The Express.
London, England, 1857-05-02 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, MAY 2, 1867.

expressions of wonder at the price of Console, and
their astonishment at the fact that, in spite of our
tight money market, the French Three per Cents. are
from 20 to 22 per cent. lower in price than the Eng-
lish. With this quotation staring them in the face
day after day and month after month, they seem as
unable to understand the lesson it teaches as though
it were some unusual and exceptional phenomenon.
The explanation is simple enough. Making all duo
allowance for the risk of investing in a security
which may be at any time largely added to by the
mere will of an individual recklessly improvident of
the national resources, the low price of the French
funds in comparison with our own is evi-
dently owing to the excessive quantity of
securities of all kinds floating on the mar-
kct, which is out of all proportion to the
amount of capital available for their absorption.
And as calls ale made to complete vast enterprises
already commenced, that amount of floating capital
diminishes ; for, great as the progress of French
commerce undoubtedly is, and rapidly as the general
profits of the country increase, they by no means
keep pace with the schemes devised for their absorp-
tion, and with the demands made by the Govern-
ment fur war, extravagance, and unproductive works.
Were there any such abundance of floating capital
as would warrant this enormous extension of
iciataitock enterprise, the prima of the better
class of French securities would be much higher
end dearer in proportion to our own as
regards the rate of interest they yield to
investors. The Government is vainly endeavour-
ing to shut the fiood-gates of speculation which it
wee the first to throw open. It looked on with the
utmost complacency while the capital of the country
was being rapidly swallowed up by enterprises
which were to beccesereprodnetive years hence ;and
it aggravated the evil by undertaking vast works
which were never to produce anything but glory to
the name of NAPOLION the THIRD. Cridit Mobi-
lien, and Napoleon Docks, and similar ingenious
devices, were to endow France with fabulous wealth ;
—but it was to be paper wealth ; and the Govern-
ment permitted and encouraged it, until the peril
became too evident to remain unchecked. The
result of this improvidence and financial blind-
ness is, that although magnificence and luxury
are carried to the highest pitch in Paris, and
though the other great cities of France are
endeavouring to rival it, the agricultural popula-
tion of the country is rapidly diminishing, and
agriculture itself, deprived both of the arms of the
labourer and of the capital which should furnish him
with employment, is far from keeping pace with the
other sources of the national wealth. It is very
probable that, were the Government free to pursue
the more prudent course, it would apply this new
capital of the Bank of France in a great measure to
revivifying agriculture, and to hastening the im-
provements of which it stands so greatly in need.
But it has attached its fortnnea too closely to those
of the Bourse to be a free agent, and a monetary
crisis, taking the form of a prolonged panic in
shares, would be most perilous. The mania for
dabbling in speculations has penetrated through the
whole population of Paris, from the Palace to the
porter's lodge, so there is a necessity for conciliating
all interests. The International Bank is to be

founded—some day, when foreign capitalists are in
the mood ; foreign gold is to be poured into France ;
French securities, more especially, are to be those
on which loans are to be made; and the egregious
scheme of the Napoleon Docks, among others,
is to be lifted out of the mud. And then the
State can employ the capital and deposits of the
Bank of France in aid of agriculture, and all will go
on swimmingly again, until, or unless, some calamity,
like thaws which have hitherto marked each year of
Louts NAPOLEON'S reign, shall arrive, and determine
the bursting of the great financial bubble.

