The Express.
London, England, 1867-12-14 00:00:00

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

The Saturday Review believes it to be a truth
that catholicism is gaining strength in France. The
priests tight for the ten.porel power as for • symbol of
their authority, and an object which they have agreed to
think absolutely indispensable to their church, and the re-
cent vote of the church ought to be set down clearly as a
clerical victory. But it was not only a clerical victory. It
was also meant as an assertion of a particular line of secular
policy. If the present storm blows over, the action of France
may possibly not be quite so decided as the Chamber has now
resolved it shall be ; but, for the immediate future, it is
difficult to exaggerate the gravity of the situation in which
France has placed Italy and herself by the triumph of H.
Thies. After years of energetic foreign action Napoleon
has succeeded in restoring the isolation which be bated
and feared so much. Het has made Germany and Italy
feel that he Is hostile to their development. He has exas-
perated Russia by touching, without settling, the Polish
question. He has alienated America, frightened Belgium,
and deserted Denmark. His ministers pretend to have
won over Austria ; but Austria seems very unlikely now to
commit herself to any anti-German enterprise.
- . . .

The Examiner complains that neither in legislation or
in administration has Ireland the benefit of constitutional
government. No man has depicted in more telling terms
than the present Chancellor of the Exchequer the painful
exigencies of the " Irish question ;" and no man knows
better than he how worse than vain it is to hope for peace,
prosperity, or contentment while that question remains
unsolved. Yet not an effort or a proposal worthy of the
name is made in parliament by the existing Ministry to
mitigate the social and sectarian injustice which has driven
so large a portion of an oppressed community mad. As
for the executive, it is helpless, save only to chase and
cage a few of the political lunatics here and there ; but as
for general measures of cure, Lord Aberoorn and his ad-
visers do not appear to have so much a• thought of them.
We read in the Spectators—Frederick Raker, the
attorney's clerk who cut up a little girl at Alton, has been
sentenced to death, and the day of his execution bar been
fixed. No one doubts his guilt, or that his guilt deserves
the highest penalty, but serious doubts are entertained of
his sanity. He was always esteemed peculiar, and so
strong was his tendency to suicide, that he wee watched
on one occasion by a policeman through a long walk. His
father years ago bad an attack of acute mania, with homi-
cidal tendencies, and another relative is now in an asylum
for the came reason. Then the act itself, in its motive-
less atrocity, is not that of a sane man, and the entry of
the murder in the prisoner's own diary can be explained
on no theory except that of insanity. It is urged, on the
other hand, that his fellow-clerks saw no insanity in him,
and that he knows right from wrong; but the doubt in
the cane seems too strong to justify execution. Until our
whole theory of punishment is changed, we cannot hang
the mad without unsettling all the principles of the public
mind. We might as well hang a man for a murder in his
sleep, or for tumbling off a roof on to a puler-by. There
m►y be danger to society without moral responsibility, but
there cannot be guilt.

The Royal Botanic Society announces, amongst
its arrangements for 1868, an exhibition of spring flowers,
to continue during one week, from March 21st to March
28th ; an American exhibition, to continue from June Ist
to June 13th ; and three miscellaneous exhibitions of
plants, flowers, and fruit, to be held respectively on May
27th and 28th, June 17th and 18th, and July lit and 2nd.
There will also be lectures at the gardens on the following
Fridays :—May 15th, 22nd, 29th ; June sth, 12th, 19th,
26th ; July 3rd.

An Italian journal states that a number of the
citizens of Spoleto (in the former territory of the Holy
See) have sent the subjoined telegraphic despatch to M.
Jules Favre :—" The volunteers and citizens of Spoleto,
assembled at a fraternal banquet, send to you a heartfelt
greeting—to you, the intrepid and magnanimous defender
of Italy, as well as to your friends in the Legislative Body,
and to Liberal Frame."