The Express.
London, England, 1867-12-31 00:00:00

PRINCE2B3.

nos EVeirca, THE OOLLEEI DAWN. Mr. and Mrs. Dion
Boueleault.—Mter which THE STREETS OF LONDON. Mr.
Vining, Messrs Murray, Shore, Nerilk, Forrester, Mellon, etc.
Misses Elaworthy, E. Barnett, Rachel Sanger, and Mrs. Addle.

STRAND.
Tnia EritaMG. KIND TO A FAULT.—/'Star which will he pro-
duced a Grand Christmaa Operatic Oriental Ext,avaganza, THE
CALIPH OP BAGDAD —And NOTHING TO NUNEZ.

I.I,OLDORN.

TAI] ItTENING, THE TWO DOLTS. Mem,. Price and WM-
dlenmh —And VALENTINE AND ORSON : OR. II UtLEQUIN
THE 611; NEAR AND THE LITTLE FAIRY. Megan. Lupine,
GrrvU, and Rowell*: Mondanies Saunders, Goodall, Montero, Ac.

BRITANNIA.

THIS EVICMI.O. DON (i-UTi.CITT; OR, SANCRO PANZA AND
CI IS WIFE TER F.ZA. Stn. Lane, it Misses FAlwlo & Booth ; Pan-
tontindst4 Mews Deane, Lott's, Newham, and VictorelU ;
C. otephan and Mimi Rose Nathan.—And WHO DID IT

HIGH WATIR AT LONDON BRIDOL
TEM DAv —Naming, 5b 7m.---Aftentoon, NAm.
TO-NolUlON—Norninx, sb. 61i. ban.

LONDON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31.

THF. year from which we are just parting has
been one of disasters and distress. Convulsions of
nature, stagnation of trade, the growth of pau-
perism, criminal outrages—springing not merely
from individual depravity, but having their root
also in political disaffection and class hatred—com-
mercial frauds and political immorality of the
grossest kind, have marked its course. We turn
the leaf upon it without regret. If, however, in
the retrospect there is little that is pleasant, there
is much that is instructive. The vague hope that
the next year will be more fortunate will prove
illusory if we trust only to the chapter of acci-
dents. We must make it better if we will
have it so. The causes of the present suffer-
ing must be reversed, if the suffering itself is to
cease. Without sharing in Mr. CARLYLE'S belief
that England is shooting Niagara, we may admit
that unless we take care what we are about we shall
presently find ourselves in the rapids. To declare
that the body politic is in a state of disorganization
and decay is to exaggerate some symptoms of bad
omen; but to neglect those symptoms, and to avoid
grappling with the disease in its first insidious
approaches, is to give reason to the prophets of
evil. Extravagant as is the language of alarm
and denunciation with which Mr. CARLYLE endea-
vours to startle the world into a sense of its pe-
rilous state, his diagnosis is substantially right.
The habitual exaggeration into which the love of
startling effects betrays the great declaimer, is
perhaps more closely allied to fiction as a branch
of falsehood than the poet's or novelist's exercise
of creative imagination which fills him with such
virtuous horrot. But it would be wrong to allow
the grotesque caricatures of Mr. CARLYLE to blind
us to the realities of which they present a distorted
likeness. The calamities under which we suffer
are of moral origin, and we must alter our ways
if we would avert the gloomy fate which he de-
nounces upon us. Character is destiny, as one of
the German sources of Mr. CARLYLE'S inspiration
has said. The cure which the Latter Day
Pamphli ti t r seeks in the imposition of an iron law
of force from without, must commence in a re-
form from within.

The character of a nation pronounces itself,
perhaps, most distinctly in the spirit which it
carries into its favourite pursuits. England is not
a nation of shopkeepers. In Franco itself, to
which we are indebted for this description, and in
most continental countries, the bourgeois and
ipirier class is more powerful and strongly marked.
But England is a nation of great commercial enter-
prises. How do we manage these ? Let the
present condition of our railway system answer.
It is a bad sign that people are ceasing to be
surprised by such disclosures as those which have
this year been made with respect to the London,
Chatham, and Dover, and the North British lines.
Falsified accounts and the creation of illegal stock
are coming to be regarded as desperate, but venial
expedients in the war of commercial rivalry. Even
when mattas do not go this length, the traces of
a reckless spirit of gambling are apparent. Great
companies precipitate themselves into enter-
prises without counting the cost or the profit.
The case of the Royal Liverpool Bank shows
how slightly men of character estimate the
responsibility which attaches to the loan of their
names, and the obligation which it imposes on them
to watch ever the transactions of the companies
to which they give their sanction. The punctilious
chivalry of commerce is departing ; and even
where honest and fair dealing is not openly
discarded, a low standard of it prevails.
With the example of this demoralisation in high
places, no one can reasonably feel surprised at the
retail scoundreliarn of the small shopkeepers who
use false weights and measures. Nor is the mis-
management of our public departments wonderful,
when the checks upon mal-administration come
from a public opinion so lax and nnvigilant as that
which permits mercantile dealings to be conducted
as we have seen.

The sequtnae of periods of commercial de-
pression on seasons of artificial and inflated
prosperity is inevitable while the mania of specu-
lative trading pervades the nation. The effects
are far reaching. The reverses which bring
poverty and privation to the middle classes, bring
pauperism and starvation to working men. The
present destitution of East London is a sample
of the distress which pervades the country. The
high price of bread and meat, due to the
defective harvest of last autumn and to the
scarcity which trade artifices have prolonged after
the cessation of the natural dearth pro-
duced by the cattle plague, have aggravated
the existing causes of suffering. But the evil
worked by unfavourable seasons and natural cala-
mities would be confined within a very limited
range, and would be easily endurable, if they did
not cooperate with a distress for which commer-
cial improvidence is directly responsible.
Great catastrophes, such as that at the Fern-
dale Colliery, must be attributed to the same
reckless spirit on the part of workmen or mana-
gers, or both, which neglects the precautions
necessary to safety for the sake of a greater gain,
or of the same gain at less trouble. Convulsions of
nature, like the cyclones which have devastated
the East and West Indies, and the earthquake at
St. Thomas, belong, of course, to a different cate-
gory. Still, the restriction of these outbursts to
particular and strictly defined regions, and their
occurrence for the greater part at special seasons,
point to their dependence on local causes and
climatic conditions, which it may be in the power