Tax horrors of the Chinese Coolie Trade appear
to have reached their climax in the month of March.
That which shocked and disgusted the public in the
cases of the John Calvin and the Duchess of Port-
land, was the kidnapping, the embenleraent of the
adnuncs due to the emigrants, the compulsory sail-
ing, the over-crowding of the ships, and the conse-
quent mortality. But in the cases of the Peru-
vian Teasel Carmen, the British ship Gulnare, and
the Dutch barque Henrietta Maria, there were
added the honors of mutinies and intervening
struggler ; the sacrifice by the inveigled and plun-
dered Coolies of their own lives and the lives of
others, to obtain liberty and vengeance. We are
not going to repeat in detail the horses we have
already given. SuMee it to say that in the ease of
the Carmen, the Coolies, baffled in their attempt to
gain possession of the ship, fired it, and to the
number of 200 perished is the tames. In the case of
the Gainers similar attempts were made, incendiarism
was again resorted to, and though the vessel was
preserved, 27 Chinese were killed and wounded in
the fight which aeppeessed the insuneetion. In
the ease of the Henrietta Maria, the mutiny was
snecessfuL The greater part of the Chinese, after
mastering the vessel, went ashore, and the ship
having put to sea again, was happily fallen in with
by the American vessel Cour de Lion, and with the
four seamen and 100 Coolies on board of her, was
Ileaned from destruction.
The dates and particulars of these occurrences
_ _ . _

afford some reliable evidence of the extent and cha-
racter of this frightful Coolie trade. The Henrietta
Maria left Hongkong on the Bth of February, the
Carmen sailed from Swatow on the lit of March, and
the Golnare on the 11th March. On board the first-
named ship were 344 Chinese, on board the second
200. The number shipped by the third is not
stated; but as the Oulnare is 1,000 tons
berthen, she would be entitled by British law
to carry 300 emigrants. Let us, however, put
her cargo at 400 Coolies. Here we have nearly
1,000 Chinese (all, of course, in the pick and prime
of life) carried off in three ships in a single month,
all rising against the ship in which they were being
conveyed, and in each case bringing disaster on the
vessel and on themselves. Two of these ship. took
their human cargoes on board at Swatow. Now
6watow is not a port of legal trade for foreign
vessels—it is, we believe, an opium smuggling depot ;
and the very feet that emigrant ships resort to a
port where there is no European supervision or
authority, and where their proceedings can only be
carried on by corrupting Chinese officials, throws a I
deep aignificance and dreadful suspicion over the'
trade. At best it has been found, even in the cue of
the British colonies, where the demand for Chinese
labour was superintended by officers responsible to
the Colonial-office, that to procure emigrants consi-
derable pecuniary advances must be promised to them,
and that payments of a corrupt kind to the lower
Mandarins were unavoidable. Not a Coolie could
I .

be shipped fur British Guiana or Trinidad Neitit-
out an outfit, without advances, and without
paying for the violation of Chinese law. Even the
presence of British functionaries has proved, in.
edema, to cheek this tendency, as is proved by the
sem et the Isle Calvin and the Duchess of Port.
had in the Iva pests. But at such places as Bwatow
sad Names there is eat so mash es the psetence of
cheek, sad there is tee mash MIMS to apprehend that
the triads trade is is the heeds et odor, who delude

the Coolies on board in the hope and expectation
that they are about to be conveyed to friends and
countrymen in tho gold fields of Australia or
California.

It may, perhaps, be suggested by our rabid
alarmists that the Coolies were sent on board these
vessels by Yen himself, with orders to capture them
and throw the crews into the sea. Could this ex-
travagant notion be entertained, it would only show
the folly and the danger of resorting to ports where
the worst characters can be most easily foisted on
the ships. But such an imputation is effectually
disposed of by the fact that long before the present
unhappy quarrel, these outbreaks on board emigrant
ships were not uncommon. That the tendency to
violence against Europeans on the part of the
Chinese has recently increased, there can be no
doubt ; but surely shipowners are called on to exer-
cise, under the existing state of things, at least
ordinary prudence; and no prudent shipowner or
shipmaster ought to have gone into the Coolie trade
in the month of March last.

