The Express.
London, England, 1860-12-18 00:00:00

Ibe •xtresixs..

W& =ll:iseiseeb leei4l
r4=116 4, Mor "Tii;-17"•Iiimiglatosiss as.
wilts:

TEO TirfairL Al VTIOTAL ILiTeL Krsr,4lP.Porak.
C=6..LOorPOL soil lodorgrea ; Xler Mme. Um
—MOT TO TIM NULL Mr. Cbroomoirk: Xlas L
Sorrol—Aid MT MOILUIVI OXOTT..-omorms MI.

TO !mum =Ai 1111117ningarair. 11.16Albowase lams
001.1 f 111071110. Mem /edam A.
Miroximilsallow ; Ifte 111111511/...Ael as GAILY=

R. JAMMU.
To Imam TNI LOAN 01 A Wes! Nam Al=
yaw MON. OANA—!TILL NATION INN
AIM taloodmiNsi;plboary lira A- Mak Mks Saatta&.-Akadl
JIM ma kaltiallt

Darwin&
nusistownlocq, 11l MUM ,ONATRAW WILD.
asesda &aka— imisetalsokes&—MLY O'CONNOR..
WN. LW. Crsidont. lbw —Awl TIM Malin ILOWICIL
nazism —Ounwass 111.

num yam £T IONDON
Tl DAT •iIi•MMI, ate.... Wria. (IL ba.
To-geasow—iimig& a TM—. Allinace. Ob. Alm.

LONDON, russzur. DIC. 18.

IT is perhaps one of the insular weaknesses of
Englishmen to wonder bow the continental world
can possibly get on without English laws, habits,
and principles. In our secret souls we are not
very far from regarding all foreigners, not in the
Greek but the Chinese sense, as " barbarians."
How is it, for example, that the law of the
road, as it obtains in our land of famous
" whips" and riders, is peculiar to the British
Islas t Of course ours is the only sensible law of
the road ; all the rest of our riding and driving
fellow-creatures take the wrong side. This
intense national self-sufficiency is no doubt
excusable when it is • question of how
the brisk and lively stranger can comfortably
celebrate the mysteries of ablution in a pint
of shaving-water per diem; and there is surely
nothing that can be called parochial-minded in our
considering the paisport system a sign of com-
parative social and political servitude. Yet, with
all the high, and sometimes justifiable, pretensions
of the moat enlightened nation of Continental
Europe to be the great forerunner of civilization,
there is not one of the many political parties in
France which, in it. wildest dreams of the revolu-
tionary perfectibility of the human race, has ever
dared to grasp the idea of allowing a man or woman,
native or foreign, to move from ens place to an-
other without • certificate of personal identity,
entitling the holder to an unknown quantity
of small extortions from a oonspiracy of
petty police officials, and to a certain number
of complimentary and illegible signatures of infi-
nitesimal diplomatists. One can easily imagine a
traveller taking his ease in his Russian inn, and
suddenly whisked off to Siberia to account, if
he can, for some faint resemblance to a name in
the Black Book. In Germany, North or South,
the clumsiest and silliest form of inquisi-
torial trifling is conceivable ; but it seems
strange that in France neither ometitutional
royalties nor visionary republics should have
ever approached near enough to an understanding
of the simplest conditions of common personal
liberty and security (not to speak of the Rights of
Man), to allow plain Mr. Joss or harmless
Monsieur Viiiv zoom to traverse or quit French ter-
ritory without entering his name, weight, and
colour in • huge Way-book that is never filled up,
qualifying him for honourable mention in the Hue
and ery, and throwing the Limo of "public safety"
round his innocent neck. It has been reserved for
an absolute Sovereign, who is usually more liberal
than his government, and not unfrequently in ad-
vanes of his Opposition, to brush away with a
stroke of his pen a system which his predecessors,
with liberty and equality on their lips and in their
laws, never so much as doubted or discussed. The
present SOVIASION of the French people no doubt
knows, se well as any foreign traveller in the Re-
volution line, or any Great Briton, commer-
cial or uncommercial, the vexatious futility
of • system of permits and vouchers, which
never stopped a conspirator, or facilitated,
the progress of • simple tourist. The Prisoner of
Ham and his devoted comrade of Strasburg and
Boulogne are not the men to believe in the
efficacy of passports ; and men who have lived
long in England and learnt to love English freedom
of locomotion on their own account were little
likely to tolerate a worrying complication of
tomfooleries which treats a Paterfamilias, taking
a trip to Paris, as a probable malefactor, from
the moment he sets foot on French soil, and
perpetuates a breed of useless and nondeemipt
functionaries whose idea of a future state is pro-
bably an eternity of recording angels, sworded,
uniformed, and snuffy, shaking illimitable sand
over an incommensurable precis verbal about

