The Express.
London, England, 1851-10-08 00:00:00

Zhe erprefso.

TO COIL m...a...a....
• soma Mahn at •• The Earseasumsw" assialsevitysa, aasasoshriaea.:
Gaartt.s" Is Pied *MI
kr Pod. • for “Tba issides:• Ladies Emir paps,
alfeltirtelliletAaltelK.d
ma 4 lap at eat thta. to. Mos
day al pablkasiam.

RIGS WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE
Too DAT —74arelyg. lb. in. .Atierases. lb. Sls.
Te-asarm—Morslag. In. 40s. Afterrob, lb. Ma

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8.

To those who have watched the course of public
ears in France, there is nothing so surprising, and
so mot tifsing to behold, as the similarity, almost the
=meant', indeed, of all administrations in that
country. Whether the monarch reigns by what is
called regitimiat right, whether ho seeks to enforce
that right with zeal, or render it palatable by con-
ciliation—whether the occupier of the throne be a
King elected by the choice of politicians and the
sanction of the people, or whether in tine the
government be a republic based on universal
suffrage, and proclaiming universal rights—it all
comes to the same point; the administration
is found proceeding in the self-sane path. Fear of
the people, persecution of the press, the grossest in-
fraction of individual liberty and of every law gua-
ranteeing it, proscription of the rights and practice
as association, endeavour to place the mind of
French youth in the limping of the Jesuits, and the
mind of French manhood under the dread of the
gaoler, the police officer, and the attorney:general--
theve are the characteristics of every administration
that Frames has seen during half a century. No
matter how liberal the statesmen who take offioe—
no matter how absolutist, the principle of
administration becomes the sane. You may
'iterate Posicsac and PE YRON NET, you may re-
joice at the accession to power of men so liberal and
so honest as Bangor and Faueffffit, vet you find the
former eager to bolster up the l'oes's despotism by
the bayonets of French soldiers, and you find a severe
persecution of the press mark the government of the
latter.
We might say the same of sovereigns, and ask
where has been the difference between the elder
Bur LISONS, the laiet.sxs ditto, and the lesser Bose-
TARTE. ? Are they nut all one and the same, except,
wham% that some one prince may have bad a little
MOM &tufty, and another somewhat more cunning?
But all run the same career, to reach
the same end viz., the unpopularity and universal
contempt under which King and dynasty sink, to
rise nu more. Is it not clear as the noon-clay that
I,oris Nasal:vs is going the way of all }rench
princes, and by precisely the same road which they
all took ? And we see the consequence. At this mo-
ment the political class, those who have influence and
hope for place these people are in the fiercest agita-
tion and commotion, some wore for the liunapartist,
some dozen for the Orleanist, and as many
for the legitimist. But look away from some
hundreds of these professional politicians to the
country at large, and there will be found a uni-
versal indifference and contempt for every one of
the candidates, not one of whom either inspiaCt4 hope
or commands respect. Yet all hope to he elected,
nay, to convert the elective chair into an hereditary
throne. They are building a pedestal of hatred and
contempt ; they are anxious to get up upon this
pedestal, and they hope to support themselves on
such u basis. Verily, kingship to the most
wising of professions, followed by the most fatuituus
of nem.
But what is the cause of princes being such
puppets, and of liberal statesmen proving the con-
trary of what they themselves promised and all
their friends expected ? The meson lies in the
terrible and vast centralisation of French government,
in the number, power, hierarchy and traditional
spirit of that bureaucratic, which, wherever it
reaches firm establishment, soon absorbs everything
else, prince, ministers, statesmen, and even public
opiniaa itself. This immense machine is the only
mode by which a minister can govern. Yet all he
can do is to set it in motion, and be satisfied with
what it produces; for regulate or stop its movements
he cannot. A home minister may be shocked by
those freaks of power which his subordinates com-
mit, such as the breaking in upon convivial meetings
in the provinces, threatening deputies with arrest for
ups • g their mouths, or issuing an ukase that libe-
rals shall not be supplied at any hotel with dinner.
The prosecution ant condemnation of young Hew
for denouncing the punishment of death as cruel,
whilst such men as Tifisies and ell %NG tItNIEIt talk
and do treason aloud every hour in the day, may
shock the sense and good feeling of a minister of
justive. But what can he do? fhe home minister
can no more restrain his myrmidons of police and
prefecture than tho justice minister can check his
rocurears and their substitute. And it is the same
iu foreign polity. A French agent at Athens
or Alexandria will get into rivalry, and quar-
rel with his English colleague for some
trifle or another, and the minister at home
can do nothing but sanction and abet. In fact, it is
a bureaucratic that governs France, that has go-
verned, and will govern it, under Louts Neroi.t:os,
under Loris-PiiiiirrE, aye, and under CAVAIGNAC
himself, all-republican as he is, but infeedatedas ho is
to the party of order.
The French bureaucratic is of course monarchic,
which is very ungrateful of it, for it enjoys greater
power, and exercises greater tyranny at present than
a did in the days of any monarch. But then it fears
that the golden reign may not last. Au official
aristocracy cannot well stand based universal suffrage,
and yet universal suffrage has rendered the French
bur, asieratie more powerful and numerous in the
republican Assembly titan ever it was before. But,
as they ray, this is not solid ; and they would sa-
crifice the freedom and the greatness of France to-
morrow to any king of any race, or of any principle,
that would secure them tliis monopoly.
It is the same thing in Prussia, except that the
Prussian bureaucratic will not tolerate even consti-
tutionalism, which it considers hostile to it ; whereas
French officials would at least have the form of re-
presentative government, although with so little of
either the reality or the advantages, that but for the
appearance of the thing they might invoke abso-
lutism& at once.