The Express.
London, England, 1851-12-24 00:00:00

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Tpanapsee—Morldhg. sh. tem. ........MlsOusle. A. oft.
I

'LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24.

RESIGNATION OF LORD PAL3IERSTON.

• The Times, on a topic which has been much dis-
cussed during the last few days, has the following :
" A few days ago, after the departure of all
the ministers from London, and at the near
approach of Christmas, a cabinet council was
unexpectedly summoned, although no assignable
cause of public interest had occurred to ex-
plain this sudden requisition. This cabinet was held
on Monday, the .12d inst., and it was remarked with
surprise that Lord Palmerston, one of the most assi-
duous members of the government, was not present.
From these eircum3tances suspicion was excited, and

surmise became rife. We now have it in our power
to remove all further uncertainty on the subject, for
we are enabled to announce that, from the day on
which that cabinet was held, Nlscount Palmerston
ceased to hold the offiee of Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, or to be a member of her Majesty's
government. • • •
We have reason to believe that the seals have been
offered to, if not already accepted by, a nobleman
who, though comparatively young in political life,
has commanded the pr-ise and esteem of the country
in all the positions he has hitherto filled."

TICE fact of the Globe, a government paper, un-
dertaking to excuse the cony (171itt of Louis NAPO-
LEON is of some importance. It says, or would •
seem to say, that our ministers, or some of e,ur I
misters, prefer the military despotism of IsTarouog
to either the turbulent freedom of a republic or the
narrow constitutional system of the 0 RLEANs dynasty. j
The arguments made use of by the Globe are more
objectionable than its preferences. The Mobt says„
that in free countries power is divided, but divided in
such a manner that euntendin; parties have always
an arbiter to appeal to. Thus, nova, power in the
United States is divided between the Con-
greas and the I'mi:soot:sr, and the latter
MA often pursue policy contrary to the
legislature ; as was the ease both with
Jail:sox and with !iota. But the Pitystinsr must
appeal to public opinion, scattered as it is over a
seine of local states and capitals. lie has not the
power to force this opinion, and he cannot elude its
verlict. In Englund, according to the Globe, the
Cint:sx is orbiter betwixt contending parties. But,
argues the mii,isterial print, in France, under the
republic, power was divided, and there was no
arbiter. 'the A ienitly thought itself supreme, the
I'REsIDENT put in also his claim to independence and
distinct action. And there being no other way of
Cciding between these conflicting powers than by
having recourse to eiolence, LOUIS NAPOLEON was
warranted in doing so.
It is ditlicult to say whether there be more un-
truth or more sophism in these speculations. In
the first place, the French republican constitution
left no doubt whatever as to where the source of
power lay. It hey in the Assembly, of whose de-
erns the was but the executive power.
The l'itr.otwx r wan not only to execute the stand.
ing laws, but to obey the decision of the legislature
with respect to peace and war, to treaties', and a hoot
of duties wide'', with us. belong exclusively to the
government. Ihe President of the UNITED STATEN
shares his executive power with the Senate—in some
important pints of his duty. The English execu-
tive, though fret to act, must not wander far from
the opinion of the majority in parliament and in the
country. When the English minister is free, it is
upon questiens. especially of foreign policy, on which
the Itaili42 public and the British purliament seldom
have an opinion till it is too late for anything, save

