The Express.
London, England, 1862-07-12 00:00:00

HIGH_ WAVER AT. LONDON mums

Tan DAY .—Alorlinin Afternoons ft. 355.
To-miaow—Morning. Ms. Oen— Attersoos. 3a. 25.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 12.

KING LOUIS of Portugal is about to espouse the
Princess Pis, daughter of the King of ITALY. The
French official prints boast that the Emrssoa
recommended this match, and even hint that it is a
step towards loosening the old connexion of Por-
tugal and the North of Europe, and bringing it to
a more natural sympathy with the East and the
policy of the South. We attribute very little im-
portance to such doctrine. The transplanting of
Princesses from the North of Germany to the cli-
mate of Lisbon has not proved favourable to health
or to longevity. In choosing an Italian Princess
his Majesty King Louis takes a wife accustomed
to his Southern clime, and ooming from a consti-
tutional land. As to any league of the South
hostile to England, we do not believe in it, and
if we did, we know how weak a tie is marriage
upon policy. The wife of Vicroa EumsNurs.
and the mother of his children was an Austrian
Princes&

With regard to the old and close connexions
between Portugal and Great Britain, a variety of
circumstances have concurred to loosen it, and to
throw Portugal more and more under other influ-
ence than ones. In the first place, whether from
the difficulty of getting it or the cheapness of
clarets, the taste of the English has become
weaned from port wine. It is little more
than a tradition among the rising generation,
and preserves its only votaries in the fast dimi-
nishing numbers of those who still retain the
habits which prevailed at the commencement of
the century. Our fiscal legislation has followed
the same path with :our taste, and has allowed
French wines to compete with those of Portugal ;

greatly to the diminution of our trade with thglt
country, the legislators of which show very natn-
rally the wish to retaliate. One of the most
striking results of this has been the recent unex-
pected and unwelcome notification of the Penin-
milar and Oriental Steam Company that its vessels
will cease plying to and from Lisbon.

There are other reasons for this announcement
than the declining popularity of port wine. For
these packets formed the chief chain of com-
munic►tion not only between Portugal and England,
but between Portugal and Europe. But since rail-
roads traverse France as well as Spain, the traveller
from Lisbon is placed within a few hours of Paris
and of all other European countries. The same revo-
lution has taken place in correspondence and its
facilities. The electric telegraph not only accom-
panied but anticipated railroad communication ;
and instead of writing a letter by one packet to
get an answer by the next, the merchant of Lisbon
or Oporto uses the electric telegraph, and tells his
wants in London almost before the British steamer
could leave the Tagus. If the use of our Penin-
sular packets has been superseded, it is not by
any relapse, but on the contrary, by the pro-
gress of civilization. The tendency is certainly
to knit new links between Portugal and her con-
tinental neighbours, from whom the want
of roads as well as political hostility
estranged her, and also to weaken considerably
those which united Portugal to England. If there
be somewhat in this displeasing and regrettable,
there is at least the consolation that it springs
from no fault of either country, but from the
natural course of things.
When English influence thus declines in Portu-
gal, and English example ceases to have sway, it
is satisfactory to think that these may be supplied

by the Italian connexion. There is such a want
of affinity between Northern and Southern races,
that it has been difficult to inoculate the one with
the sentiments or institutions of the other.
The liberal systems of government now pre-
vailing throughout all the kingdoms of the South
of Europe cannot but excite, encourage, and im-
prove each other. The isolated condition of Spain
and Portugal has tended to render both torpid,
and to deprive them of that multiplicity of in-
teresta and variety of motives which give political,
industrial, and social life. Italy has the seeds of
all this in her to a far greater degree than any
other Southern region, and no doubt will take
the lead amongst them, strongly influencing the
future of Spain, of Portugal, and of Greece.
Already we note a certain similarity in the
representative assemblies of these Southern coun-
tries. Their tendency is not to divide, like
similar assemblies in the North, into two great
sections of Conservative and Liberal. They
break rather into a number of small fractions,
bound together leas by a principle or an aim
than by the trust in their respective leaden.
We see in Italy a Minister upholding his power
and commanding a majority by colleagues and ad-
herents from every fraction of the Chamber.
In Portugal a name seems indispensable to con-
stitute a Government. A Tuterfaa, or a Sat-
DANHA, or a Louis sufficed. But since the great
personages of the revolutionary or constitutional
struggle have died off, and left successors of
more doubtful talents and more question-
able notoriety, the utmost difficulty has been
found in constituting a government, or en-
dowing it with the power necessary to work. The
constitutional rigime of Portugal has the same diffi-
culties as in other countries—a budget of which

the expenditure exceeds the income, and that at a
time when an unusual amount of expenditure is
called for to construct and complete the national
railroads, so as to place the country on a par, even
in matters of defence, with its powerful neighbours.
The complaint is that Portugal retains too large
an army and too redundant an administration
to allow of the economy and the credit requisite
for the indispensable working and outlay.
In all that relates to religious politics the Por-
tuguese Government and Chambers have been
most fortunate. They have shaken off all that was
dangerous or onerous, without diminishing in the
least the respect for religion amongst their popu-
lation. They have wisely defeated an attempt
made by the French monastic authorities to intro-
duce ecclesiastical sisterhoods in the country
under the pretence of tending the sick. In
France these companies of Sisters not only tend
the sick, but have got by degrees a complete
monopoly of female education.
It was the presence of • similar band of Sisters
in Mexico which gave rise to the chief complaints
and quarrels of the French with the Government
of that country. Thus warned and menaced on
all hands, the Portuguese Government wisely de-
termined to cut the root of the evil, and the
French Sisters have politely and without violence
been induced to re-embark with their parapher-
nalia and pretensions.