The Express.
London, England, 1848-03-11 00:00:00

NOTICE.

TH2 number of S CAMPS issued to the DAILY NEWS
by the authorities of the Stamp-office, during 1847, was :
From JAN. 1, to Dec. 31, 3,447,009
This, we believe, is within eight per cent. of the number
issued to the Morning Herald, Morning Chronicle, and
Morning Post, ALL PVT TOGETHER.
In addition to the above, issued to the DAILY NEWS,
Morning Paper, there were issued for the Evening Edition,
THE EXPRESS,
From JAN. 1, to Dec. 31 778,714
Which was more, we believe, than were issued either to
the Globs or Standard, Evening Papers.

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LONDON, SATURDAY, MAR H.

Vie two parties of the future National Assembly
of France are already in presence, and, as is con-
stitutional and right, and to be expected by
both, are making efforts to secure a ma-
ty, or as large a number of followers as may
be. The constitutional Left of the monarchic
chamber have met and have determined to put for-
ward their claims to the electors, claims founded
upon their past experience and tried liberalism. The
Provisional Governrnenr, on the other hand, feels,
that however the BeititoT party may respect and
support them as a Provisional Government, still it
cannot but view them as democrats too extreme,
and as politicians likely to go much further
lengths than those who so lately declared
for the regency. of the Duchess of OR-
LEANS. The Provisional Government has, there-
fore, in several circulars, appealed to what may be
considered the notables of the lower class, in pre-
ference to the notables of the middle class. It has
addressed itself to the 50,000 teachers of primary
schools, promising that every one of the people who
distinguishes himself in these schools shall be pro-
moted. It has told the peasants, that it is not learn-
ing or professional experience that is so desirable in
a member for the constituent assembly, as a person of
staunch devotion to the republic. Agents, of course,
have been despatched to all the provinces, and com-
mittees will be formed in every canton. The cry against
the moderates will be, that they are monarchical
in their tendencies as in their regrets. And monarchy
for the moment having no popular representative, but,
on the contrary, implying a return at least of the same
system and the same politicians so lately driven from
power, the republicans will rally to them not only
those who dislike monarchy in the abstract, but those
who dislike the samples of it and the pretenders which
have been before the public eye.
Natural as it may be, we must confess we regret
this early division of parties, and think that it would
much better have been deferred to a later moment.
We regret that some member of the old Left, or
of the friends of Messrs. TRIERS and Metter,
could not have taken place in the Provisional Go-
vernment, and lent it his countenance more openly.
It is impossible not to suppose the members of the
' Provisional Government and the party at their backs
to be resolute and daring—impossible not to feel that
11 they are men, who, having grasped power, will make
a fierce struggle rather than abandon it. If the
Provisional Government, after hawing proclaimed the
republic, were to call an assembly, and were that',
assembly instantaneously to abrogate the republic
and send these men about their business, these re-
publican
chiefs would appear to the present age and
to posterity, about the most miserable and pusillani-
mous fools that were ever gibbeted for mockery. The
consequence, therefore, of the undoubted prevalence of
moderates in the new assembly, would probably
be a civil war, and a renewal of the scenes which so
lately deluged Parts. The possibility of this ought
to be prevented by a common understanding be-
tween the two parties, and we much regret to see
symptoms of antagonism rather than of a common
accord.
It must, indeed, or it ought to be evident to the
BARROT and Tii t ens party, that a flagrant failure on
the part of the French to form a republic will
have the effect, not of restoring a liberal and con-
stitutional monarchy, but a monarchy like those
which France has seen—viz., extremely anti-
liberal, and with the mere mockery of constitu-
tional forms, not the reality of constitutional spirit.
It therefore behoves even the moderates to be staunch
republicans, if not with old enthusiasm at least with
modern conviction and calmness. Many may regret
that the French went so far on the days of February,
but having gone so far, there is no friend of human
progress and liberty who does not foresee the fatal
effects of failure or of recoil.
The Provisional Government of France is addressed
by all classes of politicians at home and abroad in
language of extreme civility and almost eongratula-
tion. But it is evident that too many of these civil
people would be extremely pleased to see the republi-
can government of France fail and go to pieces, even
in the plain-sailing work of administration.
The late government left the state in debt even for
current expenses. Not only was there a dividend to
pay, bat 300 millions of money in savings banks,
which the timid might demand. Add to this 40
millions of Exchequer Bills, or Bons do Tresor,
which become due every month. These difficulties
had fallen upon a government which was living on
credit, on the instalment of loans, and in the
midst of a commercial world, which has, like our
own, learned to operate on credit, whilst it immobi-
lised its real capital. Any government might fail in
such a position ; and it is to be feared that the pro-
visional and ri publican government will be put to
great straits, and whilst private fortunes crumble
around and beneath it in ruins it will itself be com-
pelled to have recourse to onerous taxes and dis-
agreeable expedients.
If to these unavoidable difficulties of government be
added the hostility not men ly of the conservatives,
but of the moderate liberals, the French republicans
may, it is to be feared, be driven back upon their old
revolutionary modes of maintaining power, which
would discredit ard, in the end, prove fatal to them,
whilst it would, at tr.e same time, pave the way for a
counter-revolution, fatal not merely to democratic but
even constitutional liberty altogether.

