The Express.
London, England, 1851-10-21 00:00:00

AND LOUIS NAPOLEON. !HUNGARIAN AFFAIRS AND THE "TIMES!

WASH]

Loot kre opm this ecture, and on this.

Wuhington, after a life spent in the performance
of great deeds, and those of unparalleled benefit to his
country, was at length called upon to decide for himself
this question: "Shall I for a third Limo accept the post of
prisident of the republic which to me owes its very exist-
' ence ?" Washington discussed this question in a perfectly
unselfish spirit. " Will it be for the advantage of my
ennntry ?" was the inquiry which he instituted. His own
wishes, his own feelings, were as less than dust in the
balance; and he decided, that if the United States were
to continue, in fact as well as in name, a republic,
he must cease to be president. The personal anibi-
Non of this great man was already satisfied : he
had founded a great state—he had, by worthy
deeds, earned the undying love of his countrymen. lie
had no vulgar lust fur power ; and although he might
legally have been is third time re-elected, believing that his
continued occupation of the chief executive authority of the
state would militate against the republican character of the
constitution, he firmly refused to be nominated ; laid down
I the power which he had exercised only fur his country's
welfare ; left his parting address of advice, as a legacy to
I his country ; and cheerfully, nay eagerly, became again a
private citizen.
In this illustrious example there are many points worthy
of consideration. The first of these is, that Washington
might legally have been re-elected—by the letter of the
law he was not excluded. In the next place, he would
have been reelected almost without opposition—not only
would the law not have been broken—the peace of the com-
munity even would not hare been in the least degree dis•
turbed. Ile would not have been compelled to force him-
self into the seat of the president, either by force or by
fraud. No law was to be infringed, none to be changed to
gratify his personal ambition—no anger was to be braved—
no fiercer spirit of opposition or rivalry would he have had
to encounter. The very case and alacrity with which he
would have been chosen was the chief reason for his de-
clining to be again a candidate.
The government of which Washington had been twice
elected the chief was a great experiment; and he well
knew that if he set the example of acting in op-
position to the spirit of the constitution, its sta-
bility could not be expected or maintained. He
desired, before all things, that his countrymen
should be obedient to the law, and therefore himself be-
gan by proving himself so scrupulous as to he unwilling
even to appear to oppose its spirit while adhering to the
letter. The example which lie thus gave has been steadily
followed. No person has offered himself a third time as a
candidate far the presidency.
This striking and pregnant lesson given by a great man
to all future time is at the present moment peculiarly sig-
nificant.
The people of France, when the present republican go-
vernment was established, chose, by what is called univer-
sal suffrage, a constituent assembly, to which was confided
the task of framing a constitution for the republic thus
lately called into existence. This assembly fulfilled the
duty imposed on it. A constitution woo framed, proclaimed,
and sworn to, A president and a legislative body were
• chosen according to the forma and by the powers prescribed
and conferred by this constitution.
By the strict letter of the law the president thus elected
is not re•eligible for the next succeeding presidential term.
It the law remains unaltered, and is obeyed, the existing
president must become a private citizen at the end of his
term of office., and rein.lin so for the next succeeding four
years; the law thus imposing on the presidents of the
French republic that disability which, by the scruples of
Washington, has become the custom, and thereby in fact the
law, of the American republic. This scruple of Washing-
ton hail doubtless great weight with the framers of the
French constitution, and probably led them to adopt this
s
ringent
republican
cnroWhile, hunfolofewre. r
er co.
conferred
i:t tickinghgetrehnii
,ms precautionaetnut;hteh
c framerspot
woprr preserve
revisiontheeo n
itutimi
e
under certain resteictiuns. This restricted power of revi-
sion has been much cavilled at. But if we bear in mind

that instability has been the curse of every constitution that
has existed in France since 1789, and the oar great ne-
cessity of the French people is the habit of obedience to
the law, we shall not he inclined to quarrel with a provi-
sion which attempts to throw some impediments in the
way of precipitate change.
Change has already been proposed. The proposal has
been legally negatived—and now we find that men of all
parties arc preparing themselves for a coup d t —in
other words, to put aside by force what by law and legal
forms they arc unable to change. And now comes the
application of the historical lesson of which we have
spoken above.
Let us take the President himself, and for him inquire
what is the course which he, seeking only the welfare of
France, in this hour of trial, ought to pursue. The ques-
tion, then, we have to answer is this—" Which of the
two modes of conduct now within the power of the Presi-
dent is most nicely to he injurious to France :" We en-
tirely put aside all consideration of the personal interests
of the President himself. If Washington, to whom his

country owed a debt which could never he paid, thought he
was bound to cast his own personal aims, views, wishes,
interests, out of his thoughts, surely Prince Louis Na-
poleon Bonaparte cannot complain if he be re-
quired to make also this s writiee of self. Ile
•

roust ask what the welfare of France demands, and nut
what is agreeable or convenient to himself. If that
welfare requires that he should become again a private
man, without a murmur, without and• symptom of hesi-
tation, he ought to lay down his power, however trying or
painful may be the sacrifice he is called upon to make. Ile
has sworn to obey the law by which he has been exalted.
Let him not

