The Express.
London, England, 1850-05-23 00:00:00

Eke eivreoo.

travelling expenses, can find no security Nave in
keeping up an army of 500,000 men, and mom-
over. in erecting fortifications wttboat end. Siam
1813, indeed, Austria has never pureed as, teak
with sal Nave the filling of her prisms sod the tow
pieties of heresies. She had almost wowed the laud
with them. Of what use were tttey to bet ia the
hour of used ? And yet the same policy sorvivee ;
and the building of bastimi ust 4rlashed hob eta,
tinues, as if war and military promotion were the
normal state of Europe. All the great towns in
Austria are now to have improved and impregnable ,1
forts attached to them. Those at Milan and Vienna
are in progress; the latter, a perfect citadel, directed
against the city. Bromberg is to have another. The
fortress of Buda is to be tutored; that of
Spielberg, near Bruns, enlarged. Cracow is to
be erected into a fortress of first-rate rank.
Heaven knows what it will cost. Arad
and Tememar are likewise to be made impregnable.
In addition to these, Trieste is to be fortified on the
yea side, and to have an extensive arsenal, as well as
Pols. Amongst other of his plans in concert with
Russia, Prince SCUWARZENBERG proposes. to make
Austria a formidable miuitim9 power.
The only obstacle to the revival or completion of
these superannuated schemes of military empire, is
the utter impossibility of finding money even to meet
the current expenses of the state. What these current
expenses were and are the following will show. It is
a table ellowieg in each year the
Income. Expenditure. Army Estimates.
Tear. Millions nt Millions et Millions of
Pieria,. Eerie& florins.
1831
1832
1833
1834
1836
1836
1837
1833
1639
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1843
1847

OUTGOING MAIL&
The mails fee British North henries and the United
Mates will be mole ap be-morrow eveabsg.
The mane end se the Mediterranean, Beret.
Ogle*, India, RearKeeeg, to., will be made up to-sorrow
lerehleg.
The malie be Lisboa, Spain, sad Gibraltar will be made
vp
The West
27.
The West India MAN liteladleg Benssis, Heveasalt,
lamas, Henthires, New Weans. and Mesieekasel excluding
lbws ese Iliselters, St. Jegoili4lingleMl. Now Oebbeda,
IMM. sod Para. wall be while Tr zilee evanher of Jane 1.
The melle Ileaerts, the and POMO Ayres, will
be widely es the nests( of Jess .
The semis ler (Skater, Malta, Greeee, the lambs blue,
'Mt( Ogles, India. and Chia% via Beethasetes,
M maim an ea the morning of Jane 20.

1171011 WALVIS A? LONDON 17111110 a
=Dal -7111•ma.11,1, Alarm Ira
miaow -Nano& Its am I.

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAY 23.

