The Express.
London, England, 1857-07-25 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 25, 1857.

.......--------"'--
indissolubility cf marriage was the corms of Rome, 1
reasonable and ordered liberty of di.,otts has been
throughout the doctrine of the Ref orination,
Under these circumstances, we really find some
difficulty in understanding, the line taken on
this question by those amongst our English
gentry who are not, generally suspected of
any tendency to the. doctrines of the canoeists.
The probability is that they have been misled by
vague declamation about the latitude of rationalistic,
Prussia and • the licentiousness of revolutionary
Feasts. It is humiliating to have to point out how
utterly all this is beside the mark. In Prussia and
la France during the first Revolution, the grounds
of divorce were multiplied to en undefined and dan-
gerous extent. The present Bill leaves the grounds,
ce rather the ground of divorce--for it contemplates
no other ground but adultery with or without eir•
cumstances of aggravation—precisely as it stood be-
fore; it merely simplifies and cheapens the proce-
dure by which divorce upon that single ground may
be obtained.
The object of the obstructives in last night's
dingo was to throw the Bill over for the Session,
obviously with the ulterior design of obtaining fur-
ther time for getting up an increased agitation
against it during the recess. This is not the way in
which Government can permit so carefully prepared
=dwell considered a piece of legislation to be treated.
The Bill, in its present form, fails no doubt to accom-
plish much that the more advanced advocates of an
improvement in our Laws of Divorce desire ultimately
to see realised. But it is a great step in the
right direction. It would at once sweep away many
glaring anomalies, and form a valuable vantage
I ground for further improvements. The procedure
which it introduces is immeasurably superior to that
which it would displace, and the fact that it does not
place both sexes on the same footing as to the ground
on which divorce may be obtained, though in itself a
subject of regret, affords no valid reason for further
delay. It is satisfactory to find that these views were
last night adopted by the House of Commons. Mr.
HENLEY'S motion was rejected by a majority of 87, and
though, owing to the lateness of the hour, the second
reading of the Bill was postponed till Thursday next,
this was on the distinct understanding that it is to
be taken as the first order on that day. Let as best
that Lord PALIEMIrfON will evince a resolute deter-
mination to allow no further impediment to stay the
onward progress of this I cry salutary and long-
expected reform. The Session of 1E137 will not have
been a useless ono if it is signalised by the set-
Dement on a sounder and more satisfactory basis of
• system of law which has long been one of
the most crying scandals of our country and our
time.

Tue West India planters, of all nations who
watching our debates and dillCUtiaoll2 on the subject
of free negro immigration into the colonies, must be
amused at the ignorance of some who talk the west
confidently about African labourers and the um el
their proposed toil. Lord MALUESBUST dellerVill
be credited for life with " millions of acres "down,
land in our West India colonies, as Lord Dr= is
with a corresponding amount of Taming swm.l,
Is Lord MaLmrsmarr aware that the WWI
area of those colonies of ours, rock, week
and water, town and country, marsh and sand. is
under 20,000 square miles—under 13,000,000 el
acres altogether? and that, of the million of the
aggregate population living there, so vast a proper-,
tion is of the labouring class as to leave full employ-
ment for capital for many a long year to come before
awybody need think of peopling any more " millions
of owes" with foreign labourers? But yet more
dowel is the proposal to carry over Kroomen, of
ai popie. As far as fitness and probability are
sediernasspeulators might as well talk of carrying
wt "MYs Fetish.% or a recruitment from the
)henna tribe, to be hired in the desert. We briefly
isammei to the absurdity of the scheme of engaging
insewen fir West India tillage and sugar boiling,
afbm tho debate in the Lords ; but the solemnity
Milk mini Lord MALUZSBEILT urged the par-
*Were of bap plan, and its subsequent diffusion
by reprhile. mobs& it worth while to recur to the sub-
ject for a news&
How many MIME do Lord MLLMESBURT and
his informant appose they can obtain ? They talk
of Imer country. How spacious do they suppose it
to bet It consists of a narrow strip of coast, about
tounerave miles long—fiat, mashy, woody, with
mini elesoms mains a way don moms to the sea,
esimonilisilielit oamblembil mod shoals as to
be imsiodluillft ems fit heals. It seems to be this
herbembooldw of their litteetmeitory which sends
the ow ibei ft employs/04 and not certainly
soy lopowlsolooord popoladisi. There are but five
smilimmts whisk areas dignified with the name of
tenser and those are inhabited by a remarkable
pregewdsranee of women. Their husbands are
alemit—e thousand at n *6O at Sierra Leone ; and
tie bum stayers are Mei mod protected by the five
• anninfe who preside ever the five towns and
AO aft dbleist beim*. to each—even these
builma bike Ibble to Is tempted to leave their
=mate, on a mileisat inducement. The
I.l!linineMOl ems bon Sierra Learn on
nowessee sin • Wmm she west thither to be
seek in sweat mei leme el Li. Se. pa month laid
ern mmll of the Mai of hi teem fn szpiaistai
Whir be modelhis little emlopaint. Whim them Is
meal to bon bei, within mg reach at helm lime
the Immo will go ton be has earned amok to
carry bum • cargo of merchandise, on wide lo
may lies nit ease—" rich much, plenty of wife." This
is ear, and the chief, reason for resort to Sierra
Imens; but there are others—especially interesting
to us at present. The Kroomen claim to be the
brothers of the whites, and of a different race from
ell other blacks on the grounds of their hatred of
ebearry, sad of their repugnance to till the
The whites are sever seen to hoe the
pm& at Sierra Lamm, sr to My m sea Awes;
sod therefore are they the tredeere of the liseemen.
It is Most as probable that the= milers on
the Aitken coact would go to or Guiana
tar mem of 4d. • day as that the lesewsn will do
so. Comidering the very good are the men of this
moll tribe are accustomed to take of tbswedese/
and bow they so arrange their lives as to avoid laid
labour and every sort of compulsory toil, the pre-
eastionry articles proposed in the Lords for their
rotation as imported labourers look extremely
ridiendou. The planters have not caught their hare;
and when they have, it will be time enough to hear
the reaps for the cooking.
What is it that the Kroomen do, then? Most of
dross who leave home go early Sierra Leone, in
order to serve an apprenticeshipto to a Kroo master,
and earn money before they marry. If they marry
before they are sufficiently rich to live in idleness,
they go again afterwards, and aim at the acquisition
abontSOL,weddithey take home in the form of ma-
edemiliso than eandiag a menet for our mann-
halms *She mem' Ihemands a year. In ardor
to alio the vermiello eons as quickly as rw
lbw moo weary prey they ma gam hem their
merlope, imi takt=dele,• mmillim of
lorir=e ap.
, It is that *et the waft
and sorno-labouren is kept up, and
thy Imo quarter at FM Town regularly replenished,

