The Express.
London, England, 1855-08-04 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 4.

Ws hardly think that in the estimation of most of
oar readers the speech delivered by Mr. Lsitto in the
House of Commons yesterday evening will be re-
garded as repaying the trouble of perusal. It will
be found, in point of fact, rather to answer the de-
scription of a dull pamphlet than an effective speech.
Deficient alike in breadth of view and originality of
illustration, and as low in tone of sentiment salt is
bare of the ornaments of eloquence or wit, it mews to
drag its slow and sordid length along for other ob-
jolts, and with a different purpose, than what is
specifically avowed. We cannot, indeed, acme. the
member for Wick of any attempt to gain attention
under false pretences. Hs affects no fanatic faith in the
theories of the Peace party, and no doubt as to**
ability of France and England to achieve what they
have undertaken, if they persevere to the end. But
without the consistency of those who from the out-
set protested spinet all armed resistant* to Russia,
or of those whose understandings are paralysed by an
unnational and irrational despondency as to the for-
tunes of the struggle, Mr. Limo, after cool calcula-
tion, recommends the abandonment of the siege of
Sebastopol, and the summoning of a new conference
at Vienna, because he says it would be cheaper for the
exchequer, and decidedly better for speculative enter-
prises of every kind—Austrian railways of course

included. Sebastopol, he argues, wenkl not be worth
keeping by us had we got it, and therefore it
is not worth the trouble of taking by force
of arms! The revolver of a highwayman,
could you wrest it from his grasp, would not
sell for a tenth part of what it costs to employ a
patrol ; therefore, according to the Wick philosophy,
it is better to leave ruffianism armed. Honour, dig-
nity, good faith, and permanent security, are imperial
considerations to which Mr. LAING devotes but brief
and passing consideration ; but he formally an-
nounces himself u the spokesman of the bankers,
brokers, railway emulator'', contractors, and in
short of the whole elan of money-dealers and job-
bers of the great cities of Europe ; and their opinion,
he solemnly informs us, is against a continuance of
the war. It scarcely needed any assurance from the
honourable and learned gentleman to convince us
of the fact : the only question it suggests is—admit-
ting its truth—what is its value P We fancy the
public estimate thereof will differ widely from that
of Mr. LAING, who by his own confession has
spent a considerable portion of the present session—
not in his place in Parliament, not in learning the
sentiments of his own countrymen, but in listen-
ing to the lamentations of German capitalists and the
grumbling, of other Continental jobbers at the rejeo-
tion of the terms of compromise offered by the Aus-
trian Government last May.
Nor does the sell-elected member for the European
stock and share markets stop short in his avowals
of political sentiments and motives. Ile has in this
respect made a clean breast of it. According to
him the Austrian alliance is the one thing needful
in our permanent foreign policy. The German
courts, he regrets to say, have been alienated by the
profession of sympathy made by England in 1848
and 1849, in the efforts of their subjects to extort
constitutional liberty. Nothing could be more mis-
chievous or blameworthy in his opinion than such
manifestations on our part. The true interest of
England lies, according to this advocate of abso:utist
alliances, in discountenancing all dreams and hopes on
the part of suppressed nationalities, and conciliating
the confidence of the courts of Berlin and Vienna. We
congratulate Mr. GLADSTONE and Mr. BRIGHT on the
accession of such an advocate as this. We desire no-
thing better than that he should at stated intervals
keep the public in mind that these are the principles
whose triumph is to be inaugurated by the desertion
of the cause we have hitherto espoused, and the
acknowledgment that we have failed in what we

undertook to do in conoert with France. Far from
objecting to the confessions of Mr. Limo, we rather
rejoice that they have been so nakedly made. If the
spirit of the country be sound, they will do good, not
harm.

