The Express.
London, England, 1853-07-02 00:00:00

have, perhaps, repented a little earlier than other
nations, but we have sinned more deeply than they.
British senators long &creed that their wives
and daughters should cover their hands and feet
with gloves and shoes which made them the laueh-
ing-stock of the Continent. Tncy took care that their
countrymen should have no opportunity, without I
! leaving the island, of drinking the finest wines in !
I Europe. They fed the 13ritish Lion upon native meat
and breadstuffs for which an enormous price was paid,
and kept him out of the copious stores of provender
that might have been provided for him by a voyage
across the Channel. In short, the glorious
constitution, which our fathers used to toast in
bad wine and worse spirits, was a conspiracy against I
what the French call the ,dithee•W of nations. The
great principle involved in it was that of getting
rich by selling to everybody and buying of nobody.
Of course such a state of things could not exist with-
out exciting opposition. In the same manner as our
ancestral parents, male and female, after seeing the
graceful falls of the toga and robe of their Roman con-
querors,
flung aside their sheepskin coverings in dis-
gust, so did our modern predecessors determine that
nothing should prevent them from feeding themselves
and clothing themselves as luxuriously as their Con-
tinental brethren. But the Custom-house and the
Coast Blockade were in their way. These were
facts as stern and as disagreeable as the dragons and
giants of the Middle Ages; and perhaps a little more
true. And as the miseries of the medieval times
aroused wandering knights to devote themselves to
their removal, so did the wretchedness of the
modern werld excite the feelings of a strong
class of deliverers. In the place of the an-
cient chivalry came the modern smugglers. The
smuggler, said Col. PEYRONET TllotursoN, years
ago, is " GOD ALNRIGIIII'S knight errant." He
labours to redress the evils which the iniquitous
laws of society have engendered, by restoring in

some measure the natural intercourse between na-
tions. He it was who exchanged the surplus cat-
lery of Sheffield with the surplus lace of France,
when the exchange could have been effected by no
one else.

But the smuggler, like the knight-errant, will be
soon a myth. Society has long dispensed with the
aid of the one ; it will soon be able to do without the
services of the other. The utter absurdity of the
restrictions upon Free Trade, which still keep up the
Custom-house system, will be shown in the most
satisfactory manner by the Great Exhibitions which
are in progress. Nothing has done more for Free
Trade than the Great Exhibition in Hyde-park. The
nations, before the time of this great event, were in
utter ignorance of what they could do, and what they
had done, for each other. The Exhibition in the
Crystal Palace showed them how dependent each
was upon the products and exertions of the other,
and led them to infer how absurd and iniquitous
were the restrictive regulations which put a check
upon an intercourse which could not but be advan-
tageous for both.

The answer of Lord Joux RUSSELL to Mr.
BROWN'S question was perfectly satisfactory. It
showed how cordially the French Government sym-
pathise with the wishes of those who are endeavour-
ing to throw down the obstacles at present opposing
themselves to the cordial union of nations. Goode,
which are at present prohibited from entering France,
are to be allowed to be imported for the purpose of
exhibition, and at the end of the Exhibition will be
allowed to be re-exported without any claim for
duty, or be admitted for consumption in France on the
payment of a duty of 30 per cent. ad valorem. This
shows that, although public opinion in Europe is not
yet sufficiently strong to sweep away all the metric-
tive imposts which check the free interchange of com-
modities, there is a growing feeling of their
impolicy. The more the nations know of each
other, the more they will feel their mutual depend-
ence, and long for closer union. International Exhi-
bitions bring the men and the products of various
nations into a contact that can be produced by no
other means. The result will be for the good of the
whole. It will show that the development of each is
necessary for the good of all, and to nations as well
as to men the great law is applicable, "it is not good
for them to be alone."