The Express.
London, England, 1850-05-09 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 9, 1850.

threaten. If the landlords and fanners unite, in
spite, to eat off their own sows to vex their faces,
and leave the land half cultivated, in order
to drive the poor in misses to the work-
house or to &affection, a socialist philosopher
would. soon discover, that the land might be given to
the labourer to cultivate. If landlord and farmer
are making nothing by it, neither rent nor profit,
surely they imp let the peasant live out of it.
He has still his spade, and the soil will not be

ingrate to him.
We are by no means of the school which recom-
mends this, but if landlords and farmers turn social-
ists, for the upholding of their own interests, and the
destroying of every other, they can only be met by re-
commendations equally frantic and equally unprinci-
pled. One advice we would especially give the Duke
of RICHMOND, and his prime minister, Mr. CHOWLIIII
which is, not again to threaten that they will drive
the labouring peasant out of work into combination ;
and that when in combination, they, the farmers and
landlords, will mount their horses, not to avert their
violence. The Duke of RICHMOND and his class
must be aware that if subversive and revolutionary
doctrines are to be preached to the labouring class,
and are to be put in practice by them, cunning men
may be found to inform the peasant labourers, that
if they make this insurrection, they ought to make
it on their own behalf, and for their own interests,
not for those of either landlords or farmers.

_
These are topics and arguments which, for oar part,
we carefully avoid ; we leave them to the socialist
and popular writers over the water. We know the
danger ; and know how readily they may be taken
up, and disseminated, and discussed. They are
broached, and stirred, however, by a landlord and
farmer moetingoinder the presidence of the Duke of
RICHMOND.
It was Lord Wreciimar.a. we remember, who gave
the first signal of reform in Parliament. Has it been
reserved for the Duke of RICHMOND to give the first
serious signal of social revolution?

WE hope that the committee now sitting to examine
into the question of salaries will also take into consi-
deration the utter irresponsibility of our colonial and
diplomatic employes, and the very serious conse-
quences which have and may arise from theirs ilfulneFs.
We have by no means • predilection for a highly
centralised government—one which reduces those
appointed to represent it, in places no matter
how remote, to mere automatons. But there may
surely be fout.d a medium between this and
our system, in which any proconsul, whether
governor or ambassador, can, in following his
own caprice, defy alike the minister and the pub-
lic, nay, implicate !and disgrace the country, without
it being found possible or desirable to go to the length
of displacing him.
Complaints have been raised against the Governor
of Ceylon, against the Governor of Labium. A par-
liamentsry committee has at upon the one, and have
discovered quite sufficient to prove culpability and
folly. But Lord TORRINGTON will go unscathed.
We all know how Sir HENRY WARD has behaved :
the very ministerialists excuse the cruelty of HAYNAU
by pointing to the flog4iogs and hangings of the
Governor of the lonian Islands! Mr. MORE
OTERRALL, appointed, out of compliment to
the Roman catholic', Governor of Malta, out-
Herod' HEROD in his cruelty and persecution to
every unfortunate liberal. Nay, he masts to this
very hour in continuing his proscriptions and persecu-
tion. In these military colonies it is however impos-
sible for private individuals or for the press to collect
sufficient and sure materials for accusation. And
accordingly, although the press has protested, parlia-
ment slurs over the business. The guilty parties not
only enjoy complete impunity, but show themselves
to Europe as crowned by the approbation of the
government which employs them. Although the
whig government may be judged in Italy by the cor-
respondence of Lord PALMERsTOY, it is known in the
Levant by the praise which Lard GREY has
showered upon the policy of a WARD and an
OTERRALL

Now as we cannot suppose Lord GREY to be
of the old CASTLEREAGLI school of politics, or that
he would identify his liberal name either with
the hangings and.scourgings of Cephalonians or the
Sir HUDSON Lowe terrors and persecutions Cf exiles
at Malts, we must only conclude that he sees it
inconvenient to disavow and impossible to punish his
illiberal subordinates without a scandal that it would
be undesirable to create.
If we turn from,the colonial to the foreign depart-
ment, what do we see? Her MAJESTY'S ambassador
at Vienna acting and writing directly in the teeth of
the declarations, directions, and despatches of the
Foreign-elfin. We have not the same proof of this
in the pages of the blue books with resptet to Lord
WESTMORELAND at Berlin. But we tee quite enough
to know that a grandee ambassador, in nine cases out
of ten, folloirs his own grandee notions, and snaps
' his fingers at the liberal policy or desires of the Secre-
tary of State. . . .

It therefore becomes a question whether parliament
is to support and pay a ministry for professing one
set of opinions, and at the s,me time a lordly set
of proconsuls for professing ant acting upon
another. The fact of it is, those governors
and ambassadors are too powerful, too proud, too well
paid and well fed. Once appointed and trusted, they
get in possession of important secrets, and repre-
sented as they are by party and family connexion
in either house of parliament, it is not safe to irritate
or dismiss them, unless they can be extinguished alto-
gether. An ex-governor, or an ex-envoy transferred
to the opposition benches, would prove in the highest
degtee inconvenient. So that instead of government
being muter of its agents, its agents are really muter.
of the government.
In fact, the most serious faults, scrapes, and perils
that the country has been brought into during late
years have been the result of the conduct of gover-
nors and diplomatists. And a very great proportion
of that obloquy which has befallen ministers
at home has come of conduct for which
they were in nowise cognisable or answerable, but
of which they have thought themselves chivalrously
called upon, or parliamentarily forced, to assume the
responsibility. Selee'ed as British agents generally
are, fur their unfitness rather than their fiintss, for
their connexion rather than for their experience, some
efficient check or control mast be put upon them,
either by the government, by parliament, or by the
public. It is quite evident that government will not
punish nor even reprimand, that parliament is
too easily baffled and hoaxed, and that
the public is too careless and ignorant in
colonial and foreign affairs to warrant the press in
taking the matter in hand with that zeal and that
expenditure which such subjects would require.
Hence the TORRINGTONS, the WARDS, and the
O'FERRALLS escape; and the malefactors that ought
to be gibbeted in the public eye, are literally re-
warded with civic crowns by the perverse and peevish
contrariety of the very chief that should inflict the
punishment.
But if no effectual remedy be apparent, there is
at least one step to it very feasible and obvious.
Reduce the salaries, let the offico become the aim and
the reward of the man of business and experientc,
not the retreat of the bankrupt lord or broken-down
politician. As lor gas the country gives 80001. and
6,0001. a year for the performance of highly agreeable
duties, these ditties will be sought by men who are
quite above either duty or business—men who, as
governore, will infallibly play the monarch, and
give themselves up to the old court or
official clique, or who, as diplomatists, will
merely try to make one of the most fashionable and
stupid circle which maintains itself by court favour
and court exclusion. As long as we pay sut.h men, we
shall have Lord PONSONETS SlEVOling METTERNICH,
and Lord WESTMORELANDS waving their hats and
hurraing at meetings of retrogrades and ultras. We
must pull down the nests to get rid of these old
rooks ; and that can only bus done by making a sweep
of princely and preposterous salaries.

Tug case of the Chester and Holyhead Railway,
which has at last been brought bef ire the House
of Commons, is as sad, as it is a simple one. En-
couraged by the imperial government,acompauy was
formed to shorten the route between the English and
the Irish metropolis; but no sooner did the company
bind itself t.i execute this great national work, and
ceivo lrom the legislature the necessary legal
powers, than in stepped the Admiralty and re-
quired it to spend nearly a million sterling more
than the oricinally contemplated works required or
the originally prepared estimates anticipated,
in bridges constructed on principles previously un-
known in wrehanice; and this to save a few hundred