Wa are essentially an experimental people. Oar
popular philosophy is inductive; our frame of govern
ment is composed of specific devices, provided from
time to time for specific waste, wholly regardless of
theory; our social system might furnish specimens to
fill a chronological museum. Above all, our laws are
the aggregate of expedients, suggested by various
necessities, wholly irrespective of their apparent
heterogeneity or disagreement with any common
principle. Our inaptitude for the synteetic habit
of thought and for absolute uniformity of system
may or may not be a misfortune. But the fact is
indisputable, that we are a practical people, in heart
entertaining a profound contempt for codes, doctrines,
and a priori reasoning in general, and busying our-
selves almost exclusively with the modes, in which
actual pressing and acknowledged wants can be met
In the cheapest, readiest, and most efficient manner.
I. The popular demand for certain definite reforms in
our courts of law, is an instance of this national ten-
dency. We want inexpensive and rapid de-
cisions of small money questions. We are
bored to death by the tedious formality of
the supreme tribunals in matters of simple
account. We have a settled conviction that
such prolixity of pleading about trifling sums in
dispute is in nine cases out of ten a mere contrivance
for professional profit at the cost of the suitors. The
immense majority of suits initiated in the courts of
Westminster never go to trial ; and comparatively few
of them ever proceed beyond the first step of pro-
cess. There is in fact nothing to plead or argue
about. It is therefore vexatious to have them treated
even in this p.eliminary stage as leyall.n disputable'
caste. The public are irritated at their being so; and
impatiently resist upon their being referred, or at all
events such of tbem as arise between neighbours and
where the sum does not exceed 301., to the local
courts instead of the Queen's Bench or Common Pleas.
That is all the merchants and traders ask—a practi-
cal, simple, safe, and common-sensical remedy for a
general, notorious, and every-day evil.
Whereupon, up else a swarm of doctrinaires, sys-
tetu-mongers, and anti-law fanatics, and insist that
the whole fabric of our jurisprudence must be
shunted, that to do what is easy and obvious and
practical only, instead of upsetting many things be-
sides and founding new principles, rules, and practices
el law, evidence, award, notice, and jurisdiction—is
cowardly, trimming, and *bevel all illogical. Local
warts, we are told, mast cease to be Iccal; the option
of resorting to them must be turned into an exclusive
resort to them, and the long-established principles
respecting what is termed the venue, are to be over-
ruled by the judgment of Captain FITZROY, R.N.
Instead of a bush:els-like discussion about practical
means, and their adaptability to practical elide, the
tone of some of our petulant contemporaries seems to
Imply that the affair has already become a political
faction fight, in which the sole question is, which side
ere you on. A committee of merchants and traders,
for presuming to assemble and say in the moot tempe-
rate language what they though: of the provisions of
the New County Courts Bill, are held up to ridicule
sad abuse as a club of nincompoops, or a gang ot petti-
foggers' friends. A crusade against all that is most
venerated and venerable in our jurisprudence is
preached ; and the frantic experiment is recommended
of forcing all suite whether local or not, and whether
legally controverted or not, into courts which never
were meant, and which, generally speaking, are not
qualified to have, such duties coat upon them.
The object for which county worts were esta-
blished, as we have again and again repeated, was to
provide for the cheap and summary arbitration of
petty disputes and the enforcement of petty debts.
They were meant to be courts of simple inquiry, not
of entitle argument. They were meant to be courts
for the do- —j-.motion of matters of fact, not pouts
of law ithabiticr

or. They were meant to save persons, .
the same district, the coat and trouble of a resort to
Westminster, not to undermine and subvert the tribu-
nals which are there established. But now other
aims are avowed. The wholesale merchat t whose
debtor in Devonshire or Durham fails to meet
his engagement, is to be deprived of his right to sue in
'court qualified to determine questions of law, and
he is to be compelled to abide by the decision of the
judge of a county court. If be should happen to
have two similar claims against parties resident in
the remote districts we have named, he must make a
journey to each or employ an attorney to act for him
there, and bring his witnesses per rail—a curious
mode of saving expense, it must be allowed. Finally,
he may, and in all probability will, if the cases admit
of legal debate, obtain two different judgments, with
both of which, as a good and contented citizen, he is
of course to try and be satisfied.
We have no desire to disparage the county courts.
We have never done so. We think them eminently
fitted to serve the useful purpose for which they were
instituted. But we submit that that purpose was a
definite, a limited, and a strictly subordinate one ;
and that to usurp for them the powers and functions
of the higher jurisdictions is wholly to lose sight of
that original parpose, and to lay up in them a burthen of
responsibility which they are wholly unfitted to bear.
Cheap courts they can no longer be, if they once cease
to be strictly local ; yet cheapness was and still is the
main argument in their favour. Expeditious they
must in hke manner cues to be, if they are compelled
to hear law arguments, and called upon to deliver
elaborate judgments. Respected or confided in
they will inevitably cease to be, when upon grave
and difficult questions of statutable interpretation,
of the admissibility of evidence or the weight of con-
flicting authorities—diverse and discrepant decisions
are known to have been pronounced by different
county judges.
The wife and natural distinction between snits in-
volving points for legal inquiry, and those which
turn simply on matters of fact, cannot, we are per-
Needed, be lost sight of without serious danger. We
have before suggested an easy method by which the
discrimination of cases fit to go before the local
courts from those meriting the attention of the su-
preme tribunals, might with facility be made. If the
pecuniary limit shall be widened to 60i., the adop-
tion of sane method of this kind is imperatively
required. If any one can suggest a simpler or a
better, we stall pail it gladly. But by all means let
the principle of an alternative jurisdiction be kept
;steadily in view. Let no man, for thanks of blind and
reckless theory, bs compelled to resort to a tribunal
which he justly believes to be less competent to do
him justice than that to which he has heretofore been
entitled to repair. If his case is plain, end he
has nothing to contend against but the proveable
neglect or dishonesty of his neighbour, let the county
court be open to him. But whim his case is of a
different description, let not the high places of justice
be shut against him. Let us proceed in this, as
we have in most other practical changes done, in
an experimental manner, seeking to make provision
for our actual wants, and taking little heed of the
lafiefs and lamentations of precipitate or passionate
w-reformers.

