The Express.
London, England, 1862-09-05 00:00:00

HISS WE= AT LONDON BEIDGIL.

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LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6.

THE inscrutable Sphynx we have heard so
much of in connection with French politics is found
on closer inspection to be nothing more than the
leaden mask of an Undecided Man. In private
life we all know into what deplorable blunders
and even crimes a man who can never make up his
mind to do the right thing at the right moment is
liable to fall. It is only in the awful shadow of a
throne that this vulgar infirmity of purpose looms
like the mystery of inscrutable power.
The Undecided Man is a nuisance to his friends,
and to all who approach him in business. His weak-
ness is apt to resemble knavery, and is often mis-
taken for it. The malady is incurable; it grows with
age, and with the indolence and self-indulgence
which easy circumstances encourage. In private life
your Undecided Man, who as a boy was probably
a compound of the sneak and the lout, is marked
and avoided, unless he happens to be an amiable
fool, and then he is tolerated and pitied. It is
the Undecided Man in power that becomes a
danger to himself and all his neighbours. His
actions are almost always perverse, whether he
means well or ill ; because he sees the better
course and follows the worse, suffers difficulties to
accumulate around him, and has neither the moral
courage to make a resolution, nor the moral strength
to keep one. Like a fatalist, he waits blindly for
events, and trusts to circumstances to extricate
him from the consequences of his own vacil-
lation. Well, Europe at present accepts
and suffers a great Undecided Man for
the arbiter of its fortunes. That is the whole
secret of the deep and wide-spread malaise which
characterizes the present political situation. There
is one man in whom all the energies of France are
absorbed, who presumes to control the destinies of
Europe, and who does not take the trouble to
know his own mind upon any question submitted
to his judgment. The influence he exercises is as
vast as it is unscrupulous ; and it is exercised
without responsibility to law or conscience. The
world is silly and servile enough to gape with
admiration at an inscrutable will, which is nothing
but an immense capacity for mischief, and an im-
mense incapacity for telling the truth. Thus, at
this very moment intelligent Europe is asking,
through all its organs, what decision it may please
the Emperor of the FaEwcH to come to in respect
to the Roman question, now that the last pretext
for the occupation of the capital of Italy by a
foreign garrison is removed.. The only answer
vouchsafed to these anxious inquiries is that the
EMPEROR, like the capricious young woman in the
Irish ballad, "has so great a mind, it takes a
" long time making up." Italy may be in a fever
of impatient hope, the Government at Turin may
be in torments of helpless humiliation, all Europe
may be demanding the end of a crisis which has
lasted too long ; but the Emperor NAPOLEON can-
not, in a few days' interval between the waters of
Vichy and the baths of Biarritz, undergo the
fatigue of being just, generous, or prudent, when
a stroke of his pen and a flash along the wires
from Paris to Turin would give peace to Europe
and independence to Italy.
No man has a better right to despise his fellow-
creatures than the present ruler of France ; but
there is a point at which deliberate trifling with
the gravest interests and contemptuous mockery of
the clearest rights becomes a danger. If the
Party of the Boudoir, speaking through La
France, faithfully represents the Councils of
the Empire, it is not only M. Itirrazzi's
kjabinct that is doomed. M. DE LA GUERONNIKRI

with sublime impertinence argues from the speedy the purpose of sending a private expedition of merchant-
arrest of the Garibaldian expedition by the re men to Japan, and establishing a more
between that country and the Hawse Towns. regular comments
-
sponsible Government of Italy, that the movement
itself "existed only on the surface," a mere ebulli-
It is statol that the man who was recently sp-
prebentl:t Homburg for circulating forged Russian notes
lion of popular excitement which a strong govern- complete confession, and disclosed his accom-
merit can always repress. So much for M. Rarruzi's pikes. He asserts that all the forgeries were executed in
eager obedience to Imperial mandates ;so much for London.
his implicit faith in Imperial goodwill. Because the The Portafogho' of Malta announces a recent
Italian Government has proved itself able to control miracle in Sicily. Some Piedmoutese soldiers, quartered in
the policy of the kingdom and to make public a convent, having insulted an image of the Virgin Mary,
law respected, the will of the people of Italy, again the ceiling of the corridor in which the image was placed
in, burying the sacrilegious offenders in the ruins.
and again expressed by their representatives in fen
The Countess de Montijo, it is said, accompanies
Parliament, is to avail nothing. Because the It the Emperor and, Empressof the French to Biarritz.
lian Government has protected the Papal frontier a Bt. •ts:iys the
honoured i
with tca
theterr of that town,
from invasion, it must renounce all right to will h be
presen
the possession of its capital. If anything every member of the imperial family, theircell'if nearly
ghis
were wanting to justify and exalt the wounded Prince Napoleon and the Prince and Princess Murat intend-
martyr of his country's cause, and to condemn ing to arrive there at the same time as the Emperor and
the Minister's subservient zeal, it would be found EmP"'6l-"
in this burst of feminine audacity from St. Cloud. The Gazette des Thedtres states that M. Calzado
ben takes a 14".
of Italian Theatre,
We beg M. DE LA GLIEKRONIERE to observe that rent of 140,wit& satiPolati Pon that ha at
a yearly
We :1Y
it is not the question whether Italy has a right to Laud ee renew it:for three years at 160,000 fr. In addition
Rome u her capital ; but whether the Romans i there is the expense of insurance, which is 12,000 fr. a year.
have a right to their own city and to a voice in M. Itcrage, the celebrated actor whose career
their own government. This is purely and simply was at its culminating point about 30 years ago, at the
a question of non-intervention. The Roman time of the great quarrel between the cfassiques and rO//1417 -
people, like the people of Naples and Palermo, of tiques, h" just died in PIT* aged 67.
Ancona and Bologna, are dissatisfied with their Lest week there was a rather motley group of
celebrated personages at Lausanne. Amongst them were
Government. What right has France to intervene
eases
General °inlay, the former dictator of Hun-
at all between the Romans and their rulers, or, at 'myth. Kossuth), Prince Napoleon, and the Queen of
any rate, what better right than Austria or Spain l