The Express.
London, England, 1863-01-21 00:00:00

HIGH WATIER.AT_WIDOW BUM&

Tim DAT Montag. Sh. AD. Da.
lo4eoasow—AlarnlAg. SA. 411a.....MPAwasss. 41.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21.

"Ir might seem," writes Mr. KI/1411JAL,
" that he who had first sworn to maintain the
Frenck Republic, and had afterwards destroyed
"it by stealth in the night-time, would not be
:4' much trusted again by his fellow-creatures." Such
sit least, according to this eloquent historian of the
Invasion of the Crimea, was the impression of honest
men in France nine years ago. But—to quote the
Mane fearless and sincere writer—" State policy is
" a shameless leveller—is a leveller of even that
" difficult steep which seems to divide the man of
" high honour from those of mean repute." Nine
years have passed away, and the Man whom honest
men in France supposed that free England would
never trust, sits secure above a prostrate world
of willing dopes. His banner—the banner of
knightly honour—hangs high among the chivalry
of England in St. George's ChapeL And now,
nine years after, the grace and glory of his
" achievements " have sunk so deep into the hearts
of all save a few men of obstinate crotchets,
miscalled "principles," that when this Man
ships off by stealth in the night-time five
hundred miserable kidnapped Africans, to
serve as scavengers or gravediggers to his
army in Mexico, a leading English journal regrets
that the EMPLROR'S Government "should ever have
" sanctioned such a piece of tyranny." True, the
regret comes from a congenial admirer who "would
" fain see the old sources of mistrust buried for
" ever." Plain-speaking men who are not yet per-
suaded that • free people is best governed by men
without " principles " (as though principles were a
badge of servitude !) are neither so readily trustful,
nor so easily surprised, nor so conveniently short of
memory. They have not yet buried their mistrust
of the man who " stabbed France through in her
" sleep ;" they are not surprised at his treating five
hundred African negroes as he treated five-and-
twenty thousand Frenchmen whose only crime was
" principle ;" they have not yet forgotten a slave-
brig escorted out of the Tagus under the protecting
guns of French ships of war ; or the transaction
of a Marseilles dealer on the African coast,
denominated in the language of the ENPILIIOII,
" free emigration"of negroes, kidnapped, =unclad,
and huddled on board vessels which the flag of
France was permitted to screen from search. This
"free emigration," as the EMPIEROIL lately remarked
to the Chamber, not without • shade of bitter-
ness, was abandoned for very shame ; but, like
other nefarious schemes—from the plot against
the freedom of France to the plot against the in-
dependence of Italy—it was abandoned, it should
seem, in one place only to break out in another.
M. Reims no longer exports free emigrants from
the Coast of Africa to the West Indies. No ; but
the KID =OE contracts with the Government of
Egypt for the supply of negroes from the interior,
and sweeps them on board a transport in the night-
time, even as the representatives of the French
people were swept off to prison in the gray light
of a memorable December morning.
If, as • leading contemporary preaches, it be
true that the man who leads • free people should
have no "fixed weaknesses," called "principles,"
perhaps it is equally true that a man who leads
an enslaved people must have " fixed weaknesses"
of his own sort. It is impomible, without gross in-
justice, to deny to the Second Empire " fixed
" weaknesses" of character, not to say fixed prin-
ciples of conduct. Instances abound. There is
the weakness of kidnapping white as well as black
men in the night-time ; the weakness of carrying
on the slave trade under one name or another ;
the weakness of stimulating at every cost the
French appetite for " glory " ; the weakness of
sending poor needy accomplices to purge their re-
putations and fill their pockets in foreign wars ;
the weakness of treating France as • conquered
country, and any othercountry too weak to resist her
civilizing and spoliating legions, like France-Certainly
the Second Empire is ruled by men of " princi-
" plea ;" and seldom have these principles been
more clearly defined than in the Euranoa's letter,
dated July 3rd, 1862, to his Commander-in-Chief
in Mexico.

General FORE; to whom this letter was ad-
dressed, is, in the sense of the Second Empire, by
no means an unprincipled commander. After serving
with distinction against therrench National Assembly
and the unarmed citizens of Paris, he may find in
Mexican treasures, if not in Mexican battle-fields,
an opportunity of eclipsing his Crimean fame. He
is a man after his master's own heart, and will
know how to deal in the spirit of his master's in-
structions with a wealthy country and a weak
people. For there is a " principle " in these
things, and the " fixed weaknesses " of the present
• l►ter rise to the aur-
principle of the French ex-
undergone some variations
reason to doubt that in
10a it remains in

ruler of France sooner or 1
face of events. The principl
pedition to Mexico has undo:
of form, bat there is no rea
the mind of the EXPER(