reuret.
But with respect to the French PRESIDENT there
was really no conflict of opinion whatever. From
the day of his appointment he always stooped to the
majority of the -assembly, and adopted its policy,
even when it was deeitlealy hostile to the liberties of
the people and of Europe. The Assembly was not
more conservative than Louts NAPOLEON. Ile not
only sanctioned the law of the alst of May, disfran-
chising the French people, but took the author and
reporter of that law to be his chosen minister. The
only dila:note between Louts NAPOLEON and the'
Aasembly was the amount of salary that he was to
draw, and how long ho was to enjoy it. It was
quite evident that if the Assembly granted him a
full dotation, and so altered the constitution as to
admit of his re-election, Louts NAPOLEON would
hate remained the humble servant of the Assembly
and tho permanent chief of the republic. It was
only when they refused him money, and threatened
to cut short the presidential tenure by which he en-
joyed a large salary—it was only then that there
arose any doubt in any mind as to where power lay,
or who was to be *the arbiter. It was a mere
money question. And, as NAPOLEON did, when
he swept the contents of the directorial
treasury into Sit:YEs' lap,—taking the power for
himselt, and leaving the money to his coadjutor in
the rcvolutiuu of the lath Brumaire,—so might the
National Assembly have done: have given Louts
NAPOLEON all the wealth his lavish habits could
require, and kept the power. Instead of that, they
curtailed him of power, stinted him in money,
snubbed him in matters even of etiquette, and he-
hayed to him more like a gang of unruly schoolboys
pelting a hated usher, than as statesmen dealing
with a bold, dashing, unscrupulous, and unprincipled
adventurer.
These foolish men actually put the idea of the coup
great in LOUIS NAPOLEON'S head, when, instead of
opposing to hint their respect for law, for the
rights of the people, and of parliament, they actually
discussed the necessity of appointing a general and
raising an army of their own. And the very last
days of the Assembly were employed in drawing up
and discussing the clauses of a law regulating how
the PuEstimter was to be accused, and condemned,
and set aside. When, in retort to this,
Lurtr Ncrtn.rox called such a man as ST.
ARNAUD to his councils, it was pretty evident what
he intended. And no one, save such politicians as
M. Dens, could have been deceived. Even the
Timis wrote half-aalosen laboured panegyrics on the
firmness, talents, and worth of this same ST. ARNAUD,
who was for a fortnight the god of its idolatry, un-
til the General showed his pnnciplea of strategy and
humanity by drawing up his troops on the boule-
vards, and *directing them to fire into the houses.
" Mire pear aux riches," as the socialists say.
Whilst Sr. .tIiNAPD was concocting his scheme,
CHINA:ULMER anti Caystusac were picking their
teeth, resting on their pillows at home, with all their
palith.al correspond, nir
.4,r the laid three years lying
on their desks, and not a thought of precaution or
defence. M. TIMERS alone put his papers out of the
way. the true reason of his exile ; whilst all CHAN-
GARNIER's and CAVAIGNAP'S secrets were taken with
them, and all their connexions and plans disclosed.
But all this folly on the part of Louis NAPOLEON'S
enemies in the Assembly did not warrant the step
that he has taken. The blood that he has wantonly
spilt lies at his door. The constitutional cause which
he has with recklessness and perjury betrayed and
slain, to the !swifter and joy of the despots of the
continent. constitutes in every country the only hope
of rational freedom, of civilisation. and of order. The
ativentuna who applies his stiletto,or his more murder-
ous chloroform, to an existence and a principle so vital,
so indispensable to a country as that, and when he
commits the traitorous and lidonious set merely fur
the sake of his own selfish cupidity or smbitioa—
that is a man to be viewed and condemned by
Englishmen upon bread, moral, and conscientious
grounds. not excused by the speculations and hair-
splittings of political philosophy. The ruffian who

stifles his country's liberties and murders her
sons is not to be exculpated by the plea
that there was a conflict of powers, and
that in this conflict he did not know on which
side lay justice and right. Such special pleading as
this is unworthy of an able paper like the Globe.
Such feeling and such:philosophy arc not English ;
nor will a jury of this country acquit a culprit like
Loris NAPOLEON, arraigned before it, whatever
amount of such transcendental logic, and such
dubious morality bo used in his defence.

YESTERDAY We reported the last sitting of the
commission of inquiry on the rights of the Crown,
the commoners, and others, in the royal domain in
Essex called Hainault Forest. The proceedings
before that court suggest some remarks on the use
and abuse of crown property. We do not now refer
to such of the hereditary landed property of the
Crown as may contribute to the personal enjoyment
' of the sovereign, or any of the royal family, as Wind-
sor St. James's, and other royal palares ; but we
allude to those forests and chases, all wastes or semi-
wastes, which have hitherto formed mere nests of
jobbery. Indeed, this species of property, being well
nigh valueless, has for some reigns past been given
up to the public, and placed under the management
of the officials of the Woods and Forests. The
abominable character of that management has been
shown by the recent disclosures elicited by parlia-
mentary investigation in reference to the New Forest. I
In truth, a royal forest has long been recognised in
this country as a tract of land placed out of then
pale of utility and almost beyona the reach of MI-
prevenient.
This has recently been felt o strongly by the go-
vernment, that considerable changes have been made
and are making iu the management of the royal
forests; and such changes will possible involee some
amelioration. Hainault Forest will ultimately be
disafforested; the rights of the Crown, and of the
owners of adjoining land, arc to be investigated and
defined ; and then, we believe, something like an
enclosure of the forest is to tole place. That is the
purpose with which the commissioners have been
sitting at Ilford, reports of whose proceedings have
appeared exclusively in our columns. One question
considered at one of the sittings was, whe-
ther a tract of 40 acres, called Chadwell-
heath, situated a long distance from the " King's
woods," was within the inner and outer boun-
daries of the forest, and whether it belonged to
the Crown or the Lord of the Manor of Harking.
The value of the poss.ssion may be estimated by the
evidence of the acts of ownership adduced on both
aides; that Gar the Crown showing that wane twenty
or thirty years ago a keeper of the forest had felled
a few trees on the heath, which were sold
by the Crown, while the only act of owner-
ship exercised by the Lord of the Manor seems
to have been to give leave to persons to take
away soil from Chadwell-hcatb. But it seems the
Lord of the Manor had also exercised within the
" King's-woods" rights,—if rights they be,—very
similar to those he had used over C'hadsvell-heath,
and the commissioners decided that they were bound

