The Express.
London, England, 1850-03-20 00:00:00

Ih erprtoo.

OUTGOING MAILS.
The male for British, North harks sad the Untied
Anna will he nude up ea the mega, of the Mad but
The meth eid Mareelliee, to the hierreanut,
Indle. l=eas, he., wil Made up erg
male/ el the Lisboa
The means ler 15paht, and Gihralter will be ma.
ap ea the 12di Illatoh.
The Wan labs Mae. ineindiag Berawde. Henan*
newea, liewduree, New °them, aid NI eale% end ezelntUng
These for ire, Bt. Juen-de-Nieereese, Now Grande,
Oltill, sad Peru, will he amide up es April 2.
The ails for Yederie, the Beadle, and Banes Apse, will
he wade up ea thesveldag of April 4. • •
The who for Gibraltar, Melte, Groom, tba lonian
ad Islands,
Zaps, s
up Ceyloean.Apra * sad China, via Ikr Indatheapton, will
be me 20.

RION WILMA AT LONDON 113111:10E.
him o.—Monlag. h. 11 Aftwous. 11%.114.
liwimasA—Mnilisf. scan. Afidarma. 71. !N►

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MANCE 20.

Mr. Burets treatment of ministers resembles not a
little the behaviour of Lord PALMERSTON sed Admiral
PARKER to King OTRO. Year after year has Mr.
Hvrr been sending in his " notes," fortunately with
eirliamentary publicity. Aod each year has Lord
FALIIERsTON been dunning his Greek bre-
three, from CoLETTI to LONDOS. There
was " no answer" to the greater number of demands,
a lame excuse to others. And an the Greeks
pooh•poobed FINLAY and PACTFICo, so did the
Foreign-office disbelieve that the anti-blockaders could
be in earnest, or mull make a ease of it.
There was no possibility of bringing the
Greeks to reason, or to attention, short of
a blockade and the capture of all their
fishing baste. In like manner Mr. Herr blockaded
Downing-street. The extreme measure created great
uproar and alarm. As Bing Orno threatened to re-
sign, so did Lord PALMERSTON; and Lord Jolts was
to share his fate. The Greeks called a council of
friends and et mi-friends ; but t here wan no mode of ap-
peasing the foe, save paying the money. Down i n g-street,
too, summoned its cone eil of adviser'', and spoke the lan-
guage of antler and defiance. But Downing-street
met with small encouragement. Pay the money,
advised the French mediator in the Greek calm.
Proceed to withdraw the squadron at least next
year,—nothing less will save you, was the advice
yesterday of liberal and of Peelite, of Sir JAMES
GRAHAM, of Lord HARRY VANE, and of men like them.
The fact is, ministers have allowed public opinion
to outran them upon this question. Lord PALMER-
STON, so go-ahead in many measures of foreign policy,
has lingered behind in this : and he has kept Lord
Joint back by the skirts. Now, the very essence of
whiggism is to keep up with public opinion, or to tarry
but a few steps in the rear of it. But to act this
part requires great vigilance, sharpness, sensibility,
qualities possessed and practised much better out of
office than in. And the present ministers have been
so long in, that they have forgotten them. Public
opinion has been yearly, daily, withdrawing from the
system of coercion on the coast of Africa—public
opinion of all kinds, from the philosopher who would
make QUASI:ISE work under the whip, to the anti-
slavery men, who would make a spoiled child of him.
And ministers have, after all, no plea to offer but their
own laziness for being left behind.
What was Mr. LABOUCIiERE's best argument ?
That he was not prepared with a shadow of a substi-
tute; that England had established a police, a very
unwarrantable and expensive police, on that horrible
coast, and that to withdraw it at once would be
to let loose all the rogues, and do all the harm
possible. But no one wants ministers in reality
to do more than to take serious steps for withdraw-
ing from a useless and untenable position. They had
but to promise this, and the debate would soon have
been closed. But ministers, or at least Mr. LABOU-
CITERE, took high and defiant ground. The same
old arguments were put forth, that the blockade
might be retderid more efficient; that it
would live an opportunity for treating with kings
and chieftains; that the blockade, if it had not
Prevented the export of slaves to the Brazils, had at
eat rendered them dear there, and, in rendering
them dear, had made it the interest of the Brazilian
planters to treat them well. The idea ! that we are
to levy a million each year upon the British taxpayer
in order to make the slave in the Brazils a precii.us
and well treated commodity. Well might one ex-
claim that such charity ought to begin at home, and
expend itself on the bogs of Connaught. Surely there
are other parties more interested than we can or
ought to be in keeping up the price of slaves in the
Brazils and Cuba—that is, the owners of the present
black population there. Would it not be better and
cheaper, and more true policy, to get them to make
laws against the slave trade, than for us to do it for
them, and even offend them by doieg so?
We were at the same time sorry to hear Mr. Ls-
BOCCIIERE denounce any emigration or transport of
negroes to the West Indies as a renewal of the slave
trade. It has been fully proved, that the transport
of negroes or slaves to Brazil and Cuba cannot be
prevented by a squadron, which the more it raises
the price and the demand by its interven-
tion, rains just in the same proportion the in-
centives to overcome that prevention. To assert
at the same time that negroes cannot be tran-
sported as freemen, is at once to declare that the
Brazil system can neither be put down by coercion
orb.y competition—in fact, that it is immortal. One
of Mr.LABOOCTIERE'S hopes lies in the extension of
Liberia. If free trade and transit to and from the
West Indies was established for the negro, the whole
coast might be converted into a Liberia—not, incised,
an American Liberia, based on a prohibitive and
exclusively trading system, but a free one in every
respect, and pacific as well as free.
The ministerial crisis, as the French call it, occu-
pied the house, however, more than the merits or de-
merits of the blockading squadron. On the last the
majority could not require much time to make up its
mind. But to upset the government, and reverse the
questioce and the promisee of the session, was a matter
of more serious and tardy consideration ' • and there-
fore the debate closed with a division that gave a
majority of seventy-eight to the Ministry.

