The Express.
London, England, 1858-03-03 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1.

laborious attempt to re-

cover his lost reputation for English spirit and
diplomatic skill hu proved a lamentable failure.
While the fate of the Administration, of which h•
has been the rain, trembled in the balance he was
mete ; now that the game he played .° ill is lost,
be is insolent and loud. While a chance remained
of escape under the shelter of Lord PALMERSTON'S
character in past times for national pluck, his Foreign
Secretary opened not his mouth ; but now that the
dead weight of his errors has proved too heavy
for the buoyancy of his late chief's personal popu-
larity, Lord CLARENDON comes forth, in the ill-
fitting guise of candour and self-devotion, prepared
to take upon himself any amount of the penalty his
friends have already paid, and full of the strange
illusion that people will accept his swaggering se-
, Nation that he was right throughout as proof that
his silence hitherto was disinterested, and that the
condemnation of the Horne of Commons was wrong.
Lord OAR:noon affected to appeal on Monday
night against this sentence to the judgment of his
peers. He took care to do so, however, at the time and
in a manner that rendered it impossible to obtain an
expression of their opinion, or any record of what they
thought. And what is the sum and substance of his
appeal—defence it would be absurd to call it ? In
plain words this : that M. Warawsiti's despatch
contained nothing which we had any ground to
complain of ; that its tone was unexceptionable, and
its statements regarding our legislative complicity in
the guilt of ausasination perfectly true ; that it
did not, therefore, require any other answer
than that given to it privately, and by the
introduction of the Conspiracy Bill four days
after it had been received ; and finally, that, although
it was so het, true, and moderate in all respects, it
it had been answered officially, the answer must
have " led to angry controversy." How these con-
flicting pleas are reconcileable we leave their
author to explain. But we venture, in passing,
to recommend Lord CLARENDON to write next
time to Sir RICHARD BETHELL for his advice
in preparing a defence for him, just as he wrote to
him, he says, confidentially, to try how far he might
venture to go in the way of propitiatory legislation
at the expense of national self-respect.
As for the despatch of the 20th January, the con-
demned Minister declares that when it was read to
him the following day by M. PERSIGNY it did not
call up even a flush of astonishment to his cheek;
and far from feeling any sentiment of indignation
he sat down and wrote that afternoon a confidential
letter to Lord COWLEY, telling him that " nothing
" could be more moder►te in tone." This and other
letters, equally confidential, were, as he declares, re-
gularly read to the Exexaon ; and they were
no doubt intended to be so. We have, then,
by Lard CLARENDON'S own oonfessioo, two new
bets worth careful noting :—First, that a despatch
from a foreign Government, which the Parliament
and people of this country have denounced as a
gross and wanton insult, was in the estimate of hie
lordship most moderate and suitable ; and secondly,
that the French Government were betrayed by the
confidential assurance of our Foreign Secretary into
the lamentable error of supposing that by perse-
verance in the same style of thing they would
obtain what they desired. England was belied,
France was deceived, the amity of the two
countries was endangered, and all because
the seals of the Foreign-office were at the time
entrusted to a man who by his own showing
does not comprehend when the honour and dig-
nity of his country are assailed. Lord CLARENDON,
in his desperate effort to assume a tone of courage,
presumed to scoff at the judgment of the House of
Commons, and to declare that the majority—compris-

big nearly all the great intellects of that assembly—
which voted his conduct deserving of censure, did
not understand French, had not read the
translation, or had wilfully misrepresented the
meaning of his friend M. WALEWSEIN words. This
flippant folly will not do. The House of Commons,
whose sentence has been enthusiastically ratified by
public opinion, and whose incontestable justice has
been admitted by Lord CLARENDON'S ablest apolo-
gist in the daily press, can afford to smile compas-
sionately upon the writhing. and to hear unmoved
the railings of a dismissed Minister. But for hie
owe sake it is a pity that his friends do not advise
the observance of a more decent and becoming tone
In one whose moral and intellectual faults in this
affair were so nearly entailing upon this country
and Francs the gravest alb.
We wish that we could stop even Fere, and allow
the residue of Lord CLARENDON'S suicidal speech to
pass without comment But there are other revela-
tions made by the intemperate Diplomatist which are
tooimportant to be overlooked. In his anxiety to get
rid el the imputation that the measure introduced by
the late Government was essentially a French BiU,
the ex‘recretary for Foreign Affairs has furnished
evidence of the fact of which we had not dreamed.
The very extracts he has garbled from his own cor-
respondenes with Lord COWLEY show that the
nature of the measure and its comparative valise to the
French Government, if enacted here, were the subject
of secret and confidential consultation between the
Ministers of Queen VICTORIA and the Ministers of
Narourox 111. And when to this is added the short-
sighted declaration of Lord CLARENDON, that he had
often had occasion to ten M. WALEWAICI, M. PER-
Noir, and on more that one occasion his Majesty