The Express.
London, England, 1866-09-15 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 15, 1866.

M. Pasvoirr-Pawnor. himself does not appear I
to see the connexion, we should say that the 1
illumination which does not recognise the depend-
ence of the national well-being upon the national
character—which believes that good government
can be based on bad morals—can spring only from
that light which is itself darkness. Corrupt con-
stituencies must as surely form a bad House of
Commons, as a corrupt tree produces corrupt
fruit.
M. Pszvour-PARADoes aberration in this
particular from good sense and sound ethics
is easily explicable. He is partly misled
by that honourable attachment to England,
as the historical example of free govern-
ment, which is the tradition of his party ; and
which inspires him with an affection for her very
blemishes, like that which the classical lover
entertained for the wen and warts of his mistress.
But, though writing of England, he is thinking
rather of France ; and is bent upon showing that
whatever evils exist under the constitution
which he admires are found in an aggravated form
under that which he detests. The candidate who,
instead of paying the electors one by one for
their votes, obtains their support by promising
them, in the name of the central government, a
port, a road, a canal, or a railway, practises,
he maintains, a corruption far more lamentable in
its consequences than that which prevails in Eng-
land, since in employing it he becomes the
creature of the Executive. Nothing can be
said in favour of the Government which uses
its influence thus to debauch the representa-
tion by filling the Legislature with its nomin• es.
But it will scarcely be denied by M. PKEVO9T
Pawnor. that the individual voters are less
depraved when their suffrages are determined by
considerations which are to a certain extent of a
public character, and relate to acts coming within
the recognised scope of the Government, than when
they are personally debauched by the direct pur-
chase of their votes.

This strange indifference to the necessity,
above and beyond all eke, of sound public morals
to the permanence of free government, together
with M. PREWST-PARADOL'S protest against sny

enlargement of the suffrage in England, shows
painfully how little the future liberty of France
has to hope from sonic French liberals. The
theory implied in his criticisms is that which was
practised in France from 1830 to 1848, under the
guidance, during the greater part of that
period, of "an incorruptible corrupter," of the
English Parliamentary type, as M. Pazvosr-Pasa-
noL conceives it. A venal bourgeois oligarchy
destroyed the monarchy of July ; and M. PRE-
vosr-Parninox invites us to steer directly on the
rock on which France has made shipwreck.
It would seem that the Orleanist writers, like
their patrons, are incapable of either learning any-
thing, or forgetting anything. They misapply
English precedents to justify their own errors
of practice and of theory. No doubt the
French nation may draw much profit from the
study of English institutions ; and the scholars
and thinkers who, like M. PREVOKT-PARADOL, de-
vote themselves to interpreting our experience for
its benefit, render a service to both countries
which we shorld be the last to disparage. But,
being scholars and thinkers, they ought to know
that it is impossible to reproduce in France any-
thing analogous to the political order which exists
in England. They cannot undo the work of his-
tory, though they may ignore it. The political
organization of France, liberal or despotic,
must rest upon a democratic basis. That
foundation has been irrevocably laid ; and
the only question is, what is the super-
structure which shall be erected on it t Bona-
parthun has perceived the real state of affairs, and
'is profiting by it. The partisans of constitutional
monarchy are still in wilful blindness. To hold
up this example of England, and its aristocratic
freedom for French imitation, is to put the French
Liberals on a false track ; and unconsciously to
conspire with the opponents of freedom in any
shape. The constitutional party in France must
learn to sacrifice to the freedom which it sincerely
desires the personal piques and the party jealousies
and the political crotchets which it sometimes seems
to prefer to liberty itself.

bit judgment. Had the occurrence taken place in a
ballet as wall as in a ballet costume, it could not have been
more absurd.

