The Express.
London, England, 1858-02-13 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 13, 1858.

there is no responsibility to Parliament be-
cause Parliament chooses to abdicate its right
to call offending Ministers to account. If,
for example, no one was made respon-
sible for fixing that mighty blot, the war in
Afghanistan, on our national history, was it because
Lord Psi-neuron and his sasociates were not re-
sponsible for the crime, or because Parliament would
not bring them to trial ? The responsibility of a
Minister is just what Parliament chooses to make
it ; and the government of India, we repeat, by the
East India Gaispany and the Board of Control is to
the full as responsible a Government as any which
can be devised by the most ingenious constitution-
monger who ever framed a system of government in
Utopia or in Whitehall.
And yet, weak as is this clap-trap of " responsi-
" bility"—weak in the mouth of any man, doubly
weak in that of Lord PALMERSTON— it is absolutely
the strong point of the Minister's speech. He
talked, it is true, about the delays incident upon the
present system of check and counter-check—" the
0 previous communications and subsequent oommu-
" nications, the despatches referred by each from
" one part of the town to the other, by which
" • despatch that ought to go to-morrow
" might not go for a month, when it is
" too late to mend it." But the fact is, that when
there is a necessity for promptitude of action, when
despatch is of more importance than deliberation,the
business is done with as much rapidity of execution
as if there were no distinct establishments at dif-
ferent ends of the town. There has during the last
eventful six months been an almost continual neces.
sty for the prompt despatch of troops to India. If
there had been no such establishment as the India
House, is it to be supposed that a single
Teasel would have been taken up or a
angle man embarked a day worm for the
East P What is our experience of single de-
partments in this matter of the despatch, the equip-
ment, and the provision of troops? Do things go
better under the " direct" superintendence of a
Minister of War? The machinery of the Double
Government may, by reason of its cheeks and
counterchecks, be somewhat cumbrous and over-
burdened with forms; and it is possible that some
improvements might be introduced into the existing
mode of transacting business; but the delays of which
Lord PALMERSTON speeke are almost wholly confined
to matters where no emergency exists to render
deliberation subordinate to despatch. The Court at
Directors of the East India Company is a delibera-
tive body, and there is immense advantage in its,
deliberations. But in cases of emergency forms
and procures are diminished, and the wheels go
round as rapidly as in any single department
et the State. This Is the second ministerial clap-
trap ; and with it the defence of the new
BM is exhausted. And it is on such grounds as these
that a Government out of the existence of which
have arisen the most marvellous political and admi-
nistrative results is to be demolished at a blow.
Never was so great a revolution based upon such a
slender foundation of reason. The most im-
portant measure ever recommended to Par-
liament in our time has been incubated
in haste, in ignorance, in confusion ; and instead
of solid and substantial facts and weighty argu-
ments, the propounier of this dangerous sad de-
structive scheme crows out a couple of flatulent
clap-traps, and thinks that he has convinced the na-
tion of the wisdom of his perilous design.

IT is a proud thing for an English citizen to live
under the protecting tegis of a thoroughly English
Minister—not Austrian, mark, not Russian, not
French, but English in every principle of his policy
and in every impulse of his heart. It is still a
popular sentiment, it was once a national belief,
that the British empire hes secured such a Minister
in Lord PALMERSTON. Lord CLARENDON, accord-
ing to the nine judgment, is in this respect
scarcely his inferior. According to the superstitions
of the market-place, the PRIME MINISTER and the
POISSON SECRETARY are the CASTOR and POLLUX
of British freedom. To calmer judgments this
always appeared a singular description of hero-
worship, • triumph of faith and hope over plain
facts and sad experiences. People who could ob-
serve for themselves—people who had watched the
great revolutionary storms of 1848—the shipwreck
of nationalities inflated by false hopes up to the in-
surrection point, and then calmly abandoned to
their fate—could never quite sympathise with this
idolatry for the English Minister. They thought of
arcsasia--they thought of Sicily—they thought of
Hungary, and were content to stand aside, and let
others worship after their own fashion this
&vim of the nations not yet rand,
And Europe's liberator still analarad.

