The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-23 00:00:00

nowhere save when connected with military force and
put in:practios by military commanders. &Daum
WiteDiseflosters, SELLACIIICR, are at once its gate.:
men and its executioners. The King of NAPLES, mgr.
vied to an Austrian wife, and ruling in obedience to
the old dictates of MEM:RN:CIE, has made himself
master of his own capital by means of his Swiss met.
pessaries, and, is endeavounna: to re-establish the same
rule in Sicily by means of the same soldiers.
Considering put events, the Siciaans would have
been less than men if they had not taken the present
opportunity to recover their libertiee. Nor is it won.
derfal that they should have sought to escape Nat
the dominion of the besotted and despotic F.
DINAND. Feeling, however, their own weakness,
they had early recourse to the great co.estibitional
countries, and esptcially to England, whose constitu-
tion they had imitated. The intim neeand mussels of
England. were exerted to keep the Sicilians witbire the
bounds of moderation, to make them adhere to ette
narchy, and become reconciled to their legitimate
monarch. This was mainly effected by Lord Mier°.
But the King, having recovered authority in Naples
by the sword, would rely upon the same mesas for
recovering it in Sicily.
His obstinacy in this has rendered any accord be-
tween him and the Sicilians extremely difficult, ex.
cept on the terms which a butcher might give to the
flock which he pens up. The Neapolitans attacked
Messina with a force four times greater than that
which the Sicilians could oppose. Notwithstanding
this, they spent four days in a cowardly bombard.
ment, in which the castle joined, and thus totally de.
stroyed a town of 100,000 inhabitants, ere they took
possession of it. We are as much opposed to inter.
vention u any one. But the indiscriminate roamers
of a population, and the utter destruction of a city,
the fate of which, moreover, did not decide the rebel.
lion—this fearful commencement and sample of an
internecine war—naturally called for tine interference of
the French and British admirals, which has, at least,
caused a cessation of slaughter.
The armistice is quite as much for the interests of
the King of NAPLES as of the Sicilians. With all the
force brought against Messina, that town could neither
have been worsted nor destroyed but for the citadel's
remaining in the hands of the Neapolitars. The
Palermitans have a larger city, a more numerous po-
pulation, now swelled by the arrival of the mountain-
eers, all armed and furious. The citadel is theirs, amino-
thing save mutual massacre,or a more coward bombard-
ment would be the result of the Neapolitans approach-
ing it. And either the one or the other would render
more impossible the restoration of a BOURBON to the
quiet sovereignty of Sicily.
Never wu mediation undertaken with stronger
grounds of humanity. Neither England nor France
desire to appropriate Sicily. Neither have any inte-
rest in subtracting it from BOURBON rule. But both
have a philanthropic interest, and England an especial
and long-standing duty, to procurator the island those
constitutional rights once given and guaranteed to it
by England herself, and the tory ministers of
England. Towards this end, England, in concert
with France, must struggle. It is not alto-
gether sure of sumo, for it is not prepared
to coerce the Neapolitan government. But that
government can only oppose the wishes of
its constitutional allies by trust in the prevalence of
its despotic ally—that is, of Austria. The question is,
indeed, one of Austrian and Russian influence and
principles of government on one side—of constitutional
influence and principles on the other. If the generals
of the Sclavonic race, who now exclusively command
for the Austrian court, succeed in reducing Vienna, u
they have reduced Milan and Prague, then we may
expect to see the King of NAPLES insist on deci-
mating the Sicilians with fire and sword. On the
other hand, if German liberalism and independence
can resist the Creeks and Croats, the King of NAPLES
will be obliged to conduct his policy after purely
Italian interests and possibilities; and if so, he cannot
object to give the Sicilians that constitution, with a
viceroy, which his father swore to, as the price of his
getting back the island at all.

