The Express.
London, England, 1862-01-06 00:00:00

ARRIVAL OF THE SUMTER AT CADIZ.
CAPTURE OF THREE MERCHANT EHLPH.

CADIZ, J. 5.

The privateer Sumter, with the officers and
crew, 42 persons in all, of three Federal merchant
vessels which she had destroyed at sea, arrived off
Cadis, and solicited permission to enter the port.
The American Consul demanded that this request
should be refused ; but the government having
been consulted, the Sumter was admitted into the
port without being minted.

A St. Petersburg letter of the 99th says :--
"Ifistuas Sidon nations her npressatatices hen at the
Morn Thanes. Ws he,. ailnisid her iaosonnely in
Ostherbo Rowse& and Psaapein do Mak& The
Eannor sad Elmore@ nen to see her la Math Senn.
sad the fonwir. site t►e eolith hal Wks oa the last
set, west to her room M Ottitubdoas Whig her.
The petite were sot onteatod w*►ea hes to the beat
darns the repnweatatioa, hat they she recalled bet eight
or tee than at the ead ed omit neema."

.• • *

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

Pica ous owl

PARIS, SoirDAT Evirnra.

The vexed question whether the law requiring
aignatures to political articles in newspapers is
satisfied by appending the name of a person con-
fessedly not the writer, with the prefix pour eztrait
(extracted), which was ruled a short time ago by the
Correctional Tribunal of Niort, in the case of the
Memorialda Dam Herres, in favour of the constant
practice tolerated during the last ten years, hu just
been decided the other way, on appeal, by the Im-
perial Court of Poitiers. The editor of the Memorial
deo Deux Sevres is sentenced to pay a fine of 600 fr.
and costs. I have not the least doubt that the
appeal court has rightly interpreted the extremely
bad law of signatures. It is a great scandal
that while the M,niteur and the Patric,
with Mr. Senator Onerronniere foe an so-

complies, notoriously commit breeches of the law
of signatures every d►y, the government should
now and then single out some unfortunate news-
paper for prosecution. It is an undisputable pro-
position that the Meniteur, except as regards its
official part, is subject to the laws which regulate
all other journals, and yet the government, glory-
ing in the practice of setting administrative autho-
rities above the law, continues to publish anony-
mous bulletins iu its non-official part, which treat
of political subjects. Neither the ileniteur nor
any journal could print the signatures of their real
correspondents from such places as at Petersburg,
Warsaw, Vienna, and Rome, without cutting off
their supplies of news, because the despotic
governments which rule in those cities would either
arrest or banish anyone known to report the
truth to foreign countries. To insist upon
the law of signatures, therefore, fitfully and at
long intervals, as the government now does, is gra-
tuitous persecution of the press. It is a curious
fact that this law, known as the " Tinguy" law,
was passed in 1850 by the legitimists and Orlean-
hits of the National Assembly, and that all the
leading Bonapartista, including Fould, De Horny,
and Bissau, voted against it. .
A very amusing reason is given by K Paulin
Limayrae, a "devoted and independent" writer in
the Cunstitutionnel, for the censure exercised by the
" Oolportage Commission" upon the hawking of
books. Despotic and aristocratic governments, he
says, have little oacarion to care for the morality
of the people, but a government whose basis is
universal suffrage must take care that no moral
poison is distributed among the masses whose de-
legate it is. Here is reasoning in a circle with a
vengeance.

The patronage of judicial advertisements—often
a question of life or death to country journals—
has been exercised this year with somewhat more
regard to equity and the interests of the advertisers
than has hitherto been the practice under the em-
pire. Several instances are cited in which prefects
have declared their intention to distribute the ad-
rerlieements between the government and the
apparition press ; and in some eases it has been
officially stated that the administration will not

give to any journal whatever the peculiar sanction
for its °Onions which the public is apt to imply
from an exclusive privilege. All this is progress,
slow, bat gratifying, and tends to confirm the idea
that the Emperor, more liberal than his ministers,
meditates farther reforms.

The statement that Vely Paella was likely to be
recalled from Paris is contradicted.

The news of the arrest of Nana Sahib is just one
of those dramatio facts calculated to impress the
French mind, and makes a sensation accordingly.
Bat doubts are entertained of its truth. The
Opinion Nationale says :

This in, perhaps, the twentieth time that Nana's arrest
has been announced ; bat the news seems to us highly im-
probable. It is very unlikely that such an ambitious man
should have left his country when the Sikhs were agitating
in the North West. Moreover, Nam eshib M a Brahmin, and
it is against his religion to mom the sea. It is true thniehe was
civilly dead on the day whir, pursued by English regimes*
he cringed the frontier and entered Befoul. But it will be
remembered that on that occasion he celebrated his own
funeral by burring with much pomp and ceremony owe at
his fingers, which he cut off for the purpose. The published
accounts omit to tell us whMher the prisoner of Kamtchi
bas lot a finger.