everybody in general and nothing in particular.
It ID because the passport system is • vested
interest that it has been found so difficult to
touch. We have heard more than once in
the last eight years that it wee on the point
of abolition in France ; and it was no secret that
the Everiont was resolved to get rid of it at
the earliest opportunity. Indeed, it is simple
justice to the Eurasia to own that in all his per-
sonal acts he has shown himself faithful to his in-
timate and friendly recollections of the land of his
exile. Mince his accession to imperial power the
purport system has been so considerably mitigated
in favour of English travellers that its total aboli-
tion On New Year's-day will give more pleasure
than naief. We accept the boon of our Im-
perial friend's 0e,..e. in • hearty spirit of
reciprocity. and in our English fashion we wish him
many a rooming Christmas season with its mes-
sages of peace, kindness, and goodwill. M. us.
,„,cured the h.•oi ra, in the drama
of the ."«.entol Empire. Store his return to office
scarcely a day has passed without some gene-

,
41iS

roue word or liberal Set. Basic said that
SO Whig patty was " the wife of (hen-
pecked) England In we may be allowed to
describe M. •D 1 PAsaarnitt as the "better half'
of the Second Empire. The abolition of passports
for English travellers, which we may confidently
hope is intended this time to be final, absolute,
without conditions or reservations, is the natural
and fititng completion of the Treaty of Commerce
between the two countries. The number of
Frond& commercial visitors to England has already
largely increased within the last half-year, and in
fact our neighbourly relations are becoming day by
day more and more mutually interdependent, more
closely bound up together for better and for
worse. Our friends over the water are bringing
up their children to speak and even to think in
English, and, according to all present appearances,
five years of peace and uninterrupted intercourse
will go far to make war between two such noble
rivals as impossible as war between England and
the United States.
The form of the announcement in the Mon iteur,
however, seems to suggest a difficulty which no
doubt M. nor Patine= is prepared to solve. British
subjects are to be sandaled and allowed to travel
about (or circulate) is Prams, without paasporta.
But how is the elder branch of the Anglo-Saxon
family to be distinguished in all cam
from the younger by the French functionary t
A gendarme can scarcely be expected to discern
the subtle inflections of the American language,
or to know from which pasture the lean or the
fat kine comes. The principle of reciprocity
must, in the Elll9llolos intention, comprise
our cousins in the license to travel without a vise.
But there are Scandinavians, Germans, and
Flemisp, and Amiens who might • be mis-
taken for Anglo-Sons ; and we know Italians
who speak idiomatic English with almost an English
accent. There is but one way of ascertaining a
Briton's nationality, and that is precisely by the
awkward and fallacious system about to be
abolished. To examine orally a traveller from
England sa to his nationality would be a mere
modification of the passport system, not its aboli-
tion. To accept every traveller from England who
speaks bad French or good English ea an English-
man, or any English traveller who happens
to speak good French as not an Englishman,
would be equally absurd. To abolish passports
for the subjects of one State is, to our thinking,
implicitly to abolish them for all. Take out one
stone and down goes the we& The wall itself is
a barbarous anachronism in an age of steam, and
none but diplomatists of the old school—the Chinese
of Europe--are capable of believing that it
.ought
to be kept up.

Wires we noticed the contents of the Russian
telegram yesterday, reporting the conclusion of
pace with China, it was in the trustful confidence
that a further and complementary instalment of
news might be in reserve of a nature to allay the
painful anxiety felt for those of our countrymen
who remained prisoners at the date of the last
mail. We regret to learn that private tele-
grams from Bt. Petersburg do not favour the
hopes we have all entertained. This painful
suspense cannot, however, be much further
prolonged. By the end of the week we
ought to receive telegraphic intelligence from the
neighbourhood et Pekin to the date at whirch the
treaty is alleged to have been signed, a term which
would be quite sufficient to enable the Chinese
to produce any prisoners they may hold.

.4Nr-
`4ll

'Or
' 'ely4
alirtstg p, DEC'VE 10
7:

i!!
LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

ITALY.
BONE Dim 16.
The death of Cardinal Claude is announced.
A °minatory wi4,4he held on Monday next, when
the Pope will address an allocution to the cardinals.
Several bishops, three of whom are suburban,
have been appointed.
Benevento is lost to the Holy See.
Reactionary movements have taken place at
several places in the March provinces and in
Umbria.

The Pontifical Zonaves have re-entered Rome.
General Latour has left for Paris on a special
mission from Francis IL to the Emperor Napoleon.