The Express.
London, England, 1850-12-14 00:00:00

will, to whose cupidity or caprice the whole populs,
ties ware consigned. Tee sense of property was
lined to the smallest possible numbervf the commul
and its security wu in proportion weak and trail. TI
were neither thews nor sinews in the social Ire me, in
knee its f.Ablentss and helplessness in reify time
bud. By the time the five years' experiment of '
]ushered Estates Commission shall have 1
, this state of things will, to a great extent,
be ged. On an average there will be a hundred
proprietors in fee where there have heretofore
only ten. The monopoly of land will have L
broken down, and a new element of order created in

its stead.
We think it difficult to over-estimate the impor-
tance of this beneficial change upon the interests im-
mediately concerned ; and its indirect benefits are
equally great, though somewhat perhaps less obvious.
Still we must confer that we have long desired to
see the present opportunity tuned to account, with
a view of establishing something of a better
tone in the relation between landlord and tenant. We
do not speak unadvisedly when we say that something
si this sort might safely and wisely be attempted
without injury to either creditor or inheritor, but on
the etedrary, with actual advantage to both, which
would uplift the improving tenantry of every estate
sold under the court to a position of comparative in-
dependence and content. It is not our purpose to
enter into specific details or to decide upon the merits
of any particular plan, but we wish to direct attention
to the urgent motives that exist for making some
attempt to better the condition of the many at a time
when circumstances have opened, as it were, a new
and uncontested way through the prejudices and pre-
scriptive privileges of the few. Still more do we desire
to point out that a special claim for consideration may
be fairly urged on behalf of the tenantry of estatessam-
marily brought into the market, broken up into lots,
and disposed of to • dozen different strangers.
A farmer who contracted to pay a certain rest
seven years ego, finds it hard—if not impossible—to
continue at the rent agreed upon at present priors.
If he is only a yearly tenant, or the holder of a short
lease, he finds himself completely in the landlord's
power; and in too many instances, as we know, that
power has been unscrupulously exercised. Neverthe-
less, it must be owned that, especially of late, a
clearer perception of his own permanent interest
tempers the landlord's rigour. Abatements have ex-
ienstvely been made during the last six months in many
counties of Ireland, and wherever a proprietor hopes to
weather the storm, and to leave his estate to his
family, nothing but sordid stupidity or insane per-
versity can prevent him from coming to a timely un-
derstanding with the improving and industrious
occupiers of the sail. Remission of arrears, allow-
ances for expenditure, retainable leases, and even
valuations for the purpose of adjusting rent, are heard
of where nothinr of the sort was ever dreamt of
before. The feeling of a continuing interest in the
welfare of a man's property, sharpens his wits and
curbs the haste of his avarice amazingly. Were such
a change of sentiment general, there would be no
agitation for tenant-right. But that it is taking place
gradually cannot be doubted.
Where an estate is likely to pass, however, out of
the old proprietor's hands the motives to forbearance
or forethought are unhappily wanting. The tenantry
are seldom ignorant of the crisis towards which the
affairs of the proprietor are drifting. The morality
of a crew in a foundering ship is proverbially not the
best ; and the carefulnessor charity of a landlord who
lives in weekly expectation of seeing his name in the
Latded Insolvent debtor's list, is probably the mini-
mum imaginable. The rental is exhibited to the
commissioners as heavily in &mar, and the number of
existing leases is so small, that it is a common form
of advertisement to offer the lands as being wholly at
the disposal of the purchaser ; the meaning of which
is not that there is no population dwelling thereon, but
that there arc no permanent lettings on lease or other-
wise. The case of a thrifty and honest tenant on a pro-
perty so circumstanced is ens of peculiar hardship. His
manful struggle against bad times, exorbitant rats.,
and falling prices, goes for nothing with the stranger
who purchases the fee simple as an investment.
Tenant right exists by mutual consent, but is not
eeforceable under any existing law. He is desirous
to hold on, and under the old proprietor might pro-
bably have been suffered to do so : but another has
setae to have authority over him " who knows not
Joseph." The court has no power to interfere. His
firm, like those of his neighbours, is returned in the
published rental as vacant, because there is no less
=heisting, or se about to become vacant in
a tw months, when the existing tenure will
expire. Has this man no equitable claim to be
protected by the interposition of the law? His
original contract was made with one whose character
and disposition he knew and estimated at what it was
worth. He may not have felt even under the old
proprietor secure against oppressive treatment; but
still he cherished to some extent a reliance on the
kindlier impulses of one who had known him from
boyhood, and who would have instinctively interposed
to shelter him from injury had another sought to do
him wrong. Weak the tie between them as landlord
and tenant might be, but still there was • tie of
mutual duty and consideration. Under the new
state of circumstances there sin be none. The
purchaser for investment knows not the faces of the
men who once were tenants of the estate. He
is told that many or them are insolvent and
many dishonest. How can be distinguish or discri-
minate? lie is told that the simplest way is to make
his new purchase a tabula rasa, and turn it into liga-
ture. The sentence of extirpation goes forth. Hun-
dreds are added to the already formidable bands of
disaffected men whom similar indiscriminate experi-
ments in the art and mystery of managing landed
property in Ireland have created. Ought no endeavour
to be made to find a more humane rule of transition
—a less perilous method of carrying out a change in
other respects so fall of good!

