The Express.
London, England, 1858-02-20 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20.

In the Horst of COMMONS last night, the second
reading of the Conspiracy to Murder fill being on
the order of the day, Mr. laser Gibson 's amend-
ment was moved, and the debate resulted in a
division, as follows :
For the amendment
Against . .....
Majority against the government
The announcement of this result was hailed with
loud

Br a majority of 234 to 215, the House of Commons
has expressed its regret that Ministers did set
answer the insolently dictatorial despatch of Count

WALEWiIIi, before proceeding to introduce their

Conspiracy Bill. This may not be quite equivalent
to a vote of want of confidence, but it certainly le
a sole of censure, and tlntta not much more

flattering to the Cabinet. Every friend to the
honour and dignity of the country will thank
Mr. MI oi ta GIBSON for having afforded the
House of Commons this opportunity of expressing
its regret at the failure of the Foreign-office
to answer the demand of the French Government
for the adoption of new penal measures against
foreigners domiciled amongst tis. Apart from the
tone of assumption and dictation in which the
demand was officially made, and the offensive and
threatening language an-officially, but not the less
significantly, used to enforce it in high quarters, the
mere fact that a powerful ally should formally
require the responsible Ministers of en English
Sovereign to change the legislative or administrative
policy of the country ought at any time to have
elicited a serious and deliberate answer. To have
permitted such a requisition to pass unrebuked, or
to have suffered the incompatibility of its purpose
with all we hold traditionally most dear in national
liberty to pass undemonstrated, would, in former
days, have subjected a Minister to the gravest re-
proach. Lord atwimestrav thought so when he
wrote his oft-quoted reply to the summons of
NAPOLEON I. that we should surrender, at his dis-
cretion, our political individuality.
The Foreign Secretary of England in 1803 was a
Tory, as were a majority of his colleagues in the
administration ; but he was animated with the true
spirit of an Englishman, and with the entire ap-
proval of the Sovereign and Parliament of the time
he put courteously, but unflinchingly, on record the
reasons why it would have been unbecoming is him
to entertain foreign suggestions for changes in our
domestic laws. Lord HswitzsaullY answered with
sense and spirit, with the calm courtesy of a minister
who had no wish to involve his country in &quarrel,
but with the dignified firmness that is always
best calculated to remind a rash intermeddler
that he is in the wrong. Hs had to deal, as he well
knew, with an impetuous soldier intoxicated with
victory and fall of dreams of conquest and aggres-
sion. Yet he did not falter for an instant, or truckle
by the use of an equivocal phrase. The true instinct
of honour guided his pen, and guided it successfully.

The first ICAPOLEON knew how to respect courage

in diplomacy as well as in the field ; and angry
though he was, or affected to be, et the inflexibility
of the British Government in resisting his attempt
to browbeat them, he did not recall his ambassador,
or even talk of going to war.

Unhappily, Lord CLARRNDON has pursued a dif-
ferent course. Though bred a Tory and trained in
the maxims of the party, the present FoREIGN
BacarrAtte seems to have imbibed little of the high
and resolute spirit which, with all their faults, dis-
tinguished the Statesmen of Mr. Puss's School.
And Lord PALMIRSTON, who is now the sole sur-
vivor
of the clam to which the NAWKESBURTS and
WELLE9LLTS and CANNINOS belonged, seems to
lave outlived alike their policy and their pluck.
How would the men who did not hesitate to repel
the Great NAPOLKON'II insolent interference regard
the faint-hearted and unworthy silence in which the
ceders of M. WALERSILI and the menaces of M. PER-
MONT have been received? Could they rise from
their marble tombs and come once more to judg-
ment, there cannot be a doubt that each of them
would cast his @mental shell of reprobation along
with those of nearly every man of note or mark in the
present House of Commons. What is NAPOLEON 111.
compared with his illustrious predecessor? What is
lie individually, or by the luck of revolutionary
catastrophe and coup-ditat, that the Government of
Great Britain should mutely kneel before him? We
are not now arguing the provisions of the Conspiracy
Bill. By their own merits they must stand or fall.
Bat many a man who conscientiously, though we
think erroneously, voted Love to bring in that mea-
sure, indicated lest night his desire to distinguish
between that vote sod his approval of the conduct
of Lord CLARENDON. Reluctance to give needless
umbrage to the present ruler of Prance was the
single motive that induced many to assent to Cue
introduction of • bill of some kind ; but contempt
for the pusillanimity that could permit M.
Watewiet's first despatch to remain unanswered
has all the more naturally sought and found vent in
the more recent discussion and vote. We stated
at the time, whet we believe to be strictly emu_
eate, that a considerable number of Lord Daatit's