The Express.
London, England, 1850-01-01 00:00:00

which moved the convulsion * rem)
of 1848. If we contempt's* co • 1
we shall find them recovered 'front
panic of that epoch, and eknie.tly2weedheg theft. ways
back to the paths of politilial and oiniebrcial libera-
lity. From Spain our tidings are of amnesty to ex;les,
of a reduction of the army, and a lowering of the
tariff. Holland has reformed its canstitution most
liberally. Both Holland and Belgium are repealing
their navigation laws. Of Sweden the OM story is
to be told. And even Russia, we learn, however
grim span the Danube, talks liberalism upon the
Neva. and proposes to mitigate the interdict which it
gland on English ideas and English twist.
In this hasty glance at the state and prospects of
iEurope, if there be much to desire and to regret,
there s still ample occasion for congratulation and for
hope. The sky may be clouded, and the day dark,
Mat there are still streaks of blue is the one, and
rof sunshine in the other. Great as bonbon
iesswelaions of society, with the misery and loss
asessiesat upon them, nevertheless the elements of
ratan freedom and mnaty have been so turned up
to light and profit, that however the actual generation
may lament and shudder at the events of 1848, the
world will owe an infinite acceleration of progress, and
a great increase of moral and material prosperity to
this year of effort, of change, and of catastrophe.