Ammo the classes who will be affected by the
repeal of the brick duty, we are not sure that those
who will feel most grateful to the CHANCELLOR of
the EXCHEQUER will be the parties hitherto iota-
rested in the manufacture. The operation of every
excise law is, to a certain extent, to create a monopoly.
Those who have got money to invest are cautious of
embarking it in a trade hetered and hampered by
revenue restrictions. The brick trade, it is true, has
suffered from the operation'of these restrictions, from
the practice of taking the duty upon green, or only
partially manufactured bricks, and from the want of
fair allowance for those more serious accidents which
occasionally have swept hundreds of pounds out of
the manu&cturers' pockets. But, upon the whose,
the brick trade has been by no means one of the most
oppressed of our excise-regulated manufactures.
What does the brick-maker suffer compared with the
soap boiler, compelled as the latter is to restrict his
manufacture to certain days and hours, to lock up and
unlock when it suits the convenience of the officer, to
employ elaborate and expensive, instead of simple
and convenient processes—obliged to make up his
soap in a shape, perhaps, that does not suit hie
market, and refused permission to refine it, or reboil
it, or perfume it under penalty of paying another duty
on the article? What does the brick-maker
suffer compared with the distiller, who is too often
absolutely driven to an illicit manufacture as his only
protection wird the hardships which Somerset
House imposes on him ? Wbat does he suffer com-
pared even with the papermaker, who perhaps every
week of his life is debarred from executing some
advantageous order by the difficulties attendleg the
survey as directed to be taken by the Bleb* autho-
rities ? Sir CIIARLIUI WOOD may flatter himself that
he is relieving trade from a burden by reducing an
excise law, but if that was one of his objects in se-
looting the brick duty for repeal, we can only say
that he would have done much better by beginning
at the other end of the excise trammeled statute book.
The best authorities have laid it down that the re-
peal of the brick duties will reduce the price Bs. per
thousand. The duty was ss. 10d. on that number,
leis one-tenth for miscarriages. The additional ex-
penses imposed upon tne trade, and the extra profits
accruing to them from the monopoly, which they
were, in some sort, enabled to preserve, added, it was
estimated, to the price of bricks at the rate of
nearly 2s. Gd. per thousand more. Some persons,
indeed, conceive that this estimate is below the mark,
rather than above it—and we have even heard in

some quarters lOs. a thousand talked of as not an he-
possibfe reduction. But the full amount of snob a fall
will not, we apprehend, arrive at once. Some time will
elapse and effective oompetition must acquire ample
force before the full advantage will be felt. Then
we shall not despair of finding bricks go gown in
proportion to the fall which followed the repeal of
the dutiesat on es.
The re of the brick duty will perhaps be the
greatest to parties who have brick earth upon
their own freeholds. Such is the simplicity of the
trade, so small is the amount required to eater into
it, that almost every mu who has got brick earth
may now become, if be so plains, his own brick
maker, saving all the cost entailed by the carriage
and cartage of these cumbersome articles, and all the
profit heretofore paid to the manufacturer. It will
be clear, however, that the extent to which parties
would be disposed to manufacture their own Wicks
would depend, in a great measure, upon the liberality
of the dealers. If brick makers deal with the con-
sumer in a liberal spirit, abandoning the petty
monopoly in which the Excise no longer will
protect them, they need not greatly fear either the ,
opposition of new competitors, or that which will
probably be still more injurious to them, a system, as
we may term it, of domestic manufacture.
We are the more encouraged to these remarks by
observing that the brickmakers of London met this
day to consider the altered position of their trade.
They must have remembered how the old glees mono-
pollutes suffered in consequence of want of proper libe-
rality towards the public upon the abrogation of the
glass duties by the administration of Sir ROBERT
PEEL.

One of the fruits which the brick makers dis-
cussed was, no doubt, the propriety of • clause allow-
ing them a drawback. The goveriment, we believe,
are not at present convinced that the stocks in hand
are aufficienlly important to render any drawbacks
necessary. We are informed, however, that there are
several large manufacturers who have paid very con-
siderable amounts in the shape of dory, and
to whom it would certainly be a great
"hardship, were they now mulcted in what
could only be considered a penalty for honest trading.
It is particularly to be remembered that the brick
meter has had no option se to the period of paying
the duty. It was uniformly taken prior to the com-
pletion of the manufactured article, and consequently
before the maker by any possibility could realise.
A point in connexion with the question of draw-
backs which we think should fairly be considered
with it is, the question of existing contracts. In
many cases large brick works are in hand, the com-
pletion of which may not be accomplished for a num-
ber of months (repeats. We know of railway viaducts
in progress, and county gaols and lunatic asylums
building, of workhouses erecting, and streets being run
up, under contracts taken at the price of bricks duty
paid. Are the contractors to have the benefit of all thus
duty, pocketing the money intended for the govern-
ment, or are the contracting parties to obtain the
boon which the CUANCELLOIt of the EXCTIEQUER
intends to give the people? It would be bitter, be it
remembered, for the people, that the state should have
this money, rather than that the contractor should
put it in his pocket. We therefore suggest that a
clause should be introduced into the bill, enabling
those interested in existing contracts to review them
in so far as this duty is concerned, in order that the
benefit may go to thoee for whom it was intended.