" lay perjury upon [his.] soul,
Nu, nut for p cancer
Suppose, then, that the revision of the constitution is
steadily refused by the legislature. What iv then the course
which the President ought to pursue ? This inquiry, let it
be observed, does not at all touch upon the question, whe-
ther it is wise in the President and his friends to attempt,
by legal means, to obtain the revision. We, for the pre-
sent, postpone that point, desiring to keep it completely dis-
tinct front the investigation we have now before us: and
we are the more anxious to adopt this course, because we
have little expectation that the legislature, or rather
the various party men in it, will voluntarily
abdicate the power which the present arrangements confer
on them. If they adhere to the present state of things,
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte cannot become a candidate with-
out a grievous breach of the law. While yet the chief of
the state, he will have committed treason against it, if he be
proposed fur re-election.
And for what supposed good, what expected benefit, is
this certain evil to be encountered ? We hear on all sides
that the one great necessity of France is repose. That re-
nose is impossible so long as the various political parties
habitually set the law at defiance, so soon as it disagreeably
interferes with their wishes, and therefore the present rally-
ing cry of the politicians opposed to the wild socialists and
red republicans is the word " order." Now order means obe-
dience to 'arr. But this obedience isnot merely what one party
or one man ma)• like, butis a strict adherence and obedience
to the written letter of the constitutional as well as of the
civil and criminal codes. So that if any attempt be made
to violate the constitutional code either by one party or
another, they are just as much guilty of disobedience as the
wildest socialist who asserts that property is a theft, and
thereupon proceeds to extract his neighbour's pocket-hand-
kerchief.

But we are told by same that if the present President be
not re-elected, order is impossible. But we are not
told why this should be so. Can it be that in a constitu-
tional hovensment one man can entirely act aside the
law? Suppose, fur example, in monarchical England,
by some miserable calamity, the worst possible spe-
cimen of the king kind were at once placed upon
the throne now occupied by Quern Victoria, does
any one believe, that law in England would be abrogated,
or that disorder would come in the train of a foolish and
mischievous sovereign ? No, the law of England is strong,
because the people live according to the law. The King
would be powerless if opposed to it. And can we believe
that in France any one man, however great may be the re-
flected name he bean, is necessary to the preservation of
mace, order, and security Unfortunately the French
I know not what law is. They govern always by force, and
every party—the fiercest reFublirans and the most trueu-
lent supporters of despotism alike—appeal to downright
brute force so soon as they are opposed, if in power. But
if the President wishes to be deemed the friend of order, let
him obey the law. Ile has done nothing to justify an 18th
of Brumaire, which even the mighty genius of his immortal
uncle could hardly justify. He, indeed, had preceded
that revolution by his wondrous campaigns in Ital. Ile
had saved France and almost conquered Italy. lie gave
promise of a greatness which his alter aehien meats more
than fulfilled—still even in his case, violation of law was
a crime which his genius, his marvellous powers, and still
more marvellous fortune, did not justify. Shall the pale
reflection of his name offer that name so a justification of a
still greater error ? And is the world base and foolish
enough to accept such a flimsy excuse for so foul a deed ?

SHOCKING ACCIDENT AT CARNARVON.--On Mon-
day last a must melancholy event occurred in this town. In
a cottage built under the town wall, at the bottom of
Greengate-street, there was an aged woman, the wife of
John Jones, a blacksmith, working in Mr. Smith's quarry,
sad seven of her children, including a married daughter,
the wild of Kees Nanny, of Conway, mariner, and also
their child, who had come to visit their parents. In a mo-
ment a portion of the scraping at the summit of the wall,
measuring about ten yards long and three feet deep, and
, weighing about eight tons, fell on the roof, and crushed it
in at a stroke. One of the children who was on the
threshold was throws at a distance from the house. The
old woman and the other children, with the exception of
the married daughter and her child, were speedily rescued
from their perilous situation with a few bruises. The
others remained, however, under the rubbish until about
five o'clock, notwithstanding all the exertions made to le-
i cover them, and when found she was bent down in a sitting
posture with the child in her lap, and the lives of both ex-
tinct. The rain, it is supposed, by moistening theearth and
destroying the adhesive power of the mortar, caused the
. stones to unloose. While the husband, R. Kenney, was
i engaged in the attempt to extricate his ill-fated wife, a stone,
fell down upon his head and almost killed him.—Norrk 1
Wales Chnonick.

