The Express.
London, England, 1847-12-24 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDA Y, DEC. 24.

ALL those journals, whose principle and anxiety
it is to strengthen the arm of government, and to
develop administrative power rather than popular
liberties and control, are highly. laudatory of the new
parliament and of its short session. It displayed such
firmness, such resolution, such readiness to adopt
every ministerial suggestion, and to indulge every
government wish, that the new parliament is pro-
nounced by the governmental writers to be, what a
certain French Chamber of Deputies was called, the
introurable.
Having announced and penegyrised this halcyon
state of things, these writers proceed to the very idle
inquiry, as to why parliament was called together so
soon. Could it be for the currency—when ministers
declared themselves in favour of the stub quo, and
thought the old law, with its imperfections aad ex-
ceptions, the best that could be devised? To talk of an
indemnity was what no one bad the face to do. The
passing of the Irish Crime and Outrage Bill was, we
admit, of some imminence and use. For, whatever
may be its effect on the peasantry of disturbed die
tricts, it has certainly acted as a petard applied to the
Irish semi-repeal societies and parties, which met at
the Rotundo and elsewhere. These it has certainly
caused to explode to all different points of the compass,
throwing Mr. Gitarrast and the Irish landlords into
the arms of the government and coercion, con-
signing some sixteen of the gentlemen, composing
the rump and tail of the ultra-Irish party,
to their original paucity and insignificance, and
sending the philosophic and speculative repealer
home to his quiet closet, to despair of his crotchet, and
to meditate on the evanescence of all great popular
ideas. As a social remedy, and as the endowing of
the Irish administration with a new muscle, the
Crime and Outrage Bill has yet to be tried. But as
a political measure it needs no further trial : its eno-
cese has been most surprising and most amusing.
Nevertheless, ministers were not likely to call par-
liament together for the sake of discomfiting Mr.
lons O'CONNELL, nor yet for completing the other
half of Irish roads, nor for giving railway companies
an extension of time to purchase lands. Ministers
appear to us to have called parliament together thus
early for the important purpose of feeling its pulse
and studying its temperament mad aspect, before they
decided upon their line of policy and upon their
budget of measures for the year.
There never was a general election that gave
less indication of what kind of a parliament or ma-
jority it would bring together. And had ministers
convoked it for the first time in February, it would
have been utterly impossible to have decided what
course they should steer. They must have been alike
ignorant of where was the deep current, where the
shoals and obstacles, of how they were to anchor, and
when to tack. The short session has enabled minis-
ters to make soundin4s—to become acquainted with
winds and tides. And it is pretty certain that
ministers have found the navigation altogether more
easy than they had expected.
Never, in fact, did a parliament appear so contented
and debonnaire. The oil members seemed so satisfied
to get back, and the new members to get ia, that any-
thing like ill-humour, except with that great scape-
goat of the day, Ireland, was quite out of the question.
First came the currency question, as to whether the
great commercial public ehould manage one of its own
most vital affairs, its medium of exchange, or whether
government should manage it according to a particular
theory. On this the feeling seems to have been,
that if government knew little, parliament knew less.
And the great maxim of tory-radicalism, that en en-
lightened dictatorship is best in all things, rallied too
many of the wavering and half-informed liberals to
currency and PEEL.
The same maxim was quite predominant in the
consideration of the Irish bill. Leave it all to govern-
ment and the police. Like the old Romans, when
too much hurried, or perplexed, or frightered, the
unfailing remedy was to appoint a dictator, though it
were but to drive a nail.
ow, what we fear ie, that this extreme kindness
and courtesy, sad acquiescence, in the first days of the
new parliament, may prove but a deception—that they
may proceed from mere newness to the situation and
to the business, and that all this disregard for popular
liberties may end in very pragmatical stickling for
them—that all this delicacy in interfering with the
behests of government may turn to the oontrary ex-
treme of intermeddlirig, and this apparent recklessness
of expense may turn to stinginess and parsimony.
As to the ministry, it evidently counts upon a par-
lament not over jealous to guard the public liberties
or the public purse. Lord JOHN RUSSELL is not a
minister to take any extreme advantage of such a
spirit. But it is pretty evident that one result
of the short session will be a great in-
crease of the police force in Ireland, and of the
military force throughout the empire. Ministers feel
that they can count on parliamentary adherence to
whatever they deem useful. Ten thousand artillery-
men will therefore walk into the Chancellor's budget,
with fortifiratione and floating batteries, and perhaps
with Sir Jolts BUBOOYNE'S 30,000 men to guard the
south-east coast against the terrible Frenchmen.
Having thus been so amiable in the items of ex-
penditure, this firm and wise parliament must of
course find corresponding items in the revenue. War
expenses will need war taxes, or the extension of the
war taxes we have at present. Either this will be
the case, or parliament will sensibly change its
humour. It came in liko a lamb in November : per-
haps it may go out like a lion in July. And had it
been less of a lamb at its autumn birth, it might have
been spared the necessity of being grim hereafter.
We have said it before, and we repeat it now, par-
liament wants &rational opposition, than which there
can be nothing more indispensable or useful to go-
vernment. Without it, parliament will inevitably
oscillate from inane good humour and acquiescence,
such as marked the short session, to groundless jea-
lousies and benne of discontent; while this fickle-
ness will have the unfortunate effect of first leading
a ministry astray, and then sacrificing it unjustly for
vriat was as much the fault of parliament as its own.

~! ...

.' ..

TER differences between the rights of people and
the claims of princes, the struggle of the liberty of
thought and of its expression, against the pretensions
of churchmen to stifle it both in youth and man, have
formed beneath the apparent repose and quiet surface
of Europe a continuation of volcanic fire, which, sup-
pressed or exhausted in ono spot is sure to break
forth from another crater. Portugal is on fire one
day, Spain another. Italy has its throes, and the
convulsion of Switzerland was till a very short time
since of a violence, which tempted statesmen and i
potentates to interfere, and seek to quench the flame.
We will do the German potentates in general the
justice to say, that they are now more prompt and
clearsighted to perceive the signs of the times, and
that they are anxious to conciliate public opinion,
instead of stifling it by bayonets. The general senti-
ment, even of the courts of Germany, was decidedly
against France and M. GUIZOT is their proposed
dragonade against Switzerland. Thus we we the
present moment chosen by the King of BAVAILIA
to modify or mitigate his law of censorship,
declaring ihe press free,save in certain excepted points.
Baden, more liberal and advanced than Bavaria,
is removing the fetters of its censorship. Whilst the
Ring of PROP.MA, who lest year refused to grant
periodical sittings every four years to his centralised
Diet, has already found a pretext for summoning that
body a second toss.
In the midst of these gentle tendencies towards
liberalism there has sprung up in the midst of Ger-