The Express.
London, England, 1865-09-19 00:00:00

SW gourt.

calm

Tess precept Lone-Lriterverrairr of Ireland is
much too liberal • statesman, too English in all his
ideas of government, to enjoy even the emblems,
as almost every continental statesman enjoys the
substance, of • coup d'itat. A Frenchman, be be
Imperialist, Royalist, or Republican, has an innate
passion for taking the law into his °melange, or set•
tisighbassif above and beyond it by some sort of dic-
tatorship assumed and exercised in the name and
on behalf of Society. For Sooiety is always supposed
to be resolving itself into its simplest elements, but
for the timely and sudden intervention of an
irresponsible power, usurping all the functions of
" the Stabs," and holding men's lives and proper-
ties at its mercy, on the plea of rescuing and pre-
serving both from chaos. There is something won-
derfully stimulating to the &Teases Frenchman in
an occasional episode of government by decrees,
and in sweeping measures of public safety. To
the mind of the average Englishman, on the con-
trary, trained from his boyhood up amidst ideas
and usages of freedom, publicity, responsibility,
and legality, nothing can be more distasteful and
even abhorrent than the neoessity of suspending
or superseding for a moment the civil power, or
resorting to extreme and exceptional measures
of severity designed in secret and executed
by form. We may rest enured that it was
not until the last moment, when indifference
had become • public danger, and forbearance was
leading thousands of poor dupes, more mad than
guilty, into temptation, and all the great botanists
of the country were disturbed and harassed by
vague alarms, that the authorities at Dublin Castle
resolved to assert firmly and decisively the right of
Ireland to possess itself in pesos, under the pro-
tecting
shadow of the British Crown, and not to
be handed over to the tender mercies of aR.
public composed of the offscourings of Transatlantic
rowdyism, of mobs of indigenous ragamuffins, and
of a theatrical army of heroic tailors, stage-struck
counter-jumpers, and attorneys' clerks pining to be
taken into custody. And it is the privilege of
really free and responsible governments that in
emergencies of this kind they osa act with uncom-
promising vigour at the right moment, with the
full certainty of being sustained by a vigilant
and searching public opinion; and with the
mascioinness of being ready and willing to
answer for their acts in the presence of a free Par-
liament. In some countries on the Continent, where
the constitution itself is the offspringof a conspiracy,
and the government is to all intents and purposes
irresponsible, inasmuch as the guarantees of public
Bbert7 are fictitious, the proceedings of the Irish
Goverment In± and iitterdsy M Dublin,
Cork, and Wexford, would have ciarkaned the 1
whole country with foreboding fears of law-
less and arbitrary violence, which the innocent
would have feared at least as much as the
guilty. Arbitrary governments, which are no-
thing more or better than successful conspiracies
in permanence, cannot exercise the most legitimate
duty of every established government—the pro- I
tection of the public peace—without menacing I
those rights and liberties which alone make
the public peace a trammel worth pre-
serving. Such governments know that the
law of their being is to suppress conspiracies
like conspirators, and to put down insurrections
like insurgents. Under • free government
every act and movement of the Executive
is dictated, guided, and limited by acknow-
ledged and accepted law. If the strict
boundaries of the law are for an instant
transgressed in the name of the supreme law of
public security, it is with the distinct and recog-
nised understanding that until indemnity has been
obtained from the Legislature, the authority that
has commanded such transgression is itself in a
manner on its trial before the country.
These considerations may be recommended to
some semi-official journals across Vie Channel,
which are, not unnaturally perhaps, delighted at
the spectacle in the streets of Dublin of a
newspaper office occupied and ransacked by
a police force acting under the instructions of
the Administration. The Patric and its con-
sorts cannot restrain the satisfaction of their
prompters and employers at exceptional action
on the part of the free Government of Eng-
land, which bears so strong a superficial resem-
blance to the habitual, oonstant, and regular prac-
tice of governments with which they are more
closely acquainted. How superficial, how baseless,
any such comparison must be, we would not insult
English readers by insisting, or by suggesting
to the amiable historians of the Patric that to
fabricate analogies between Rungs in Poland
and England in Ireland is not altogether
consistent with sanity. Such rabid nonsense, how-
ever, is scarcely worth a peering smile. Nun
regionals di tor. But there are other political
sages nearer home to whom we cannot resist the
temptation to address a simple question. What do
our domestic advocates of seciemion—of the right
of five out of thirty millions of people to destroy
the "integrity of • great Empire" whenever
they are outvoted in • national election whs.
do the English public writers and public
speakers who never ceased during the civil war in
the United States to assail with scorn and insult
the Government which bad sworn to maintain the
integrity of the Republic, think and my now
of the legitimate and proper action of the
Britiah Government in Ireland I Let them
observe that the more contemptible and insignifi-
cant this Fenian movement really and undoubtedly
is, the more excessive must the measures of the
Government in suppressing a newspaper and ar-
resting suspected persons appear. Assuredly.
any risk to the Queer's authority from the Fenian
madmen in Ireland is not to be compared with the
risk to the Government at Washington from the
rebellious secession of the Confederate States.
The secession of Ireland is tolerably problemati-
cal as long as every part of that greenest of green
countries can be approached within fifty miles
by her Msnary's gunboats. But really, that

BALMORAL, Barr. 16.
The Queen went out driving with Prince and
Mawr Lents a/ Hesse in the evening.
The Prise. end Prism= Louis el Hew, with the Prin-
cesses Vieewle sod Elisabeth, arrived at the Cutle et live
(Noah.
BILTOONNI

ewe Sebes* sad Bares al Babentu were in at,
Madman ea their royal higlineewa.

-- -
Despatches were mewed at the Oeiredal.oHoe yeeterday
free the Governess of Case* Gibraltar, Vanoonver's
beet Heligoland, and the Mauritius. Despatches were
see* the Gomm of Male.