MONMOUTH AND GLAMORGAN JOINT STOCK
Compront.—lt is undentood thatu soon u term com-
mences an application will be made to the Court of Chan-
cery under the act of parliament to wind up the affairs of
this company.

(From the Unity News.)

THE Times has the fairness, tho good taste, and
the good judgment to declare itself infallible in its
facts and its views respecting Hungary. No other
paper, it declares, knows or knew anything upon the
subject. lt, alone, employed Englishmen to visit
Hungary, to collect and furnish information, whilst
the Daily Noes derived its intelligence only from
Hungarian refugees. Such is the plea set up by
the Times, in °mkr to give plausibility and weight
to its calumnies upon KOSiCTII, and upon the Hans
garian cause.
Now the fact is that, during the fits,t campaign in
Hungary, no journal of any kind had correspondents
in that country. The Times, as anyone may see or
may remember, depended exclusively for its intellis
gence on its Vienna correspondent, Mr. II -- a quondam
writing-master in the family of METTERNICH, a man
who wore a slouched hat and largo feather during
' the triumphant days of the revolution, amidst which
be valiantly swaggered, but who showed quite another
feather when WINDISCHGRATZ appeared. And it
was evidently this same revolutionary feather that
be converted into a pen afterwards to malign the re-
volution itself and the Hun,gariam. This gentleman
wrote to the Vows from Vienna such intelligence
about Hungary as he could glean from General WEL.
nex's bulletins at first, and police reports afterwards.
It was in his letters that appeared the defence
of the flogging of Madame MADEnsimen, and
the calumnies upon Kossurn's private life
in exile, as before exile. These slanders
were contradicted in the columns of the Daily News
by an Englishman who chanced to be with the Hun-
garian emigrants at the tims, and who very plainly
told the Vienna correspondent of the Times what lux
stories were, and what credit they deserved.
In the first months of 1819 WINDISCIIGRATZ en-
tered Hungary; and the Times went on for three
months lauding his triumphs and recording his ex-
ploits. Even so late as the 13th of March the
Times congratulated tho young Austrian Emperor
on having reduced two great kingdoms in rebellion,
Lombardy and Hungary. (hi the 2;th of February,
three weeks before, the Daily _News had told that
SMACK'S corps was destroyed, WINDISCHGRATX
repulsed, and the Hungarians in the full tide of suc-
cess. This intelligence, derived by us from corre-
spondents in the Hungarian camp, proved completely
correct. And yet its truth did not even dawn upon
the Times for a full month after the circutustancea
had been published in our columns.
The truth of the success of the Hungarian arms
became manifest in good time even to the eyes of
the Times, and caused it very materially to alter its
tone. Thus, on the sth of May, ND, it wakes 4
new discovery, and says:
" Within certain bounds it is impossible to con-
test the justice of the Hungarian cause, and a nation
in arms for constitutional independence, which dates
from the 12th century, is not to be confounded with
a mob of rebels."
Admirable Times ! on the 31st of the same month
of May, the Times, very far from prixiaiming
its past judgment to have been infallible, as it does
in October, 1851, laments, on the contrary, that the
intelligence from Ilunoary was of "so ineompleto
and unsatisfactory a narure, that the actual state of
the two armies was not known even in Vienna. It
must, therefore," it continues, "remain an unsettled
point between some of our contemporaries and our-
selves whether the Magyar insurrection is a great
national movement for tine defence of the constitu-
tional rights of the kingdom, or whether the mut%
rection be not deeply tainted by the subversive doc-
trines of the red republican party." The Times
closes their article with the hope that "a negotiation
might be opened to resture Hungary her constitu-
tional rights:'
The Russians, soon after, marched with 170,000 men
into Hungary. And the noes, giving up all idea of
negotiation, merely laboured to support Austria and
Russia. And that journal gave as its "solemn
opinion, always confidently expressed, that both tho
Austrian and Russian monarchs had engaged with
perfect good faith in the arduous duties of constitu-
tional monarchy, and that int restoring order by mili-
tary power, they were animated by no blind spirit of
reaction."
Such were the opinions, inn those days, of our infal-
lible contemporary.
Now, as to the charge which the Times makes
against us, of receiving our intelligence solely from
I tungarian agents in this country, whilst it employed
Englishmen, we can say that, during 1819, wo
employed two English gentlemen, well acquainted
with the country and its language, one to penetrato
Hungary from Austria, the other to come up the
Danube from Constantinople. We received fre-
quent communications front both. One of these
gentlemen was at I'esth, and in over ac-
tion that was fought, down to that of lemes-
war. And we know of no account of these
actions (the Austrian bulletins being mere fables)
save those which appeared in the holly News. The
Timis had also engaged a correspondent to proceed
into Hungary, but lie was lk% lee sent back from the
outposts to N ienna. And his letters descriptive of
Hungary were merely sketches of the country after
tho war, not during the struggle. Throughout the