_
But these things didn't come home to the hearts
of the English people ; deserted nationalities and be-
trayed revolutions were topics too remote and abstract
to stir strongly the sympathies of an insular and self-
centred race. Here and there a stump orator made
political capital out of them for a time, but the facts
were too little known and the order of ideas too un-
familiar to excite more than a transient emotion of
incredulity and surprise.
It is different with this case of the English Engi-
neers at Salerno. Here are two of our own country-
men who, literally for no fault of their own, bat
simply in consequence of armed violence which they
were powerless to resist, have been ever since the
end of last Jane subjected to the grossest in-
dignities, to the harshest imprisonment, and
are now undergoing a trial which is •
mere mockery of all the forms of justice.
These two men, who, as engineers of the vessel, bad
no more power of guiding her course than though
they bad been themselves • part of her machinery—
these two men who, with loaded pistols pointed at
their heads, were compelled, under menace of instant
death, to continue at their post in the engine-room,
are arraigned upon an act of accusation which alleges
as a proof of guilt " the grave circumstance that
" Warr, being the chief machinist, would have
" directed the course of the vessel to Tunis, and not
" Ponta, bad he not been in perfect accord with
" PARK and all the other conspirators ;" and which
declares " that there is no proof of violence of which
"they can avail themselves es a shield." It is difficult to
say whether the absurdity of the one allegation or
the falsehood of the'other is more glaring. Warr, inhis
engine-room, was of course absolutely powerless over
the course of the vesseL All on board of her concur
in declaring that two hours after the ship sailed
from Genoa the insurgents rose on them, compelled
them to go below, put guards over them, and threat-
ened to blow their brains out. Directly the insur-
gents had landed, and the compulsion was removed,
the ship sailed far Naples, and on her way thither
on a friendly errand was captured on the high seas.
From first to last, as far u the seizure of the
ship, the crew, and the two English engineers was
concerned, there has not been the shadow of a
shade of legality in the proceedings of the
Neapolitan Government. This seizure took place at
the end of June ; we are now in the middle of
February. Nearly eight months have elapsed since
these two nnoffending Englishmen were carried
captive into Salerno in a sort of barbarous triumph;
chained like felons; stripped stark naked; throat into

a wretched cell, where for four months and a half
they were kept, contrary even to such semblance of
law as still exists in Naplee, without being permitted
to see so much as the British Consul; starved on black
lamed and noisome prison broth, and, worse than all,
with a maddening sense of neglect and abandon-
I sent eating into the very core of their
manly English hearts. For these two engi-
neers, low people as they were, had, strange
to say, a dim sense that after all they were English-
men, that they were being foully punished though
they bad done no wrong, and that they were basely
deserted by the great country of which they gloried
in being natives. They had no blue blood in their
mina, but they felt those things almost as acutely as
a Right Honourable. They came of a stalwart race,
they were denizens of that stout northern town where
even the humblest have been accustomed to hear, if
not to use, strong language about the rights of free-
men and the oppression of the despots. These two
Newesatle men, though only engineers, actually felt
it an addition to their degradation that they were
in the gripe of FERDINAND the FALSE; that they
were thrust into prison without crime, were kept
there without law, and were going to be tried without
justice. It may be a low quality, but there is some-
thing in the average English temperament which
makes fiat injustice more loathsome even than the
harshest severity ; and these men, besides the burn-
ing resentment which this sense of wrong kept alive
in their rade minds, had to bear also the burden of
the thought that they were forgotten by their coun-
trymen, and abandoned by their Government. These
things have produced their natural effect. Warr has
been driven mad. His answers are rambling and
incoherent. He sees figures, and hears strange
expressions in court, which none either see or hear.
Finally, he has refused to appear before the tribunal.
When our correspondent's last letter left, he was
under examination of a medical commission to aecer-
tain whether his trial could be proceeded with. The
next thing we hear of him will probably be that be
is shut up for life in a Neapolitan lunatic asylum.
Are these things to be tolerated--are they to be
explained away, or sneered away, or joked away ?
This man Warr has been seized without law, impri-
soned without law, tried without law, and is now
driven mad by a course of persecution, every step in
which has been a scandalous violation of interna-
tional right, and a foul disgrace to the honour of
England. And what during these eight months
have my Lords PALMERSTON and CLARENDON been
doing for these unhappy men—what are they
doing even now? The FOREIGN SECRETART, in the
Upper House, when last the case was mentioned,
simpered out a self-complacent hope that the two
prisoners would in due course be honourably ac-
quitted, and gave vent to a feeble joke or two as to
their being not wane treated than Neapolitan pri-
soners. The Parma Munirrzs, in the Commons,
vouchsafed the information that the Law Officers of
the Crown would proceed to consider the points as
to the legality of the seizure, rand by the Sardinian

