The Express.
London, England, 1849-05-19 00:00:00

SPAIN.

The Madrid mails of the 13th in.. have been re-
'rived. The debate on the Contribution Bill was
continuing in the Cortes. The 13th was Sunday, and
consequently there was no Boles.

ITALY.

ROMAN STATES.—The intelligence from Rome
by the ordinary conveysnce is to the 9th inst. The
King of Naples was still at Albano, where Captain
Key had been to see him, and informed him of
Palermo being still determined to hold out against
him. The king was, as it were, blockaded in Albano,
the bridges bring blown up behind him. A Leghorn
battalion bad arrived at Rome. The French repub-
lican Laviron hsa enrolled them in a foreign legion, of
which he has been given the command.
Letters from Palo state that the minister Miami
said M. Pescantini had been despatched from Rome
se envoys to Lord Palmerston to solicit his interven-
tion. General Oodinot had, according to this cor-
responds...As, promised to suspend operations till the
result of the negoiation was known.
The Positive of Rome, of the Bth inst., publishes a
note to the catholic powers, dated the 7th, and signed
by armorial, Roman minister of foreign affairs. After
observing that the Roman question, hitherto a
political one, has now assumed a religious character,
and that all Europe conspires to impose a detested
power upon three millions of men, who declared it for
per fallen, this document proceeds to state that a
great people, recalling its old traditions of glory, has
Aiken off its slumber and awoke to the life of nations.
If the prince whom Europe would restore at Rome
were, like many others, the mere inheritor of vulgar
ptivilmee, the consequences of the straggle would be
limited to a greater or lower number of victims;
were the task Europe amuses a mere question of in-
dependence at servitude, it might be loaded with
maledietion, but still the moral interests of the human
rocs would not suffer. But the actual object of Europe
shakes the edifice of religion to its very foundations,
and crushes faith in thousands of hearts. The whole
state of Rome has declared the downfall of the
tosapeeel power of the pontiff; and, though under the
mensee of a French. an Austrian, and a Neapolitan
invasion, all the municipalities have boldly protested
against its restoration. Is this the mere voice of a
faction? The consequence is, that many believers
now ask themselves whether he who represents a re-
ligion of peace has a right to reassert temporal power
by force of arms; and, as it is easy to confound the
doctrine with its apostle, many begin to doubt of the
truth of religion in consequence of the acts of its
heed, sad cannot conceive how a religion that once
sedsenwl the world from slavery is now changed into
a weapon intended to transform free men into slaves.
" Let Europe," says the document in conclusion, "re-
flect before she proceeds; the s'ruggle is no long, r
between one army and another, nor between one
class of men and another ; bat it is a straggle that
embraces a whole moral world of ideas, hopes. and
faith, that may have an echo in the most distant
generation'."
TUSCANY.—There is much noise made about the
French flag having been trampled on et Leghorn—
that which was over the French consul's door has
lien tort away and trampled in the mud.
As soon as the Austrian general heard of this,
be offered every rrparation, and the French
flag having been hoisted on the fortress la
the 12th, r. was honoured by a salvo of 30Le=
The French steamer Magellan, which was at
on the I lth, received on Wert a great many refuges%
Wee
read in the Semaphore of Marseilles, of the
15•11 loot :
The trail* packet the Bully sawed this port yesterday,
having left emits Vecchia as the nth. Leghor thouthe
evraion et the 12th, and Gum ea the moraing 013
At Leghorn the Austrians had been very strict in their re-
pression. We are told that, after the amitslatioc, the is.
surgeete who were setreosimsd in the cathedral and on the
Asstd.& sitars, who wire toads. their repast is Ike pia.