The Express.
London, England, 1863-06-03 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS,

and parasites to rake up the garbage of forgotten
calumnies and insults against the " national hide-
" rian," who, though he brought back the bones
of NAPOLEON to France, wrote a prose epic on the
First Empire, and made democratic Imperialism
a fashion, has lived long enough to prefer liberty
to glory. M. us PERNIGNY'S recent Circulars have
betrayed an uneasy conscience. What could be
more injudicious than the attempt to disprove the
figures of the Budget, and to persuade the electors
that the Empire was cheaper than the Constitutional
Monarchy I A Budget of eighty millions sterling
and a doubled national debt are facts no rhetoric
can explain away. The Empire may have
done great things at home and abroad ;
waged incessant wars, annexed provinces, occupied
foreign countries and cities, conquered remote de-
pendencies, demolished and rebuilt cities, con-
verted Paris into a magnificent caravanserai of all 1
nations, *a glaring whited sepulchre of free-
dom ; but all this has not been done for the
modest sum which enabled poor Loris PHILIPPE to
live respectably and keep the peace, and made his
people sick of doing well, and eager to change
for the worse. M. DE PRELIMS Y insists on
gratitude for the "great things" which the
Second Empire has accomplished by those
financial means which the Opposition candidates
call in question. He does not understand, as
more dispassionate observers do, that it is a ques-
tion of value received. The Parisian electors
may be proud of new pilau's and barracks, of
interminable facades, of public gardens and lakes,
and all the beneficent devices of modern, as of
ancient, Ciesarism ; but they are apt to weary of
these things, while rates and taxes, and house
rent are rising like a flood, and the problem of
existence, for those who are obliged to spend
their lives in the midst of all these Imperial won-
ders at which strangers from East and West stand
agape, becomes more difficult day by day. It may
easily be supposed that many a Parisian house-
holder finds small compensation for his private and
prosaic troubles in the protection of the POPE or
the siege of Puebla, or the treaty with Cochin
China, or the civil list of a million sterling.
Nothing is more remarkable in the addresses of the
independent candidates than the iteration of the
good old watchwords which liberals in these islands
have too soon unlearned—peace, retrenchment,
reform. Eleven years' despotic rule have not
been all a loss to France, if they have
purged French liberalism of that windy jargon
which would consign an English politician to •
madhouse. If M. DE PEBSIONY chooses to dis-
cover anything hostile to the EMPEROR in the ad-
dress of candidates who demand less taxation and
more liberty, fewer expeditions and more rights,
so much the worse for the EMPEROR. For as cer-
tain as that nations survive dynasties is it that
France will not submit for ever to pant for freedom
and to be told that to eat and drink and be
merry is the sole end and aim of human govern-
ment and society, and of a nation's life. Men like
Jones &mow and EUGENE Pew.rrari will, if we
mistake not, tell the Talking Ministers, in accents
that will be heard by Europe, that moral and intel-
lectual stagnation is death to a people, and that
justice and morality are vital interests.

Ebe Couti.

BALMORAL, MAT 31.

The Queen and the royal family, attended by
the ladies and gentlemen in waiting, attended Divine service
in the castle this morning.
The service was performed by the Rev. Dr. Gelid.
Prime's Helena and Prince Alfred attended Divine ser-
vice in the parish church of Crathie.

The Prince and Priers of Wales, accompanied by the
Prince Leiningen and attended by the Countess de Grey
and Lieutenant-Colonel Koppel, left Marlborough-house at
25 minutes peat eleven o'clock yesterday morning for the
private station at Vauxhall, and travelled by the London
and South Western Railway to Ascot. Their royal high-
nesses afterward. proceeded to Progmore.
A deputation ersteiating of Mr. Gilmour, Mr. Id`Rwan,
Mr. Turner, and Mr. Knight, had an interview with the
Right Hon. Sir George Grey yesterday at the Hootirodloe.
TU. deputation was introduced by Mews. Buchanan and
Dalgliah.