The Express.
London, England, 1867-04-11 00:00:00

PEI NCFNES.

Tars IiirMING, NO. I,ROCNIS—TITE CORNER. Mews.
Shore and Forrester.—And IT IS NEVER ToO LATE TO
MEND. Messrs. Vining. E. Villiers, Verner, Shore, Calltaens,
and Mellon: Misses Page end Rodgers.

LITEI

TRII EVENIN(I. iI.IMIIOIT/.l;iiiT.Mr. Price and Miss Kate
Bidltitp.—Aud TII E IH K Ezi MOTTO. Mr. Fechter, Messrs.
Jordan, Eatery. Price, Fitzpatrick, ttc. ; Muck
lienrade, Elswurt:iy, tiratton, and Carlotta Leclemi.

STRAND.

THIS EVRNING, SW Miff! lalif`i AND WIVE. 9. Mr. BeI-
ford.—ESMEILALDA ; OK, THE SENSATION GOAT. Mears.
Morse, Junes, Robson. and Turner Swanborough,
Hughes, Weatheralq, ex.—And THE FRENCH EXHIBITION.

HOLBORN.

Tam ammo, MY TURN NRXT. Mr. Belmont; Mime
soots and 1.0111101-41 A FLYING SCUD. Mesas. Neville, Bel-
move, Blake, Vollaire, ttc. Mesdames F. Josephs, C. Mandan,
Bessie Foote, friddes, Lounos, Raymond, de.

BRITANI,TIA.

THIN EVENING, 711 K OLD MINT OF SOUTHWARK. Miss
(lard UrillllllB.—F.ll., r. Mrs. Lane. Illows Edwin. and booth;
blew& Higwood, Elton, de.—Aud THE EAtilJe. AND
CHILD. Nhas Clara 141111118.

MOO WATER AT LONDON BRIDOL

TIN DAY tren......Afternoon, Th. Im.
ZO-MOlutow—Morulng, ton.

LONDON, TII URSDAY, APRIL 11.

WHEN the First NAPOLEON returned from Elba
he solemnly acknowledged, by the grant of the
Acte Additionet, the impossibility of governing
France without liberty, in the absence of military
glory. Whether, had the Allies consented to his re-
covered usurpation, ho would or could have kept his
word, and disarmed, and proclaimed an Empire of
Peace, is a question that must ever remain un-
answered. At St. Helena, however, he repeatedly
and emphatically declared the sincerity of his
adhesion to the Aete Additiwo.l. He also, it is
true, asserted that his original desire had
been to unite all Europe in one grand
confederation, and to establish perpetual in-
ternational peace ; only the perverse ingra-
titude and unbelief of nations had limited his
beneficent purposes to conquest and subjugation,
to the partitioning of kingdoms among the mem-
bers of his own family, and the enrolment of sub-
ject populations under his liberating standards.
The Restoration gave liberty to France, but un-
happily with a sparing and grudging hand ;
and when the reaction triumphed in the coun-
cils of the BOURBON monarchy, it was obliged
to fall back upon glory; if glory it could be called
which consisted in sending an army to a country
distracted by civil war to lend its aid in the de-
struction of liberty. But mark the result of that re-
actionary policy at home. It combined the liberals
and the Bonapartists, and made the latter the cham-
pions at once of national honour and public liberty.
The Monarchy of July was founded by Liberals
and Bonapartista, and began by attempting to
satisfy both the passion for liberty and the passion
for glory. It ended by disappointing both,
and fell before an insurrection in the name of
liberty, of a people who had neither all the liberty
they asked for, nor all the glory. The Republic of
'4B gave so much liberty that the nation had no
need of glory ; but the " old parties," in
order to get rid of this excess of
liberty, • combined with an ignorant peasantry
to elect a NAPOLEON in the name of glory. Not
that the French Conservatives called for war. They
bad not forgotten the terrible conscriptions of the
First Empire ; but they wanted order, and they
were destined to get more of it than they desired.
The Empire was restored ; but without the
charter of the Hundred Days. It was to be the
Empire of barracks and bayonets pure and simple,
with every public right and liberty suppressed, ex-
cept the right and liberty to eat, drink, and be
merry. But soon came the inevitable problem.
How could a Napoleonic Empire without the Ade
Additionel exist without glory ? The EMPEROR
at Bordeaux, at a banquet of " men of
" business," declared that the Empire was
peace. But peace, as all the world
knows, means liberty at home, and it
remained to be seen whether the Second Empire
was capable of restoring the liberty it had de-
stroyed. What followed ? A sudden and im-
mense expansion of industry and commerce, a
devouring fever of speculation, a rage for public
works, all the blessings of order, but of order
without security. From that moment all Europe
became that " armed camp " which Mr. DISRAELI
deplored the other day. A new era of wars and
foreign expeditions was ushered in. First, the
Crimean war, which, as history will show, if Russia
provoked, the French Government had tempted it
to provoke. Then the Italian war, transacted in a
tite-a-tite at Plombieres for the valuable consi-
deration of Nice and Savoy. Then the war in
Mexico for the establishment of an empire under
a French protectorate, as a counterpoise to
the Republic of the United States ; then a
war for the liberation of Poland, if England
would have contributed a contingent to the French
forces; then a Congress of Paris to show cause why
France should not resume her natural frontiers ;
then on the more or leas direct refusal of all the
Powers to take part in such a Congress, the
abandonment of Denmark to the tender mercies
of Germany, and a second edition of the Plom-
bieres transaction with Count BISMARCK for the
aggrandisement of Prussia, with conditional com-
pensations for an attentive neutrality ; then this
little affair with the King of HOLLAND which has
expanded into " the Luxemburg question," and
now convulses every Bourse in Europe. Such
has been the peaceful and beneficent course of
the Second Empire, which the " men of business,"
who disdain principles and dread liberty as a
nuisance, acclaimed as a reign of order and tran-
quillity. It has enriched a host of cynical
speculators in uncertainty and confusion—it has
debauched or .stet e!ied the publi,• mind of a great
people—but so far from establishing peace or