The Express.
London, England, 1850-04-05 00:00:00

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OUTGOING MAILS.
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LONDON, FZIDAY, APRIL 5.

Sta Cumin WooD's new Stamp Duties Bill has
made its appertain. and it fully condi= everything
we have said se to the increased duties proposed to be
levied under the sew sebum, and ma to the immense
number of now items which us about to be brought

Into taxation. The CHANCELLOR of the Exam:at:rift's
words were admirably chosen. Henceforward it is
abundantly clear that "every matter and thing what
noever" must be stamped, and that any attempt to
maps will only make things tan times worse.
Indeed, looking carefully at the wording of the
bill, we have begun to doubt how far the CHANCEL-
Lott of the EXCHEQURR's alterations can have been,
as we bare been glad hitherto to suppose them, the
result of carelessnese' accident, or want of due consi-
deration. We observe that the remarkable new
word!, by which not oily "property" as defined 17
the courts, but every other matter and thing," is
sublectcd to camp duty, run throughout the bill, and
are introduced as if purposely, to guide the judges
In any future interpretation of the statute.
Throughout this measure the extent to which the
CHANCELLOR has gone in altering the text of the
existing Stamp Acts quite surprises us ; and espe-
cially to. when we remember the legal difficulties
which attend the interpretation of these acts at every
clause and paragraph. The Stamp Act now in force
has existed ever since the 33 Geo. 111., and has be-
come, by the assistance of the interpretation of the
courts, settled law and practice. This meddling
measure of Sir CHARLES WOOD'S undoes everything
which the wisest legal hands in Great Britain have,'
for the last quarter of a century, ben en-
gaged in arranging. It re-opens the doors of
Westminster Hall to a class of suitors who bad nearly
disappeared from it. Great joy for Lincoln's lon !
For years past coesultatiors about matters affected
by the Stamp Acts have been few and far between.
For the next ten years, if Sir CHARLES WOoD's bill
we shall have nightly meetings in the neigh-
of Stone-buildings to consider casts arising
out of, the interpretation to be pat upon the new
and extensive phrase, " matter or thing whatever, or
of whatsoever natu 0." _ _

As a correspondent put it upon Wednesday, the
question really is, what description of property it will
be hereafter possible to convey or mortgage without
the usistanceof an ad ralorena stamp? Everything
relating to shipping is at the present time exempted
by statute from the operation of the stamp duty : but
Who will like to buy or to lend money upon mortgage
of a ship hereafter, except all the documents have
paid a duty preportloned to their value ? The Caws-
caxwa eg the ffiCHSCP:ER perhaps may tell us that
be does set intend to touch the shipping interest :
but we vesture to reply thereto that his bill, if it
plane in its present shape, will at least leave the
question in a state of greet ancertainty. And in
every this, that relates to a legal transaction what
can be worse than that?

As showing the 'Bird in which the CIIANCYLLOR of
the EXCEIVICER'• bill is drawn, we may advert to the
6th clause, which provides the " terms and conditions
on which deeds may be stamped after the signing
thereof." At the present time certain deeds executed
on uns'amped paper may be stamped upon payment
of a penalty of 31. and the duty. Henceforward the
be penalty is to be 101. in all cams where the stamp to
affixed does not exceed that amount in
value. In all cases where the stamp is
above the vales of 101., then the penalty
is to be of precisely the same amount as the
stamp. This is carrying out the ad raltirent principle
with a vengeance. The eficet it will have upon the
small consumer is not immaterial, when we consider
that this increased penalty is to be levied even where
a two-and-elxpenny stamp is %anted. But the effect
upon those who by carelessness, ignorance, or mead-
Tert.nce, may esquire a stain upon a heavy consi-
deration is abso!ntely frightful for a conveyeneer to
contemplate.
The stamp-ofilee have lately been greatly troubled
with complaints from the retailers of stamps, who are
wroth at the illiberal way in which they have been dealt
with by the department. The Stamp-office allow a
certain per cestage to the retailers upon the sale of
stamps, and one of their acts imposes a penalty of
10/. upon any such retail's who may charge the pur-
chaser of a stamp, under any colour or pretence, a
larger amount than the price marked upon that
stamp by the revenue. Very lately the Stamp-office
have cut down the commission to such a small
amount, that it becomes very little worth the while
of any respectable stationer to retail for the de-
partment. No little embarrassment has been caused
thereby. Sir CHAIRLES WOOD proposes in this bill
to meet the difficulty. How dues he intend to do it ?
Why, by repealing the penalty for over charge, and
thereby throwing the payment of the commission
upon the consumer! Any purchaser of a common
threepenny receipt ramp hereafter will be charged
31d. or 4d. for that commodity, and may be charged
a much larger amount in districts whe.e there is no
competition but only a single person "licensed to
sell stamps." It is bad enough to have to pay for the
stamp. Will the public submit to the additional
charge of an extortionate stamp dealer who is " duly
licensed" to defraud them of any additional amount
upon its cost which his elastic conscience (not the
law) may warrant his imposing ?