WE have been not a little puzzled by a paragraph
which has appeared in our own columns. We allude
to the account of some gentlemen from the
Metropolitan Sewers' office, who, by passing through
dark underground ways, where light was extin-
guished, and the filth and stench intolerable, " dis-
covered in the crown of the sewers an opening
large enough to admit the passage of a man, and the
sewer being above the level of the floors of the vaults,
no difficulty was experienced in stepping out into the
underground apartments of the houses of parliament,
which was accomplished by the whole party." This is so
accurate a description of the dark and dirty ways by
which so many members get into the lower house that
we more than half suspect the Commissioners of Sewers
of having played the wags with us as a relief to their
nauseous duties. The paragraph reads very like a
figurative description of a Lyme Regis or Sudbury
election. . . .

-----
Assuming, however, that the narrative is a literal
account of an actual fact, not au allegorical descrip-
tion of the way in which members of parliament are
manufactured, we are struck with the perfection to
which the art of blundering has been carried, in the
construction of the new Houses of Parliament. There
is positively no part of the structure which has not
been bungled. The House of Lords hes been
esestrocted on acoustical principles which render
bearing next to impossible. The upper stories, attics
which were intended to afford place for the national,
or at least the parliamentary records, have, like Ka-
therine's gown, in the " Taming of the Shrew," been
so " snipped and nipped, and cut, and 'Belied and
slashed, to make pinnacles and picturesque roofs, that
they are entirely inapplicable to that purpose. The
lower apartments are so many receivers of the quint-
essence of foul air and effluvia distilled from the
sewers, to be diffused among the legislators of the
land ; and, to crown the absurdities of this splendid
and costly, " house that Jack t itilt," an immense ex-
pense has been incurred in devices for remedying its
imperfect ventilation, when common sense might have
suggested that in an entirely new building it was the
architect's business to render the ventilation perfect.
The structure, if ever it is finished, will cost double
or treble the original estimate, will have taken up
double or treble the time in building that was origin-
ally contemplated, and will, after all, be only fit to
be shut up or pulled down as a receptacle of foul airs
and source of pestilence and contagion.
There is no name that will suit the new palace at
Westminster butthat which came bycommon oonsentto
be applied to certain anomalous structures which the
landowners of last century were so fond of erecting. It
is a huge national " Folly." To whomthe honour of its
invention is due were hard to determine, there are so
many candidates for the honour with feasible claims.
The plcthrenino architect, whose mind was so en-
grossed with the pretty outside that the distribution
of the interior and even appropria'eness of ornament
appears entirely to have escaped him; the learned
raiser of the wind, upon whom devolved the task of
ventilating the structure with its " long peassges" that
lead to nothing, or the committees of both houses of
Ml=who have sate umpires in the disputes be-
wranglers, like chaos, more embroiling
the fray by their decisions ; the Commissioners of
the Fine Arts, who added to the incongruous
glaring decorations, all are entitled to a share. But
perhaps after all Jotth Bum, whose attention has
assuredly been drawn often enough to what was
In progress by their alternate wranglings and
bursts of admiration, and who has yet allowed them
to go on squandering his money in suck a ridiculous
manner, has the least claim of all. The reward at
least will be his—the privilege of paying the bills,
and being laughed at by all who examine or read
about the erection. The whited sepulchree, full
within of dead men's bones and rottenness, are most
inadequate prototypes of this structure—this carved
and painted and gilded structure of fantastic gothic
and arabesque reared to be a palace of the plague-4
shrine to be worshipped at by such corporate devotees
of miasma, as those who in the east end of London
uphold Smithfield-market, and proclaim that lay-
stalls are sources and generators of public health.

THERE is one result very likely to follow from this
year's course of events in Ireland—the priests will
probably, with their characteristic shrewdness, per-
owe that their interest does not any longer he in
political agitation. The terrible dangers attendant on
&paean:tar ofan rlittsirin which the paasto
ary un:rotlathure Irish
appealed to have now become plainly visible to
every priest in the island. We understand
that the farce-tragedy of the last three months
has opened the eyes of several priests to their real
position, and disclosed to them the perils of an Irish