The Express.
London, England, 1855-05-08 00:00:00

THE LEFT ATTACK.

COURVOISIER. Bat we do think that the die-
eiple of the French Old Bailey school who
indited these lines, might have been induced by

recest events to have expunged them from his
acte d'acetesation. In " that centre of the most auda-
cious agitators," NAPOLEON 111. passed unharmed,
and safe even from insult, through dense crowds,
with no other protection than our ba:oned police.
In Paris not all the ramifications of a prying and in-
quisitorial secret police could prevent the attempt of
the assassin. In England the EMPEROR was protected
by the popular detestation of violence and cowardly,
clandestine vengeance. The people of England have
learned to conduct their popular movements by means
of argument and votes, without recourse to arms.
Even before they attained to this high grade
of civilisation, they bad discovered the folly
and criminality of assaseivation. With the
exception of the Cato-street conspirators, we
have had no political assassins in England,
except • few maniacs; and the Cato-street con-
spiracy only excited abhorrecco and detestation.
The rabid brawling of the vitriol declaimers of Dub-
lin would have aroused indignation had it not been
so utterly contemptible. It is to the moral sense of
the people of England that we are indebted for our
emancipation from deeds of political bloodshed, public
or clandestine. So strong Is the influence of this
moral sense that even those who in other lands give
the rein to their murderous propensities, pay homage
to it, and conform to the customs of the country.
Hence it is that England is a neutral ground, on
which the most inveterate political antagoni,ts meet on
terms of truce. It is a sacred asylum, within which
they lay aside for the time their ferocious
internecine propensities. Such declaimers as the
author of PIANORI'S acts craccusation would gladly
see England deprived of its character as an asylum,
in order that they might gratify their short-sighted
animosities by laying hold on their foes ; whereas
this " centre of the moot audacious agitators," by
serving as a school of humanity, saves even them-
selves from many perils. All this railing will not
induce Englishmen to forego the proud distinction
of their country, that on its soil political antagonists,
though they may not cease to hate, must at least
suffer each other to live in peace and security. It is
not by sanguinary laws, or by police spies, that
the other countries of Europe can hope to
• attain to our exemption from political violence ;
but by teaching their populations that liberty, though
• it may occasionally be defended, never can be perma-
, neatly established and maintained by arms. We
have within the lapse of less than thirty years man-
, cipated our Roman Catholic brethren, reformed our
electoral institutions, abolished a grievous monopoly
, to which the oligarchy clung with insane greed, all
by peaceful agitation ; and we are now commencing a
still more arduous agitation than any of these with
the most perfect confidence that it will be prosecuted
to ■ triumphant conclusion without any breach of
, the peace. When the other nations of Europe have
learned to imitate us in this then will their kings
and nobles be safe from the plots of assassins, and not
till then.

We have ventured t suggest to the EMPEROR of
the FRENCH that his payment of CANTILLON'S legacy
may almost be regarded as an encouragement to the
murderous attempt of Purim. Let us, in couclu-
lion, call upon such as may sympathise with the per-
verted principles of that poor foul to read aright the
lesson taught by his failure. Had his plot succeeded
he would only have plunged France into anarchy.
His failure has only strengthened the EMPEROR of
the FRENCH in the possession of despotic power.
Peaceful arguments, and a conciliatory deportment,
might have encouraged the French people to assert
their claims to a greater share in the Government,
and induced a man possessed of so much sagacity as
NAPOLEON 111. to listen to their prayers. But the
attempt upon his life will in all probability have
the effect of stimulating him to further encroachments
on popular liberty in self-defence; and fear of the
anarchical state they have so narrowly escaped will
prevail upon many Frenchmen to acquiesce in the
stringency of a despotism they might otherwise have
laboured to relax. This moral of the story of
PleNom is not new. It is old as the debates in the
schools on the merits, or demerits, of BRUTUS and
CASSIUS. But it is not the less true and important
on that account. —Doily News.