The Express.
London, England, 1864-08-27 00:00:00

MOH WALTZ AT LONDON RILLOON.

TED DAT -7- 10;n1ai 10h. 60.:17:10erasos. TX Us.
To-Xoliaow Morals& 11h. 23m.....Aginie6s. 11h.

LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27.

Jr ought to be satisfactory to the most unmiti-
gated speecbifyers on the face of the earth to find
that they have not all the speechifying to them-
selves. While Parliament is sitting the Great Briton
who peruses his morning broadsheet takes comfort
in the thought that no other people under heaven
can be so long-winded, or represented by mach •
power of tongue, as the people whose deputies fill
vast spaces of paper with the transcript of their
conversations in the Palace of Westminster. There
have been periods of dreadful stillness throughout
Europe when a word uttered, even by • Cox of
Finsbury, resounded like the echo of • trumpet in
the hollow of the hills, and when the inquiring
voice of • DARBY-Garman seemed to shake •
listening universe. Latterly, however, continental
Europe has recovered the use of its lungs, and
not only in Brussels and Turin, but even in Paris a
parliamentary Opposition begins to claim once more
the right of articulate and audible remonstrance.

Even authority, armed with reason and argument,
condescends to offer explanations, and to justify
its ways and works. Our public men are thus
delivered from the painful glory of monopoliting
the attention of civilised mankind whenever they
open their lips. A knot of independent members
of the Corps L..,gialatif have had the courege to
prove that parliamentary speaking is not a lost art
in France, and that the language of Miassuu is
more than a tradition. Nor is it dining the par-
liamentary season only that our brilliant friends
over the water are, we rejoice to find,
rivalling us again in the practiced and pursuits
which are apt to be associated with free institu-
tions. However widely the constitutional frame-
work of the Second Empire may differ from our
own—however earnestly the ablest adherents
of the Napoleonic system may discredit the accli-
matization of English liberty, it is evident that a:
the bottom of their hearts lurks a disposition to
imitate, under safe restrictions, some of the
modes and fashions of that liberty. NAPOLEON HI.,
we know, has more than a lurking V indiums for
the land of his refuge ; and no sovereign of France
has ever known England more intimately, though
many have known it as familiarly. His dearest
friends and comrades, though more Imperialist
than the EMPEROR himself, are almost as
English in certain of their tastes and sympathies,
and in the very act of protesting against the folly
of imitation they imitate with all the grace and
goodwill imaginable our convivial orations and our
"loyal toasts." Thus it happens that while our
own everlasting jeuris Pereira is talking turfy
politic at Tiverton, and his Under Secretaries—
old gentlemen of five and twenty—are mimicking
the tone and attitude of their leader, on the other
side L.! the water the Duc DE PERSIGNY is ban-
quetting the members of the Council-General of
the Loire, and taking advantage of the liberties
of the social board and of the good diges-
tion of his guests to toast the Emperor
NAPOLEON as nothing more or leas than " the
"founder of liberty in France."
This is not the first time, u oar readers
remember, that M. DE PERSIGNY has gra-
tified himself and a loyal audience with
an elaborate theory of the Second Empire
evolved out of the depths of his moral conscious-
ness, as carefully constructed and furnished in
all its parts, as wholly unanswerable and un-
deniable, as the wildest specification that ever qua-
lified an inventor for a certificate of lunacy. No
doubt this dexterity in constructing a theory of
perfect wisdom out of one's favourite folly, in
systematizing one's aberrations, is a form of self-
delusion as old as human nature itself. But there
is no need to suspect M. DE Prisluxy of this com-
mon weakness. It is at least excusable in this
faithful comrade of conspiracy and exile, this
friend of evil as of good fortune, that he should
believe with all his heart and soul in the " extra-
" ordinary destiny, so manifestly marked by the
" finger of Providence," which has made M. DE
PERSIGNT a senator, a statesman, a landowner, a
duke, and provided him with a dinner-table large
enough for the loyalty of the whole Council-
General of the Loire. No one can for a moment
doubt the perfect sincerityof this noble duke when
he rises to propose a toast to the EMPEROR as the
founder—not of credit, of ducal fortunes, of a
new Paris, or of a Mexican Empire, but of liberty
"in France," and liberty sans phroms, not liberty
of theatres or of bakers ; not even of industry and
trade ; but of liberty pure and simple ; liberty
of thought, of speech, of writing, of meeting, of as-
sociation ; of all that we in England call liberty.
If. DE PERMS; perhaps, measures the liberty of
his fellow countrymen by his own ; and certainly
it would be difficult for the greediest lover of
free speech to desire greater liberty of speaking
without being contradicted than M. Pammarty
enjoys at his own table when he toasts his
" founder of liberty in France." By way of pre-
face it may be interesting to English readers
to learn bow it comes to peas that