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

Tice Saturday Review speaks of the reform meet-
ings as " a monotonous demand of organised multitudes
for a monopoly of electoral power," and praises Kr. Glad•
stone for the moderation and temper of his esitisbini

speech telling him that if he resolves to be moderate as
well as firm—he may still rally to himself all the sections
of the liberal party. Treating of English influence in
Europe the Review asks why we should be so eager to take
up the position diplomatically of a second rate power. Our
assumption that we do not want to have any infinenee in
Europe has a depressing effect on the services which is ex-
ceedingly undesirable and perilous--sapping the public spirit
and numbing what little official energy the whip have left.
The Saturday Review says it is not a mere accident which
has made the two chief leaders of opinion in the rising
generation take exactly opposite idea about the conduct
of the late Governor of Jamaica. Mr. Mill and Mr. Car-

lyle take opposite sides in most matters, from nigger' ,
down to metaphysics. They only agree in being thoroughly
in earnest about everything that they take up, and this
signal merit of sincerity has been the secret
of the impression which each of them has made
upon the minds of young men. For young men com-
monly care a great deal more for sincerity than for the
direction in which it is shown, though they like it all
the better if, as is the case with both these writers,
it-
diverges as much as possible from the orthodox and ap-
proved track. Mr. Mill is thoroughly sincere in hating
the good despot, and Mr. Carlyle Is equally thorough-
going in his detestation for negroes. In the American
war, the former felt that the whole question of free go'
vernment all over the world was at stake in the contest,
while the latter vowed that the simple difference between
North and South was that the South preferred hiring
their sex wants for life, while the North took theirs by
the quarter. In the Jamaica controversy, the one declares
that the governor deserves hanging, whole the other is
lost in admiration at the truly heroic energy with which
the governor had his vile niggers whipped, hung, bayoneted,
chopped up, burnt out of house and home, and otherwise
suitably admonished that there is no room for such black
rascals in the great Everlasting Yea. Here is a murderer,
says the representative of Westminster. Here is your true
king, your kenig, your can-ning man, your hero, cries the
representative of the Eternities and the Sorrowful Silent
Spheres. Mr. Eyre has been legally guilty of murder, says
the one. Away with your horse-hair and wiggeries, says
the other ; he hes saved the island and proved himself a
real captain of men ;no phantasm captain, no Islington
gigman, no header of doggeriee. The public meanwhile
has not much sympathy with either of the extreme
champions.
The Spectator says that the committee of the Eyre De.

fence Fund have had a meeting to consider the propriety
of permitting the admirers of Mouravieff to entrust the
funds intended to raise a monument to his memory to
their care. Mr. Rusk's thought Ir's manor. oullit to be
enshrined fittingly in the stones of Warsaw. Mr. Carlyle
remarked that the wild shrieks of the universal anarchy.

