The Express.
London, England, 1859-03-12 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 12.

Tun City has pronounced against the Bill. Nearly
all the Metropolitan Boroughs had previously de.
eland their conviction of its insufficiency to meet
the wants of the time; and their unanimous verdict
has now received the confirmation of that great
centre of wealth, intelligence, and enterprise that
sits as a queen among the capitals of nations.
Speaking by the lips of her parliamentary repre-
sentative, and foremost merchants, London yesterday
gave forcible and fitting expression to the sentiment,
whisk everywhere pervades the community, that
unless a measure of Reform is calculated to appease
the just discontent with which industry and intellect
regard their present exclusion from the rights et
citizenship, it is not worth while disturbing the
existing order of things. For itself the City literally
asks nothing. To its inhabitants and proprietors it
matters lees than to any equally numerous section of
the people what are the provisions of the measure.
Whatever be eventually determined on as the proper
bane of the suffrage, it will hardly make any appre-
ciable difference in the choice of the four individuals
chum se their representatives, or in the tone of the
eonstitnent body by whom they are elected. But
London sympathises intelligently and wisely with
the legitimate requirements of the rest of the realm ;
and discerning instinctively that its own permanent
weal is indissolubly bound up with that of the pro-
Maces, it seldom fails to throw the weight of its
authority into the scale wherein depend the just
claims of the nation at large. Nor is it unworthy of
note how little stress has been laid at meet
of the metropolitan meetings on the speciflo
disappointment of their local expectations. With
the exception of Chelsea, whose case is no doubt
peculiarly hard, none of the populous and wealthy
districts laying claim to increased represented=
appear to have founded their protests against the
Government Bill upon their sense of peculiar wrong
done to them. Neither has a grudging or jealous
word been spoken regarding the benefit invidiously
conceded to the counties. No urban eye is evil, be_
cane Lord DERBY has been good to rural industry
and worth. On the contrary, every popular assem-
blage that has met and deliberated on the question
hes frankly owned, either in so misny words or by
implication, that the reduction of the county fran-
chise to IW. is just and right, and that in point of
het it is the one redeeming feature in the scheme.
From all quarters, however, echoes of the same
Oiler and unmistakeable utterance come, that the

Bill faits to answer the main purpose for which
slow it professes to have been framed.

Ix oar recent observations upon certain inventions
new in process of adoption, and calculated at no dis-
tant time to alter the character of modern warfare,
we purposely abstained from any allusion to an en.
tirely new system of strategy, still more likely, if
adopted, to change, if not altogether to revolutionise,
the proceedings of future belligerents.
Bir WILLIAM ARMSTRONG, Captain NORTON, and
Mr. WARRT carry out their hostile operations by
means of projectiles of unusual range and by an.
wonted means of combustion, explosion, and de-
flagration. Mr. JOHN MiictNrostt, however, goes
to work in a very different, if not in an altogether
novel way. He has taken out a patent for " facili-
" toting attacks co strongholds, batteries on shore,
" and on fleets, dockyards, harbours, towns, and other
" objects," as well as for the better defence against
a hostile approach. In the dull, common-place rou-
tine of ordinary life the occupatioos of few amongst
us would urge them to teat the utility of the
proceeding detailed in the specification. It is not
often, in the course even of the longest and most
chequered career, that a man has occasion to attack
• fortification, or even the simplest " field work."
The vale* of the patent cannot, therefore, depend se
mach opal its adoption by the public generally, as
by that very limited portion to whom the manage-
ment of all destructive pweeedinga is entrusted—the
War Department, Aware, doubtless, of this circum-
stance, Mr. MACINTOSH, as soon as he had matured
all his plane, and modified himself of their perfect
feasibility, immediately made application to the
navel and military authorities, offering, upon terms
that do not seem unreasonable, when the extent of
tee proposed undertaking is considered, to place his
invention at their disposal.
As far back as December, 1854, he wrote to the
Duke of Nnirc.r.seta, who granted him au interview,
and, after witnessing several practical experiments
in the private gardens of the War Department, ex-
pressed his intention of having the matter fully in-
vestigated, and directed Captain Sir THOMAS Malt.
LAND to report upon it.

. .
It will be remembered that at this time the
Crimean war was raging, the Allied Fleets had
been repulsed from the fortifications of Sebasto-
pol, the entrance to the harbour was clamed by
a barrier which it had been found impossible
to demolish or remove ; yet, notwithstanding
this accumulation of adverse circumstances, our
ises•tor boldly undertook to render the stupendous
fortresses at the mouth of the port untenable, to
&gm the Russian fleet, and to place Sebastopol la
a taw boors at the disposal of the English sad
French forces. Every day, at this juncture, wu, a
coarse, of extreme valise, and, to do him justise,
Mr. MACINTOSH appears to hare prosecuted kb
salt with a degree of zeal and energy worthy 01 •
Warr H►ts. Ha has now printed in rather a key
pamphlet the whole of the correspondence that so-
pa jt M the old, old story—tilt bland °Said