The Express.
London, England, 1864-05-02 00:00:00

THE CONFERENCE.

THE BRITISH AND AUSTRIAN FLEETS.
(From tin rims.)

Tho mystery which has enveloped the earlier
proceedinp of the European Conference is gradually be-
ginning to disperee, and we gain some insight, though by no
means go clear es we could wish, into the parkas and
motives which actuate the different performers in the
momentous drams. No armistice has yet been speed
upon, but it would sewn that, unless some new and on.
toward inflames interferes, a °oration of hostilities is
neither an improbable Door remote event. The two
German powers have gained so much that there is very
little more left them to gen. Holstein, Marc and
Jutland are already theirs, and the island of Alum
will, we learn, be ceded es the peke of a breathing time
allowed to the overmatched and outnumbered Danes. Little
' more is left to seize than Copenhagen sod the island on
which it steeds. All the rest, by repeated sok of violence
and under one pretext or another, all equally good to sup-
port the acts of the stronger party, and equally worthless
in the eye of justice and equity, has been seized. Nothing
now remains but to set the seal of legality upon acquisitions
due to the strongest and the most manifest exertions of
force. . . . The chances of an armistice do nos, if
rightly eressidered, depend so much on the will of Prussia es
oe the policy to be adopted by the other four great powers.
We apprehend that Bemis and Sweden are ready to ad in
wooed with England and France for the preservation of
what is yet left of the kingdom of Denmark. The difficulty ie
that as England earn/10CD must act together to produce any
germs improstioo, the least divergence of view is fatal to
the exertion of their salutary power. Austria seems to be
aware of the danger of the course on which she hu ea-
tared. She knows how impossible it word be for her,
with her embernowed finances and her discontented pro-
vinces, to sustain the shock of a European war. She is
sending her ships into the North Sea, is order, as she says,
to protect German commerce from the depredation of the
Danes, and we nmy as well believe her until those ships
make their appeaser in the Baltic. But she ought to
reflect that by sending a fleet into these waters she really
gives pledges to England, and that it is not wise to act point-
ally and directly hia defiance of the wishes of a powerful
neighbour, and at the Dame time to place the means of
complete redress in her buds, and then to calculate
on her forbsar•noe. If the Austrian fleet returns to
the Mediterranean, it is entirely by oar sufferance, and
it is not wise to furnish people who are fully able to
execute whatever they have determined with such easy
means of retaliation. The whole difficulty of the ease,
however, is really cared by the Emperor of the Preach.
IT. has mode himself remarkable for the strong resolution
with which he bee hitherto supported the policy of his
empire. He seems now desirous of distinguishing him-
self as passive and stationary amid the vortex
of politics whirling around him, and of showing
Europe how possible it is to neutralise the coon-
try which till lately assumed to take the pets-
cipel direction of its affairs. Aemming this conduct to be
what it professes, that there is is it no afterthought, no
mental reservation, it is ors of the most remarkable in-
duces on record o• the destruction of a mighty &Buenos
by the very hands which have created it. The pride of the
Emperor of the Preach has hitherto been that, without
desolating the worll by perpetual wars like the
of Louis XI V. and the great Napoleon, he hoe
contrived to remise an influence equal to either
of them. Hitherto he has undoubtedly succeeded
in maintaining this intimate, due alloveaea being made for
the difficulties of hie situation. Bat now all this is to be
changed ; Fr.ugos is to be the only country in Europe that
has no opinion to offer on its dearest interests. She will
still formally emir at conferences, but only more pointedly
to mark bow entirely she leaves the regulatioe of those
affairs to others. A greet power is for the time withdrawn
from among us—a lower whose plies it is not easy to

We can only trust that this om'nous Banes may be
attended with what would be a sufficient indemnity for the
lose of the counsels and Mamma of France. Let us hope
that em France has given np the office of arbiter of Europe
she will dimnim there armies which have farad ea other
nations the ungrateful burden of defensive prepare.
tioa, and as she is content henceforth to do nothing, so she
will give us this proof that she intends henceforth to do
nothing which can in any way e'strrb the poem to which
she appears to have become so sudden and so sincere a
convert.