The Express.
London, England, 1860-03-27 00:00:00

enacted filitit aft.'
raiikeeents
whisper ova,

night at the expense of England by
tires of the English people. The •
of an independent member's voice in the Britt.
Pariiament sounds like a trumpet through the
sßence of Europe. How measured and how calm
should be the tone of English voices at such a time
r this I There is probably but one opinion among
i►gliahmen as to the system and policy of the
French Empire in this dark and disgraceful bruit.
law of the annexation of Savoy. There is but
ass opinion as to the tendencies it betrays and the
dangers it creates. Deliberate brigandage, how-
ever decently disguised, systematic piracy, however
iriurieously worded, has no friends or ad-
mirers in this old land of ordered freedom.
Bat do independent members, impelled no doubt
by the highest motives, represent English feeling
with due dignity or discretion when they lift up
their voices, and—call names T Mr. HOUMA,
mounts Savoy a. a favourite war-horse and charges
full tilt at the Government, but even he is careful
to protest that be means no fighting, and all his
blows at M. THOUVINTI, and the &reason are
backhanders at some ancient colleagues nearer
home—

To be wrath with those we love

Dual vMilliiii;;Tiel;;; ;12 the brain.
But the mischief of these backhanders, of such
a reckless expenditure of force, is that it weakens the
moral arm of England. Nothing can be easier and
nothing more mischievous than to make war speeches
without the responsibility of carrying your words
into action. To bind over a government to keep
the peace, and then to stigmatise it for pursuing
a peaceful policy, is surely the pettiest of all
the artifices of faction. Mr. HOUIRAN vitupe•
rates the English Government because Count
CAVOI*I has concluded an unworthy bargain,
because M. Taovvaxa►. has done his master's
dirty work with painful seal, because Austria is
ready to cut off her nose to spite her face, and
because Russia is indisposed to quarrel with a
precedent so profitable to her own designs in
the East of Europe. Even Prussia, perilously
near to the burning house, is ready to be appeased
by the insurance that the flames won't spread ;
and to England it is left to oover the dishonour of
Sardinia, and to maintain the residue of treaties
against the complicity or the cowardice of Powers
which have broken them before, and are glad to
have an excuse for breaking them again. The
silliest bigots of the Tory party 'hewed by their
acclamations last night into whose hands Mr.
ROMANIAN was playing when he suggested without
defining a deliberate recurrence to that continental
policy from which England was delivered by the
far-sighted genius of CANNING. Mr. Diaaazu, as
the " gentleman's gentleman " of the Holy
Alliance, is never so well inspired as when he is
mimicking the airs and the accent of a Merraasieu.
The ludicrously feeble vehemence (for in the
House of Commons vehemence is usually in exact
proportion to feebleness) with which Lord Jous
Max sass caught at the concluding sen-
tences of the Foams Misurraa's speech, and
converted them into a confession of Tory faith,
was a soi iv-0 which we recommend to the reflec-
tion of all true Liberals. Lord JOHN MANNZIA
and his friends live in hopes of seeing England at
the head of a new legitimate coalition, rallying the
forces of a subsidised Germany to the lively
strains of " Radetsky's March." It would be a
noble effort of the latter days of the nineteenth
century to put a fraudulent bankrupt Kaiser'
on his legs, and to " restore " liberty to France,
under the benignant auspices of the genial Bottesos
who writes to M. VILLZHAIX from Frobsdorf to
congratulate that eminent Liberal on his tardy
conversion to Catholic truth. Mr. BRIGHT, who
in hi■ loftiest flights on foreign policy seldom
raises his head above the counter, did good
service last night in detecting and denounc-
ing this miserable old Tory policy of coalitions,
subsidies, and restorations, and in repudiat-
ing the counsels of thine foreign advisers, who,
in their excessive zeal for the liberties
they have not had the courage to keep, are inces-
santly sneering their little sneers at the neutrality
and isolation of England. Let us for a moment
endeavour to disengage from a heap of sophistries
one grain of truth as to the duty of England to-
wards Europe. It is the honour, perhaps, too, the
misfottime of England, that in political morality she
is to France what civilisation is to barbarism. In
spite of all her flashy sentimentalism and diseased
art, France is, politically speaking, a barbarous na-
tion. At home in the enjoyment of the basest
of all forms of government, a democratic despotism;
abroad she glories in the pursuit of organised
brigandage. In an age of peace she is mad with
the intoxicating idolatry of War. To this
Moloch her genius, her energy, her reproduetive
labour is sacrificed ; and even the few nobler
spirits that profess a faith in right and freedom
are ready to worship the Force that compels some
weaker neighbour to stand and deliver a province.
Against this worship of the sword the whole life of
England visibly protests. But, thanks to the
narrow seas, we protest only. It is no duty of
ours to crusade for the liberty of nations that pre-
fer glory to freedom, for the " rights "of deposed
sovereigns, or even for Austrian ascendancy in
Europe. Our own shores, our own rights and liber-
ties, our own living witness to the right and the
truth—to shield these sacred blessings from insult
and attack, and to hold up the beacon light of jus-
tice to the nations—this is the first and last duty
of England.