Ir is to be hoped, now that Austria has experienced
the inutility of keeping up a monstrous army, not
only for the intimidation of its own discontented sub-
jects, but for frightening Prussia into submission,
and the lesser winos@ from joining with her in a
constitutional union, that both the courts of Vienna
and St. Petersburg will roe, or will at least feel,
the necessity of diminishing their expenses, reducing
their 'raise and of Austria at least, adopting such
conciliatory and liberal measures in domestic policy,
as will admit of return to the ways of peace.
Unfortunately, the present ministry of SCRWAR-
ZEMBERG and EACH, although their treasury is so
empty as to be unable to defray the young Emperor's

Thus, from 1830 to 1847, during seventeen years of
peace, the deficit amounted to 155 millions of florins.
Tee debt of Austria was increased every year since
1818 by 20 millions, whilst the interest was increased'
30 per cent. On a state of such disorder came the
terrible events of 1848, diminishing the revenue, and
more than doubling the expenditure. The result was
too visible in all matters of currency and finance.
The bank, wholly in the power of the government,
now compelled to make advances, felt its reserve
become an incalculable fraction of the amount of
notes issued. In the summer of 1848 the bank, at-
cordingly,discontinued the reimbursement of its notes,
and the premium on silver has gradually risen to 20 per
cent., that on gold to 271. Even the copper coin disap-
peared from circulation. And in order to prevent
the interruption of all commercial intercourse, the go-
vernment issued notes of 4s. and 25., which the public
found necessary to divide into two and into four parts
for the common necessaries of life. Even this did not
suffice, and almost all shopkeepers were obliged to
pass notes and cheques in change. Government is-
sued notes of 4d. and 2:-,cl. value. And lioaily came
forth stcanynoten, notes of forced circulation. Such
is the present state of the Austrian currency, without
enough in the treasury to pay the EMPEROR'S bill
charges and railroad fares. And yet this state
threatens war, nay comes into our market to help
to keep up its monstrous armies.
This, however, is but the picture of the public
distress: the private suffering is in propottion. In
Hungary and Gallicia the late revolution decreed
that the landlords should lose their right to peasant
labour, but they were to be indemnified. The present
government has paid no indemnity. The owners of
the soil, therefore, without capital or labour, have
left the land half uncultivated. In Lombardy, the
proprietors of the sol have suffered tantamount loss
from positive exaction; and land is the only
soiree of wealth. Even the manufactories of
Bohemia and Moravia are stopped : Hun-
gary no longer offers them a market. Its
people have but wherewithal to live; and deeply do
the Mayon, of Bohemia now regret the day, when
they aided Austria to subdue the rich and independent
Hungary.
In fact, the whole of the Austrian empire is
stricken with paralysis, property ex'ine., and even
the cultivation of the soil diminished by r least one-
thitd. The remedies for this state of suffering, de-
vised by the government, are the maintenance of an
army of MONO men, the erection of fortresses,
the establishment of convents of Jesuit:, of which
there were formerly two, whilst now there will be
24, scattered through the empire. The police and in-
quisition of private as well as public life is committed
to the prierhood, the same as in the Roman states;
and this state of servitude, from which the Austrians, I
and even the Lombard., were exempt since the days
of Joserti IL, has been restored. _ _

