a
Leal colouring derived from the prevailing relations
and modes of opinion of the society in which it is per-
petrated. The poisoning+ in the Tendring hundred
of Essex appear, from what has hitherto transpired,
to have been the work of a knot of wo.nen, who in the
seventeenth century might have assumed the cha-
racter of witches to give effect to their malice,
avarice, or lust. Ths records of witch trials show
that the mummery of incantations was not nnfre-
quently made submrvient to the same ends for which
in this age of materiel= recourse is had, sam /non,
to the apothecary's shop. The chief witch of a dis-
trict, as she appears is these records, often bears a
strong resemblance to the late Mrs. MAY, with her
attendant body of pupils and accomplices or conniving
@skates. The under current of suspicion, and mut-
tered tales against both, which circulated in half
whispers till a formal denunciation encouraged people
to speak aloud, bear the strongest possible resem-
blance.

In the accounts of the prevalence of poisoning, with
which the public is from time to time aroused, large
allowance must be made for exaggeration. The insi-
dious nature of the crime—the impossibility of
guarding against it—make it regarded with the ima-
&dive fear which attaches to all occult agencies.
The detection of two or three contemporary and con-
nected caste of poison is enough to set timid fancy to
work, and every instance of sudden death, accompa-
nied with acute nftim, is at once assumed to be-
long to the oatsgory. The belief in poisoning, like
the belief in witchcraft, is epidemic ; one well accre-
dited witch cue used to lead to the discovery of
witches by the dcaen, and it is the same with poi-
amen in our days.
The preeentstate of the inquiry in Tendriog hundred,
mortised, however, with the Norfolk and Stafford triage-
dice of an earlier date, and the frequent occurrence of
isolated poisoning men in otherdistricte, is a sufficient
not to push this reasonable soepticism too
;yr Who recurrence of such startling crimes at in-
tennis, is a lama spinet too implicit confidence in
the decorous exterior of that portion of society which
is raised above the profarional MON clam. A con-1
ventional decceum—an external conforming to the
dictates of morality and religion—pervades in this
country the bulk of the classes who having property,
w being steadily industrious, lead regular lives, and
from habit or a regard to interest pay deference to
the opinion of their neighbours. But every now and
then some explosion breaking through the fair-seem-

One word more, and we have done. It is alleged—
how truly we do not pretend to say—that the clerical
supervision of the Tendring hundred is very defleient,
and that the consequence is grows ignorance and
immorality among the inhabitants. Now, on turning
to the population returns of 1841, we find that the
hundred has a superficial extent of 80,840 acres,
divided into 31 parishe,, and 24,479 inhabitants.
This gives an average of 2,608 acres and 790 inhabi-
tants to each parish. (Surely this is not too extensive
for effective supervision if the working clergy depart-
ment of our church is properly organised and
supported.

Tin period of the year, when so many of the
laborious denizens of the crowded town are enjoying
their periodical breathing-time by the &eel sea
shore, or on the windy mountain top—an epoch
like the present, when so many outlets towards
these priceless enjoyments have been opened—are
alike well adapted for reminding our wandering pub-
lic that it is their duty, as it is their interest, to
keep their eye on the efforts made with az much
silent, ceaseless perseverance, to appropriate the places
of old open to the people, and to bar the seeker of re-
creation and health from the means of obtaining