We cannot say as much, however, for the speech in
which Sir GEOROE GREY followed, without answer-
ing, the learned representative of Wick. Through
interminable mazes of verbiage and evasion it will be
found difficult to trace any intelligible or connected
clue of meaning. With emphatic feebleness the
flouts SECRETARY repeated the greater part of Lord
CLARENDON'S well-known despatches; but he con-
trived so to mix their fragments with dreary paren-
theses of his own, and so to smother their drift in
words and phrases whose sole characteristic may be
said to be negative, that we doubt if many of his
hearers would have carried away any very distinct
idea of what he had averred or denied, had he not
in his turn been followed by that most inveterate of
friends, an ex-colleague. It was just the opportunity
for a master of fence like Mr. GLADSTONE, and dex-
terously he turned it to account. We have now, he
said, got a step further In ministerial disclosures.
Heretofore wehave been led to believe thatnegotiations
were broken off, and Lord Joni; Russia:9 advice
overruled, because the Cabinet could not renounce
the demand for the limitation of Russia's naval forces
in the Black Sea; but now we are told by the
SECRETARY of STATE that he, for one, " does not
think limitation ought to be made • an qua wow in
future negotiations for peace !" Well, then, if this
be the opinion of the Government, what, we would
ask, is to be so regarded P One after another the
objects for which the nation believed it was called upon
to contend vanish like dissolving views. We were
told that great things were to be done last year in
the Baltic; but our magnificent fleet returned home
without effecting aught which even those who sent
it out could ask Parliament to pass a vote of thanks
for. Then we were told that in the second campaign
• great blow would be struck in the Gulf of Finland;
but the second summer is passing away, and we hear
of nothing doing or done. High hopes were held
out of a Turkish legion and of a Foreign legion;
but nobody can exactly say what chance there now
is of either being in a condition to render efficient
service within any assignable period; and a Polish
legion, which would, in some respect., be better
than either, is, we understand, still under dis-
cussion. We need not dwell on the di..
appointments created month after month at the
waste of life and treasure in the Crimea; we know
that the Cabinet took a whole week to maks up their
minds not to abandon the siege for the sake of peace;
and now we are told by Sir GEORGE GP= that he
and hie colleagues no banger consider the condition
of " limitation," on which the Vienna Oceanian arm

broksa up, indispensable to the conclusion of an
amiable emeprondee ! Parliament is shout to be
lenrogned until November; truly it is time that it
should Or a SEIM stand aside, in order that the
people should the more distinctly speak out on their
own behalf.

Tax letter from Sir Ds Ircr Evrn, which appear,
in another column, seems calculated to provoke or
prolong a controversy whir& we sine ely hope will be
allowed to drop. There have been mistakes and Ws-
understandings shout the unlocky_meeting on behalf
of Poland that wee to have been heid on Wednesday,
het, and personal susceptibilities have been roused
by them; but it is not to be endured that a great
and good cause should be placed in peril on that
account. The only questions in oonnexion with that
meeting, of which the English public ought to tole-
rate the discussion at present, are, can anything be
done to promote the oases of Poland P and how can
it be done!

In common with the great mass of the English
people, we have refused to admit that the nationality
of Poland has been extinguished. We have "hoped
against hope :" we have clung to the faith that the
clause of the Poles will ultimately triumph. An op-
portnoity now presents itself of doing something
that may materially promote that cause. The
Polish nation may at this moment be regarded
as composed of two parts—the Emigration
and the Poles who remain resident in their
own land. With regard to the former there
can be no doubt of their eager and in-
eradicable desire to expel the Muscovite intruders
from the soil of Poland. With regard to the latter,
it is more difficult to ascertain their views and wishes.
Russia has kept its frontiers so hermetically sealed
against the intrusion of European inquiry, that we
are left, on this moors, in a great measure to inference
and conjecture. We have, indeed, scarcely the
shadow of a doubt that the resident Poles writhe
under the tyranny of Russia, and would gladly
shake it off; but we are in no condition to say
with certainty that they are able to co-operate
effectively with their exiled brethren. The
embodiment of a Polish Legion would afford
the means of experimentally ascertaining how
the Poles in Poland stand disposed. Already there
are rumours of insurrections in Malorossia, and of
discontent in Poland ; were a Polish Legion assem-
bled on the Russian frontier, it might be the torch
that, in the words of the old Scottish proverb, would
" met fire to the heather." For this reason it is the
duty of every loyal Polish exile, and of every friend
of Poland, untrammelled by official position or con-
nexions, to promote to the utmost of his power the
enrolment of a Polish Legion.

With Government the cue is somewhat different.
The first duty that an English Government owes is
to the English people. It has no right to tax
the national resources to aid a foreign people, until it
has ascertained that these foreigners are worthy and
capable of being helped. We do not expect Govern-
ment to be influenced by the ulterior views which we
entertain and proudly avow; but neither can we
admit that it has any right to shrink from a measure
otherwise eligible, because it may ultimately tend to
promote these views. We will go farther. The
suppression of the nationality of Poland is a standing
reproach to the English Government, which was
a party to the great European treaty which
guaranteed that nationality. If reasons of
state have hitherto entitled the English Go-
vernment to withhold direct aid from Poland
they do not exonerate it from those claims which
Poland has upon its sympathies and good offices
whenever time and opportunity permit. Now, in so
far as the question of the enrolment of a Polish
Legion is concerned, the policy of the English Go-
vernment seems clear. England has need of brave
and trustworthy soldiers, of foreign birth, to fight
under her banner in the present war. There are none
more brave than the Poles; none whose hereditary
sentiments, as regards Rims* entitle them to more
unreserved confidence on our part. The Poles
will form a more efficient corps if kept to-
gether than if they are mixed up with men of
other races, speaking other languages, inspired by
other sentiments. Viewed merely with regard to
the needs of the war, the enrolment of a Polish
Legion would obviously be a wise step on the part of
the English Government. The apprehension that
the adoption of such a measure would cause in the
Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and the crippling of its
means of defence, by compelling it to reserve a part
of its forces to guard against internal foes, ought
also to be taken into account.

