The Express.
London, England, 1859-01-01 00:00:00

the expregifl.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
Advertisements oatende.l for the "The kr Labs
livesiag reyer, teuel to at the Otter. 10,
by Two o'Clock ch the d 37 of pubh.Liall.

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LONDON; B.4TURDAY, lAN. I.

We are year by year making improvements in
this Metropolis. We widen our thoroughfares, and
project new streets through the most crowded
quarters of the busy hive. We sweep away
tenements which have held a family par
room—the clouds of dust which accompany their
destruction have scarce passed away before
palaces for the rich, magnificent shops, and gigantic
warehouses rise rapidly from their ruins. Then with
pleasing satisfaction we congratulate ourselves on
the great progress we have made. /tut do we ever
sit down to calculate the cost of morality, the cost
of health of body and soul, by which the transforma-
tion has been accomplished ?

Somehow or other, wealth and poverty seem to
advance with equal strides. Where wealth and
luxury most abound, there too, as near, though
perhaps invisible neighbours, may be found
squalid poverty and wretchedness. In making our
renovations, in supplying the demands of our cease-
las traffic, our reformers choose instinctively
direction which sweep through the dwellings of
the most abject poor. They gain a doable advantage.
They remove a nuisance which offends the sight
and, perhaps, other senses, sad they get their land
at a comparatively cheap rate. The thorough-
fare opened, or the street widened, immediately
advances thevalue of the land they have purchased,
and 'huts occupies the place of LAZA avg.
The proems very much resembles the means we take
to prevent wretchedness, filth, and rugs from in-
truding themselves into our main streets. It is
the imitation by society of the policeman's " Move
" oci ; move on." This injunction is given to those
who have nowhere to move to, save the work-
house or the prison. With our constant improve-
ments, we follow a class a little higher than these; a
clam who have a habitation. We say to their dwell-
ings, " Move on ; move on ;" without providing
any place to which they may move. The rich die-
tries drive out the poor, acid the poor become more
and more hopelessly and helplessly poor. No doubt
the unequal distribution of rates, and the support-
ing of the poor by the poor instead of the rich, adds
greatly to the evil. Still other causes lurk behind.

_ .
We are told we must not infringe the laws of
political economy, we must not interfere with the
laws of supply and demand. if palatial residencies,
gaudy shops, and piles on piles of goods, replace the
poor man, it is because the poor man is out of place,
and nothing can bo done to help him. Now we
don't want to inculcate false political economy.
NVhat we want to do is to show that a due attention
to the welfare of the workers, to the sinews, bones
and muscle, which co-operate with the brain labour
of the higher workman to produce our wealth, is
sound and high economy.

We have been slowly learning this lesson in
the country, thoxgh still there we have much
more to loam. It has hardly yet been superficially
examined in our towns. The best and most direct
teachings of common sense are sometimes the last to
be learned. We have been satisfied to hones oar
soldiers in barracks, where a superficial cleanliness
has deceived the eye of the inspecting officer,
while it was forgotten that our soldier was a breath-
ing animal, and no one calculated how much
air be needed to breathe by night. So we spent
thousands and thousands a year in destroying
the costly engines of war we had trained. Had
we been dealing with trees and plants instead of
men, we might sooner have discovered our error.
In the country large Wallies were considered a
nuisance, Mr. MALTrICS could hardly tolerate the
idea of a rapidly growing pauper population. Now,
we have learnt to consider farming as a profession
and science. We have called machinery to our aid,
we have made automaton labourers of iron, with
breath of steam ►nd coal for food. With what result?
A positive diminution of agricultural poverty—a pen-
ti we increace in the value of human labour. Oar country
gentlemen no longer wish to encourage emigration.
They beg in to appreciate the value of their labourers.
Right and I, ft they find self-interest, as well as the
prompting, of benevolence, teaching them that to
take care of the working man's health, to improve
his dwelling, ti feed and clothe him well, is the
highest and moat paying political economy they
have learnt. list it is but a few years since many
and many a rich Isoclines-1 chuckled while lie bought
up one little fret-hold and holding after another, till
he cou'd eject all the labourers from the village in
whose parish his farm was situated, fancying in this
way that he had dispersed a hive of pauper manu-
facturers, while he reaped all the honey of their
labour.

Considering man es a machine, a mere labouring
machine, ja.tice and benevolence being left oat of
coasideratina, sound economy will bring us to much
the same end. When we bad to dig our railway
trenches through the land, and tunnel under our
hills with the beet speed we could, we learnt
that for a man to work well and quickly he mast
be fed well with the best of food and plenty of it.
The squire knew title feet wall long ago, so far as

hone and hound were concerned. Both were well
housed and ted. But eomehow or other the fact
that man after all was a labourinirmaehine—aye, and
• wetly one too—costly in proportion to the value of
his labour, had escaped the attention of the political
economist.

Now to apply the same lesson to town u well am
country. Our vast stores of goods imply labour, and
human labour. Do our masters in the towns be-
think themselves where their labourers live and
sleep ? The sportsman who works his horse and dog
is careful to look well to their food and habitations,
and to husband all their strength for hie work. Now
with our perpetual " move on, move on," we Dead
the workman miles and miles from the scene of his
labours, or we drive him into squalid dens, where
families are deueiy huddled together. If we send him
tar away, if he has four or five miles to walk before
Iw commences his work, and the same after his labours
are over, we deprive ourselves of all the animal
power and labour thus wasted. If living nearer,
the close, mephitic atmosphere of an overcrowded,
badly ventilated building far more effectually de-
prives him of his animal strength. Thus is a consi-
deration of some value in an economical point of
view. But this is not all. Oar man is morally as
well as physically deteriorated. Over-wrought and
over-spent, he flies to spirituous drams to rouse his
failing energies. Overcrowded localities not only
breed physical plagues but moral pestilence.

