The Express.
London, England, 1853-05-17 00:00:00

no sootier is it lower than in other couutries than it
begins to how out. Whatever nu v Laid other na-
tions which are denied 1 ree Trade by their 'selfish,
short-sighted, ignorant rulers, we shall obtain is full
share of all the food of the world, aril prices will
continue to be here, as they Lane Leen On many
months past, comparatively low, and almost free
from fluctuations. We are now intlhe fifth' year of
Free Trade in corn—always excepting. the one shil-
ling duty, the remains of old oppression, reminding
us continually of the terrible fetters that formerly
galled us—arid every year has made more and more
Imanifest and impressive the numerous advantages,
the steady prices, the abundant supply, the vast
consumption,, the exuberant enterprise, and the
!profound, though active, contentment, which have
ensued.

A PROJECT of law, proposing to establish new and
severe penalties for offences against any of the mem-
bers of the BONAPARTE family, has any
formally
presented to the Legislative Corps, by direction of the
Minister of State. No attempts, which the public
are aware of, have in any instance been made to
summit acts of violence against either the person or
y of any individual belonging to the
Tiemr:ill Family. But the love of ridicule,
which forms so strong a characteristic of our
French neighbours, being deprived of many ob-
jects to which it was long accustomed, has
no doubt been frequently concentrated of lato
upon those who occupy a place in the charmed circle
of the new dynasty. The EWA} bb herself has formed
no exception to these sarcastic attentions, and the
Sovereign himeelf, like all his predecessors since the
days of Loris XV., has constantly served as a target
for the aim of those whose missiles consist of "paper
pellets of the brain." The diligence of the police and
the rigour of the laws affecting the press have been
unable to suppress altogether these wicked witticisms
and republican railleties. Something more is there-
fore demanded to secure the household of the
Tuileries from
.perverse criticism on its personal
history, peculiarities, or costume. A boo mot or a
caricature directed against the infallibility of any
collateral heir to the throne of December, tends to
I undermine that throne itself ; and a joke at the
expense, or a grin at the features of the sacred indi-
viduals who sit thereon, will obviously partake of the
nature of blasphemy after their heads shall have
been bedewed by Pius IX. with the anointing oil
at Notre Dame, and meantime any such evidence of
disrespect is to be dealt with under the provisions
of the proposed law of constructive sedition.
If discussion upon the subject be permitted in the
Legislative Corps, it will doubtless be argued that
the stringency of such a measure has not been Bur
geeted by petty resentment or unpunished annoy-
ances, or personal sensibility to the species of affront
offered to Majesty or its relatives through the me-
" diem of yulta perclia figures, or rhythmic pasquinade*.
From the summit of heroic greatness the successor of
CHARLEMAGNE, HENRI IV., and NAPOLEON, looks
down with religious pity and imperturba-
bility upon the non-jureng streams of the
Faubourg St. Germain and the coarser jests
of St. Martin and the Bonlieues. It is for the
sake of society alone that the EMPEROR asks for new
, measures of repression. It is in the placid inflexi-
bility of consummate science that he has formed the
resolution of tightening the politica! tourniquet a
little further. It is all for the good of the patient
that circulation should be wholly stopped and all
sense of consciousness or sympathy with the upper
I portions of the body politic completely paralysed in
; its members. Upon a similar plea Loris NAPOLEON
first assumed the dictatorship and then the crown ; and
upon this plea likewise is it that so many of the most
eminent persons of civil and military rank are still
proscribed and condemned to live in exile. Upon
this plea also a bill has been passed, during the pre-
sent session, altering in its most essential features
the law with regard to juries. Not only has the
mode of forming the jury lists been changed so as
greatly to circumscribe the range out of which every
panel in criminal cases must Le taken ; but the pro-
portion of the jury whose assent is necessary to con-
viction has been altered from three-fourths to a bare
majority. Having. thus got the ligatures ready, the
Imperial operator is now about to apply them.
' Under the proposed enactment every offence which
St be judicially construed into an injury or an in-
sult to any member of tho House of BONAPARTE is
liaised to the dignity of a crime °pleat the State,
