The Express.
London, England, 1864-04-20 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20.

" AnseNee of information and commencement
" of negotiations," as Mr. Disitsxm put it
last night, are either of them indisputable reasons
for arresting and postponing a parliamentary ex-
pression of opinion on the foreign policy of her
MaJesrv's Government. Let us enjoy while we
can the luxury of agreeing with the leader of the
Opposition in the propriety and discretion of
moving the " previous question," when it is
gravely proposed to the House of Commons to
record overnight its deliberate conclusions on a
question of foreign policy which is to come before
a Conference of the plenipotentiaries of Europe
next morning ; a Conference, in Mr. DisaseLt's
dramatic language, about to meet " in this city,
" in this parish, within sound of that very clock."
It will probably strike many simple people out of
doors that the first serious debate of the session
on the Sleswig-Holstein papers might be better
timed than on the day after the storming of
Duppel by the Prussians. Any tolerably attentive
observer of political affairs in this country will be
at no loss to estimate the sagacity with which
Mr. DISRAELI seizes an undeniable excuse for
" reserving" the judgment of his party on a
course of policy for which he has not only no sub-
stitute to offer, but no criticism, except of the
most negative character. The leader of the
Opposition takes exception fairly enough to the
tardiness of the Government in producing the
papers without which it was impossible for Par-
liament to ascertain the policy of Ministers ; and
he displays his peculiar dexterity in rejecting the
responsibility of relieving its embarrassments or
anticipating its failure. This is, at least, very
clever steering. But when he traces all the
deplorable events in Sleswig which the Foreign-
office has been unable to prevent to Lord
Ressezn's ineffectual and abortive moral aid to
Poland, and subsequent refusal to acoept the
EMPEROR'S idea of a Congress, he suggests
too much. For, as Lord PstmeiteroN asks, would
a Tory Government have gone to war for Poland,
or preserved an absolute silence on Polish wrongs,
when week after week the House was provoking
some declaration from Ministers in response to
public feeling throughout the country ? Or would
they have aczepted the EMPEROR'S invitation to •
Congress ? To these questions, the only cate-
gorical answer the leader of the Opposition
could give, if compelled to abandon all evasive or
dilatory pleas, must be, " Certainly not." So
that it can be hardly said, to use a vulgar phrase,
that the Opposition takes much change out of the
foreign policy of the Government up to the present
moment. Should the Conference dissolve without
pacifying Germany or Denmark, Mr. DPZRAELI
will no doubt be better provided. It is evident
from the tenuor of Mr. BEM:GI:Bes amendment that
even among his own party, as, perhaps, on the'
Liberal aide, there are at least as many
Danes as Germans ; as many Poles as Russians.
Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE, however, succeeded in
convincing the House, if not the Under-Secretary
of Foreign Affairs, that he had the capacity to
digest and assimilate • series of enormous Blue-
books without injury to his sprightliness and wit.
Mr. LAYARD appeared quite hurt at the sportive
cruelty with which the member for Liskeard dis-
sected the despatches which had been laid upon
the table, and insisted with indignant emphasis
that the Sleswig-Holstein question, with all its
niceties and intricacies, had puzzled the ablest
heads inGermany, and was not to be disposed of in
an off-hand manner by a humorous and indepen-
dent member of Parliament. One cannot but
agree with Mr. LATARD, that it is easier to state
the difficulties of such a question than to solve
them. But is it the business of au independent
and humorous member on the back benches to look
at foreign politics from a Foreign-office point of
view ? Mr. OSBORNE was playing his proper part
when he extracted all the comic bite from the
Foreign Minister's "incessant " honest remon-
strances to one continental Power and another, all
dictated by the soundest intentions. And without
reference to the tendency of his sympathies as
between Dane and German, or of his opinions on
the particular question of succession in Holstein,
we must express our conviction that Mr. OSBoRNE
went straight to the final issues of all international
questions in the future, in protesting against
the pretension of diplomacy to dispose of the
destinies of any people against or without their con-
sent. A more striking text for such a sermon as
Mr. OSBORNE preached so pleasantly last evening
could not be found than that Treaty of 1852,
' which within the short spew of twelve years is to
be sat upon by a second Conference, and by a Con-
ference which, if it is to do any good, must begin by
discharging the duties of • coroner's inquest. Mr.
KINGLANE'S amendment was also in spirit, though
not perhaps in form, in conformity with that new
right of nations which is taking the place of the
1 old artificial right of dynasties ; a right which,
it should be remembered, belongs to Denmark
Proper as much as to Holstein or Sleswig. It
may depend on the result of the deliberations
of the Conference whether the people of Den-
mark Proper, so contemptuously described last
evening, by more than one speaker, as a " mob,"
shall insist upon the right to provide for their
own national integrity and independence with-
out consulting the convenience of any foreign
Power. The sole avowed object of the Conference,
however, being to restore peace between Ger-
many and Denmark, and to preserve the peace of

Europe, Lord Palmas-1143N ia judicioilily content
to take credit for an "incessant" anxiety to
compare •that result as the ruling passion of the
Government.