Government;points on which Count CAVOIII has
long since terminated inquiry and proceeded to action.
And these are the high-spirited English Ministers—
thew) are the Dioscuat of British freedom—these

are the men who are to strike blind the despots
of the earth by waving over the meanest of English
subjects the protecting tegis of Britannia. Faugh !
It is a considerable title to the gratitude of Loma
NAPOLEON to have introdnoed a Conspiracy Bill ; it
is a still more gratifying offering of the same kind to
our faithful ally of Austria to have tamely allowed
this unoffending Englishman to be tortured into
madness by the lawless oppression of FERDIXAMD
the FALSE. The House of Commons, which ensures
the triumph of the one act, may mare the indemnity
of the other—but the People of England will forget
neither.

OUT of six hundred and fifty-four members, who
constitute the House of Commons, two hundred have
determined to allow the French Bill, for the better
protection of the French EMPEROR, to be discussed.
These two hundred are Ws than one-third of those
who are supposed to represent the opinions of some
27,000,000. No fewer than 258 of those whose duty
it is to have an opinion hung back because, we pre-
sume, they have as yet no opinion at all. The sub-
ject for consideration is both novel and difficult.
There is, therefore, something to be said for the step
which has been taken. In order to allow time
for deliberation it may, perhaps, be reasonable to
permit the introduction of this new Alien Bill. To
some it may seem more decorous, and more dignified,
to give the matter full discussion. But if this be the
opinion of those who supported the Government on
Tuesday last, or who declined to give an opinion, it
is obviously their duty now seriously to consider the
question, and to understand clearly the effect of the
Bill now on the table of the House. The House of
Commons may rest soured of this, that if they are
blind to the momentous consequences of this new
piece of legislation, the people out of doors are not
so eager to be deceived.

Consider for • moment what Lord Patinas/vs
proposes to do. As the law at present stands say
two or more men—whether British subjects or

foreigners—conspiring, or, in other words, forming
the design to commit murder, are guilty of a

usdemeaa or. U, therefore, several persons meet

together in their own lodging;, or in a
chop-house, and come to the resolution of
murdering a foreign Potentate; or if inch
persona write letters to each other, and thus
arrange to perpetrate such a crime ; they may, if
the facts be proved, be found guilty of a misde-
meanor. Legal jargon is not very intelligible to
laymen ; but the effect of the present law is this :
the conspirators--those who are suppoeed to hays
formed this murderous design—may be summoned
before a magistrate, and may be bound to appear to
stand their trial ; but before trial they cannot be
put into prison. If convicted by a jury, these con-
spirators may be compelled to pay a considerable
fine, and may then be punished by being imprisoned i
but until that verdict of a jury is delivered they are