No vulture or carrion crow has a surer instinct of
coming death than the Times. The vulture scents
the carnage b..., re armies meet; the carrion crow
smells out the boxy µhile the doomed sheep is yet
grazing, unsuspicious of its impending fate ; and
neither the one i.or the other swoops with more vora-
cious appetite towards their victims than the Times
pounces upon a ministry in whose frame lethal decay
has begun its work. " We shall not be misunder-
stood," says the Tim's of yesterday, as a pre'ace to
the declaration—" We want practical men, and a
practical man that is an efficient minister ;" and " a
moderate budget of good measures, vigorously pushed
and ultimately carried." The Times will not be mis-
understood. lis par; nthetic " with all respect for indi-
vidual memh,r3 of the cabinet" is a civil pre-
face to the notification that they are to expect
no further support from it. The Times, be-
lieving:they can no longer help it, will no longer help
them. It is 10. king about for " the coming man ;"
and should he prove to be the party to whom the '
Chronicle has of late devoted its services, it odds but
the Times pushes that journal out of office in its
butterfly state of toll ism, just as the Times served it
in its Whig chry sal is state at the last ministerial change.
Who is the "practical and efficient minister," about
to be installed amid the plaudits of the versatile
Times?
Sir ROBERT FEEL is understood to have abdicated.
His resignation of leadership in favour of Lord LIN-
COLN weal' spectacle unsurpassed in grandeur, ex-

cept by that passage in Keats' " Endymioe," where'
Saturn is seen passing in slow colossal grandeur
to take a last look at the universe before
he shots himself up in eternal meditation.
The step scarcely took the world by =prise.
As the grave-digger of the stage in" Hamlet" prepares
himself for stepping into the grave by takieg
off one coat and waistcoat after another, Sir ROBERT
has for years been stripping off one opinion after
another before entering his political grave. Like
some ambitious provincial actors he showed his
versatility, by appearing in another character in the
earns play as well as that of the statesman
l'olonius. If opinions be, as some metaphysicians
conceive, the aliment which swells out a soul to
a portly presence, Sir ROBERT'S spirit, after
this preparatory evacuation, will find ample mom in
CHARON's boat ; or it opinions be, as is held by others,
the integuments which wrap the soul, he must have
pulled oft his, like the coats of an onion, till scarcely
' anything is left. Be this as it may, the apotheosis of
PEEL; has taken place. Henceforth he sits, like
JUPITER on Mount Ida, remote from the fray, sending l
his counsels, dreams, and warnings with due impar-
tiality to the leaders on both sides.
It seems doubtful whether the late hero of parlia-
mentary strife acquits himself rqu,lty well in his
new capacity, of superintending and controlling demi-
god. It is true he exerts himself strenuously to
adjust end preserve a balance of power in parliament.
When he notices any want of power in a speech of
Lord LINCOLN, he throws something of his own
into the debate to compensate for the deficiency.
And when anything of importance has been omitted
by Lord JOHN RUSSELL, Sir ROBERT is straightway
at hand with a supplementary oration. But the
classic repose of the immortal is wanting. The
oracles of old were laconic in the extreme and preg-
nant with mystery, if sot with meaning. But the
oracles of JUPITER PEELIUS are long-winded and dif-
fuse beyond all mortal totem ion. It, sides, he is evi-
dently anxious about their effect, thus betraying scep-
ticism in his own power to snake his mere mortal in-
struments do their work effictively. lie evidently
begins to think that it would give him infinitely less
trouble to carry or defeat measures in person than to
invire Lord J. RUSSELL or Lord LINCOLN with the
ability to do it. And it is extremely probable that
he may some day soon, when they are more than
usually awkward and unmanageable, in a fit of im-
patience, shove one of them to the left and the other
to the right, and coming forward, complete the job him.
self. Tired of playing the demi-god, he will be all the
man again, and burst upon the House of Commo..s,
the scene of so many triumphs—

