The Express.
London, England, 1855-06-01 00:00:00

the Bea of Asoff." R-----7-----aseitni Jewels laden with cora
have be running into Kedah as into what would I
be called in the argot of the Rae de Jerusalem a
sooriciere. Leanly, the Allied Troop,, employed in
the Kutch expedition continue to espy excellent

health.
But the consequences of this *Wiese proralsel
to be of an importance infinitely beyond the advan- I
tiges already pined. The formidable entreseh-
meats in front of the Russian army, connecting Ilshas-
topol with the impracticable country eyestalk*, bus
st the Tohatir-stag--so ably described in the medillfil
later of a special correspondent which we plibil*Mll
yesterday—pointed to an obstinate and preisepi
defence on the part of the enemy. They suipeld
the Idea of a repetition of the bloody though globs=
storming of the heights of the Alma, on a web d
aliases' magnitude. They suggested reminkimetele
et WELLINGTON'S patient waiting behind the Isis of
inheres Vedrss for the moment when he soli OW
mete an irresistible and triumphant advises*. int
the success of the Allies in the Sea of Asa bac
sundered these immense and toilsome yespee-1
*es of the Russians unavailing. The 11110
trenehmenta on the heights behind Inkermsea
sr
Tasegoun can be turned—taken in the rear by the
Allies. The army that lurks behind them is threse.ll
end on both flanks—from Etspatoria and from Ara-
fat. We give no faith to the rumours of a great fight
en the Tchernays, and the cutting off of Lienaisei
with 8,000 men, which pervaded Paris on Wednes-
day. They are, apparently, of the number of those
groundless reports which almost invariably, and un-
accountably, fly before the news of great battles.
But the day when a decisive blow is to be struck at
the Musoovites in the Crimea cannot be far dis-
tant. The Allied Commanders are straining every
nerve to concentrate a large force in the Crimea. A
private letter, recently received from Constantinople,
says: " Enormous masses of French troops are being
daily conveyed to the seat of war. The French
camp at the Mash& was broken up immediately after
the review, and the last contingent of the (lauds
has been shipped for the Crimea. There are only a
few depUts remaining here, not amounting in all to
above three or four thousand men. These, with the
sick and wounded men in the French and British
lhospitals, are the only soldiers that the Western
1 Powers have now in this neighbourhood."
We have only left ourselves room for one word of
I warning, which we will continue to harp upon as
'obstinately as the old Roman did upon the necessity
of destroying Carthage. Russia muse be made to give
an indemnity—to defray ALL Me expenses of the war.
Equity and precedent concur to recommend this, as
we will show hereafter.—Daily News.

the Court.
The Queen and Prince Albert left Osborne
after two o'clock yesterday afternoon, accompanied by the
Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal, Prince Alfred, the
Priam:me Alice, Helena, and Louisa, Prince Arthur, Prince
Leopold, the Princess of Hobanlobe Langenburg, the
FtWeems Adelaide and Feodore of llobenlohe, and at-
tended by the Marchioness of Ely, the Hen. Mary Seymour,
Majorßesent' the Ron. C.Grey, the Master of the House-
hold, Major-General Buckley, Captain Da Plat and Mr.
Gibbs.
Her Majesty and the Prince, with the Royal Party,
cloned in the Fairy stems yacht to Southampton, tea
celled by a special train on the South-Western Railway to
town, and proceeded from the private station at Nine Elms,
in tie of the Queen's carriages, escorted by a detachment
of Carbineen, to Buckingham Palace, where the Quea and
Prince arrived at tie o'clock, mad were received by Earl
Spencer, the Marquis of Breadalbane, Lord Ernest Bruce,
Lord Waterpark, Viscount Torrington, Mr. F. Cavendish,
and Major General Wylde.
Her Majesty and Prince Albert, accompanied by the
Prisons Adelaide of Rokenlohe, honoured the Royal
Italian Opera with their presence in the evening. The
royal suite consisted of the Marchioness of Ely, the Hon.
May Seymour, Lord Waterpark, Major-General Buckley,
mad Captain Da Plat.
The Princess of llohenlohe Imageoharg and the Prisms
Feodore of lloheolobe visited the Beeline of Kent Teeter-
at her residence, Clarence Roue, St. Jima's.