NEXT to judicious praise and encouragement there
is nothing that persms engaged in undertakinge of
great public utility have more to desire than un-
founded censure. The :loud of witnesses who came
forward at the late meeting in Pear-street to bear
testimony in behalf of the tfficicy of the raged school
in that district for good, in contradiction to the dis-
paraging sta•ements in the Morning Chronicle, Eco far
to corroborate this view. They were reported in our
yesterdly's publication, and deserve the moat serious
attention.

At the meeting referred to, fathers and mothers rose
one ate, another to declare how deeply they were
indebted to the ragged school, to heap prayers and
blessings as the heads of those who originated and
supported it, and to express their earnest
wishes that their ciroomstanc,s could have ctiahlid
them to contribute to its maintenance and ex-
tonsior. One poor woman told, with a mother's
pride, how her boy educated at the school
had gone to America and had remitted her "a
sovereign—his first savings." Another with a
sigh remarked, that "had the ragged school been
establilied five years ago she would have one child
among Ler number whoa she now bad not. He had
gone away [trasepxted]: the school was too late for
him." Another expressed her gratiyude fir the good
her boy had received at the ragged school: "she
could now (se never btforo) go to bed at night and
rise in the morning, and thank the LORD that her
chill was sae." A man who had two Lop at the
school in Pear-street, exclaimed "Gem bless you all
gentlemen! If I was worth 1001., I would not
grudge it for the boys to receive so touch good as
they have done." Another " hoped ha should not die
till he had assisted the school in some way." The
good that is acquired by the children at the schcol
is in some instances communicated by them
to their parents. Mention was made of a
boy who had been educated at the Pear-street
*0.0,1, and was teaching his f Aber and
mother and two sisters to write. There were
many testimonies to the general improvement of the
vicinity since the ragged school was opened in Peer-
street. The neighbourhood is now decent and orderly:
arse years ago no respectable young woman could
walk there without being insulted; thirty persons
might 1r seen gambling in the street, and as much 1115
3L staked at once; in the very room where the et-
irg was held thieves were wont to meet end teach the
secrete of their profession.

The statements made at the Peirehrest
illustrate admirably not only the effeffin of
schools, bat of the mode in wide\ they no
In our densely peopled to there has beensa
a clam left outside of the elt ica,
the reach of its softsaing strengthalso Led
Children whose parents are too poor to Had them to
school, too moth engrossedin the pursuits by
which they urn a Bounty and precarious subsistence
to keep see eye spas them, are left exposed to
all contaminating inflasliss• The unhappy
creatures grow up without having any
maxims instilled into times Ise the guidable of their
conduct, the natural anises on steeled in the nip-
ping air of poverty. Ise the seines lei hear
the conversation of the duLeemt t sad sassethoss, by
the nen instinct of imitating tallow their exwmple.
Were they to seek for receptis• into any of the semi-
narks which evicted before ragged schools were in-
stituted, their squalid and Istimed raiment and equi-
vocal characters would mere their being refused
admittance. These outcasts by the roadside, destitute
of " wedding garments," have been invited by the
founders of ragged schools to sit down at a table
where food is provided both for their intellectual and
moral nature. No ooe was rejected, however un-
couth his appearance, however gross his ignorance,
however equivocal his character. They have learned
to love instruction; the better principles which re-
mained dormant within them have been awakened;
they have been Wooed to try to become useful
minters of society. In some instances the example
of the child trying to better itself has shamed demo-
' lute and reckless parents into emulating its example.
The whole poverty stricken class of a neighbourhood,
witnessing the good effects of these schools, have
become their warm partizan', and take au honest
pride in being so. The schools have become a rally-
ing point for the good : they are the source and object
of a purifying aid ennobling public spirit. They
have created bodies of citizens in the highest and
best sense of the term.