These considerations are sufficient to show that it
is the interest and duty of the English people at this
moment to urge upon their Government the enrol-
ment of a Polish Legion. A public demonstration
in this sense will be useful, not to Poland only, but to
England (as tending to accelerate a complete victory
over the Russians, and the conclusion of a stable
peace), and to Europe (by asserting the great prin-
ciple of the independence and the Indestructibility of
nations). The Englishman who believes in the justice
of the cause of Poland, and yet throws obstacles in the
way ot such a demonstration, is a traitor to his own con-
victions. We speak with reference to the future, not to
the past, which we have already dismissed from our
memory. Row the ask would chuckle if it should
turn out that, when an opportunity of materially assist-
ing Poland presented itself, Englishmen, who boast of
their sympathy for that country, were to allow it to
escape them because they were engrossed with petty
personal wrangling. amongst themselves.

The Arkemetent, classifying the Civil List for ten
years' passions into literary and non-literary (and including
in the literary section those which were given for service in
art and science), arrives at the following results :-1845,
Literary pensions, 7001. ; 1846, 1,0001.; 1847, 7001.; 1848,
7001.; 1849, 4901.; 1850, 8501. ; 1851, 1,0261. ; 1852,1,1001.;
1853, 1,0001 ; and finally, 1854, 1501. Thus, for the nine
years previous to 1854, the amount given ri rewards for
" literary exertions " was 7,565 L, or something over 8401.
a-year. Last year, in Lord Aberdeen's hands, the sum
dwindled down to 1601.

Mdlle. Rosa Bonheues picture of " the Horse
Fair " is sold to u Englishman—but not a resident in Eng-

1- -
land—for a trifle under 2,000 L Mdlle. Bonheur has painted
a reduced copy for the engraver, which Is now in Mr.
Thomas Landsser's bands. The second picture has been
purchased by Mr. Jacob Bell.
M. A. Dumas has been appointed by the French
government to collect all the popular ballad poetry of the
South of France.

Mr. Ruskin is again at work as an illustrator of
the genius of Turner. Some drawings by the great master
of landscape—twelve in number, bat not equally finished—
representing the Harbours of England—are in Mr. Buskin's
hands for critical elucidation. The manes are crowded with
boats, is in Turner's " Coast Scenery ; " and the circum-
stance ass supplied the commentator with an unworn and
picturesque topic—the history of boat building in relation
to Art in all ages. The work, we (Athenaeums) understand,
II likely to app ear in the autumn.

The CarliaJ.Patriot says it is folly expected that
the ezlnawn of the late Exhibition there of the Royal
Agricaltraal Society will be severed by the receipts. It
has hitherto bees thought not so any bad if the receipts
at the, Society's annual sasetiap fell below the expels's.
sot more than a thousand pounds.

Five hundred hate, to contain 50 men each, are to
It/a ready for despatch by the end of the present month._ .

It is expected that the West-end branch of the
Bank of England will ore la about three weeks.

LATEST FROM ABROAD.

THE BALTIC FLEET.

0111,011 017/1 OWS

DANTZIC, Aram 8.

The Primus Alice has arrived with mails. She
left the fleet on the Slat ult. at Num. No altera-
tion hu taken place in the position of the squadrons,
and nothing important has taken place, except the
destruction of some coast batteries at /Loth& ;
preparations are, however, being made to strike an
important blow.

- - - FAROSUND, JULY 29.
The Bolleidoillerpitiel ship, Mamboed to the Gulf of
Finland, preparatory to the apioisid °potations.

RUSSIAN NEWS FROM THE BALTIC.

--4.--
The Invalid. Rune, of Jolt' 27, contains the fol-
lowing:

" Alde•de-Camp General de Berg, commander of
the troops in Finland, states that on July 20 a frigate,
a steamer, a corvette, and a gun-boat, carrying the
English flag, appeared before Friedrichschamm. At
10 o'clock a.m. on the following day, these vessels,
arranged in line, commenced an uninterrupted
cannonade against our coast batteries, but, being re-
ceived by a well-sustained fire on the part of our
artillery, and our oarabineer marksmen, were obliged
to retire after an engagement of two hours' duration."