We build our prisons, and we strive hard to make
them moral reformatories. But our exertions are
paralysed, because we have to feed and lodge the
rogue more comfortably than the honest labourer.
We then take a step in advance; we establish our
ragged schools ; we open our refuges for the desti-
tute ; we found institutions where the wandering
Arab of our streets may learn the value of industry,
Thus we strive to diminish the number of those who
in reply to the policeman's "Move on," find their
entrance into prison. Cannot we take another step
in advance,—go to the very root of the evil ?
Replace the moral jungle which breeds the inmates
of the prison, the reformatory, the ragged and the
Arab population, by fit dwellings for the habitation
of the honest, industrious, working man?
The experiment has been tried, only on a small
scale compared with the pressing wants of the metro-
polis. The Metropolitan Association for Improving
the Dwellings of the Poor have endeavoured to meet
the wants as a commercial speculation. Their work is
coMeiently prosperous to induce a continuance and
far wider extension of its benefits. They have in-
vested something like 90,0001. in providing decent
dwellings for the workman. They have constituted
themselves a chartered company of landlords. They
let their dwellings at a fair rental, not only to cover
their expenses, but to make them a money return in
the shape of interest and dividends. They discover
that in the infancy of their work they have made
some blunders and some bad investments, yet they
have given wholesome comfortable habitations to
between two and three thousand persona, and pat a
dividend of between two and three per cent. into
their pockets. They might have realised four per
cent. had :it not been for an investment which expe-
rience has taught them is a loss rather than a profit.
Now, if we add to this two or three per cent. in
hard cash, the gain to the public at large, in
reduced sickness and mortality, in a consequent
reduction of pasperisation and loss of valuable life
and labour, and in a reduction of that demoralisation

which breeds the dangerous class of society—we
must add a high moral per onstage to the mere
maasy profit. Could not the City of London and
its civic parliament take a hint from this, and do a
really good work? They have improved the thorough-
lheea of the crowded City vastly, yet still more of this
work must be dam. What ban they done for the
labourers IA dick busy hive, whose habitation, they
have rooted se They have built a magnificent castle
at Holloway, bid that is for their criminal population.
The site of the old Fleet prison still remains desolate,
year after year the ground yields no return. Could
not the Corporation follow the example of the Metro-
politan Association, and build a comfortable habits_
lion for some few of the labourers they have ejected
from their dweliimp ? If the money return were lies
profitable than some other tenants may give them in
years to come, they would most assuredly get a return
which no money can estimate.

Cbc Court.

WINDSOR, Dn. 31.

The Prioce of Wales, the Princess of Leiningen,
sad the Frisco of Leiningen, dined with her Majesty yes-
terday. Colonel the Hon. R. Bruno, Major Loyd Lindsay,
and the Rev. C. F. Terser had the honour to be included.

The band of the tad Ufa Ounrds wen in attondanoe, and
perlbriond during dinner the

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Tits Queen and Pram Consort wanted fa the How Park
this morning. end vimited the Dueller of Lest at Frorteorr.
The Prince of Wales rode out ea berasheek, attended by
Major Loyd Liattley.

Despatches were mot from the Colontel-odScs yesterday to
the Goveroons of the North American Provinces, end to the
Governor of Bermuda.

Prince Alfred, who is now being lard at Malta,
wilt leave tar Egypt to-sonotr.

The Duke iud Duchess of Montrose are expected
ia toes ie a Ire days, from visiting the Commie of Powb,
at Peale, Weleispool.

The MarquiS and Marchioness of Exeter have re-
tuned to Burghley, from Heebner, where the noble mar
quis and marchioness have been residing for eareral months
Pte.

The Count and Countries do Jarnac have arrived
its town trots holland.

Sir John Shelley, M. has left Merestleld Hone'
for Ctilrk None, North Wales.

The Workly Register states that tho death of the
Sul of Orford cause so accord= to the number of Roma.
catholic poem by the saccaraico of his eldest sea, Lord
Walpole. a teacart to the Rowan catholic faith.

The Aar. William Manifold Townsend, 8.A., wu
on Thursday Soma to the perpetual curacy of Little lio-
bornagh, In Suffolk, on the nomination of the Provost sad
Scholars of King's College, Cambridge. On the tame day
the Rev. Daryl Morton Malay, A.M., was inarotuted to the
amsolidated vicarage of Mutton' St. Aadrrat and the rectory
Bartiaby St. John the Baptist, in Suffolk, on the prams-
tenon of the Maitre and Fellows of Gonville and Caina
College, Cambridge.

At Cambridge next week, on the 41h, the Honour
Men will go in for their examination ; soda the 13111 thaw
will go who offer theineehres for the ordinary degree only.
W. (Combrodis bultpevide.f) bear there is great doubt is to
lobo .ill be the Senior Wrangler ; there is no one named of
decided prominence.

Once more Mr. Robert Chambers contnidiets
(through the colomaa of The beek.eller) the eater:mit that
be is the author of the " Vestiges of Creation." It appears
that his name is attached to the book as author in the British
Museum catalogue, bet the was the act of au unauthorised
ofinial. Borne of the proof shi-ete were forwarded to hits,
sad it was in that way probably that the rumour originated.

We (fferapatA) regret to hear that Mr. Chaplin
ha. lately found hie health so bad a. to induce dim to resign
the chair of the Bath Western Hallway Compaq.