The Express.
London, England, 1864-12-08 00:00:00

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BA pf AIET..

MS MIMIC THIBLVI Asiilllll WIRD.-BC2iITY
VALE FARM. Mean Howe, Farrel, Clark, Waal, aad Coe :
Madames Beatrice, Snowdon, and 1L FarrUlam.—ON THE
SLY. Mr. Suckatone.—And KY 'MOANS'S GHOST.

PRI3OI/18%.
TI Brannon. BORN TO GOOD LUCK. Kr. D. Mum.
Red THE STRUTS OP LONDON. Mann. Vtaind, J. W. Ray,
D. Must, D. SI , J. Nelson. H. ronedw, and H. Yolks ;
Rim H. Manton, Barnett and Gwynn.

LYCEUM.

1/II! EVIAIDIO. MT WWKS OUT. Mr. Widdicomb.—RUT
Hears. Prater, Ryder. Fitzpatrick. Charles, Mclntyre,
anyzoond, Moreland, Collett, Clifford Mies C. Incterra, Mrs.
Wlnitanley.—And NIIESEY CHICKWEED. Mt. Widdtomb.

lIITAIINIA.

2101 ITEMS'S, DICK WHITrI.YGTON LNG HIS CAT.
by Mr. Albert Steele, the Great Vance, Melilla
Del the celebrated D'Aubaas.—And THE MOTHER'S
D G CHILD. Mn. S. Lass—Comsmnits MUM-past I,

HIGH WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
I DAY Morning. 910. 126....A80rn00n. ft. Sam.
foyfoiioW . Month& 106 14a.....Altgrnoos, 104. Anis.

LONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBRR 8.

Tea Imperial Court of Correctional Appeal has,
we learn, confirmed the sentence pronounced by
the Tribunal of First Instance upon the Thirteen
Deputies who were found guilty of forming an
electoral committee of more than twenty per-
sons during the last general election in France.
No one, however slightly acquainted with the ad-
ministration of justice in political cases under the
Becond Empire, will affect the least surprise at
this result of an appeal from one set of magisterial
functionaries to another. In France the magis-
tracy and the bar are, to all intents and purposes,
distinct bodies ; and under the present Govern-
ment not only distinct bodies, but as mutually
repugnant se the wages of devoted service and
the pride of independence can make them.
Assuredly the illustrious advocates who represented
the Bar of France at this memorable trial knew well
that all their magnificent eloquence and all their
irrefragible arguments must be wasted on a tri-
bunal composed of zealous agents of the Crown.
Content to acknowledge the conciliatory patience
and dignified air of open-mindedness with which
the Court listened to their speeches, those
eminent men were, doubtless, conscious of
fulfilling a solemn duty to their conscience and
reputation, and to the conscience and reputation of
their country, in the defence of their clients, and of
addressing • higher court and a larger audience
than that in the presence of which they stood
while they vindicated in the noblest language the
first principles of political liberty and justice.
It is difficult, we confess, for any ordinary Esg-
lishman to understand the satisfaction with which
a government possessed of undisputed and almost
absolute authority, and firmly seated on " the
" national will," can regard such • judicial victory
as this, or what advantage it can hope to derive
from such • prosecution and such • trial. That •
purely and professedly military government should
suffer the inconvenience and annoyance of being
pelted by the tongues of ambitious lawyers, when
it might close its Courts of Justice altogether
against political suitors and appellants from
its decrees, seems an almost unaccountable
temerity or caprice. But the system that
now prevails in France is not purely or
professedly military ; it is representative in the
broadest sense, since it is based upon universal
suffrage, and upon those " immortal principles of
" 'B9 " which are always in • state of suspended
animation. Hence the painful necessity for
the Emperor NAPOLEON of observing the forms and
traditions of "liberty and equality," as those some-
what abstract terms are interpreted in civilised
countries. Hence the necessary inconvenience of
open courts of justice, and of hostile speeches deli-
vered to the world. Sincere admirers of the Impe-
rial Government, among whom our modesty will
scarcely permit us to take rank, are disposed to ask
with some uneasiness whether it would not have
been better for • Government elected by universal
suffrage to have allowed some tb:rteen gentlemen of
liberal opinions to meet together in a private draw-
ing-room, and even to form a committee for the
selection of candidates of their own way of thinking
at a general election, than in the face of Europe to
provoke a trial, not of physical butof moral strength,
in which all the character and intellect and inde-
pendence of the Bar of France, represented by
such names as BERRVEFt, JULES Favor, DEPAURE,
MARIE, DE,MAREST, PICARD, and ARAGO, are
arrayed in defence of rights which no French Go-
vernment since the fall of the First NAPOLEON has
•ven threatened or disputed.

. -
If this were merely, so to speak, a municipal ques-
tion, if its aspects and consequences were merely
French, in would be no concern of liberal opinion
in other countries. But in fact the question
whether the foundations of the existing govern-
ment in France are as broad and dura-
ble as they pretend to be; whether the
national will which is its title is genuine and au-
thentic ; whether the universal suffrage to which
it periodically resorts for a renewal of its sanction
is a aincore, unfettered representation of the
whole heart and mind of the country, or as unsub-
stantial and unreal as those pasteboard villages full
of happy peasantry with which the favourite of •
Russian Empress amused her ➢lajesty on a " pro-
" gresa" through her dominions : this, we say, is
not an exclusively French, but rather an European,
an international question. France holds too high a