The Express.
London, England, 1858-02-09 00:00:00

been sanctioned by the Imperial Government.

The House of Commons, true to its traditional
instincts as the immemorial defender of venerable
rights and endangered liberties, is evidently in no
temper to treat this matter as one of despatches and
apologise—of offence taken on one side and repara-
tion proffered on the other. Let as try our own old
common law before we an called upon to change it;
above all, let us hesitate before we make this change
at the bidding of one who once enjoyed, if he did
not abuse, the very hospitality which it is now his
real purpose to abridge. The cheers which greeted
Lord PALYZELSTON, when he alluded to the anima.
tive of patting in force the powers of our osmmon
law, and the chilling silence in which he sat down
after having stated the terms of his proposed law,
were tolerably significant intimations of the real state
of public feeling on this matter. We execrate the
crime of assassination under all circumstances; ; we
have the meet sincere regard for the alliance of the
great and gallant people against whose ruler the late
wretched attempt was directed ; but until we see far
more clearly than is at present the case, that our own
laws are inadequate, we decline to change them on
the spur of a sudden emergency, in the presence of
aroused passions, and under the pressers of impotent
threats or importun►te dictation. It may be difficult
to say in the abstract that penal servitude even for life
is a punishment too severe for the guilt of the criminal
who has conspired to procure the perpetration of a
murder. It is plausibly urged, too, that by strictly
confining murder, the conspiracy to commit which is
made punishable by the proposed Bill, within the
limits of the definition supplied by the rule* of our
criminal law, many of the dangers are obviated
that would arise from a more lax construction. It
is contended that each a definition excludes the
possibility of making men punishable for conspiring
in this country to organise armed resistance
against any de facto Government of a foreign
State, or to commit any of those insurrectionary
attempts which, in their prosecution, might involve
the destruction of human life. But it may, on the
other hand, be urged with equal plausibility, that,
under the new law, any revolutionary movement
may be oonstraed into an attempt upon the life of the
Sovereign. The Hone of Commons, too, like the
People it represents, is manifestly and justly re-
luctant, even with the strictest fences of technicality,
to concede this new and untried power. Then is a
natural sense of insecurity inseparably connected
with the notion of passing a law at the dictation of
despots, for the more effectual punishment of
refugees. The rulers of Europe cast theme men
loose on our shores, and then attempt to
compel us to supply the defects in their own police
by requiring us to amend what they an pleased to
point out as defects in our laws ; and this they do
under menaces of high-handed violence, the expres-
sion of which, after being paraded in the columns of
a gazette, is supposed to be atoned for by the expla-
nations of an ambassador. It may be all very ad-
mirable, but—we don't admire it—we can't help sus-
pecting it, and we don't mean to give in to it.

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