HANDCOCK v. irm..-
--e---
The incident' of a civil trial, eves where thseiato.m
robe family manes sad personal @modal,
live •in the recollection of the public for more than
the briefest period. The cease of Hendee& v. Dela,
Dour, which was heard by the Lord Chancellor of
behind is Sensory last, seems to be an exception.
The strangeness of the MO made in support of the
application—the unexpected compromise, by which
public curiosity was defeated—above all, the impala!
lions cast upon a person of so lees rank and pe
tote than the Nast Noble the Marquis of Clanrieude
have sort goomeeed it from oblivion. The cause
=1 so ismisksble that we gave in our leading 1
of 146. 13 a short abstract of the facts
li
ea preseated by the Attorney-General, who was
the petitioner's counsel. It is now slimed
that that
unitstatemet was from beginning to end—et
least so far implicated the noble marquis—a
mere romance, and our attention has been called to a
=rt recently published in his vindication,
iry an affidavit meeting many, if not all, of
the asps against him. In our former account of
the trial we expressly called attention to the fact,
that the only statement then before us was made as
parte. We gladly de Lord Clanricarde the justice of
giving equal publicity to the counter-statement which
has now been put forward on his behalf. A very
short recapitulation will suffice to recall the unhappy
cheamstances out of which this litigation aroae.
Mr. and Mrs. Handcock were married in 1824. For
some years they appear to have lived in harmony,
1 and three daughters—Josephine, Kathleen, aid
1 110110611-•11M11 the fruit of the marriage. As early
iat least as the autumn of 1841 matrimonial differ-
' enoes arose, which ended in a formal separation in
the following April. In 1843 Mr. Handoock died,
sod his daughters, who were then minors, succeeded
to very considerable property in Galway, which bad
boss settled on the children of the marriage in tail.
They were made wards of the Irish Court of Chan-
my, their mother was appointed guardian of their
11= and Lord Clanricarde, who had been on
terms both with Mr. and Mrs. Handcock
bees a time anterior to their marriage, was nomi-
aided to the guardianship of the infants'
mity. The daughters, on coming of age,
the entail of their estates. In 1849
11
the share of Kathleen devolved by her death
and
upon her sisters. In June, 1851, Josephine =
leaving her real estates to Honoria, and
giving to her mother a legacy of 10,0001., and the
reversion of the landed property on the death of her
daughter without issue. In December, 1851, Honoria
Iliandcock settled the whole estate which had de-
[volved on her upon herself for life, with remainder
to her mother, reserving, however, a power of revo-
cation. She survived her mother about nine months,
sad died at the close of the year 1853 intestate,
and without having revoked the deed, but not before
she had given instructions for a will by which the
bulk of her property would have been diverted to
charitable porpoises. The result was, that the whole
of the Handcock estates passed by the will of Mrs.
Handoock who had died in the early part of the same
year, 1853, leaving everything she possessed to a boy
of some 12 years of age, described as John Delacour,
the defendant in the cause of Handcock v. Delacour.
The plaintiff, the uncle and heir-at-law of Honoria,
claimed the entire estate devised to Delmar,
on the ground that all the instruments by
which Mrs. Ilandcock's interest was created had been
extorted from her daughter by undue influence,
oppression, and fraud. The case went even further,
and accused Mrs. Handoock of having shortened by
deliberate cruelty the lives already threatened by
consumption which stood between her and the
coveted inheritance. A serious difficulty, however,
stood in the plaintiff's way. Lord Clanricarde, the
friend of the family, and the guardian during infancy
of the daughters' fortunes, had been consulted by them
as their confidential adviser, had drawn with his own
hand the will of Josephine, and bad given his sanc-
tion and become a party to the settlement executed
by Honoria. Unless he could be implicated in the
conspiracy, it was clear that the plaintiff had little
chance of success. To impute complicity so base,
without some powerful motive, would have been too ,
absurd to be attempted. The Attorney-Oeueral
undertook to supply- that motive by the fol-
lowing strange and revolting story :—He was,
he said, prepared to prove that the marriage
between Mr. and Mrs. Handcock was brought about
by Lord Clanricarde to provide for his own mistress,
that the suspicion of an improper intimacy between
Mrs. Handcoc k and the marquis was the real caused ,
the separation ; that the boy John Delacour was tie
child of Lord Clanricarde and Mrs. Handcock ; and
that the subsequent transactions were the links of a
steadily pursued conspiracy, by which it was sought
to gain for the son the inheritance which belonged
to the lawful issue of the marriage. We do not pro-
fess to sift in detail the evidence by which this extra-
ordinary story was sought to be supported. It is
enough to say that the intimacy admitted to exist be-
tween Lord Clanricarde and Mrs. Handcock and her
daughters, the unnsuul part taken by him in the pre-
paration of the different instruments, the report of a
conversation in which M r. Handcock was stated to have
expressed his suspicions of an improper intimacy,
particularly with reference to a visit paid by himself
and his wile to Portumna, the seat of Lord Clanri-
earde, in September, 1840, the statement of the
lady on her deathbed to her solicitor, that he might
say that the boy would be twelve years old in June,
1853, the circumstance that he had been known by
the name of De Burgh as well as Delacoar, and the
favour shown by Mrs. Handcock to her so-called
adopted son, were the facts chiefly relied on as impli-
cating Lord Clanricarde. After accusations so grave
bad been advanced, it was unfortunate for the cause
of truth that their investigation should have been cut
short by a compromise, the effect of which was, in
substance, to divide the property between the
contending parties. Such a result seems to
show that the claimants were not very confi-
dent of establishing their use, while the
Lord Chancellor's approval of the arrangement
makes it impossible to regard the infant's title as un-
assailable. We are bound to say that Lord Clan-
ricarde has, by his subsequent affidavit, disposed of
the surmise that the compromise might be attributed
to his desire to withdraw the matter from investiga-
tion. He was not a party to the suit, and he has
expressly sworn that he took no part in, and was not
consulted as to the compromise effected. He looks
upon himself with some reason as the person really
aggrieved by that course, inasmuch as he has been
deprived of the opportunity which the progress of the
suit might have afforded of clearing his character
from the charges under which he laboured.
With whatever jealousy Lord Clanricarde's affidavit
may be read, it is impossible to deny that it has, to-
gether with the comments contained in the pamphlet
to which we have referred, greatly altered the com-
plexion of the case. The whole charge,in fact, rested
upon circumstantial evidence of a rather vague elm-
rector, with the exception of the specific accusations in
reference to the visit to Portumna in September, 1840,
and the assumed date of the child's birth. The former
is met by a specific denial, corroborated by the evi-
dence of Mrs. Kennedy, the housekeeper of Lady
Clanricarde. The latter rests on a statement the
accuracy of which seems, from the form in which it
was made, scarcely worthy to be relied on ; but,
so far as it goes, it becomes (if the Portumna story
is assumed to be false) an argument against
the alleged paternity. The only other circumstance
immesetiog the marquis in any way with the boy
Dslscour is that he passed at times by the name of
De Burgh. Of this Lord Clanricarde positively
swears that be never heard until after the death of
Mrs. Handoock. He declares that the allegations of
improper intimacy with that lady before her mar-
riage, and also in and after the year 1840, are false—a
statement which, it the boy's age was stated with
anything approaching to accuracy, is sufficient to
dispose of the relatiouship. It is very fairly urrd
in the pamphlet to which we have alluded
that the accusations do in fact rest on this
corner-stone--that Lord Clanricarde was the father
of John Delacour, and after the answer given to the
specific circumstance, mainly relied on, it would
hardly be fair to assume it to be true, even if Lord
Clanricarde had not, as he has done, stated in his
affidavit that the boy. could not have been and was
not his 1100. If this circumstance is omitted from the
story told by the Attorney-Oenersl, it loses much of
its consistency. The disposition made by the &ugh.
ten of their property, though hardly such as might
have been wisely recommended, is not (talks lump-
able of a reasonable explanation, even if we