comparatively at their nee. No malt c n layliande

on an alleged conspirator until he has beet duly sum- '
mooed and has refused to obey the summons. No
officerrof justice can obtain access to his letters or corre-
spondence; for no warrant for that purpose can be
obtained. This is now the common law of England,
and it has been the common law for centuries. That
law is the foundation of our liberty. It is the source

of that respect for personal liberty which forms the
noblest chapter in our legal history. The right of
personal freedom bas always been guarded with the
utmost jealousy. It is almost a constitutional super-
stition. In striot acurdanos with this inveterate
idea the English law has always recognised the dis-
tinction between words and acts—between a design
in contemplation and a design in execution. Mo-
ralists will tell you that the man who has the inten-
tion to murder another is just as guilty as the man
wbo has the dagger in his hand to execute his
design. Suppose four persona dining at Claremont
should form the project of dethroning the
French EMPLIIOI, moralists will tall you that
they are just as wicked as four men who
provide themselves with some explosive matter
and launoh it from a window at the imperial car-
riage. But jurists and lawyers are of a difluent

opinion. They say one is a mere design, the other '
is an accomplished Ibct. They allow time for re-
pentance. They see the danger to which innocent
men would be exposed by confounding a design
eviclenoed, by conversation and letters, and a design
evidenced by acts and deeds. They say it is very
right when a man is attacked that those who see the
outrage committed should at once seize the culprit.
It is very right when a man has been robbed or
murdered, and grave suspicion attaches to some indi-
vidual, that search-warrants should be granted, and
that the rooms, the drawers, the most secret
corners of the suspected man's house, should
be examined. But this cannot be tolerated in
a case of mere criminal intention. No doubt it is
very bad to hear a party of men at a dinner-table
expressing a desire to put Louts NAPOLEON to death
and concocting means for the purpose ; but it would
never do to allow the butler to call upon the footman
to join him on the instant, and to collar his master
and his guests. Words are too easily misunderstood
—the dangers of mistake are too serious—to allow
anything of the sort. At present, all that could be
done in such a case would be to obtain a summons

from a magistrate, calling upon the master to answer
for his criminal design, for, as we have already ex-
plained, he would be guilty of a misdemeanor only.
But Lord PALMERt3TON proposes to convert this
misdemeanor into a felony. In other words, he pro-
poses to allow any gentleman's butler who thinks
that words uttered at table amount to a design
to murder any man abroad—the Emperor of
FRANCE or the King of NAPLES—to arrest his master
at the head of his own table. Lord Patuzasroar

proposes to allow any spy of the French Govern-
ment to obtain search-warrants, so that the drawers,
the desks, and secret repositories of every citizen,
will be liable to be overhauled, and every line found
there to be read and scrutinised. The is the simple
effectof converting a conspiracy, which is now a mis-
demeanor, into a felony. Now, are the people of
this country prepared for this P Are they willing to
alter the fundamental principles of our criminal law ?
Are French spies to be invested with powers
which we have hitherto denied to our own officers ?
Is the distinction between words and ace so long
held sacred by English lawyers to be obliterated P
We are told to believe that every Englishman's
house is his castle. Where will this axiom find a
place, if every house of every English citizen, and of
every foreign refugee, is liable to be invaded by
police-officers armed with search-warrants, whenever
Lorne NAPOLEON or FERDINAND of Naples may
see fit? Let not the public imagine that the

distinction between a misdemeanor and a felony
is merely verbal. It is substantial. If I see
a man commit a misdemeanor, I cannot arrest
him. If I see a man commit a felony I can.
If I commit a felony, a police-officer, with his search-
warrant, may enter my house, break open my drawers,
and read all my papers. He may do this again and
again. In short, he may by never-ceasing interfer-
ence torture me out of the country. If I commit a
misdemeanor lam subject to no interference of the
sort. Hall those men driven by the storms of State
to these hospitable shores are henceforth to submit
to this sort of persecution, they mast henceforth be
content to forego all the blessings of English inde-
pendence and the happiness of an English home.