Chinese emigration is against Chinese law. It
may, however, be said that the Chinese cannot call on
Europeans to enforce their laws. But the present
Coolie trade is illegal in itself, being carried on by
Europeans from Chinese ports, where their presence
is unlawful. The inference that Coolies see sought
from those ports because they cannot be obtained
elsewhere, and because they can be illicitly obtained
there, is only too reasonable. That there is no
indisposition, bat ea the contrary a strong dis-
position, in tho Chinese Coolies to emigrate for a
few years, is certain. But it is to countries whither
they can curry the framework of their own society—
where they can work in association—where they sea
. .

rule their own affairs by their own laws—where they
can enjoy independence and reap the full benefit of
their industry. They go in thousands to Manila,
Java, Borneo, Singapore, Australia, and California,
where they can enjoy these advantages ; and they go
thither without European aid, stimulated solely by
their own cupidity. But Chinese emigration to the
British colonies, to Cuba, to Peru, to Brazil—under

contracts to work for wages a stated number of hours
a day for a certain number of years, and to submit
themselves to European habits and discipline—has
never been voluntary. It has been carried on as a
trade by Europeans. Those who carry it on hays been
paid by the number of Chinese they landed in porta
of labour; and the consequence of undue stimulus in
Chinese ports to obtain the Coolies has been disap-
pointment to the Coolies always, and sometimes also
to their employers, in their new homes.

In the cases now under consideration the destine,
tion of the 1,000 Coolies was either Cuba or Peru.
Now, what humane, conscientious, really benevolent
man would suggest to an European labourer that he
should seek bis fortunes either in Cabs or Peru,
even if he spoke Spanish f But an European labourer
going to Cuba or Peru would at least have some
security for good treatment. He would have the
reputation of the power of his country; he would
find some one, in all probability, with whom he
could communicate; at least he would have the
diplomatic or consular representatives of his own
nation to fall back on; he would have the sympa-
thies arising from a common religious faith, similar
habits of thought and of life, and to some
extent of a common race. But no such security, no
such protection, attends the Chinese immigrants to
Cuba or Peru. They are not sought as colonists or
as settlers ; they are imported simply as labourers,
out of whom the largest possible amount of work is
to be obtained for the five years of their contracts.
If separated, their condition becomes most deplorable;
they are without the resources of communication,
without the interest or excitement of intercourse
with each other. In Cuba they are (there is ample
evidence to prove) slaves; and they have no country,
no government to vindicate their wrongs or procure
them redress.

That Chinese labour is destined to play a much
greater and more important part in the world than it
does at present, there is every reason to hope and
believe. But it is not by carrying on a trade in
Coolies to Cuba or Peru, or the French West Indian
colonies, that we can reasonably expect to associate
Chinese labour with Christianity, or with European
production. Within the last twenty years there is
proof enough that it is not distance or difficulty that
can deter voluntary Chinese emigrants from trans-
ferring themselves to European communities. They
have sought and found California and Australia by
themselves, as they also did Singapore and Java;
and if they are only well used, this disposition will
rapidly extend itself. But it must not be forced or
coerced, or made the subject of a speculative traffic;
for where human cupidity comes into play, we see the
result.

Mose people have been to look for lodgings or a
furnished house. You ring the bell—talk to the
middle-aged female with a cold in her head, and a
child in her arms, who answers it—traverse the lower
floors—go up stairs, look into the bedrooms—put
some questions to your companion—and return
home, perhaps, to make up your mind. In some
houses everything that meets the eye is admirably
nest and clean. The superficial observer—the
young bride or the verdant youth—is perfectly satis-
fied. But the shrewd mother and the experienced
bachelor of forty are not so easily deceived. The
outside won't do for them. They open the cup-
hoards—poke into out-of-the•way corners—turn up
the clothes on the bed—examine the state of the
floors—look into the kitchens and cellars. And
they have their reasons. It is one thing to sweep
a hearth, and another to carry away the ashes.
In some out-of-the-way corner—setae unostentatious
cupboard—these shrewd investigators will come upon
the most nauseous treasures, the accumulated filth
of months swept into some dark corner—pots and
pans, bowls and basins half filled with the refuse of
culinary art. These things are disagreeable enough
to think of, but when the unfortunate inmate of a
house is made conscious of their presence by the
aroma which will disturb even his dreams, they be-
come not only intolerable, but unwholesome. Most
people have experienced these annoyances; and,
unless their senses prove impervious to such horrors,
most people leave the lodgings at once, and warn
their friends not to have anything to do with them.
In short, if a house is to be comfortable or healthy,
the filth and dirt must not be put out of sight—it
must be put out of the way. To keep it up in a 11
dark corner produces—not cleanliness, but corrup.
' tion. The whited-sepulchre system does neither in
the religious nor in the physical world. There is
hypocrisy in household as there is in higher matters.
These familiar principles have a wide bearing. If
a good housewife sees that the dust and filth is not
• merely concealed, but removed in her private house,
I the good administrator ought to do the same thing
• in the populous city. &ales are asneeessary now as
t they were in ancient Rome. The mad and abomitunions
of such a city as London must not merely be swept
• into some common receptacle out of sight and there
left to breed a pestilence, they must be removed
• altogether. But whilst so much trouble is bestowed
• upon the mad and offal of mankind, what is done with
; that mass of human beings which constitute the poorer
t classes of the metropolis? By force of our present
aysteta—particularly that of our poor-rato—we ado.

