The Express.
London, England, 1858-04-01 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, APRIL I.

IT is rather awkward that the Revenue Returns
should show a diminished income for the year at the
very time that there has unavoidably been an in-
creased amount of expenditure. This coincidence,
however, is simply annoying, not dangerous. The
CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER will Bad himself in
the condition of a gentleman who, with ample re-
sources, is momentarily at a loss for a little ready
money. The amount of the national Revenue for the
year which ended the 31st of Match, 1838, is
4,432,350/. Ices than that of the Revenue for the year
which ended the 31st March, 1837. But the de-
mise in last year's receipts from Income Tax alone
as compared with the receipts from the same source
in the preceding year is 4,503,8191. Had it not
been for the reduction of the Income Tax from
9d. to 7d. in the pound—as a step to getting rid of
the war rate—there would actually have been a
trifling increase in the Revenue collected during the
year which has just terminated. In the Customs
and Excise Returns for the year there is a slight
reduction ; but this reduction is owing to the tem-
porary diminution of receipts about the middle of
the financial year, at the time of the great monetary
embarrassment. The first quarter of the year
shows a large increase, both in Customs and Excise ;
the last quarter a large increase in Customs, and a
rapid recovery from depression in Excise. There
has been throughout the year a steady rise
in the receipts from Stamps, particularly re-
markable in the last quarter. Notwithstanding
the sharp chastisement our commercial circles re-
ceived during " the year that's awa'," for over-indul-
gence in speculative propensities, our industrial and
financial position is sound and healthy. The country
can therefore afford to wait with equanimity to see
what ingenious devices the CHANCELLOR of the
Excsmitta will resort to to make ends meet, and
to hear what bandying of imputations and recrimina-
tion' between the Ins and the Outs the deranged
balance of Income and Expenditure will give rise to.

WU tT a miserable as Well as dreadful business is
this fire in Bloomsbury. Here is a house constructed
with perverse ingenuity in such a way as to cat of
all reasonable chance of escape in case of fire. It has
as outlet whatever behind, none through the roof;
its ground floor is occupied as a carpenter's shop,
filled with inflammable materials, which a dropped
match, or a genteelly snuffed candle, or the ashes
shaken from a pipe, might in a moment ignite. It
is a mere brick and mortar fire trap, an apparatus
for roasting people alive, with every precaution
against the possibility of rescue. The vile contri-
vance has had a horrible success. Out of the
amottldering ruins of this escape-proof abode four-
teen half-burnt corpses have been recovered ; a fif-
teenth inmate was destroyed by a desperate leap out
of the flames of an upper window. And this abo-
minable place was the property of his Grace the
Duke of BEDFORD. It paid its quota to the re-
venues of the Prince of Woburn. It is only one of
a clams. There are but too many tenements on the
same estate whose condition is not less, nay move,
disgraceful than that of this No. 20, Gilbert-street.
Just look at the evidence already taken as to the
nature and occupation of the premises. It was a
two-storied house, built against the back wall of
another building. In the carpenter's shop on the
ground floor there was a box of limiters and a large
quantity of shavings: on the night of the fire the
shutters in this place were left unclosed, and in the
window were two broken panes of glees through
which the wind ►ad free access to fan any
chance spark into a flame. The lodgers were
not insensible to the additional peril caused
by this mode of occupying the lower pre-
mises. One of the destroyed people—Mrs. SMITII
had mentioned it to her brother, said she considered
it dangerous, and that she would get out of the place
as GRIM as she could. WILLIAM HEDGER, another of
the victims, had said to his sister, "I wonder at
" father and mother living at the top of the house,
" because if a fire were to break out in the shop
" below we should all be burnt to death." The two
upper stories consisted of four sets of rooms, three of
which were occupied. EASTWOOD, a carpenter, his
wife and children (the only persons saved), lived on
the first floor; luckily for them, in the set not imme-
diately over the shop. The opposite set, back and
front, was empty. At the top of the house, on the
second story, both sets were let. That over
RARTHOODII was occupied by four persons : WIL-
LIAM linTunta (a journeyman biscuit-bsker), his wife,
and two sous. That on the other side of the pawns
WY occupied by RICHARD SMITH (a porter in preca-
rious employment and often in great distress), hie
wife, and nine children. All these persons perished :
fourteen by fire, one of the Swans by a desperate
effort to escape it. All these sets of rooms were
constructed on the same principle. Each set had
one door and one window, in the front room : the
only inlet to the back room was through the frost.
The back rooms had each a small square window on
the staircase " on going up stairs," mays one of
the witnesses, "you were liable to put your foot
through it There was no ventilation and no
light in the back rooms except what was borrowed
from the staircase. The house, thus wretchedly
constructed, was in a corresponding state of repair.
The water came through so as to make the
back room unfit to sleep in, even according
to the cot very fastidious notions of the poor
couple who, with their nine children, had long bad
no other dwelling than these two miserable rooms
supplied. The suddenness with which roof, treat
wall, and flooring all came down with a crash, seems
sufficiently to prove, if any each proof were wanting,
that the tenement was as ill•bsilt as it was ill-
repaired and ill-arranged.

Bach was No. 20, Gilbert-street, Bloomsbary;
each, or nearly such, are hundreds--aye, thoseateds
of tenements, whose aggregate rental' make an
enormous return upon the amount of capital ex-
pended in their construction. Cupidity is deeply
Interested in the fabrication of such receptacle,
Poverty is too feeble or too ignorant to be able or