The Express.
London, England, 1861-06-25 00:00:00

TO OUR READIRS.

SPORTING LNTELLJOENCE.

A labs edition of the E Tres; is published every
evening during the rating season, containing the
results of the day's mom.

Tin results of the Census, as already aecer-
tained, disclose a state of social and industrial
Us:Adios' which calls for grave reflection on the
part of those who seek in any degree to influence
the councils of our country. While empirical
'ebonies of improvement are on the one hand ad-
vocated by superficial thinkers every day, and
while upon the other great interests and great
chimes set themselves more doggedly than ever to
defend the 4,ffe../.40, as if they had a charter for
its immobility, the stream of time is silently float-
ing both from their moorings, and mutely effacing
the most important figures of their confident
arithmetic. Most persons, perhaps, would have
been ready enough to take for granted three
months ago that the decennial enumeration of the
people would show many different rates of M-
enem ; and, perhaps, few save the more ignorant
dogmatists of political reaction would have hazarded
a sweeping denial of the assertion that some locali-
ties might be found in which the movement of
population would appear to have come to a stand-
still. lint nut the most sanguine believers in the
superior fecundity of trade and enterprise will,
we think, have ventured to anticipate contrasts of
proportionate augmentation so striking as the
Census Returns of 1861 disclose ; nor the
most wary and discerning maintainers of traditional
policy and traditional power have suspected how
far its foundations had sunk during the hist ten
years. While the town life of England
has within that time given numerous
and splendid 'proofs that its expansive
energies are still in course of further development,
the rural life of great districts of the kingdom
has not only failed to manifest any corresponding
tendency to increase, but in several instances the
agricultural and country-town communities appear
to have remained nearly stationary, while in certain
important counties and even comparatively impor-
tant towns there has actually been a very con-
siderable decline.

There are now in England and Wales no leas
than twenty millions of people. The increase
during the ►ast ten years has been 2,134,116, in-
dependently of 640,210 who have emigrated,
showing upon the whole an advance of more
than ten per cent. In Buckinghamshire,
Dorsetshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire,
Oxfonlshire, Soinersetshire, and Westmoreland,
besides seven Welsh counties, the actual increase
has been little more than nominal ; and if even an
average rate of rural progress be applied to these
districts, sevcrsl of them must be held to have re-
trograded in the nnniber of inhabitants. But this
is not all. Cambridge, Norfolk, Rutland, Suffolk,
Wiltshire, Anglesey, and Montgomeryshire have not
only declined comparatively but absolutely in po-
pulation. All of these are exclusively agricul-
tural ; and their stagnancy or retrogression be-
comes the more striking, when contrasted with the
condition of Durham, Lancashire, Middlesex,
Staffordshire, Kent, Surrey, the West Riding, and
Gliunorgansl.ire, all of which contain commercial
or manufacturing towns. These central lives of
industry claim,indeed, to be credited with
• very large proportion of the national pro-
gram. Liverpool has added to its number
6/1.000 ; Birmingham, 63,000 ; Sheffield,
150,000 ; Manchester, 35,000 ; Leeds, 35,000 ;
Greenwich, :14,000; Bristol, 17,000; Stoke-
upon-Trent, 17,000; Newcastle, 22,000; and
so on throughout ; while the old borough towns of
Berwick, Boston, Buckingham, Bury St. Ed-
munds, Cando-laze, Chichester, Cockerrnouth,
Dartmouth, Frome, Gloucester, Moulton, Kidder-
minster, Lancaster, Launceston, Lichfield, Lyme
Regis, Lymington, Marlborough, Oxford, Stam-
ford, Totness, Warwick, and • number of places
whose names are less familiarly known, have ac-
tually fallen lack from the place they formerly oc-
cupied in the general muster roll. An analytical
inquiry into the intermingling causes that have pro-
duced these resell' would till a goodly volume.
Something is of course to be set down to the ac-
count of local changes and shiftings; and some-
thing likewise niiir.t ho ascribed to the fitful im-
pulses wl•ich fr•.l'ieutly seem to influence
the c-iiiree of emigration. But rifts! making
every allowange for minor contributive
causes, the great fact stands out broadly
and impressively, that where the concentrated
powers of industry and intelligence are, there
chiefly will the progress of the people be. Them
will no doubt be carping on the part of the
indolent and unproductive classes, who in times
past have been accustomed to boast of the
physical and moral superiority of equirearchical
England over that portion which is devoted to
this creation of new wealth, the sharpening of intel-
lect, and the cultivation of knowledge, in the
great cities and towns. But no cavils or quibbles
can cloud the clearness of the demonstration that
is here afforded of the way in which the career
of the nation is setting. Population clusters
more and more every day round the vital centres
of wealth and intelligence ; and all the maunder-
ing reproaches and expostulations of social or poli-
tical reactionists will not stay the national course.