Such is the empire, such the condition and policy
of the government, which still C 312 find organs and
public writers to belsud and support it in this coun-
try. Such is the tyrannical and rettognde govern-
ment, to which they would subject the population of
Germany, and to which they would entrust the guid-
ance of that country and ill defence against the ultra-
liberalism of the west !

DAT by day, the opposition to those parts of the
Metropolitan Interment Bill which infringe on local
self-government and on freedom of trade, is increas-
ing. On Monday, the committee of the three die-
seating denominations declared against them; and
this morning a general meeting is to be held at the
Freemasons Tavern, to petition parliament on the
subject of those glaring defects of what would, under
different machinery, prove an invaluable measure.
Nor has this opposition, as we understand it, any
connexion or sympathy with the noisy disturbance at
the Crown and Anchor, reified by the disorderly ser-
vants of a class of capital-less middlemen who inter-
cept, at enormous cost to families, funerals from being
directly and economically conducted by the trades-
men who indirectly furnish them. It is neither based
on trading selfishness nor does it spring from paro-
chial jobbery ; bat is provoked by the extraordinary
attack the bill makes on the principle of local admin-
istration and on the practice of representative taxa-
tion ; by the competition it proposes that government
shall establish to private trade; by the immense
amount of uncontrolled expenditure, and of irresponsi-
ble patronage, it will place in the hands of a govern-
meat commission ; by the unlimited power it will
confide to that commission of charging the public
rates of oar metropolitan parishes with the unlimited
loans it may raise ; by the authority it will give this
commission of rewarding by perpetual annuities the
parochial clergy of London for the aid they may ren-
der to the scheme; and by the unjust burthens it will
thereby impose on diameters.
It is on these grounds that the opposition to the
bill is founded; and very irresistible grounds they
appear to us. To its principle, or, in other words, to
extramural interment, there is, and can be, no objec-
tion. All classes are agreed as to its necessity, and
are united in a strong desire to prohibit intramural
burial. It is idle, then, and wholly inaccura'e, to
affect to trace this opposition to any discreditable or
interested sources. It is not to be parried or averted
by any attempt to confound it with the hostility of
those whose inordinate gains, it is at once admitted,
mart be abated before any system of extramural
sepulture can work well.
The Board of Health, whence this bill has pro-
ceeded, and by which, if enacted, it will be carried
out, is • new department of the state ; and it is
founded on principles of central supervision over
local affairs and local administration which, if strictly
confined to superintendence and suggestion, might be
v useful and valuable ; but which, if
pushed to management and control of those
efflux!, will effect a great change in the
machinery of English society. This Board
sprang up into existence during the visitation of a
pestilence; and, by its enforcement of house to house
visitation,it undoubtedly saved a large amount of
human life. To its temporary existence, the Health
of Towns Act gave prolonged life; and, under the
operations of that statute, its inspectors have prepared
a series of reports on the sanitary condition of ourprin-
cipal provincial towns which, in a few pages, furnish
to their " oldest inhabitants," a much more perfect
knowledge of the foulness of their respective localities
than a long life of desultory observation, even
auis'ed by smell the most acute, could supply. The
Health of Towns Act has, however, ea yet yielded
nothing more than reports. No town has hitherto

THE EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 23, 1850.