HANOVER.

HkNOVER. FRIDAT.

The names of the new ministers have been
putted. The King, Queen, and three children
have gone to Norderney.

FRANCE.

(mom ova owl( col

PARIS, FRIDAY BTENIXO.

According to the Indipendance Beige," it is not
imposible" a new effort to bring about peace may
be at this moment making in " high diplomatic
spheres." The foundation for this conjecture,
launched by a journal which never mines an oppor-
tunity of throwing a wet blanket upon the war, is
the story already sent to London, of General de
Letang's new minion to Vienna, consequent upon an
autograph letter written by the Emperor Francis
Joseph, at the instigation of the Empress Dowager of
Russia, to Napoleon 111. Although the Independence
does not speak very confidently of the truth of its
own news, and admits that the authenticity of the
Empress' letter is not completely established,:and:that
peace, however desirable, is not among the probabi-
lities of the moment, it takes the opportunity of in-
sinuatin ; that the chances of the great cause in
which the Allies are engaged being on the point of
being betrayed, are not altogether to be despised
because " the good understanding between Austria
and the Western Powers was never so complete as it
is now, and the Italian revolutionary party has never
yet been so categorically informed that it has
no help to expect from the French govern-
ment" If any dependence may be placed
on the above intimations from a decidedly hostile
source, it is to be inferred that at one time there was
some coquetting with the party of freedom in Italy.
At any rate, it appears that communications have
been frequently made to that party, since they are
now " informed" more categorically than ever.
The Independence says that all letters coming
from the Crimea are now opened by the Provost-
Marshal, in order to see that they contain no news
displeasing to the military authorities, and that they
arrive with the stamped mark, " Grand Prevlt of the
army; opened by authority of justice." Very sum-
mary justice that of the Provost-Marshal, the Itule-
pendance observes.
There has bees come considerable oscillation on
the Bourse to-day, not so much in the Rents as in
other securities. The Rents, after a variation of not
more than 5c., closed at 67fr. 30c., with a fall of 50.
But Credit Mobilier, after having been in extraor-
dinary demand, and quoted at 1,170 fr., ran down to
1,120 fr. for the close, which price, however, was still
an improvement of Mr. upon the great advance
of yesterday. It is reported that the Credit Mobilier
is about to double its capital, and to issue at once
120,000 new shares of 500 f., that is to say,
shares for 60 millions of capital. Each holder
of two &areal to receive one new one. Further new
shares to the amount of 60 millions will, according
to the project, be retained by the company in its own
hands. In railway shares there war great fluctuation.
Orleans left off with a fall of 221 r. 50c., and Eastern.
with a rise of 20fr. Lyons fell 10fr., and Lyons and
Mediterranean 201 r. It ib confidently said that sup-
plementary reports of subscriptions bring the loan up
to 4 milliards, instead of 3 milliarda 600 millions,
which the Idoniteur announced akthe approximative
amount.

THE PARIS UNIVERSAL EXHIBITION.

(THOM OUR OWN CONNISSIONNIL)
PARIS, AVOOST 2.
_ _ _

Since I last addressed you some notable ameliora-
tions have been effected in this exhibition. Orange
trees have been arranged before the grand entrance
and in the gardens ; Jackson and Graham have esta-
blished their splendid piece of furniture in the nave
(the paintings on porcelain being, you will be glad
to learn, from pupils of Marlborough-house) ; cheap
trains have been organised from the provincial towns;
Fridays are to be made two franc days, and Mondays
four sons days; Sundays being henceforth one franc
days. I may also inform you that measure. are now
in progress that will enable excursionists of the work-
ing class to enter the building any day at the cheap
rate of four sous. The average attendanoe on one
franc days is now 2,5,000 ; on four sons days 120,000.
It is generally believed among the foreign commis.
sioners that the Exhibition will be closed during
three or four days, to prepare it for the visit of the
Queen.

SPAIN.

The Madrid papers of the 28th ult. state that pro-
positions of a satisfactory kind have been made by
certain Spanish firms for the construction of the Val-
ladolid and Miranda Railway, and that a bill for the
purpose is shortly to be presented to the Cortes. M.
te, the new Spanish minister to the United
States, is to leave next week for Washington.
Madrid, Aug. I.—The cholera is raging in the
province of Valladolid, and is increasing at Madrid.
M. Mum has been promoted to the rank of Lieut.-
General.