The Express.
London, England, 1859-03-24 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MARCH 24.

Want the Tory aristocracy aroma that the
Middle Claims are ready to respond to their call, and
prepared to make common cause with them against
any real extension of the suffrage, they reckon with-
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out their boat. It m►y, indeed, be true that a MT-
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ten eupertietal metion of the middle Cl4/01111, rendered

selfish by excessive wealth, and subservient by occa-

atonal contact with those who ars socially above
them, would rally to the standard of resistance, and
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;bum; the opulence and influence acquired in corn-

merce or in trade to thwart the enfranchisement of
laborious industry. And it may be true that, scat-
tered up and down a land so populous and indus-
triously diversified u ours, individuals, or even
groups of individuals, may be found needy or mean
enou,ch to Iced themselves to the work of faction
at the bidding of those whose motives they
do not passe to scan. and whom they are accustomed,
without well knowing why, to call " their betters...
Hot the thoughtful, intelligent, enterprising, self-

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reliant bulk of the middle ;lame ars no more to be

wheedled or bullied into joining a crusade against
the wor►ing population, u such, than they are to ha
caught by the fluttering ribands of a recruiting ser-
geant, or captivated by his fife and dram. Enlist-
ment, whether foe political or military service, is
not a popular word in their vocabulary. They have
not been brought up to wear any man. badge, and
nothing but the manifest sense of national danger

would reconcile any large proportion of them to don

even for a day the. QuEem's livery. To be crimped,
and drilled, and told to march at the bidding of a

churlish, overreaching, and bigotted oligarchy
against the mass of their neighbours, customer.,
clients, and working hands, is just about the last
thing in the whole world that they could be per-
suaded to do. Their strongest interests and their
best feelings, their most venerated traditions ►nd
their deepe►t prejudices, concur to render them invin-
cibly averse to any proceeding of the kind ; and
should the experiment be practically tried, the re-
Mat will signally verify what we say.
The middle classes, to whom electoral power was
given by the Reform Act of l"12, are not, indeed,
exempt from the oreseciousness or love of power.
But the lees that makes us jealous and tempts us to
be unjust must he associated with a vivid perception
of the value of what we prize, or a vivid realisation
of the fact that we either do or may exclusively
pewee it. And if the present House of Common.
were really chosen equally and fairly by electoral
circles of Ten Pound Householders, so that every
man amongst them should be made practically to
feel that he exercised a certain and definite con-
trolling power over the most potent assembly in the
world, we might perhaps entertain a fear lest a
grudging spirit should render them unwilling to
enlarge their numbers,ancl so diminish theiroollective
and individual iufluenee. But it is admitted on all
bands that no such state of facts has any existence.
One-third of the members of the House of Commons
are confessedly appointed and sent thither by mem-
bers of the House of Lords. Another third are re-

turned, home by their own influence u landed pro-
prietors, some by their money as jobbers, and some
by a combination of influences in which the free and
independent suffrages of the few Ten Pound electors
that vote in the various small boroughs is decidedly
the least important. We fear we are far exceeding
the mark if we say, for argument sake, that the
remainder of the 220 are returned bone Ma by
majorities consisting of middle-class men. It would
puzzle us exceedingly to name anything like that
number of gentlemen in the present Parliament
who we could honestly say we believed had been
so returned. So that instead of the present electoral
class possessing, or fancying that they ponces, that
predominant power in the State which her
MAlLsrel Ministers would fain cajole them
into fancying they do, they are not after all
able to hold their own, or anything like their own,
with the greedy and grasping few, who, now that
their political craft is in danger, modestly call on the
Tea Pound electors to make common cause with them
is defending it.
Common cane ! There is none, and they know
it ; and so do we. There is not a borough in
England, Ireland, or Scotland whose representa-
tion during the last five-and-twenty years the
aristocracy could filch from the middle class, that
they have oat recklessly seized and shed is their own:
and as for the counties, Lord DEntiv himself has put
upon record the impudent declaration that if you
but tell him to which West-end Club most of the
large landowners belong, he can tell you unerringly
whet are the members. Had oligarchy kept up thel
semblance of justice or fair dealing with the
electoral body, it might now with a better
grace call on that body to come to the
reenact of its doomed prerogatives. But neither
in the selection of candidates nor in the mode
of voting has there been ever the show of regard for
public opinion ; and of the party that now in despair
cheer with frantic vociferation the elevation of
their new standard of " Middle Class Monopoly"
there an not perhaps • nore who have been re