ailed • the reports soe% made in no ems bare the
wts tfiscei n n sotaally comiammod;
are not wan complaints in oonntry
pipes that the delay in beenning the good work of
aural &salines, is emribaNe to the obetrue-
tire spirit apparently htherent in centralised tune-
tionaryima, than to ser want et load energy. At all
events, it remains to be men whether the Board of
Health as work oat the statiMimpossesalkied to
its cars. le aOn its ability to de rta&
From the operation et tie et 'lbw.. Act,
London was excleded. in the emnighise Ow 'm-
ama., events have proved) that Ws BMW? Clima-
minim would speedily and ellbstively preside he its
sanitary improvement. This esempdea et the me-
tropolis from the furiediotion at the Board of Health
is, naturally enough, unpopider at Gwydyr Heave;
where there is a strong desire, transplanted freaa
Somerset Hones, to have oontrel and authority over
the sturdy and refractory parishes of London. The
subordination of any part of the parochial system of
the metropolis to centralised and scientific administer
don and functionaryima would, It is there antici-
pated, be followed by enlarged powers over the sani-
tary arrangements of country towns. So that gradually
and with the very best intentions, the Bard of
Health will, it is hoped, expand into a departmental
centre bureau, endowed with larger powers over
parish officers and local taxation than any existing
department of the state. Towards such expansion of
this hitherto very modest and very useful board, the'
Metropolitan Interment Bill is the first pipe to be
laid down. The expectant report on the supply of
metropolitan water will, we suppose, be pipe the
second.

Now there may, it Is just risible, be—to use the
dogmatic and positive language of the Reports
on Intramural Burial— absolute necessity

of unity;" "a change of management" may
_ " be absolutely necessary snp.erintendenoe" say
be " absolutely indispensable." It le, we say, jut pow
'ibis that in interment and water supply these prin•
ciples may be needful, and that oar present parochial
system is altogether unfitted to carry out unitary im-
provements. Bat in legislating on these subjects it in
indispensable that we know what we are about, whither
we are going, and what the end proposed is. It we can
only have extramural sepulture, and ample and cheep
supplies of water, by the agency of a new department
of the state, endowed with arbitrary powers and the
right of taxation, let us have time to consider whe-
ther that is not a price too large to pay even for those
blessings. Let us not legislate in the dark, or in ig-
norance, when it is proposed to increase so seriously
the authority of executive power, and to diminish so
greatly the powers of eeltgoveniment.
At present the Board of Health is composed of
three members, all appointed by the crown—viz., of
Lord SE% moue, who belongs to it cx officio, as chief
commissioner of the Woods and Forests ; of Lord
ASHLEY, who belongs to it as an amateur philan-
thropist ; and of Mr. Eletvix CHADWICK, who, doing
the real work, is, very properly, the paid member of
the board. If to these gentlemen are added two seem-
Javier, four ill-remunerated clerks, and a better-paid
porter' the existing establishment is, if we are to
credit the civil estimates, complete.
Now in such a board there is nothing inviting very
much confidence. Lord SEYMOUR has certainly oem-
menced his official career admirably; for he his, in
all probability, saved Birkenhead from that ruin
a hich Lord CARLISLE'S indolence was bringing down
on it ; but Lord SEYMOIa has, in the reformation of
the administration of the Woods and Forests and
other crown property, a great task before him ; and
it will require all his energies and mist of his time.
A little general supervision is the utmost, therefore,
he can give to the Board of Health ; he may interfere
now and then to restrain it when running a head ; but
direct it efficiently and completely ho cannot. Lord
ASHLEY and Mr. CIIA DwlcK will, in fact, constitute the
every day board. But Lord ASHLEY in the hands of such
a man as Mr. CaAIMICK is a child. The board is, there-
fore, resolved into Mr. CHADWICK, a little controlled by
Lord SEYMOUR, and a little ornamented by Lord
ASHLEY. Now Mr. Citanwice is the most resolute
opponent of local self-administration in the kirgdcm.
He regards the parochial system as a machinery fur
jobbing merely; and all his reports and measures
aim at what he calls "absolute unity." They are,
therefore, to be watched on th it account.

