The Express.
London, England, 1855-04-28 00:00:00

coasts would begin to addict themselves to every
species of lawleas traffic ; and that ere long there
would be tolerably sure to grow up a wide-spread
system of ping. But another and a plainer
consequence, fraught with far more serious re-
suits remains to be noticed. The Greeks would
instantly resume those practices which of late years
they have been forced to forego in the Again and
the Adriatic, but the guilty gains and glories of
which they have not forgotten. The sons of the Cor-
*airs of thirty years ago would soon make the Black
Sea their own. Under the terms of the contemplated
treaty, trading vessels of every nation would be free
to pass the Dardanelles, and to navigate the waters
of the Euxine. As traders these matchless masque-
raders of the deep would come and go ; • but every
Milos would be an armed man, and every hold would
Barry the munitions of predatory war. It was
only by the continued presence of British and French
cruisers in the Levant, for years after the
recognition of Hellenic Independence, that the
system of piracy was put down. Many of our own
naval officers now living were engaged in that ser-
vice ; and many are the stirring t-les of chase and
conflict, varied with incidents of capture or escape,
that have been narrated by them. It .took a long
time, and no little cost, labour, and risk, to accomplish.
Let anybody picture to himself what the Levant
would have been in these days of fast-Bailing steam
clippers and corvettes, had buccaueming been
eradicated less completely; and when he has realised
in all its fell iniquity and infamy the condition we'
have indicated, he will be able to estimate correctly
the state of things to which the Black Sea would
infallibly be reduced by the proposal of what is termed
in diplomatic dialect—" neutralisation."
But this is not all. If there be one fa•ct which has
throughout the present struggle been unanimously
admitted by friends and lees, it is the fanatical sym-
pathy of the Greeks as a race fur the came of the
CZAR. What Russian politicians disclaim, or endea-
vour to explain away in the action and language ot
their court, the Greeks even in England enthusiasti-
cally avow. The ruin of the Moslem is with them a
faith ; their restoration in the land which he took
from them by force, and still occupies in spite ot their
daily curses and plote, is with them a traditional
policy which statesmen can neither teaaon with
nor venture lightly to ignore. By establish-
ing the condition preposterously styled that
of neutrality in the Euxine, we should enable
the Russian Government, under the flimsy veil ot
some commercial enterprise or company, to collect
within the numberless creeks of those ill-known
coasts any description of cleft suitable for use on a
sudden call, manned by crews accustomed to the winds
and eddies that render the navigation difficult to
strangers, and ready at a moment's notice to drop the
. .

mask of merchandise, and to draw their cutlasses as
the champions ota new crusade. Another Sinope there
might not be within the gates of the Dardanelles;
but the spirit that planned and executed that still
unpunished deed of carnage would collect, dis-
cipline, and, at the secretly-appointed hour,
send forth a flotilla freighted with an army
of surprise against the devoted City of the
SULTAN, infinitely more formidable than any which
could possibly have been carried in a siugle voyage in
the frigates and ships of the hie which Admiral
NATCIIIIIIOIT had at his command. It was not in
three.deekers that NAPOLEON planned his descent on
England. His whole scheme consisted is the countless
multiplication of small craft, in which he hoped to
be able bimultancously to effect the transport of his
army. The fleet was only necessary in his mind
to distract the attention of NELbON'd squadron ;
and had he been sate that his enterprise would
not, at the critical juncture, have been intercepted
by the British fleet, ho would undoubtedly have
made his long meditated attempt. What would
NAPOLEON not have given for a clause in the Treaty
of Amiens which would have secured for six
months the total absence of vessels of war from the
Channel ?

This is the way to bring home to ourselves the
value of those vague and high-auundii.g phrases of
diplomacy of which we have recently heard so much.
We can underetaid the policy of opening the Black
Sea to the armed squadrons of all nations ; but the
proposal to shut them all out of it would be simply
to set its waters apart for piracy in time of peace,
and to render it the cradle of irresistible coups de
main at the outbreak of another News.