The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-10 00:00:00

or the onl:itary triban.thi was luminously debated,
but no public investigation of the matter has taken
pee, to this day, and people are wholly ignorant
whether the conspirators are transported to Cayenne
without trial, whether they ore yet in prison, or at
Large and again employed upon "a particular service."
The forty fifty arrests of Feb. 6 were solemnly
announced as a measure of public safety called for by
s fearful conspiracy. That affair has ended in smoke.
AU but two of the conspirators have been released,
maw of them, for the sake of !ippearances, having
first been called upon to give bail to answer charges
which will never be made. It was indeed be-
' fiend and generally stated several days ago, that
all the state prisoners of February 6th had been
I-cleared, but it appears that Count a. CoCtlogon and
m.virmeitre, ot the suppressed journal, the C'orsair,
me TO in custody. If it should turn out that these
rnilemen are really guilty of
.the heinous s
in-offence o
who so Mittly were accost 41 it will be a curious
stance of the efficacy of fishing for political prisoners
with a cap:mita*, net.
An estraorilinary instance of the exercise of arbi-
ow power has just occurred. Two shoemakers,
msll Cliapital and Brayet, inhabitants of the Puy
de Hume, were lately sentenced by an ordinary court
dins:ice, the one to six months, and the other to
two months' imprisonment for having been affiliated
to a secret society. The minister of police, of his own
thereauthurity,lMS assentma decree directing that at
xpiration of thei ence both these men
*hail be transport' dto Cayenne for ten years. Yon
will naturally think it impossible that in a country
now professing to be regulated by a law
see Oohs ideal shened possess the power so enormously
to' increase the punishment awarded by the na-
tural judges of all citizens.. It appears, however,
that by one of the dictatorial decrees made during
the period when all laws were suspended on Decem-
ber 9, In.ll, power to transport for five or ten years
ant individual, without ti Hal, who should have broken
his ban, or " belmged to any secret society," was
conferred upon the police minister. This decree re-
mains unrepealed ; .rod by an article of the coned-
tutim, although an act uf illegal violence when
passed, it has now the force of law. The decrees of
14:4 are full of such traps. This decree was made
at a moment when end war was raging. It is now
—at a penal of profound peace and tranquillity—
acted upon under circumstances to which it is mani-
festly inapplicable, to the monstroas extent of inflict-
ing the maximum of the arbitrary punishment in ad-
dition to a legal sentence.
Sid el Hadj Ahmed ben Mohamed el Mokhrani,
Caliph of Medlar's, in Algiers, lately came to Paris
from Marseilles to pay his respects to the Emperor,
on his return from a pilgrimage to Meets. He was
created a commander ot the Legion of Honour on the
occasion. On his was back to Africa, he died sud-
denly of apoplexy at Marseilles on Friday last, and
his funeral oluequies were celebrated there with
great military pomp.
Lord Stratford de Itedeliffe, English ambassador to
the Ottoman Porte, has just arrived in Paris, where he
will only remain a tew days, and then proceed to
Constantinople, sin Vienna.