The Express.
London, England, 1852-03-02 00:00:00

latill"da Thesews from Lyons and St.
L rather good. Melia manufacturers have
orders estoogh to keep Rost of the hands employed.
'taw silk continues to be mane. Business in cotton
has bees active at Havre, with a further rise of about
2fr. ; 15,000 bales have arrived during the week,
and 7,600 have been meld. The stock in hand
is 52,000 bales, being 30,000 less than
at this time last year calicoes at Mulhouse and Rouen
are very dull, with a falling market. The iron-
musters have still great expectations of benefit from
the numerous concessions of railways. But the rise

La the prise el irsa Ms had the effee't in many places
of shutting up rectories, owing to the impossibility
el working at a profit.
We find the following in the Gault* du Midi et
Montpellier: "Accounts have just been rewind
from Avignon as serious as unexpected. A nuw
bet of persons, some say sixty, and others n
the majority forming part of a societyrcal
the friends of order, have been arrested. It is
however stated that they were soon after set et
liberty. The municipal council at Avignon is die.
solved, and M. Poncet appointed, provisional mayor.
The events had produced a great sensation in the
department of the Vancinee, and even in the arrow
disseincnt of Arles, which is on such neighbourly
terms with the old Comtat Venaisin."

At the Bourse the Five per Cent; fell 40e., closing
at 103.30 ; the Threes fell 20c. Bank of France
shares arc without change. Railways were not af-
fected by the fall in the funds. Many of the lines
rose a little. Bordeaux, Bfr. 73c.; Rotten, 7fr. 50c.;
Boulogne, 2fr. Mk.
7, P.Y.
P. S.—There is a report this evening that an in-
surrectional movement has broken out at Brussels.

Louis Napoleon, there cannot be a doubt, is bent
upon war, but not open war with England or with
Europe, but rather with the family and dynasty of
Orleans. He has taken Louis Philippe's progeny
and followers en rime, and has determined to per-
secute and punish them in every way. How the
Orleans family have managed to provoke and to
accumulate the President's ire against them is
not very dear. No doubt they have conspired
against him, and were • party to those
plots of the conservative clubs and chiefs
which proposed to get rid of the President in some
forcible and summary manner. Whether Louis
Napoleon could prove an actual and immediate
plot against him, almost ready for execution in the
month of December last, may be doubted. But that
there were plots, and very unscrupulous meaus were
then meditated, there are few who do not believe.
No publicity, however, has been given to them.
Throughout the course of his hostility to the Or-
leans, Louis Napoleon has warred in his own
personal interests, and without either invoking
public opinion, or using the authority of
the tribunals and national institutions of the
country. He has issued a decree of confiscation
and forced sale, universally stigmatised illegal.
The opportunity was afforded of trying this the other
day, when the agent of the Orleans family sold a
small property by public auction. But the govern-
ment took no notice of the sale, and allowed it to be
accomplished, although it was of the property con-
fiscated, and not ordered to be sold. The senate has
not been summoned, nor the council of state con-
voked, nor was the consultative commission apprised.
The war against the Orleans, their property, and
their friends, although it might very easily be car-
ried on by means of the laws of the country, is
waged by the police, in the sole name and interests
of the Elysee. It is impossible to conceive anything
so impolitic or so undignified.
And now the chief affair before the French public
is a plot which, even by the avowal of the police
authorities, is a mere distribution of pamphlets and
pleadings to prove and show the illegality and in-
justice of the confiscation of the Orleans property.
For the distribution or possession of these pamph-
lets the most respectable men are thrown into prison,
or obliged to fly. The simplest traveller who may
happen to have one in his trunk is seized and mal-
treated as an agent of treason ; and all this for a
private question of property, still undecided in courts
of justice.
What a picture is this of the progress or declen-
sion of the age. Two dynasties, or the representatives
of two dynasties, who, in any past century, would
have suet in the field and moved courts and armies
to aid in the decision of their quarrel, lowering their
party feuds down, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, to a mere question of property, to a Chanxry
suit, in which, to be sure, the police act as lawyers
and a military President acts as judge, but of
which, after all, the great decision is, who shall en-
joy so many hundreds or so many thousands a year.
If this is not leaping from the sublime to the ridicu-
lous in matters of government and civil war, we
know not what is.

This great interest of the enjoyment and use of
private property is a thing that not only influences
the pile', of the President, and sets his deem-makers
and his myrmidons in motion, but it is the interest
which dominates French society, and absorbs it. People
here have learnt to consider or d ;scum forms and systems
of government with reference to their political results.
All they look to is the consequence to private pro-
perty. The Republic deteriorated private property.
It left capital idle, and made the land unproductive.
The great and universal hatred to republicanism
Fervading so large a portion of the well-to-do
renchmen is founded on this, and on no-
thing else. Immediately after the coup (Mat
of Louis Napoleon things looked better.
People talked of speculating and investing. Have
they persevered in doing so? Certainly not. Louis
Napoleon has done what he could in the great
matter of railway works. He has conceded all he
could, has taken what English money he could get;
and he has certainly entered into a very useful con-
tract with the powerful house of Rothschild to
cover the north of Franco with railroads and connect
them altogether. So that one may henceforth not only
go through the north of Franco, but actually visit it
throughout its breadth. This is much, but state im-
pulse is not enough. And state impulse often mili-
tates against private exertion. It offers a surer and
a higher return of interest than legitimate specula-
tions, and therefore throws them intothe shade.
The real and the true struggle of Louis Napoleon
to secure power consists in his efforts to restore con-
fidence, and to re-assure to property its security, and
to capital its power of reproduction. The merest
suspicion, the smallest breath of war, would mar all
this. And whatever may be his future views, or his
continent policy, it seems plain that war is by no
means in his calculation at present.
It is with reference to the President's policy and
desire to be considered the great champion of the
rights and profits and property, that the question of
the confiscation of the Orleans property becomes
important. The Orleanista represent it as striking
at the security of all property and of all law. Such
is the gist of the pamphlets, against which
the police aro performing their crusade. M. de
Morny warned the President of this danger,
which, however, ho braved for the sake of vengeance,
hatred of the Orleans being, in fact, his domi-
nant passion. And some say, that if he ever marches
into Belgium, it will not be to annex that country,
but to compel it to elect another king, unconnected
with the Orleans family. So far Leopold is in
danger. But the great fact of a Rusoan envoy
having at last been accredited to the court of
Brussels, tends to show the Coburg dynasty to bo
under the protection of the Russian Eagle, which
renders the idea of war on the part of France more
unlikely, or at least more remote, than ever.

Whether the French President can be made to
desist from the war which he carries on against both
representative institution's and against the press, is a
more doubtful matter. French representation and
the French press he has found universally either Or-
leanist or socialist—that is, of the two principles de-
cidedly hostile to him. lie has accordingly slain
representative institutions and the press. hether
he can by this means instil Bonapartism in their
plate, or whether by the gaggin? of all freedom he
is nurturing up power for the socialists, and hopes
for the Orlearnsts, is what may well be doubted.
Quite enough, however, has been said to show that
Louis Napoleon has other things and other cares
to occupy hint besides war: and that war would be a
doubtful remedy fur the ills under which his govern-
' meet labours.

SIMIARINE THLEURAPIL—It itl stated that tho
reeriots of this undertaking were, for the Rr•t month of it.
working, MAI., for the second month, 5171, and for the
third month, AIR ; the animal expenses being estimated
not to exceed 2,0001.