It may be fearlessly admitted that these schools
have not been in every it ranee successful. What is
said about children being brought into contact with
thieves at them may indeed be disregarded. They were
brought into such contact before the schools existed,
and without their counteracting influence. But we
admit that many a pupil may have felt a momentary
desire, awakened in the schools, to become an honest
and industrious man, subside and die out under the
recurrence of bad habits, or the influence of bad cern-
panions. We can easily imagine young reprobate.
availing themselves of the knowledge acquired in the
schools to attain to greater dexterity in wickedness.
Such exceptional cases, the consequences of naturally
weak or perverse characters, are not unknown among
the flews of higher seminaries, or even amoug
Christian communities that exercise a rigid discipline
over their members. A large allowance may ba made
for inch relapses, and yet the better spirit breathed
into a whole chute the number of individual "brands
snatched from the burning " remain sufficient to vin-
dicate the segscious humani,y of those who pro-
jected the ragged schools. In %hie, as in everything,
" Wisdom is justified of her children."
The general tose and tendency of those papers in
the Morning Chronicle, of which the disparaging
statements regarding ragged schools form a part, c
vince us that these statements are m nely the result
of inadvertence. The writer has taken too heavy and
superficial a view of the class to ba dealt with, and the
manner in which the schools deal with them. The
main object of the schools has been to awaken the
torpid germs of goodees.a which lurk in the breasts of
all. They are the first missionaries sent into the field;
their work is preliminary ; they are meant to prepare
the way for something better. D..ring the brief
period for which the *ciboria have been in existence, it
would have been as much as could have reasonably
been expected had they only inspired the destitute
• amoLg whom crime elbows indifference, with
• conviction that they might become something
better, and, with intermittent desires to realise
the eseirstion. Time is necessary to the growth of
three habits, which alone can make an orderly and
decorous clans But the witnesses at the Pear-
street meeting (and similar teetimonies might
be gathered from any district in which a raised
school has been in active operation for a year or
two) proved that more has been done than to awaken
vague longings after improvement; that many have
been reclaimed, many kept from felling. The fella-
cious nature of the inferences drawn from the report
showing an increase in the annual number of pees ens
taken into custody within the district of the metropo-
litan police during the last three years, was expesed
by us on Saturday las% The number of committals
I for trial his diminished in a much larger ratio than
the Lumber of arrests has increased.

IlowEven useful our diepet series mey be, the ino-
tives of their reorders will not always &sr investiga-
' don. They are sometimes got op by the friends of a
medical man, for the purpose of providirg him with •
place as resident medical officer. It not unfrequently
happens that a physician or surgeon, wantirg to
bring himself before tie public, tekt • the opp-rtunity
of doing so by establishing a dispensary. ?deny of
our London dispensaries have had their origin in this
slum. At the present moment, a large number of
young physicians and surgeons, not content with
being attached t 3 dispensaries and hospitals, con-
, vert their own houses into shops where advice
may be had gratis from 10 to 12 o'clock, the only
difference between their own houses and the dispen-
sary being that at the latter patients get medicine as
well u advice. It happens, however, occasioeelly,
that a dispensary has a bowl file fouudatioe, that the
benevolent inhabitants of a neighbourhood, feeling
the importance of administering relief to the sick
poor whiiet residing at their own homes, inetitate a
medical establishment for the purpose. But sooner or
later the danger threatens even these, when their medi-
cal officers are not paid, that they ev,ll be converted
Into means for advertising physicians and surgeons
rather than the healing of the sick.
In all our dispensaries, except where fraud is in-
tended to be practised, the government of the diepen-
eery devolves upon a committ e of thu rubecribers.
This committee is nominally elected, at an annual
meeting of the governors or subecrihnrs; bit to those
who know anything of the working of our dispen-
saries and hospitals, we need not say, that except in
the case of some squabble, the governors seldom or
never attend. The committees, thee, are self-, lector!.
They generally cinsiet of the clergymen, same of the
medical men, and two or three of tie princip it trades-
men or gentry of the district. The meth, al officers
of the dispensary are variously alio red either to sit
on the committee or not, or when sitting on it to
vote or not. This matter frequently depends ore
the origin of the dispensary, but in most eases
the physicians and surgeons have a Feat on the
committee, with a vote, on the ground that, as their
services are gratuitous, they ought rot to be regarded
as servants of the institutien. Now, as it happens
that the physicians and surgeries are generally at tie
lowest four or five, sometimes menet more,
and as the other members of the commit-
tee seldom attend regularly, the medical men
have things pretty much in their own way, and
succeed in the inset in arresting any it quiry into
their own conduct. We do no' think that the medi-
cal men act wrongly here; all the sereiee they per-
form they give, and however little it may be, it must
elways demand iruch more time and a tenrien than
any committee-mire ever pest, ode to give to
the institution. Ilene., when committees ven-
tars to find fault, they are met w,th the
remark that "If you will pay us C.r our minims, we
will allow you to find fault, but whilst we do your
I work gratuitously, you must allow us to do it in our
own way." This is generally seffiei+ rat to quiet all
differences, and the thing ruts on iu the old way.
The real fault Lore is, that the eoturnit'Pe ere not to
earnest about working their dispensary. if they were,
they would take the proper inear, of eith. r increasing
their funds or decreasing their expeediture, in such
a way that, without diminishing in any manner tie
efficiency of their institution, they would secure a
eontrol over their moat imp .rtant functionaries. We
shall shortly have occasion to show that the
i expenditure of our dispensaries in one di-
rection might be very much diminished, and
thus afford the mean, of paying the medical men.
I But, ',peening the most judici nes ecuneiny is pre&
timed, a would be no very (Mule thing IM the
ince ne of every dispensary In Landon to be inner seed
were the committee only in earn s. ab or it. There are
DO charities to which the public, teed a mere favour-
able ear than the hospital and disp emery, and in
aimed every di-trict direct appo il 'vet p snional influ-
ence will a+.tu-e 4 contribution towa,ds their ex-
penses. If in any ce,e, thee, • dispees re is wentirg
fends to deftay either one expense or the other, we

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY