The Express.
London, England, 1851-11-20 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, THURSDAY

found respect and impliciesubmission 'a the.law ;
and non-intervention in the Airositic affatri of other
nations. Both are daily beestrain4 less and le. re-
garded in the new states le allst-sittleasints af, the
American Union, andnmoug the crowds of American
adventurers who arOn the 't of squatting within
the frontiers of neighbouring states almost as if they
were tiraillettrs in advance of an invading army.
1
These practices are blamed, and we doubt not with
perfect sincerity, by the Washington statesmen; but
the central government of the United States has on
all occasions been obliged to rest contented with al-
lowing the effervescence to exhaust itself, and has on
some been obliged to accept its consequences as if
they were its own act. The comity of nations re-
cognises every de facto government as legitimate :
but is that a de facto government which cannot com-
pel its citizens to respect the rights and interests of
other nations?
Without falling back upon the old stories of the
annexation of 'Texas, and the acquisition of new tor-
ritorie) at the expense of Mexico, we may remiss
our readers of the recent Cuban expeditions from
New Orleans, and the atrocious Lynch law proceed-
ings in San Francisco and Sacramento. By the last
mail we learn that the organised couspirators against
law, who, in defiance of the constituted authorities,
put two men to death in the former city, are resting
on their oars, but boastfully announcing that they
persist in their combinations and only wuit.for an
opportunity to resume their active operations. Com- i
tuned with this intimation is another, that a number 1
of the "adventurous citizens" of San Francisco were
to set out on the Ist of October, under the command 1
of Colonel GEORGE WRITE, to the assistance of " the 11
struggling patriots" in Cuba.
It may appear that the doings of the " Vigilance
Committee, as they call themselves, are a matter
with which foreigners have no concern; that whe-
ther merely " the sessions of the committee" are
" suspended," or the members themselves, is indifferent
to all but Californians. Nor indeed uive we say-
thing further to do with them than to watch their
progress as indications of what may be coming. The ,
pseudo-judiciall
murders In San Francisco and Sacra-
menie were no ordinary enforeements of Lynch law.
Hitherto Lynch law has been a substitute fur regular
law in districts where there was no organised go-
vernment. In California it has been an insurrection
against a constituted government ; an opposition
to, atrampling under foot of,theexecutivo elected by
the people only a few moaths before; the tyranny of a
few usurping conspirato-sapplauded by an unreflecting
populace; a relapse into anarchy. Now Californian
must be kept in mind, must, from its population, its
position, and the excellence of its principal harbour,
exercise an immense influence over the rising settle-
ments and commerce of the Pacific. If California is
to be occupied by a horde of lawless buccaneers. the
Pacific must continue unsafe. This is no vain fear.
The " adventurous citizens" who have already started
in aid of the piratical invasion of Cuba (which has
fortunately been repelled before they could arrive on
the scene of action) hare been trained and spirited on
to external lawlessness by the internal lawlessness of
the Lynchers. They are not unlikely to make com-
mon cause with their countrymen whose overbearing
violence has disturbed the peace of Chagres, and
threatens to make the passage of the Isthmus unsafe.
With the fate of Texas and California before our
eyes—with the intrigues actually in progress in
Nicaragua, and the attack upon Cuba still recent—
who would be surprised to hear of a forcible occupa-
tion of the province of Panama by these desperadoes?
It is the duty of the American government and of
the American people to nip these evils in the bud.
'Them is a party in the Lnited States dazzled and
misled b old-world dreams of military fame, and
wealth obtained by conquest. In New England—in
all the old state's, this party is kept in check by the
good sense of the community; but in the new
states, and especially in those situated on the
Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, it is rampant, and
appears not unlikely to gain the ascendant. The
civilised world has a right to call upon the govern-
ment of the United States to suppress and punish
all overt acts of this lawless faction. That govern-
ment can scarcely claim to be considered a de
forts government which cannot enforce compliance
with the behests of international law upon its citi-
zens. The pretensions of bjUlt! American politicians
to expel ail European powers from their American
posse asions were simply ridiculous, and have of
late been little heard of. The declaration of Ameri-
can statesmen, that they will not allow the
powers of Europe to meddle with any American
states that have asserted and established their inde-
pendence, has hitherto been respected ; bat if it shall
appear that the United States reject and resist
European intervention in the politics of their conti-
nent, simply to prevent interference with their own
schemes of aggression and conquest there, that re.
speet will soon be materially abated.
There is no nation or government that has a
I greater and more direct interest in suppressing this
I growing spirit of disregard for law and this propen-
sity to external aggression, than that of the United
States. Habits of self-control the ability to
submit implicitly to laws of their own making
—are the only guarantee the people of the
United States can have for the permanence of
institutions like theirs. The President and Congress
are powerless but through the co-operation of the
people. The subversion of legitimate authority in
San Francisco and California is the beginning of
anarchy; a few more successful appropriations of
foreign territory—avowedly, as in the care of the
late acquisitions from Mexico; or =avowedly, as in
the case of Texas—will raise up a class of military
adventurers, who will avail themselves of this
anarchy to usurp personal power. The United States
will be the first, but they will not be the only, sufferers
by such a revolution. It has been admitted on all
hands that in America the great problem of the suffi-
ciency of the people to govern themselves is being
subjected to the test of experiment on the largest
scale, but also under the most favourable circum-
stances. The subversion of free institutions in the
Baited States—the erection of military sway and
lawless mob-rule on their ruins—would be a death-
knell to the hopes of freemen and the lovers of
rational government in all parts of the world.

FRANCE

PARIS, WEDNESDAY EVENING.

General St. Arnaud has published a fresh order of
the day to the army, in winch he announces that no
order is to be obeyed by the troops which dues not
emanate from the minister of war. This produced
the greatest sensation in the Assembly, and it was
reported that 300 would bring forward a motion for
his impeachment.
Since the abstention of the Mountain from the de-
bate and divisions on the Electoral Bill of the Muni.
cipal Committee, this debate and the votes accom-
panying have lost all their real importance.
The decisions of the committee have been vitiated
by the abstention of the five democratic members be-
longing to it; and the decisions of the Assembly
still more by the abstention of the whole Mountain.
The results, therefore, cannot be accepted as serious
and definitive. It is idle to suppose the government
will pay any attention to a system of legislation eon-
ducted by a majority of which nine-tenths are its
bitterest enemies.

The results of the sitting of the Assembly were
alone of importance. The debate, possessing very
little interest, turned upon Art. 9, which orders the
inscription upon the register of the commune of citi-
zens who have resided in the commune during the
six months previous, if they were burn in the com-
mune, or have satisfied there the law of recruitment.
This clause was adopted. Another clause proposes
that all Frenchmen, aged twenty-o.le, who
were not born in the commune, shall be inscribed,
provided they have resided there during three years.
AI. Motet, a member of the tier* parte, proposed an
, amendment reducing the term of residence to one
rear. This amendment was apposed by OM.
and Vatimesnil. and supported. by Laroeliejacguelin,
Valetti, and Victor Lefmne. It was rejected by 330
against 281. Half of the Left voted ; the other half
• abstained. The sitting then broke up.
I mentioned previously that a portion of the gar-
rison is daily exercised to the Champ de Mars. Yea-
terday the President went to witness the manoeuvres of
the brigade of General Levasseur, consisting of the
oth Light Infantry the 3rd Regiment of the Line,
the 9th Infantry Ciumpeurs, a company of Engineers,
and a battery of Artillery. The President distributed
a few crosses of the Legion of Honour. It was par-
ticularly noted by the Patric, and copied into the
I Monittur, that the generals consulted the President
assiduously with regard to the taanceuvres which he

sobbed to see performed. This seems to t".
ullalition tit dellauee on the part of Louis Napo.-
Apieet the strum laid by Lamociire, Changarnier,
aril* rest of the 300 on the clause in the coostitu-
fiat which prohibits the President from command-
big titil troops in person.
The parliamentary majority which threw out, a
week ago, the Electoral Bill of the government, to
punish the President for his defection from the law
of May 31, have reaped the fruit of their factious
opposition. They have dragged the electoral debate
to a (pound upon which the democratic party. will
not follow them. And notwithstanding the inge-
nious and plausible arguments of MM. de Vatimesnil
and Odilon Barrot, the objection of the Mountain
cannot be rejected as unsound. In fact it is quite
clear that when the committee on the Municipal Bill
was formed in last February, nobody supposed that
it would be eventually charged with the task of
framing a bill for political elections to replace the
law of May 31. Such at that time was the state of
parties in consequence of the unprincipled coalition
of M. Thiers with the extreme Left, that no less than

a liple‘

fivo members of the Mountain were chosen on the

committee. Nothing can be more apt than the re-
tribution which followed. These very five members,
MM. E. Arago, Michel de Bourges, Furconnet, Mo-
relict, and Frichon, have been the first to thwart the
factious policy of M. Thiers and his new allies, the
legitimists, in transferring the debate on the poli-
cal electoral law from its natural and proper ground
to an episode of the Municipal Bill. These five mem-
bers, as I informed you yesterday, having formally
protested spinet the fusion of the communal and
political elections, were in the Assembly followed by
the whole Mountain in this protest; and the conse-
quence was the abstention of that important section
of the Assembly from the debate and division on the
first article of the bill which is to supplant the law
of May 31. Thus MM. Thiers, Berrycr, Mole, and
Odilon Barrot with their supporters, now called
I the three hundred, have fairly driven the
engine off the rail, and brought the par-
liamentary machine to a dead fie. You are
aware that the special committee on the Municipal
Bill consists of thirty members, among whom are
MM. do Broglie, Odilon Barrot, de Vatimesnil,
Lamericiere, and fourteen others of the 300, chiefly
legitimists. The legitimists being in a decided ma-
joritv, all the amendments of the law of May 31
carried in the committee are calculated to promote
the interest of that party. Thus a distinction has
been drawn between the domicile of origin and that
of adoption, or, in other words, between the residence
of a citizen in the commune where he is born and
residence in a commune where he is nut born, con-
sidered
in relation to his right of suffrage. You
will remember that the law of May 31 made no such
distinction ; but, establishing the same rules for
attesting the three years' residence required in both,
cases, succeeded in eliminating from the electoral
lista a vast portion of the rural population. Now
the legitimists of the commit tee on the
Municipal Bill wished naturally to remove
the restrictions imposed by the law of May 31 upon
their agricultural clients, while they allowed those
rivetted upon the much more independent and intel-
ligent operative class to remain. Everybody knows
that a great portion of the artisans in every town
are necessarily not natives of the place, although
established there, and that a part of these are again
obliged, partly by immemorial usage, which pre-1
scribes such travel to young workmen, and partly by
the fluctuating local demand for labour in their peeu-1
liar calling, to keep perpetually on the move. The
distinction of domiciles, therefore, and the mainte-1
nance of all the strict and vexatious modes devised by
the law of May 31 for attesting the domicile of
adoption, the terra of which is still fixed for three,
years, while that of the domicile of birth is reduced
to six months, amounts to subjecting the industrial
labourers to the same exclusion as before, while the
agricultural are completely emancipated. In other
words, the electoral bill laid yesterday before
the Assembly proposes the abrogation of the law of
May 31 in favour of the tiller of the ground, hut its
maintenance against the operative and mechanic.
Such is the lop-sided measure which the majority
of the Assembly have insisted on bringing before the
legislature instead of the even and equitable return
to universal suffrage proposed by the government,
And to produce this monstrous and misshapen bill
they have strangled its elder brother in the birth,
and wrenched with insult the right of initiative
from the President of the Republic. They have
erected into a political conclave of the first import-
unce, a committee elected specially upon municipal
grounds, and betraying in its composition traces of
the vicious coalition which presided at its birth.
Under these circumstances the refusal of the Moun-
tain to take any part in the debate seems quite justi-
fiable; and the tirades of the organs of the 300
against the alliance of the Left with the Elysee are
amusing specimens of effrontery.
The following committee wos chosen to-day, to
consider the bill relative to a literary treaty between
France and England :—MM. lies Itotours de Chau-
lieu, Levet, L. Re baud, Poureard, de Neuville,
Koll-Bernard, Ch. I)upin, Delagrenee, Amiable Du-
bois, De Luppe, Salmon, de Flavigny, Valette,
Malbois, I'oujoulat.
Yesterday, a committee was appointed in the
bureau, on the bill for maintaining the state of siege
in the Cher, Nierre, and Ardeche. Eleven of the
committee chosen arc in favour of the bill.
Count Mole has addressed a letter to the Conatitn-
tionnel, protesting against the part attributed to him
In that journal as a promoter of the banquets which
I preceded the fall of the monarchy of July. On the
contrary, uo person had blamed the banquets more
than himself; no person had more clearly foreseen,
or more loudly predicted their disastrous conse-
quences.
M. Schcelcher has laid a proposition on the bureau
of the Assembly, to the effect that the public ballot
at the tribune shall take place de jure, when de-
manded by 40 members. 'The object of this pro-
position is to modify Art. 54 of the regulations which
Mtn the number at 20 members, and besides requires
that the Assembly should be consulted.
The majority of 408 against the Questors' Bill was
divided as follows: 183 belong to the Mountain, 213
Bonapartists and members of the Pyramids Club, and
10 now or formerly belonging to the Legitimist Par-
liamentary Club. Among the minority of 300 were
134 Legitimists, 33 Tiers-parti, 101 Orleanists and
fusionists, 27 republicans, 3 Montagnarda. Amongst
those who abstained or were absent are 22 coneerva-
than. 6 legitimists, and 13 members of the left.
The opinions of the different generals who have
seats in the National Assembly, on the proposition
of the Questors, may be seen from the manner in
which they voted on it. Generals Bedeau, Cavaig-
nac, Changarnier, de Lamoriciere, Leflo, Radoult
de Lafosse, and Rulliere, voted for the proposition ;
and Generals Achard, Arrighi de Psdoue, de Bar,
Baraguay d'Hilliers, de Chaseeloup-Laubst, Durrieu,
Fabvier, Gourgaud, de Grammont, de Grouchy,
d'llautpoul, Musson, Laidet, Lebreton, Montholon,
Ornano, Oudinot de Reggio, Pelet, Rapatel, Reg-
nault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, Rey, Rage, Subervie,
Vest-Vitueux, and Admiral Cee. ille against it.
The following account of the number of electors
for the department of the Seine at different periods
bum the establishment of the republic is given by
one of the journals: At the election of May, 1849,
373.358 ; in July, 1849, 372,101 ; March, 1850,
366,875; April, 1830, 328,369. By the electoral list
made up to the .nth September, 1850, under the new
electoral law, the number of electors is reduced to
131,557.

By an account of the customs returns just pub-
lished
by the -Iffrnitenr for the month of October, the
receipts amounted to 10,982,211 fr., being 995,361 fr.
less than in the corresponding month of last year,
and 524,434 fr. less than those of 1649. The total
amount received for the first ten months of 1851,
18.)O, and 1849 were respectively 98,237,678 fr.,
104,808,3401 i., and 106,639,366 fr.
The Ifoniteur Parisien states that the products of
French industry for which the exhibitors at the
Crystal Palace have obtained me als or honour-
' able mention, will be exhibited fur a fortnight at the
Palais National.
The state of M. de Lamartine, which for the last
two days had given some hopes of improvement, has
again changed fur the worse, and threaten him with
lung-continued and increased sufferings.
A telegraphic despatch, received last evening in
Paris, announces that Marshal Soult had been sud-
denly stacked with violent inflammation in the
chest, and was seriously ill, at his chitea of
Soult-Berg, in the Tarn. M. de Dalmanc, his son,
and M. de Mornay, his son-in-law, left Paris imme-
diately for Soult-Berg.

'G, NOVEMBER 20;

.the ilWaree the Fives rose sc., and closed kt
land the Threes rose 10c., and closed at 06.50.
Always were generally firm.

BELGIUM.

The Chamber of Representatives of Belgium was
occupied in its last two sittings in revising the
penal code. An amendment of M. do Perceval,
for the abolition of the penalty of death, gave rise
to a lengthened discussion, and was eventually re-
jected by forty-eight votes to nine.

The Suisse of Berne states that the appeal which
had been made to the cantons and the commercial
interests, in order to facilitate the establishment of
electric telegraphs, has been very favourably received.
Numerous signatures had been affixed to the
subscription hat got up by the Commercial Direc-
tor). of St. Gall, and the Petty Council of Bale had
subscribed 60,000 Swiss francs. It has also given
permission to fix the poets on the property of the
state and of the communes without any indemnity.
Negociations are to be opened with the Grand
Duchy of Baden, for the purpose of uniting the Bale
telegraph to that which ends at Haltingen, and to
put it in communication with Chiasso. The govern-
ment of Geneva has objected that the establishment
of numerous stations would retard the transmission
of dispatches, but the objection has been explained
away by observing, that it was but just that the in-
termediate towns should benefit by the new means
of communication. The district of Zofingue (Ar-
govie)
has subscribed 5,01:10fr. The total amount of
the subscriptions received was not yet ascertained.