Hitherto the parochial system has in London, as
els-where throughout this realm and in all its colonies,
had the care of providing places of interment. Un-
fortunately the rapid growth of our towns has brought
buri,lplaces so provided into their very centres, to
the injury of health, and to the increase of taxation.
All classes are now, however, agreed to put a atop to
intramural sepulture. But this, says the Board of
Health, cannot be dine efficiently and economically
without the substitution of powers the most " abso-
lute,'' or, as we think, the most arbitrary, in a
central I:cely, for the parochial system • and with-
out the substitution of a governmental trade in
interments for a commerce carried on by private
speculators.
The first point for consideration is, then, not the
expediency of abolishing intramural sepulture—for all
men are agreed on its abolition—but whether extra-
mural sepulture may not be superintended by local
and representative machinery ?
In the provinces, the theory of the Health of
Towns Act is, that sanitary improvements can be
carried out by local agency, superintended by cen-
tralised science and suggestions. But if this principle
be applicable to every other town in England, why is
it inapplicable to London? If it be, in the opinion of
the Board of Health, inapplicable everywhere, then
this measure now before parliament is only the first of
a series of measures for the destruction of local self-
administration. Either, then, the Board of Health
ought to show cause why London is to be deprived of
the administration of all its sanitary improvements,
or it ought at once to proclaim its ultimate object to
be the destruction of local government in all matters
affecting sanitary improvement.
Of late there has been a succession of attempts on
the part of the executive government to interfere with
local administration and with private enterprise.
Lord MONTEAGLE proposed that government should
take railway audits in hand; Mr. Ltitoccuenz pro-
posed that the Board of Trade should have power to
rule and regulate the merchant service of the
kingdom ; and now we have Mr. CHADWICK propos-
ing that the Board of Health should, in the matter
of burial places, supersede the rarish authorities, and
take interments out of the hands of undertakers.
These attempts, we say, merit the most serious atten-
tion of the legislature; for, if successful, they will
produce a complete change in that system of govern-
ment under which, and very much through which,
this country has risen to that greatness, from which
M. LEM: ROLLIN, in a spirit of socialistic prophecy,
foresees we are about to fall.

At all events, it is, we repeat, necessary to be fully
aware of what we are about.

SPAIN.

We hats received our Madrid correspondence of
the 17th. The Gazette contains a decree prohibiting
the exportation of bark for tanning purposes. There
are rumours of a Carlist movement, and the govern-
meat continues to take great precautions. The Clamor I
Publico bee been condemned to pay another heavy
tine. M. laturitz was oa the point of setting out for
London.

AI A IMP, MAY 15.—Theo per Gala. S 7 I.loprpef, ; after Boleti
SI 13-16 to 32 cash. PP" 121 paper. eta, 13 prper.
, miter
Mu, 12 13-10 to 13 each. l'ainlera, 4 paper. nipsrus ;74
cash; Baia of $l. Fattening, 64. Exchange on London, W. 23.

ITALY.
NAPLES.

Letters of the llthjewm--- N7i7Jles, state that M. de
Rayneval has taken leave of the king to repair to his
new post at Rome. M. Baudin toted as chargé
d'affs.rss until the arrival of M. Walewsky.

BAVARIA.—At tho lath Mat., the
opposition in Um Bavarian Diet had made the follow-
ing motions :
That this climber protests against the full powers which
by a one-sided action wire give° to the &within Plenipo
tentiary, for the purpose of assisting in a anal resolution on
the subject of the German question; end,
That this chamber declares that no legal resolution can
be taken respecting the future of the German people with-
out the express assent to it of that people.
It is stated that the Bavarian )iet will be pro.
rogued on the 10th of Jane.
HOLLAND.—Tna HAGUE, MAY 20.—A cabinet
council was held to-day. The first chamber of the
States-General is convoked for the 20111 of May.
His Majesty, the King of Holland, has joined the
project of the constitution of the four kings in his
dignity of Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Grand
Duke of Limbourg