The Express.
London, England, 1864-12-31 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31.

THE year that is closing is rightly described as
being a year of prosperity and general welfare to our
country and people, but it will leave a grave im•
pression on the future readers of onr history ; and
it has certainly been to ourselves a season of se-
rious impressions and of some mournful feelings.
The reason for this will appear on the slightest
survey of the past twelve months, though no ad-
versity has been appointed to us as a nation, and
we have enjoyed a mood of general contentedness
and calm.

We have once more known the feeling
of being on the verge of war, and of a war which
would have been exceedingly popular; we have
experienced the mortification of appearing capri-
cious, or even unfaithful—compelled as we were
by the unfaithfulness of the other parties con-
cerned to disappoint Denmark of our aid. This
has been, no doubt, the bitterest experience of the
year. The benefit that it has yielded is bringing
us nearer to a practical understanding of what is
meant by non-intervention, and to some prospect
of an intelligible and steady policy whenever those
wars break out in Europe which all Europe consi-
ders to be inevitable. Since the Ministry were
absolved by the critical vote of the Commons on
their foreign policy on the Bth of July, we have at
least known what to discuss, and have been free
to compare all the ideas which can exist under the
term non-intervention ; and thus, by the passing
alarm of war we may have become better prepared
to meet or decline it, on the next critical ocauior.
During the months over which the uncertainty
extended, we witnessed the mournful spectacle of
the invasion and dismemberment of Denmark,
and the yet more painful manifestation of the
worst points of the German national character.
We have seen the constitutional prospects of
Prussia overclouded or destroyed, and the dignity
of Austria fatally impaired, while the outrageous
violence of the Minister and the King of Paresis
carried all before it. The decline of Germany
generally, and of Prussia in particular, in the es-
timation of the civilized world will date from this
year, and it is not in the next that we can see the
evil repaired. When the news came that peace
was concluded at Vienna on the 30th of October,
and when the German newspapers were full of
descriptions of the festive return of the troops to
Berlin and Vienna, we could not but feel that
this was not the and—that the aggression on Den-
mark was not an affair which could be begun and
closed within the year, and that the real results
to the aggrenive Powers and to Europe have yet
to be revealed.

There were other dismal spectacles abroad. iThe
Polish insurrection went out with the hanging of 1
the chiefs of the National Government early in
August; and the vengeance of Russia hu had
free course ever since, so that Poland has under-
gone a year of hell, if ever there was a hell on
earth. In Russia there has been much insurrec•
tion of the servile sort, which' hu not been kept so
secret but that the world has had glimpses of
burning villages, and even towns alight like rick-
yards in rural districts in times of discontent. The
exodus of the Circassians, after their defence of their
country against Russia for so many years, has
pained the world's heart—the movement being
to the sufferers a concentration of famine and
pestilence. Tens of thousands of the exiles did
not wander long, but lay down to die wherever
they might be. The Arabs, again, have been
showing that they are less satisfied or subdued
under their rulers at Algiers and Tunis than bad
been supposed ; and there haa been much of the
scattering warfare which characterises Northern
Africa. We have witnessed the issue of one more
manifesto from Rome against the progress of
knowledge and the development of philosophy,
and have felt the effect of the POPE'S admonition
in the suppression of the most liberal and pro-