now for a long time pro: eding quite too loudly, and to
sober-minded, order-loving people, in a most distracting
fashion, from the ret:on calling itself Poland,
had been smothered 11 a notably more efficient
measure by this man than by any other as
yet known in this universe of ours, awl that the
memory of such a man, what memory the world may
be expected to cherish of him, should surely be grate-
ful. Mr. Kingsley remarked that early in his
career Mouravieff had entitled himself to the trust of all
good men, and that he had taken him upon trust ever
since. It was unanimously decided to open a second ac-
count with Messrs. Smith, Payne, and Smith, by the side
of " The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund," to be called " The
Mouravieff Monument Fund," and several handsome sub-
scriptions were announced before the meeting separated.
The middle class, the Spectator thinks, is falling into
the lassitude and the indifference which indicate that it
does not truly care about the great questions still un-
settled, and which affect the greatest class of all, and
must ultimately determine the bent of our national future.
The labouring class have still their turn to come, and
when they get it, we shall begin to see if there is not once
more a new and inexhaustible energy thrown into our
national affairs—whether they will not be able to infuse
fresh energy into the middle class (as thirty years ago the
middle class infused fresh energy into the aristocracy),
so as to give us once more strongly defined national de-
sires and unanimous purposes. And if, as the Spectator
believes, it proves so, we may well expect England to be
once more in the very van of Europe, for no other country
has solved so completely the territorial and the mercantile
questions which properly belong, as it were, to an earlier
stage of civilisation, or can bring to the greatest of all po-
litical problems—the intellectual education of labour and
our political education by labour—a bolitical mind so com-
pletely free from the complications of territorial struggles
for unity and nationality, and of economical struggles
for a true solution of the problems affecting the aceumula-
tions of material wealth.
The answer of the King of Prussia to the Hanoverian
deputation should suggest, the Examiner thinks, anew
version of the fable of the wolf and the lamb. Sheridan
and Hare were addicted to abominable practical jokes.
Between two sitting-rooms, communicating by a dark
passage, Sheridan planted • sort of maze of broken glass
and bits of prongs of forks. lie then d d something to
provoke Hare, and ran away through the path he had left
for himself in the treacherous ambush. As he expected,
Hare followed, fell in ,the snare prepared for him, and was
much cut. Hare returned to the company, bit:d-
ing from several wounds, and vowing vengeance against
Sheridan. " I'll pistol the scoundrel, I'll shoot him like
a mad dog for so cruel a t ick—but," he added with
enthusiasm, " it was admirably contrived and executed."
And that is the feeling upon this gigantic Prussian trick
—it was admirably contrived and executed. The mora'ity
of the example is not thought of ; the success covers all.
Perhaps souse day we shall see a well-planned murder
excused by the excellence of execution. Austria is back-
ward, Austria is bigoted—we grant all that can be said
against her—and for Prussia, educated, protestant, and
progressive—the one a type of liberalism, the other of
conservatism, but we do not approve of the breaking into
a man's house because he is • tory. There are common
rights of nations, the infraction of which it is the interest
of all to discountenance, even though the wrong has been
a stupendous success.
The Economist cannot help thinking that the strange
championship of a purely muscular morality by men of
high intellectual reputation will have a vet f dot: imentiq
effect. If this is seen to be the legitimate outcome of
literary culture, depend upon it literary culture will be
more distrusted in the world of politic than ever it has
been before. Even the squires, unless they are bitten by
Mr. Bright, looking on these Jamaica transactions by the
light of quarter sessions, feel that game itself would not
tempt them to commit such acts of naked injustice.
It is of little importance that men of the stamp of Lord
Cardigan should patronise wholesale illegality. Nothing
better is expected of them. But Mr. Carlyle, and even
Mr. Ruskin, occupy a far other place in the public estima-
tion, and exercise a far other influence than the hero of
the black bottle, to whose level for the moment they have
descended ; and we say that when they go out of
their way in become the advocates of Jamaica—
we shall no longer talk of Jedburgh—justice, they
do a very grievous injury to the common cause which they
as well as we have really at heart.

The important series of experiments g Shoe-
burynees were restuned yesterday. The object of
most of them was to test the respective merits of
the two systems of securing the bolts et armour-
plating proposed by Mr. Paget, C.E., and Mr.
Easemub, of the Admiralty. The previous experi-
ments were to test the penetrating power of the
Palliser shot and shell as compared with the best steel
shot hitherto produced ; and yesterday one of the Palliser
shells fired from a nine-inch gun direct at the target was
found to have pierced the eight-inch plating and the teak
backing, and to have carried away and driven into the
timber supports of the target a strong iron rib, making a
' clean bole of the exact diameter of the shell. Next a
solid shot made of old cannon-ball iron, which was fired
from the same gun, pierced the armour and the backing,
and protruded in the rear three or four inches. These
two shots confirmed the results of the previous day's
experiments, and demonstrated that the present Wool-
wich nine-inch gun will pierce the armour of any iron
clad afloat, whether of our own or any other navy.

ICA.

(1'213 ATLANTIC TELYAZAPTI.)
NEW YORK, Rm. 13.
The radicals have carried the Maine elections.
NEW YORK, Strr. 12, Evsamo.
Gold, 1461. Exchange on London, 156. 5-20
United States Bonds, 111. Illinois, 122. Erie,
72i. Cotton, 53f. Petroleum : Crude, 27* ; re-
fined, 45. Stocks and exchange firmer.