The Express.
London, England, 1864-03-23 00:00:00

TO COItIikAPONDE24III.

advertisements Intended for •• the Favor" London Evening
Palwr, most Met tbo ogles, 10, Bonvaiwiattat, by Two
o'clock on Qs day of ynbllcatlan.

LYCLTM.

ON EA,T CR MONDAY, A DAY AFTER TBK FAIR. Mr.
WiddLomb auu JAMS E. Laveuue.—Awl LK oONIO.
Moro,. Pechter, Brougham, Maury F. Morton, Charles, and
Jordan ; Mama Terry, LIMIIIIIO, and Nlawortlty, and Mrs. L.

BILITANN!A.
THIS EVENI2IO, EVIL HANDS .tND HONEST HEARTS.
Mrs. s. Lane—A GRAND t.GNi. Enc. Messrs. Porde, Steele,
Plo Whautkini : Miss 11. Coveney, rte.—Dancing by
:itephan—And 1111. SH.AM CAPTAIN.

MGR WAIF,* Al Cu:WWI KUDOS.
VIII Ds, Morals& 2b. 13ru .AMarsoos. 2h. %,s.
Iro4l.lslOW. Morals& 3h. 44W..... AitiMOOM. 212. 69m

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23.

ArrER the general elections last summer, when
Paris returned the entire list of Opposition can-
didates, some official writers angrily asserted that
Paris was not France ; that France was to be
found in the breasts of an uncorrupted peasantry,
not in the capital, or in the large towns that fol-
lowed the example of the capital. Yet, as none
better than these oftivial wr:•ers know, never was
Paris more emphatically the orain, the will, and the
nerve of France than 1.,..7, N 10.11 by steeps and the
electric wires, the piessaii: in the remotest
province is brought witi.iu earshot of the
capital. It is, we are inclined to think
therefore, as members of the Provisional
Government of '4B that political sympathies in
Paris have rallied to the names of MM. Calmer
and GARNIER Pairs. No set of men were ever
more savagely abused than the members of that un-
fortunate Government. To steer the State through
a perilous crisis; to save it from national bank-
ruptcy ; these devoted men risked life, fortune, !
happiness, reputation, worked day and night
like slaves, amidst a storm of calumnies, and at
length gave up to the National Assembly they had
convoked, the power they had exercised, humbly
enough, in behalf of the public safety,
and rejoined their fellow-citizens poor and
broken in health and spirit, and pursued by odious
insults, but proudly and silently conscious of
having injured no man and of having preserved
all. Now, a great nation is never long ungrateful
or unjust ; and many an elector of Paris may have
reflected that when an Imperial Minister of
Finance was recommending national bankruptcy,
M. GARNIER PAGES resisted the advice, and that
when the adherents of the present Ruler of France
were organizing that terrible insurrection of June,
which was destined to destroy the Republic,
M. CARNOT, retired from power, was serving
the cause of liberty and s.,rder in the N aliens] Assem-
bly as a simple citizen. Thus is Truth vindicated
at last in the justice done to honest men.
For, without disrespect to the choice of the electors
of Paris, it is, we presume, as emphatizally honest
mess, much more than as men of any remarkable
capacity, that MM. Cam Nor and GARNIER PAGES
have been sent to the Corps lAgislatif. There
are times and conditions iu the political life of
nations when mere honesty, unattended by any
other special qualities, is an Opposition in itself.
There were other candidates as high and pure
as either M. CARNOT or M. GARNIRR PAGES,
and who, as belonging to a later generation,
or as being new at least to public life, would (it
seems to liberal observers at a distancejbe capable
of more effectual working service in the cause of
reviving liberty in France than men whose political
ideas and programme belong to an epoch for ever
past. Such a candidate, for instance, as M.
LASOULAYE, the eloquent professor and admirable
essayist, may be said to represent all the highest
and justest aspirations of the liberal, as distin-
guished from the revolutionary, party. His pre-
sence iu the Corps ligislatif would add grace and
dignity to the Opposition, and challenge the respect
of M. De BIOENY. Nor could the election of
M. LASOCLAYE be fairly regarded by the
Government but as an acknowledgment on the
part of the electors of the capacity of the Second
Empire for liberty—that is, as an act of constitu-
tional opposition. Not s), of course, can the elec-
tion of two members of the Provisional Government
be regarded, though it is true that the Second
Empire owes its being to the Revolution of '4B.
MM. CARNOT and G • NUR PAGLA have for
twelve years declined to tske the oath of allegiance
demanded of every candidate ; and it is excusable
that a sometime Repas ii:an l'resident should
suspect them of taking the oath at last in some
non-natural sense, or with some mental reserva-
tion. Yet their answer is plain enough. "We
" declined to take the oath so long as abstention
" was the moral law of the whole liberal party ;
"hut when the liberal party resolved to take a
" part in public affairs car allegiance was due to
" the electors." The I ar,erial Government has
itself to thank if candidates are selected to
represent the great cent: es of wealth, industry,
and intellect, not so much on account of their will-
ingness and capacity t 3 serve in the ranks
of a constitutional Opposition, as because their
names are signs, and warnings, and manifestoes of
resistance to arbitrary power. It has to thank its
own agents for such gross blunders as the violation
of a Liberal candidate's d -micile by an imposing
force of police agents, to disperse a private gather-
ing of a few of Lis pol,•.ical friends and sup-
porters ; and as the aile:tation of respect for
the memory of Cati N-r in requesting the
municipal authorities of 3la.;deburgh not to disturb
his remains, fifteen years after General C.tvaD:Nro '
bad decreed that the body of CARNCYT should be
brought back to France. M. GARNIER
writes to the electors reyiesting them not to call
at his apartments to learn the state of the poll,
and M. C kn:o.l. to the ,e, inquiring how it
happened that the I I,erial Government had
become so suddenly snud respectfully anxious
about his father's men: iry and remains. How,
then, could the populsti.•:i Paris, with its sharp-
ened hunger for persmal liberty and its poignant
perception of the ridicti"-, .F, be expected to vote
after such incidents as these ? Besides,
under a Government that permits only
one legislative debate a year on its policy,
and a general election on-e in seven years (the
next general election w ill be when the Parece
ImesaisAt comes of age), Lind which having all but
completed the span of every French dynasty
slice 1;89, is still so uneasy in conscience as to
fear to face the free opinion of mankind in
public meetiog, or in the ress—all political vitality
is necessarily concentrated in these fitful and
spasmodic attempts to wile a lesson to the Go-
vernment in the face of E :rope.

Yecterday the elector, of the ward of Bassishaw
met in wardmote, under the ~,,ideney of the Loot M.yor,
to choose an alderman fur the ward in mom of Mr. Alder-
man Cooler, who retires from ii:-health and advanced years.
The choice fell noaniummle -•a Mr. David Henry Stone.
Mr. Stone is a nephew of tte ',ate Mr. Allettrua Kumcon..b.