ally convert this living mass into a heap of human
corruption, and then, instead of removing it, we
simply put it a little out of sight. How is
this accomplished? The lower classes of London
migrate to the eastern districts, and are collected
there in masses which arc both inconvenient to
themselves, and dangerous to their fellow-citizens

There is inconvenience, because the poor people are
compelled to make long journeys to reach their work;
there is danger, because overcrowding is both de-
moralising to the people themselves and certain to
generate disease. And yet these evils are not with-
out remedy, for they are due in great measure to the
present poor law. The inequality of the poor rate
in various parishes has the effect of overburdening
the poorer parishes of the metropolis with poor and
with rates, and of preventing selfish proprietors in
rich parishes from building inferior houses for the
accommodation of the lower classes. By our abse,xl
laws we compel the poorer classes to huddle toge-
ther; we blind their moral sense; we destroy the
possibility of domestic comfort, or ordinary decency ;
we create a mass of human corruption, and then,
instead of removing it, we attempt to conceal it—
to put it out of sight. But it will not do. The
public are beginning to see the magnitude of the
evil, and to demand a remedy. We have long advo-
cated the necessity of doing something. There was ,
a public expression of opinion on the subject a
few weeks ago in Camberwell ; and we are
glad to observe that on Wednesday last a meet-
ing of the ratepayers of St. George's-in-the-East
and the adjoining parishes was held to consider
the proprietyof petitioning Parliament for an equali-
sation of the poor rate throughout the metropolis.
_ _ _

The Rev. G. H. M'Giu.was in the chair, and
although there was some difference of opinion as to
details, the evils complained of were generally
admitted. It seems that Mr. HANBURY and Lord
R. GROSVENOR have promised their aid to carry the
remedy into effect, by introducing a Bill for equalising
the poor rate throughout the metropolis; and indeed
the case for this reform, as stated in the petition which
was adopted at the meeting, seems overpoweringly
strong. It is admitted that vast masses of the poor of
London are either already located in the suburbs, or
are being driven from the West-end and the City by
various causes totakc up their residence in the Eastern
parishes. In consequence of this the ratepayers of these
distressed districts are daily becoming more and
more impoverished—the poor rates having during

