The Express.
London, England, 1866-12-26 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

(THLS DAY.)

FORTIGN AFFAIRS.
Reviewing the two late speeches by Comm
Bisinar,k, and explaining the position and argument,,
which they assume and employ, the Times has no hesita-
tion in filling up one blank in them by expressing the
conviction that the upshot of all the late German
movements would be to close against France the frontier
of the Rhine, and thereby greatly to diminish the
chances of general European complications. With
regard, however, to the flagrant bad faith with which
the Prussian statesman puts off the appeal which he
had promised to France should be made to the North
Schleswigers, until their vote for Prussia may by
fair or foul means be secured, the Emperor Na-
poleon would be fully justified as regarding it as
a crimes Galli any time he might feel inclined to try an
issue between the Chassepot and the needle gun. But
while we have hardly any terms sufficiently strong to de-
nounce the pretexts of the " vague wording" and the
" latitude " on which the Prussian Minister almost cyni-
cally grounds his arguments, we cannot lose sight of the
fact that in this matter, no less than in that of the treaty
of Nikolsburg itself, Count Bismarck acted under the pres-
sure of a force which he had no power to withstand.
Schleswig-Holstein is the only point on which German
obstinacy is proof even against all the sense and worth of
the greatest of living Germans.
To the Timfd, the Republican party in America appear
to be endeavouring to attain their ends by means which
are deati active of the scheme of government designed by
the authors of the Federation. The government of the
United States at this hour is net, the Timca says, a repre-
sentative government ; Congress is not a deliberative b doy.
Congress is engrirsing power to itself on all sides, and yet
it is not Congress that is supreme, but a power behind
Congress—secret, irresponsible, almost unknown. The
decrees of this self-elected council, matured in private,
are launched upon the legislature, which accepts them
without discussion, and the destinies of the nation are
committed to the keeping of a few unseen men, who direct
the machine of legislation. The only hope of arresting
this transformation of the American government lies in s
recoil of national opinion such as has landed the Republi-
can party in its present triumphant position.
It would be absurd, observes the Doily News, to com-
pare the actual financial resources of France and Italy, but
the budgets of the two countries may be fairly contrasted
without disadvantage to the younger State. M. Fould's
financial statement, a purely conjectural and imaginative
manifesto, elaborately incomprehensible and studiously
vague, is a brilliant romance of expectations, a dream of
possibilities, a mirage of unemployed credits and super-
abundant revenues, which vanish at the approach. Italian
ministers of finance have yet to learn the art of grouping
figures so SSW make a deficit look more splendid than a
surplus. The Daily News then praises the Italian
finance minister for his frankness, and lauds
the schemes by which it is understood he will
seek to liberate the country from seine of the heavy debt
which weighs upon it, cowing to the conclusion that he is
justified in anticipating a happy and not very distant end
of financial deficits.
The Daily Nears instances a recent interposition of the
Archbishop of Paris in one case, and of a vicar and care
in another, as a fact which encourages the hope that the
practice of the Roman catholic clergy of France in sc.