entire of the evcntS'of the 11.u"tirpriun revOlution it
was impossible fur a public journal to hare been
worse informed than the rums, or to have had such

scanty and tardy and warbled intelligence.
We have taken this retrospect, and indulged in
this comparison, with very great reluctance and
much regret, being forced to them by the audacious
assertions of our contemporary, which are at (axe so
contrary to fact and unjust to ourselves. It is
impossible for a paper to have taken more pains, or
gone to more expense than the Daily News, to bo
well informed on Hungarian aftiiirs, from the very
great interest which they inspirml, and frame our
conviction that the struggle was not a subversive
but a constitutional one, and that on the result of
that struggle depended the freedom or enslavement
not merely of the east of Europe, but the continu-
ance or extinction of constitutional government is
the west. The full of KOSSUTH was, in fact, the
signal of reaction everywhere. The German princes
was subjected to Russian and Austrian dictation in
consequence. Austria moved her troops to
the very Baltic, and stabled her dragoon
steeds in the Protestant churches of the
north. This was the result of Kosserd's
fall, a result that the notes gloried in, telling the
English public that the victorious sovereigns medi-
tated no readjust. Oh no! The innocent lambs
were for restoring constitutional chambers no doubt,
and establishing the rights of the people.
We may here conclude by wishing the Times
of its friends, of the veracity of the promises it
for them, and of the hilidlibility of its opinions and
its narrations.

A TELEGRAPHIC CONGRESS assembled at Vienna
a few day* ago to draw up measures for facilitating tole-
graphic communications between different countries. It
proposes to establish a union between different states ; to
have translators employed, so as to transmit all despatches
without delay; to have a uniform tariff; to pay their re-
ceipts into a common fund, and to divide them afterwards
between the states, in proportion to the length of their
telegraphic lines, dec. The new arrangements, are, it is
said, to come in.° operation on the Is: of January next;
and, if France shall accede to them, it will he possible to
send a despatch in a very few minutes from Trieste to
Calais or Ostend.
BEGGING LETTERS.—Last week, the Mayor of
Southampton received a communication from % iscount
Galway, asking him to investigate the genuineness of state-
ments contained in a petition that had been sent to him by
a Rev. Mr Butler, of l'riory Lodge, Southampton. These
statements were that a surgeon named Mason had died near
Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, through benevolent and
professional exertions, leaving a widow and family utter°.
vided for, and the petition of course prayed for pecuniary
contributions for the afflicted family. Among the subscri-
bers' names appended to the petition were those of Lord
Scarborough, the Earl of Guildford, and the Attorney-Ge-
neral. Mr. Borrett, an active Southampton magistrate,
took the matter in hand, and quickly ascertained that one
of the signatures was • forgery. The question now was
how to catch the rascal. Application was made to the
Post-office as to what was done with letters for Priory
Lodge, when it was ascertained that they were re-address
to an obscure coffee shop in Lambeth. Just about
this time • letter was received at the post-office, written in
a most clerical band, purporting to conic from the Rev. Mr.
Butler, and enclosing a bf. money order, payable at South-
I ampton, from the Countess of Shaftesbury, and requesting
that the amount should ho sent to the Lambeth post.office.
The Southampton police immediately wrote to the London
Mendicity Society, and on Saturday one of the society's
officers attended at the Lambeth poet-office, and there re-
cognised, in the rev. gentleman who hail come to have the
order cashed, his old familiar friend, " Iliad Johnny," one
of the most notorious begging-letter impostors in the
country. Johnny was immediately taken into custody, and
before the sitting magistrate at Lambeth, and after an exa-
mination was remanded until Thursday next.