so that the number is maintained at about a thou-
sand. On the one band, they discharge all domestic
offices for themselves—cooking their own rice, &c.,
in order to leave their women at home, and thus
' incur the contempt (which they entirely disregard)
ot all their black neighbours ; and, on the other
I=4 they regard with equal contempt the agricul-
tural occupations which they devolve upon the
women of their tribe. Commercial as are their ob-
jects and tastes, their hatred of slavery is remarkable;
and no project can be conceived more hope-
less than that of engaging them, for small and
fixed wages, to go to a distant country, to work in
the fields, treading the soil, whose very name is
hateful to them on account of twiner slavery, and
where they would be associated with labourers who
had been actually bought in Africa. As for the
canting plea of evangelising and civilising Africa by
their return at the end of ten years—it is enough to
my that every Kroo who comes home with a know-
ledge of reading and writing, or any kind of
schooling whatever, is at once and irreversibly
exiled for life. Whichever way the scheme is
looked at, it appears impracticable on all grounds.
The smallness of the tribe ; the habits of the men,
personal, domestic, and social ; the occupations and
objects of their lives; their peculiarities, forbidding
removal from the African coast, and field labour
everywhere ; their virtues and their vices, all mark
them as the very last people to be looked to fur
raising sugar in another hemisphere. In the
first place, a sufficient number is not to be had ;
in the next, they are quite strong enough
to refuse to go, and shrewd enough to make
sure where they are wanted to go, and what for:
again, if they could possibly be inveigled into such
a migration, it must be by wages very unlike any
yet proposed ; and, if any compulsion were at-
tempted, the Krooman's choice would be simply
between killing himself or his masters. The
Krooman's strength is enormous, sustained not only
by his occupation of loading and serving ships, but
by the athletic exercises in which the men of that
tribe pass their holidays; and the Krooman's spirit
is high and exclusive, familiarising him with the
resource of suicide, if homicide will not avail him
better under critical circumstances. We shall wish
the planters joy of their Kroo labourer', if they ever
get such.
We referred just now to the plea of the French
partisans of this scheme of migration—that the
labourers would be fortunate beings, ransomed from
slavery in their own country. It has not been
sufficiently shown how false the conception is on
which this excuse is founded. The slavery
from which it is proposed thus to rescue the
natives is of that sort which belongs to a primitive
society in which no division of clones has yet arisen.
It may, in certain cases, be a condition of very great
suffering ; but at worst it cannot be compared, as to
mischief and misery, with the slavery which exists
in a wi•called civilised society. The mode of life is
unchanged by prisoners of war being detained as
slaves, and there is little or no restriction on personal
freedom, beyond compulsory residence on an ap-
pointed spot. It is even common for the victor to
desire his slaves to establish themselves in villages or
districts, only paying him tribute from their produce.
While Europeans discountenance and obviate the
slave trade in all its forms, and encourage industry
and commerce, this is the nature, generally speak-
ing, of the slavery of the interior; and, superior as
it is to foreign slavery, it is always receding and
dissolving before commerce and the arts of peace.
But, from tho moment when negro labour is sought
for exportation, everything goes wrong ; and the offer
to pay money for men, women, and children produces
immediate effects of a diabolical character. Wars,
strike between tribes and houses spring up : laws
are rawarted, and judges bribed, to give a power of
=is silo over the innocent: witchcraft
11111"ravalent, from the hour of the opening of
&market for men : apprentices are obtained, only to
disappear for ever ; and the society in which indus-
try was growing, and human life obtaining some.
Wag like the consideration with which civilised
misty invests it, falls back into violence and sloth,
asselty and barbarism. Cruel are the tender mer-
cies of those who pretend to be serving the native
African by a method bred between the lust of lucre
and the pride of power ; and it is a dark day for
human hearts and hopes,'when the righteous labours
of the best men of half a century are staked, in wan-
tonness and levity, against odds which are supported
by all the worst passions of human nature.

MR. DISRAELI'S MOTION ON INDIA.

The following are the terms of Mr. Disraeli's
notice to be reposed in the Howe d Commons on Mon-
day night
" To oil the attention al ths hones to the state of asks
in India, sad to more tar the redaction of the following

More
" ' Ist. Copy of any sdnuie a despatch addressed to the
Govertior-Gereal of India, by his Bzoallasey as Com-
mearisr-M-Chist, Wes late Waioc-Owasal the Rom G.
Amon, dated ma or about Mach, 1856, relative to the state
at the Bagel may
"'fad. Copy of a report on the organisation of the
Bengal army, dawn up by the late lattensat-Genseal Sir
Charles Napier, sad transmitted to his Grua the Duke of
Wellington, ILO." '