THREE hundred mad sixty-four years have elapsed
since BAntrioLonaw DiAj sailed from Lisboa in two
caravels of fifty ten each, and, rounding the southern
promontory of Africa, called it, from the storms he
experienced in its vicinity, " Cabo Tormentoeo." His
discovery transferred, for a time, the commerce of the
east from the Venetians and Genoese to the Portu-
guese; and for upwards of three centuries the route
by the Cape was the high road to India and the re-
gions beyond it.
To-day a voyage commences as pregnant with
great changes as that of BARTHOLOMEW in his
caravels of fifty tons. To-day the screw steam-ship,
Bosphorus, sails with the mail to the Cape of Good
Hope. The day marks an era in steam navigation, a
step forward in the civilisation of the globe.
Twenty years ago the operations of steam vessels
were confined to coasting voyages. The giant power
was still in swaddling-clothes. Its first display of
adult vigour was made when the "Hugh Lindeasy,"
under the auspices of the East India Company,
proved the practicability of re-establishing the ancient
route to the Rut by the Red Sea. Its second was
when Captain Roams and Captain Hossein, in the
" and "Great Western," first " bridged the
Atlantic" by stem
The spread of abeam navigation over the globe has
been clinked by the interference of government,
who, inflamed by the old notion that improvements
Yawn nse to encourage them, granted to
board virtual monopolies of ocean
diem melodies. Private enterprise was paralysed
by the mail thawed system, and for years no ocean
isomers were befit except by companies holding the
government mail contracts. 'fires monopolies kept
down the inventive genius of our countrymen; for
every one was afraid to venture on sew experi-
ments, lest the favourites of Downing-onset should
step in and reap the reward of his enterprise and
skill. At last the Americans have girded themselves
to the contest, and at their first trial they have
equalled CONAZD'a line, indisputably the best we
have.
It is to the system of threw propulsion, first prac-
tically introduosd by Esiosox in 1837, that we look
for the maintenance of our uoentisecy in ocean stem
navigation. This system was Aided for ten years by
the great contract companies. For the last three
years, however, it has been rapidly extending ; it
has, without government seristance, carried goods and
wronger, to New York, Alexandria, and Constant-
inople with oak speed, punctuality, and emomy that
the great meargelide are now themselves
down saner deems with the vain hope of
Mir usabsiiel thappetitors. •
The definition of a paddlewheel steamer iaa vessel
that makes ma way without wind or seila ; that of
a mew steamer, one that sails best with wind and
stem aseabined. The fiat defies the elongate at es
easiness Nati the other prams then late her est.