The Express.
London, England, 1863-09-14 00:00:00

I1TAWI«

I'Hl 64,11.0111, LADY AIIDLLY 8 BICRRT. TEI ORZAT
GROAT EFFECT. Mesdames Yarnold and Cranked—Mr.
Part er. Madame Plena. and Mr. W. Randall—And Tali ADYZN-
Ti /MS A 1 KM' OF LIAYL

BUM wArla AT I.OIIDOII 1111.1 Di
Tau DAY —Wonting. fit IST. .Imam. Eh. 5211.
tAaattsoa —Stamina. 11.. fa... .Alarasea. 311. 2,m

LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14.

Tun French Government, having created the
new Mexican Empire, is naturally the first to re-
cognise its offspring. This is fair and legitimate
enough, and it would be moat unhandsome to
complain of the apparent precipitat;on with
which M. us MuNruotux, who has been spe-
cially promoted from the Consulate at New
York, has taken his departure for the new and
higher post of Minister at " the Court of Mexico."
That Court, it is true, does not yet exist, but
neither did the thrones of the penniless but august
Princes with whom M. Candide supped at Venice,
and over whom the Court to which M. DS MON-
THOLON is accredited had at least the advantage
which the future has over the past. The selection
of M. DE MONTKOLON for the delicate and im-
portant office of representing his Sovereign at
the Court of an Emperor who remains to be
discovered, is, perhaps, due not so much to his
Napoleonic name, as to the fortunate circumstance
of the late Consul at New York having been the
first to receive and transmit to his government
tidings of the surrender of Puebla and the occu-
pation of the Mexican capital, and to his
capabilities, after • long official residence in
New York, of estimating the probable destiny
of the Court of Mexico upon the conclusion of
the American civil war, and in defiance of that
doctrine of the balance of power in the New
World which Mr. Cavritnio dictated, and President
Mormon adopted and enlarged. When the
French Minister to the Court of Mexico
arrives on the ground he will present his credentials
to a Provisional Government sent from Paris, and
stamped by Marshal FORICY with the trademark of
" the national will." The Triumvirate, consisting
of two proscribed traitors and a high ecclesiastical
conspirator restored to his flock under cover of the
French flag, is, in fact, the substance of the Mexi-
can Empire, which it rules by the grace of French
bayonets. What the Mexican Empire of the
future is to be must depend, in no slight measure,
on the continuous supply of the same sort of
" moveable securities."

The probability of the Archduke MAXIMILIAN'S
acceptance of • visionary crown can hardly
be a question of personal capacity or ambition. It
may be that, like many other men of meaner
merit and pretensions, the ARCHDUILK finds an un-
eventful life in Europe, a life without danger and
romance, without great enterprises and r;tlcs, some-
what tedious. European politics and Austrian
honours may be a weariness to his soul. Ho may,
like Prince HENRY of Portugal in the fifteenth
century, be moved by the very hazard of
this adventure to undertake it, because
"he knows of no one but himself
" who is fit for it." He may be agitated by
longings for a grand experiment in paternal
despotism—the career of • ruler and shepherd of
men. A. a sailor he may dream dreams of a
magnificent maritime empire ; as a man of in-
tellect and culture he may see visions of an
Imperial civilization, enriched with all tle arts and
sciences of Europe, reared amidst the remains of
cities and temples at which the first discovere-s
from Europe stood amazed. As • man of curious
and eager temper he may have pored over the
peps of PRESCOTT, and imagined the splendour of a
MOMTIZIIIII, without bloody idols, and the victories
of • COMICS without greed or guile. As • nine-
teenth century practical man be may a-pire to be
the holder of the gate of two oceans. He may be
merely sick of Europe, or resolved to plant •
regenerated Austria in the midst of American
democracies.

In truth it would matter very little what the
purely personal motives of the ARCHDIMeS condi-
tional acceptance of the throne of Mexico might
be—whether a restless vanity, &chivalrous ambition,
or the temptation of a career of vigorous adventure
—if a Prince with so fair a fame to theow away,
and so well advised, could with his eyes open make
himself the instrument of the schemes or the
scapegoat of the follies of • foreign and rival
Power. What neither the people of Austria nor
of France can understand, is that French blood
and gold should be squandered to pay a com-
pliment to an Austrian Archduke, and that an
Austrian Archduke should be willing to owe a
crown to the valour of • French army, and a crown
which in default of • French army would not be
worth a month's purchase.

Let us assume that the Emperor NAPOLEON'S
nominee for the Mexican throne is endowed with
all, and more than all, the monarchical virtues ;
that he is devout and crafty as a Coarse, liberal
and tolerant as a MONTALEYBEHT, fortunate and
successful as a Naroxsom, aa sound an econom:4
as a MICHEL CHIVALICE. He wile, never-
theless, find himself in the midst of a turbulent
people, unused to the decencies of settled Statm,
of a ravenous and ignorant preathood, of a rank
growth of military factions, ready at all times to
tear one another to pieces—ready to decapitate an
Emperor on the shortest notice. To reduce such a
wild herd of impossible subjects to order, after the
Austrian pattern, where are the resources of the
Archduke MAXIMILIAN to come from ? Apparently
not from Austria. The conquest of Maxim is no
Austrian idea, and the Germans who go out to
make a new and free Fatherland in the Western
World do rot, it should seem, go out in quest
of an Austrian Emperor, or even of a Prussian
King. In spite of the jeremiads of our effeminate
political foppery over the failures and excesses of
democracy, it is to democracy, not to monarchy,
that the emigrant multitudes from Europe gravi-
tate. Evidently, then, unless the Emperor of
Maxie° is to be nothing more than a guerilla
chieftain, with a saddle for a throne, and a body-
guard of " Papal Zouaves," recruited from all the
hungry vagabonds of our coolie and aristocracies,
for an army, it is to a French army that he must
look to keep what a French army has given him.
Au Austrian Prince of well regulated mind may,
perhapa, be willing to accept, as neither too preca-
rious nor too undignified, a Protectorate, which the
Holy Father is content to patronise as a fulfil•
ment of prophecy. But then remains the question
for the French people, how long and in what degree
French interests and French honour justify the cost