The Express.
London, England, 1851-08-02 00:00:00

ROMAN STATES.

Letters of the 22nd from Rome announce a proxi-
mate change in the mini try. M. Galli is to be
appointed definitively Minister of Finance. The
Minister of Justice, Giansanti, is become director of
the administration of the public debt, in the place
of M. Neri, who passes to the financial department.
M. Ruffino, director of police, is to be Minister of
Justice.
ROME, JVLY 24.
The necessity of providing the sinews of war, a
necessity as imperiously felt by governments as by
private individuals, has driven his Holiness to the
ever unpopular resource of imposing extraordinary
taxes upon his subjects, and, although the rumour
of such a measure has been current for some time,
its realisation will be not the less productive of pub-
lic discontent. The official edict on the subject, pub-
lished last night, sets forth the motives and determi-
nation of the government. (This edict appeared in
yesterday's E.rpress.)
These financial emergencies of the government
unfortunately happen just at a period when the
tax payers are the least able to cash up, owing
to the distress which the political persecu-
tions of the authorities have occasioned amongst
the middle classes. The population of the capi-
tal is diminished, and poverty increased in the
provinces, by the great number of persons, not
actually born in Rome, who have been driven out of
the city without regard to age, position in society, or
long residence. Nor cats these arbitrary expulsions
be considered as legal even under an arbitrary
government, since any one is entitled to the citizen-
ship of Rome after a residence of five years in the
capital if a native of the Roman states, and ten years
if a foreigner; whereas, many of the unfortunate
victims of these new police regulations have been
domiciled in Rome since their infancy.
The affair of the domiciliary visit and disarming of
the British vice-consul, at Porto &Anzio, has been
satisfactorily settled at last, as far as concerns the
part which the French soldiers took in the expedi-
tion, since the guns seized in the vice-consul's resi- ,
dente have just been restored to him. It would
therefore appear that the English and French
authorities in Rome are upon terms of harmony with
each other, as both M. do Rayneval and General
Gemeau paid immediate attention to Mr. Freeborn's
representation of• the case; whereas no kind of re-
paration has been hitherto offered by the Papal
authorities for the misconduct of their vice-governor
at Porto d'Anzio.

GERM ANY.

BERLIN, JOLT 30.

The strides of the Frankfort Diet, with its seven-
.eague boots on, backwards, are, as you have already WM,
of porn talons length and rapidity. To-slay I base to men-
tion another stride in that direction in contemplat:on by
the same assembly, which surpasses all it has yet taken..
The Zeitiing for North Germany gives a brief abstract of ,
• proposition made jointly by Austria and Prussia to the
Diet for systematically remodelling the constitwisms of all
the German states, so as to bring them into harmony, it is
said, with the confederation. The proposition runs thus:
The n peatedly so-called fundamental rights of the Ger- ,
man people proclaimed in the project of a constitution for
the Germanic empire under the dates of the 27th December,
1818, and of the 28th March, 1819, can neither be regarded'
as valid as a law of the empire, nor be considered as bind-
ing on the separate states as a part of the imperial law.
fhesc rights, therefore, are hereby &eland to be
abolisheal in all the confederate states.
Those German states where, in particular, laws have
been passed on the basis of these so-called fundkunental
rights, are commanded to set aside these laws whenever
they are in contradiction with the laws of the Confedera-
tion, or with the objects aimed at by the federal legislation.
The paper from which the *those is taken also gives im-
portant information with respect to the view the govern-
ment of Hanover adopts touching this remodelling of the
Gorman constitution. M. &bele declared on this subject
at Dresden
When three is question of changes in a constitution, or in
laws recognised as necessary by the fundamental laws of
the Duna, the right of the Bund to interfere cannot be con-
ditional on the appeal of the government in question. I
move therefore : "'That in the event of such changes meet-
ing with obstacles which cannot be removed in a constitu-
tional way, the confederate Diet should take coarisance of
the fact, and should, in its competency, devise means by
which such changes should be brought about."
This motion made by M. Schele,l was seconded, accord-
ing to the ?kitting for North Germany, by Count Alvens.
When, in the second committee at Dresden and is now to
be brought immediately before the Frankfort Diet.
The Prussian police have within the last few days sup-
pressed altogether the 'Freres Zeitung, in a manner which
shows that, without resorting to a special proclamation or
edict, like Austria or Mecklenburgh-Schwenn, establishing,
es cathedra, a new law of the press, the Prussian govern-
ment arc determined to act a. vigorously and arbitrarily
against the press as can be desired at Frankfort. As the
article for which the Treves paper has been suppressed,
though printed, was seized before publication, no one can
know what the offence committed was ; hut the onus of the
charge against the government in this matter is that
whereas by the press law of the 12th May of the present
year, no paper can be permanently suppressed till sentence
has been passed upon any offence it may have committed
by a law tribunal, the government have nevertheless sup.
pressed the
.journal in question summarily, without
bringing against it any specific accusation, and with-
out any process of law whatever. If anything can
be called, then, illegal and violent, this act must
be so culled. The reasoning by which the govern-
ment, too, justifies this arbitrary proceeding, only aggra-
vates its wilful despotism and injustice. It is not denied
that, by the law of the 12th of May, a journal cannot be
suppressed till judgment to that effect has been pronounced'
by a law tribunal ' • but the argument used is, that this law
of the 12th May has not abolished another law called the
Geirethe urdnung" (industry ordinance), by which it is
left within the competency of the government to revoke, at
pleasure, any license it may have granted. And what makes
this hollow and dishonest pretext for tyranny still more
patently hollow and dishonest than it otherwise would appear,
is that it is confessed that the 48th Article of this "Gewerbe
naming," which makes the granting of licenses dependent
merely on the will of the government, is abolished whilst it
is maintained that the 71st Article of the same law, which
makes the revocation of licenses at the pleasure of the go-
vernment lawful, is not abolished.
Thus, to sum up this iniquity, the pros:sion of an old law
is made to invalidate the provision of a new law; and that
the old law has been abolished is virtually acknowledged,
by the acknowledgment that one of its article., the counter-
part of another, appealed to as valid, is abrogated to all in-
tents and purposes.
If the government of Prussia can thus withdraw sum-
marily, at the bare will of a ministry, the licenses from
papers, it is indeed quite unnecce.sary to publish edicts
against the press like those lately published by Austria and
Mecklenburg.