memorable 1 to

TnE domestic retrospect of 1849 is eminently fitted
to inspire popular hope and to stimulate popular ex-
ertion. Its characteristics are twofold—industrial
and political; the former suggestive of emotions of
unmuigled triumph, the other of feelings more che-
quered in their kind, yet fall also of encouragement
and instruction.
We have seen the last chapter added to the charter
of Commercial Freedom. We have seen the
great principle of competition applied to ship-
ping as well as to the innumerable articles of '
import and export trade in which it is em-
ployed. In all that regards the commerce
of the country with its neighbours we have at length
got back to first principles, and proclaimed to all the
world that, after multiplied experiments, devices, and
cantrivances, we know nu other way to wealth than
the broad and open road of Universal Competition.
Already is that great highway o' peace and civilisa-
tion more thronged than the crooked path, of protec-
tionism ever were. There are more competitors in the
race of national industry than there ever were before,
and there is more profitable production to be divided
between capital and labour. Money is abundant, and
so is food. In other words both are cheap, cheaper than
at as same time both ever were before. There have
been former periods when money waste cheap in Lom-
bard-street, and them have been farmer seasons when
wheat was even lower than it is now. But there
sever was a time when the employer and the em-
ployed were both so well off—when discounts and
dinners were both so easily had by honest men—
when enterprise found it as easy to obtain the means
of carrying out its creative purpose, as labour found it
to obtain in exchange for its daily wages the daily
necessaries and comforts of life.
The industrial epitaph of 1849 is that it produced
more than any that had gone before it, and that it
enjoyed more of the good things it produced. The
harvest was large, but popular appetite was larger,
sad there being no longer any need to stint consump-
tion within the limits of home grown food, we
imported from abroad many millions worth beside, and
are now busily engaged in consuming them. How
were they paid for ? By increased exports of those
commoditit s of which we have skill, and capital, and
labour sufficient to produce any amount that we can
get anybody to buy of us. And the glory and good
of this exhilarent freedom of trade is this,—that
there seems to be no reason why it should not con-
tinue to expand indefinitely. Do our best, end
we are not likely to overtake the wants of
the human race. We make shirts, and knives,
and ribbsnds for • great many millions of
foreign customers; but there are tea times as many
who purchase little or nothing from us,—all of whom
could give us in payment numberless things that
would add to our comfort, and lighten the weight of
our toil. Nor can we hope to see an inert sling
absorption of still unemployed labour, or the per-
manent diminution of poor rate., by any other means.
The boast of free trade may well be that in the first
fair year of its experimental adoption, • greater
number of people eat enough of bread than bad ever
previously been known, and that every pound of it
has been paid for in the creative labour of those by
whom it has been consumed.
Turning to the pilitical side of our national reckon-
ing, a strange but most suggestive ecntrast presents
itself. While the proportions of popular strength and
intelligence have been growing space, the constitu-
tional rights wherewith it thus palpably needs and
unfortunately claims to be endued have in no respect
whatever been enlarged. New regiments of industry
have been embodied; yet they are denied the honour
of a uniform, or the use of arms. The state which
felicitates itself upon their devoted loyalty, their
matchless Ain, their productive energy, their auxi-
liary strength, as given to the moral and political
influence of the empire—pauses, parley., and looks
puzzled, when this invaluable adjunct asks, es is na-
tural and just, to be recognised as part and parcel of
the citizenship of the realm. But the day for aria-
I hieratic doubts is passed. Industry has come
to the condition of maturity, and can no longer be
excluded from the inheritance of power. England is
no longer the hunting-ground of nobles, or the (air-
men condescendingly lent to traders for the show and
sale of their wares. Trade has made England
its own. It holds the key of crumbling oligarchies
gates, and many who still linger within their shadow
are already there on sufferance. 'Twere well to end
the controversy while it can be ended amicably, be-
fore the gathering indignation of the excluded wealth
and worth of the community grows ungovernable,
and the expostulatory accents in which the middle
end the working classes now ask for admission to
their fair share of constitutional rights be exchanged
far
imperative demand and scornful defiance of the
power that shall continue to refuse it.
From the hour that free trade was carried, it be-
came manifest that the franchise mast become the
great question of the day. It has become so ; and
the troth is confessed in the menus with which
every plotting enemy of the one endeavours to decry
the other. And if there be wisdom and comase
among those who won three years ago the battle of
free tmde, they will] prepare to carry the exten-
sion of the franchise and its necessity concomitants
without further delay. In the popular cause
!hm can be no danger of reaction except in the
imbecile hesitation to advance. To halt or waver
is to invite assault. It is because so little has
been gained during the last two sessions, that
the bankrupt and desperate partisans of territorial
ascendancy have summoned up courage to talk aloud
of a return to protection. They have watched the
effect of retrogressive annals from high places, and
chuckled over the seeming evidences of disunion
among the irresolute and inert of the people's friends.
And from all this they have ventured to infer that the
session of 1850 will be even as that of 1848 and 1849,
or still more disastrous.
It must not be. The assembling of parliament is
but a few weeks off, but if any time for concert is
required that interval is already abundant to
determine on the course which ought to be
pursued. To muster strong and to pull to-
gether are obvious duties. To meet the old
advocates of dearness, preference, and exaction
unyieldingly requires no prompting. In this we
shall confessedly have the entire co-operation of the
Whigs and Pulite', who deem their peculiar interests
and character involved in maintaining the inviola-
bility of the corn law of 1846. But class legislation
is a Proteus in its way. Its cupidity is inventive
of new wiles, and its selfishness is full of cunning.
Failing in its first essay to put a tax on food, it will
infallibly resort to some more covert scheme of plunder,
sad under the pretence of re-adjusting taxation or
mug ether fair-sounding phrase, it will try to shift
Os share of the common bnrthen upon industry. Will
the Whigs and Peelites prove al
dart 106 on that whereon theyflo:l thateh on
tiliesy each
no h coa-
lave
turning room ? We hope they may ; but let any
nsalous friend of freedom and of progress
ask himself whether it is endurable that
we should continue to hold even that which
we have gained, upon sub tenure ? Another
schedule A, including the fifty smallest and basest
sinks of territorial corruption, and a transference of
the power they unworthily exercise to plugs at pre-
sent unrepresen'ed— the Ixten,*on of the suffrage to
every person rated or liable to be rated to the relief
of the poor—and, finally, the concession of the ballot:
thus would crush, and crush for ever, the hopes and