assume that the oppression said to have been
exercised by the mother might have substi-
tuted soothe! fselin in the place of affection. Lord
• , it is tree, does not go eo far as expressly
to avow his disbelief d the charge of cruelty on the
part of the mother, hut he does declare his own
entire ignorance of anything of the kind. He asserts
most positive that though he sanctioned the instru-
ments by which Josephine and Honoria disposed of
their property, it was not without an attempt to dis-
suade them, nor in the latter case until he had pro-
cured the insertion in the deed of a power of revoca-
tion. Much discesdit, too, is thrown on the alleged
suspicions of the husband by the fact that
he continued on terms of intimacy with the man by
whom he is said to have been so grievously injured.
Without entering into further details of the affida-
vit, or of the argument founded upon it, we are
bound to say that they do answer in great measure
the charges against which they are directed. It
may be that the purity and the humanity of Mrs.
Handoock still remain to be yindiested—if vindication
is possible ; but that the story presented to the
court was one of those romantic fictions in which
the Irish gentlemen of the long roim are
so well able to clothe a modicum of truth, can-
not be doubted without treating the oath of the Mar-
quis of Claurbsarde, as unworthy
.to be put in the
balance against the surmises and insinuations which
the admitted facts, while unexplained, were calculated
to suggest. But if the express accusations are
answered, the mystery remains as dark as ever.
Who was John Delaoour ? The plaintiffs, whose case
turned so much upon it, adduce no evidence
that he was the child of Mrs. Handcock.
Her daughters speak of him by his Christian name as
one of the family. They know the preference felt for
him by their mother, and in disclosing with their
noble friend the proposed disposition of their pro-
pity. they manse, apparently without causing any
their adviser, that this unknown John
re t• to
ur is likely to be the recipient of all
that Mrs. Handoock may acquire. That lady
herself persists until her death in calling
him her adopted son, and seems to know and to con-
seal both his parentage and the precise period of his
birth. No trace of his origin is to be found in the
diary of Josephine, and Lord Clanricarde in his
affidavit neither throws any. light upon it nor asserts
his ignorance about it. It is this we believe, more
than anything else, which has disposed the public to
receive with more readiness than they would
otherwise have done, charges supported by bat
very slight evidence, and which have now
been met by a direct denial. To infer crime
from mystery, to assume that concealment
implies the existence of something that will not
bear the light, is a habit too natural to be overcoite,
perhaps too reasonable to be much quarrelled with.
While mystery remains, suspicion will dog it as its
shadow. But it should not be forgotten that the
thirst for a solution does not justify the acceptance
of the first derogatory suggestion that may offer
itself; and those who may be suffering under unjust
imputations will do well to impute the obloquy they
endure to the concealment which possibly the best
motives have occasioned, rather than to those in
whose minds it has but borne its wonted fruits.—
Daily Newa.