the last twenty years been doubled in amount, whilst
the number of paupers has increased threefold. The
oessequence of this is, that whilst the eastern
parishes are paying 4s. in the pound, the richer and
mss favourably situated parishes arc not paying
more than one-sixth of that sum. It is a fact, how-
ever, that if the rate were equalised on one
uniform assessment throughout London, it would
nut exceed ono shilling in the pound per
annum for all ; and if every description
of property from which pauperism may incidentally
arise were equally rated, it would be considerably
less than that amount. The desire, therefore, is that
an act may be pained to equalise the rate and the
assessment throughout the metropolis.
No demand can be fairer. The chairman reminded
the meeting that when the Bishop of LONDON and
Mr. GLADSTONE, some time since, visited the eastern
part of the metropolis they expressed it as their
opinion that the residents in the west end
et London ought to contribute towards supporting
the poor in the east end, in order to relieve the
unequal pressure to which the inhabitants of that
part of the metropolis arc subjected. We agree
with this on all grounds. These poor people
who live in hovels and garrets in the east, aro abso-
lutely necessary to the rich nobleman and merchant
who live in their spacious palaces in the west end.
The rich ought to pay for the poor—the master ought
to pay for his servant when he is worn out—the
west end of London ought to pay for the poor of the
east end. There is another consideration which
may come home to some, whom motives of humanity
and right feeling are powerless to touch. In that
great eastern district you are rearing a separate
people, the inhabitants of a separate city. Is this
safe? Let any man look from the Blackwell or the
Shoreditek Railway over those wide wildernesses et
mean red-tiled tenements which spread on every side
around him, and ask himself whether it is safe that
such a city of labour and pauperism should grow up
in close neighbourhood, but absolute estrangement,
side by side with this Western city of luxury, and
wealth. If London ever rose in insurrection, what
would St. Antoine or St. Marceau be to the Dock%
Spitaldelds, and Poplar? We must do sossatlsiag
to bridge over the gulf that separates dose tw
cities. We must fuse wealth and poverty by sone
kind of relation or other, by the obligations if lIIIITO
ash payment," if no better bond of union sac be
devised. In some way or other the rich of London
and the poor of London must be brought into a slate
of interdependence the one on the other. No better
first step can be taken towards this object than by
passing some such law as the petitioners of St.
. . . _

MR. I)ISRAELI, it appears, was after all not so far
wrong when he told the electors of Buckingham-
shire that nothing of importance would be done in
the first short session of the New Parliament. Does
anybody believe that anything of importance will
be dose between the ith of May and the beginning
of August in Parliamentary Reform, in Law Re-
form—in any other description of reform? In the
language of the Chancery Court, many measures of
importance may perhaps be " spoken to," but few
indeed will be set down for a serious hearing, and
fewer still can be matured into law. There is,
however, one measure which, as we are informed,
Lord PALMERSTON has wisely resolved to urge for-
ward at any rate. It is an isolated measure. It re-
quires no preliminary research ; it connects itself
with no long train of doubtful consequences. All
that can be said upon it has been said. Action is
required—action, and nothing else. The abuse it
seeks to remedy is one whose perpetuated existence
is the infamy of our age. When all elsehas yielded
in this country to the civilising tendencies of the
time, there stands the insolent obstruction of Jewish
exclusion—the one foul remnant of mediaeval
bigotry which is still suffered to disgrace
the practice of a liberal and tolerant age.
Seven words in an oath, intended as a shield
against the unscrupulous evasions of the Jesuit, are
converted into a fence of exclusion against the conscien-
tious scruples of the Jew ; an oath devised when not
a single Jew existed within the limits of the four
seas, is wrested from its original use to keep the
Jew out of Parliament, in an age when he is per-
mitted to exercise every other civil office to which an
Englishman can aspire. Lord PALMERSTON, we
believe, has determined to lose no time in putting an
end to this state of things. The country has given
him a Liberal majority. A more legitimate employ.
meat for such a majority than the admission of the
Jew to Parliament it is impossible to conceive.
Let this popular and powerful Prime Minister
strike home, once and for all, at this miserable
solecism, this wretched mockery of a con-
vientious conviction—this bass anachronism that
seeks to perpetuate in an age of light a spirit
only worthy of the worst day. of darkness. U this

first session of the

Parliament is to

be signalised by nothing else, at all events let it earn
the credit of having finally trampled under foot that
execrable mummery wjlich perpetuates the abjura-
tion of an extinct family, in order to persecute a
living creed, and preserves the rusty touchstone of
the Jesuit as au exclusive shibboleth to detect and
oppress the Jew.

The election for the vacant poetry professorship
at Oxford is fixed for Tuesday next, the tith inst.
It is understood that Mr. Matthew Arnold and Mr.
Bode are now the only candidates in the field. The
contest is expected to be a very sharp one.