Imam such it is to be made punishable, not as now
..Naffing to the intentions of the offender or the
MOM mischief or annoyance inflictei, but measured
by **expansive rule of political exigency, and the
necessity of guarding analogous
.by terrors
rthreeedformerly connected with the law of sacri-
lege ell who belong by ties of consanguinity to the
hierarchy of power. All this is sad and bad
enough, but something much worse remains. By
SS and b 7 sections of the criminal code, as revised
mg mended in 1543, the punishment of death for
political offences was entirely abolished. Under the
monarchy of 1830, the power of death for treason
nominally existed; but, in point of fact, it was never
tseroised. Of the many who attempted the life of Louis
PHILIPPE, the greater number were reprieved by
W clemency, and in the rare instances—such as that
se PlEsClll—where the extreme penalty of the law
Texas exacted, public opinion recognised the ri-
gour of justice dealing with deliberate sa-
misens, not with mistaken revolutionists. But
the most signal proof of the sincere antipathy
of the Monarch of the barricades to the shedding of
blood for political crime, was in the case of Louis
NAPOLEON himself. Twice he had attempted an
invasion of the soil of France, and twice he had
endeavoured, by money, to corrupt the troops of the
line, and to induce them, amidst profound internal
peace, to desert their colours, and aid him
in an armed effort to overturn the esta-
blished order of things. On the second of
these occasions Louis NAPOLEON, finding the first
sentry he met with at Boulogne deaf to his en-
ticements, shot the honest soldier through the heart.
In a few hours afterwards he was himself a prisoner.
and being tried by a duly constituted tribunal, was
found guilty of treason in its most aggravated form,
and with having himself for purposes purely per-
smog shed innocent blood. Nevertheless the so
forfeited was spared by Louis PHILIPPE, with what
requital the recent sequestration of his children's
property may suffice to show. Yet LOUIS NAPOLEON
is the man who at the zenith of power and fortune is
I net satisfied unless he be permitted to erect anew the
political guillotine! That the measure will be sanc-
tioned by a legislative body nominated by the Exe-
cutive, and pensioned at its will, there hardly ap-
pears to be any room to doubt. It is already received,
we are told, by the sanction of State, only one member
of which, M. no......nuesie, ventured to withhold hie
assent, and even he, it would seem, did not actually
vote against it. Some half audible mutterings of
dissatisfaction there may possibly be, mingled, of
course, with the usual protestations that the Govern-
ment is too popular to need any resort to harsh mea-
sures. Rut whom will these hypocrisies deceive? None
assuredly within doors, or without. But everywhere
such a step is likely to be productive of ill effects.
To internal and external enemies alike it is an
avowal of weakness and fear. For the reckless and
the desperate, if such there be, occupied in ma-1
chinations against the new dynasty, it will have
but few terrors; but it will serve to keep in counte-
nance other Governments which adhere to the old
sanguinary system of despotism. Eventually it
cannot fail to inflict a dewily wound on that which
it is blindly adopted to sustain. Men may not be
allowed to print or publish ; but they cannot be pre-
vented from remembering and comparing. The
clemency of the House of ORLEANS, and th lenity
of the Republic, will be contrasted by the least re-
flective with a dark and unforgiving spirit, which
resorts to obsolete and cruel rigour in the selfish
anxiety to maintain itself unquestioned in absolute
power.

[NSW or TIIE CITY Or LONDON,

- _
—Mr. Anthony Brown, who was elected by the Livery of
London in the year 1814 to the office of Chamberlain, in
the room of Sir William Ileygate, But., died on Sunday
last. He had been alderman of the ward of Billingsgate
from the year 1821 to the time of Lis ekction to the office,
the duties of which he discharged to the satisfectim of his
fellow citizens. The candidates spoken (din the City for
the situation are Aldermen Sir John Key, Bart., Fare-
brother, Humphery, and Sir William Mammy, Bart., Mr.
William Bowes, who is not connected with the corpora-
tion, and Mr. Benjamin Sc3tt, who is designated in the
"City rotktt Book as "clerk to prepare accounts for
auoitors," and has been several years performing the lobo-
clone duties of the office of chamberlain. are also candidates.
It has been long the custom of the livery to appoint to the
office a member of the Court of Aldermen, and the report
in the City is that they wiii not depart in the present in-
gested Matt that old rale.