Like a 1.-app.earing.star,

EL-; glory from utur.

There car, be little doubt this is the " practical and
efficient minister," with his "moderate budget of
good measures," who to the prophetic vision of the
Times looms large in the mists of futurity as the
spectre of the Brocken in the clouds around the
mountain head. The Times regards Lord JOIIN and
Sir ROBERT as the political CAsTOlt arid l'ourx of
the age, living and dying on alternate days, and is
always ready to transfer its homage to the semi-
immortal brother whose turn it is to be alive fur
the day.

Oar Brussels correspondent, writing on the 9th
that , says:
The Independence of this morning contains an ar•
tide is which the opinion is expressed, that if, unfor-
tunately, there should be a war in Europe, the
battle-ground this time would undoubtedly be
Italy, and not this country. The same jour-
nal—which is a ministerial one—is doing all
in its power to restore confidence amongst the parties
connected with the Brussels and Antwerp bourses.
The Baron d'Arnim, the Prussian minister in Paris,
left Brussels this morning in route for Berlin. His
excellency, during many years, fillrd a similar post at
this court, and, as is well known here, is favourable
to liberal principles.

Our Brussels correspondent also thus describes the
state of feeling on the Swiss frontier of Lombardy :
I have just received a copy of the Republican," dells
Srizzera Rabana, of Lugano (canton of Ticino) of the
3rd inst. The late events in France have created, as
might be supposed, an intense sensation in that Ita-
lian canton of Switzerland. In a leading article this
journal asks, " What will Switzerland do, in case of
war ?" and contends that the lute revolution in France
has changed the relations of the former country with
the northern powers; and boldly asserts that ware
the Helvetic confederation to maintain neutrality, as
in 1813, it would be tantamount to an act of suicide.
A war between France and the powers of the north
would be a war to the death between liberty and
absolutism. Under such circumstances, Switzerland,
it is argued, could not remain neutral, inasmuch as its
own destinies would be at stake during such hostilities. I
Should the struggle terminate in the victory of ab-o-
lutism, Switzerland with its traditions would cease
to be. Switzerland (it is added in conclusion) could
not, in the event of war, hesitate to take its proper ,
part. The same journal states that all the elections
of members of the grand council of the canton of
Ticino have terminated in favour of the liberals, and
that in consequence of the events in France, the
authoriies of the Orisons have convoked the grand
council for the 15th, in order to take into consider-
ation the immediate assembling of the Landwehr.
Up to the first instant, the works in the fortifica-
tions of the castle of Milan were carried on with the
greatest diligence; on the arrival of the news from
France, at Milan, the moat profound agitation pre-
vailed. All eyes were directed upon Prince Metter-
nich. On the 26th, there was a grand council of mi-
nisters, and couriers were starting off in all directions.