THE REPRESENTATION OF MALDON.

Mr. Mechi Mechi has issued the following address to the
electors of the borough of Malden :
" Gentlemen,—l aspire to the honour of representing you
in Parliament whenever a vacancy occurs. I do not auk
this as a favour, because I consider the obligation in such
cases mutual. Living, as I do, amongst you. you are well ac-
painted with my general conduct, character, and opinions.
In politics I have always been a consistent Liberal, having
invariably, as a citizen of London, voted fur Liberal Can-
didates. My natural inclination is for improvement, whe-
ther general or political, and we know that all things re-
quire looking after to repair the damage caused by time,
corruption, or decay. Our glorious constitution forma no
exception to this general rule. In religion I am a steady
Churchman, with a large measure of toleration for those
who conscientiously differ from our formularies. I can
forget that much of dissent was caused by the ones
lax and venal condition of our state church. Happily
those days of pluralities and neglect have passed away.
I am decidedly in favour of educating the million.
As a mere matter of business, knowledge is power as
Ignorance is weakness. You know my practice in
this matter. I am an advocate for cheap, quick, and
honest law, end will support any measure that will condense
add simplify our statutes. I have a great horror of the
Chart of Chancery. In a badness country like ours it n
MS be necessary to occupy a number of years in the investi-
paha of feats that would be ascertainable in a few days,
weeks, or months, by ea ordinary tribunal of diligent and
intelligent men. lam a man of peace and conciliation, bat
when our honour, dignity, or welfare is attacked directly
or through our allies, let us castigate our enemies manfully
and effectively. I like no half measures—they are nn-Bri-
tish. Let us do in war, as we do in business, try to find the
right man for the right place. I have taken a deep interest
in the improvement of our National Agriculture as a means
of feeding and employing our industrious million', and
although bat • small landholdur, I have practised what I
I preached in my transactions with my tenants. Whilst soli.
citing your votes, I wish you clearly to understand that I do
so individually, unshackled by any personal or political al-
liance. In conclusion, I will make no pledges, but if you
elect me, I shall exercise my judgment as an honest and in-
dependent man, according to circumstance', for the benefit
of my country.—l have the honour to be, Gentlemen, faith-
fully yours, "J..T. Menai.
"Tigers, Hall, Helvedor, Baez,
"May 26, 1855."