to treat the heath as part of the Kiugs-woods.
What effect that may have on the future value of
the property, or the competing interest of the Lord
of the Manor, we know not; but what we would
point to as illustrated by these inquhics is the utter
state of desolation in which these royal forests keep
a district. llere, withix a few miles of the metro-
polis, we find a tract of several thousand acres co
vend with stunt( d timber, fern, and brushwood;
used for keeping deer, and &pasturing the miserable
cattle which *rc turned out by persons having emu-
MUD rights ; and furnishing legitimate employment
fur only a few keepers and woodmen, but affording
harbour and occasional plueder fur a wretched and
often vagabond population, who occupy
.cottages on
the borders of the tbrcst, and arc a class Intermediate
between indifferent labourers and Gipsies. Amongst
the rights stated were those of all widows residing in
the parish of Barking, and not being in the receipt
of parish relief, to receive either wood or money from
the steward. There appear to have been generally
upwards of eighteen ot these widows, amongst whom
five loads of wood had for some years been divided,
or they had received Bs. in money instead. The Earl
of NIMININGTON, the ranger of the forest, had
stopped the widows allowances. Then, all the inha-
bitants of Staplefiird had turned cattle into the forest
as long as the "reeve" of that parish could remem-
ber, paying two pounds fur a cow and four pounds
for the run of a horse during the year.
Now, if there be one device more than another
calculated to render land useless, it is to give one per.
sun the right to the soil and another the right of com-
mon over it. In such a state of things improvement is
impossible. We presume that the iuclusure of the
forest now to take place will get rid of such obsolete
usages, and that to the commoners there will be
allotted lands in lieu of their common rights,—the
Crown taking its forest free from all liabilities.
Then the question is, how should this land,--which
is substantially the property ot the public,—he dis-
posed of? If it is to be laid out in plantations,
under the pretence of growing timber for the navy
and so forth, we shall find that there will still be a
costly staff of rangers, surveyors, woodmen, keepers,
and the like, and that the expense of managing the
estate will render it, as at present. a losing affair for
its real owners—the people; while the prospective
benefit to the nation, of growing for itself tim-
ber, which can be purchased cheaper, is, to say the
least, highly problematical. What, then, should be
done ? If the public advantage is to be the object in
view, there is only one rational and business-like
method of dealing with this property, and that is, to
sell it out and oat by public competition, in such
moderate portions as will be certain to attract nu-
merous purchasers. Let the Woods and Forests'
commissioners lay out main roads, and make such
open watercourses as may be necessary to give an
outfall to drainage of the different parts of the pro-
perty when distributed by sale, and they will have
performed all the functions they can usefully dis-
charge in reference to the national wastes. All
attempts at continuous management can only lead to
jobbery and failure ;—to public loss and official dis-
grace.

JI:DGMENT on tho Bells of Clapham has at length
been given.
Any anti-papist publisher who contemplates a con-
tinuation of Foss's Book of Martyrs down to the
present year, must not omit the life and sufferings ofl
Mr. WILLIAM SOLTAU, of the Manor-house, Acre-
lane, Clapham. That unfortunate gentleman has, it
would seem, been reserved for a species of agony,
the like of which—for unceasing protraction, if not
for severity,—is not to be found among the
details of ingenious torture set forth in the " Acts
and Monuments." When heretics were rolled down
hills in barrels of spikes : when they were hung
upon tenter hooks like beef, or suspended, legs
uppermost, like game; when they were buried up
to the neck that their heads might serve their foes as
skittles ; when they were converted into wheel-tors ;
when they were trussed likefowL3and finally roasted,
their sutfilings could be numbered by days; but Mr.
SOLTAIfS has been a lingering agony of years. In-
deed, the mere recital of his peiae forte et dare occu-
pied, in KINDERSLET'S court, three
entire days. Happily the story is capable of abridg-
e went. It is very touching in any form..
On the _'sth of )(arch, a.n., 1817, Mr. WILLIAM
SOLTAI: purchased one of the two dwellings into
which the Mauer house, Acre-lane, Clapham, had
been divided; and, for thirty-one years, enjoyed his cc-
coranev with all the race and comfort which charac-
terise Ale lot of a private gentleman in easy circum-
stances. During the whole of that period he had—
so far as we can discover—no cause to be dissatisfied
with the equally comturtable gentlemen in easy cir-
cumstances who were, from time to time, his neigh-
bours iu the adjoining half of tho Mansion.
Up to 1819, he seems to have lived a happy
and a prosperous gentleman ; but that year
of grace was his black year. The so-called
" papal aggression " had commenced; and, in
July, • body of Roman catholic, calling them-
selves Redemptorist Fathers,' invaded Clapham.
They bought themselves in under tLe same roof with
Mr. Bomar' and converted their moiety of the
Manor-house into a monastery.. The ruin of Mr.
SOLTACS peace commenced in August. A wooden
frame was erected in the roof close to Mr. SOLTACS
bed-ruom ; and in it was inserted the instru-
ment of torture which eventually drove its victim
first into the Court of Exchequer, and, finally-, into
the Court of Chancery—than which nothing
stronger could, perhaps, be adduced in proof of the
extremity of clespemtiou to which he was goaded.