turned to Parliament by the unbiassed or spon-
taneous choice of middle-class men. Nor is this all.
Granting, for argument sake, that one in every three
of our present representatives owes his return in a
greater or lees degree to the genuine influence of
the industrious portion of the community en fran ebised
in 1832, what portion of that community is by just
distribution and division of electoral rights made to
value, or enabled to feel its power? Is it not
admitted on all hands that, by the preposterous
inequality of constituencies, and the excessive size
of many of them, all sense of the value
of the franchise is individually lost ; and that
thousands and tens of thousands of ten-pound houae-
holders in large towns have long abandoned the
thought of exercising an apparently melees privi-
lege ! Will these men turn oat and fight for the
exclusive possession of that which they habitually
spurn as worthless ? Or will the independent
minority of a country town, who have found them-
selves,: because of their fewness, overborne and set
at defiance by the menials of "My Lord" or the
vassals of " Sir John," feel that it is for their
advantage to keep up the exclusion of their five
pound neighbours, with whose aid they might pro-
bably emancipate their borough ?
But truly has it been said that hypocrisy is the
late-born child of wrong. Whatever is active,
energetic, and thoughtful in the electoral mind
of England regards with just and bitter re-
sentment the way in which the aristocracy
has systematically cheated and baffled the
nominally powerful classes, whom now it calls on to
take close order in opposition to expansion and pro-
reel Its flatteries and professions of friendship
come too late. Had they been earlier they might
have been deemed kind, and thereby made some
dupes. Now they will deceive nobody. The edu-
cated, frugal, inventive, and orderly men of the
working classes are our natural allies, whose aid we
have long desired to obtain, and whose participation
in the privileges we ourselves panne we feel it to
be our interest as well as our duty by every legiti-
mate means to facilitate. We don't want to be
swamped, but we don't fear being so. There is not
' the least danger of too much bi ing conceded to
waged labour, or humble householding. The only
danger is that there will be too little.

Titt probable li.cale of the projected Congress is
an airy topic for the diplomacy of dinner tables at
the present moment. Of the great capitals of
Europe, London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg are all
more or less neutral cities, but they arc all the capi-
tals of great Powers, end therefore, it should seem,
ineligible. Brussels is gravely objected to for fear
of the fascinations of au Austrian Duchess, and the
choice now lies, we are told, between Genera, the
Hague, and Aix-la-Chapelle, but Aix is the favourite.
That spacious little town, with its Brunnen and
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Casino so dear to English tourists, has the advantage
of being easily accessible, and of excellent hotels;

for the dining sleeping accommodation is a mat-
ter of European importance when the digestion and

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repots of Plenipotentiaries are in question. Genera
is declared to be too far off, and though its hotels are
excellent, itsmountains are a bad "point of view" for
men who meet in the spirit of the " immortal "
MALMDBURT, not as poets but as politicians. All

these considerations are very pretty gossip, but a far
more serious question foe well-wishers to mankind
is, on what thesis is the Congress to deliberate ? Is
it to ratify, or to revise the Treaties of 1813 ? If to
ratify, to ratify the infractions, or the remains of the
Treaty ? If to revise, where is the revision to begin
and end' If the possession of Lombardo-Venetia is
to be guaranteed afresh to Austria, will England,
or France, or Russia be a consenting party
to such a guarantee? If Lombardo-Vene-
tia is to be conveyed away from Austria,
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will Austria consent ? In either cue, will the

peace of Europe be secured ? The more closely we
examine the questions about to be submitted to •
Congress the more doubtful and difficult any satis-
factory solution appears. Italy, no doubt, and Pied-
mont can only gain by diecussion, whether in a Con-
gress or before all the world ; but it is not certain
that a Congress can untie what the sword may cut
through.
In noticing Count Bvoi, elaborate statement of
Austrian grievances spinet Piedmont the other day,
we took occasion to suggest that it needed an
Austrian dictionary to make it intelligible to the
undiplomatic world in general. Signor
however, has taken the trouble to supply a glossary
to the language of the Austrian Chancery, and
though he writes in very choice Italian, it will be
very difficult, we imagine, even for the meet in-
genious of the IIaCONSOTe of MerreaNteu to dispute
the data which the eminent publicist has been
permitted to extract from the royal archives at Turin.
The diplomatic correspondence which 'sustains his
argument dates, it should be remembered, from a
time when Piedmont, if not Austrian in sympathy,
was certainly not opposed to Austria in sys-
tem and forms of government, and was as
little disposed as Austria herself to provoke
liberal movements in the Peninsula. These docu-
ments, which Signor PARINI takes pains to quote,
" chapter end verve," indicate a most unmistakeable
grievance on the part of Austria against Piedmont,
and it is a grievance of that plain and practical cha-
racter which the simplest minds can appreciate. It
is the sort of grievance every man who is obliged to
ase his legs as a conveyance feels against his tellow-
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creature who drives a gig ; it is the grievance which
a man who has a limited and precarious income feels
against the wretch who revels in a large landed estate
the grievance which SMITH feels against JONES, but
for whose bit of ground, so awkward and so tempt-
ing, his property would be all in a ring fence. It is
the highly respectable grievance which we have
read of in the Old Testament, and which crops oat

pretty often in ancient and modern history. Pied-
most has been very much in the way of Austria for
a good many years, even when her " system" would
have been pronounced temperate by the thermo-
meters of Vienna. As far back as 1816, just a
year after the Treaty of Vienna bad tattled Europe,
Austria sought to deprive the King of PUDIC:INT
of the Upper Novara'', and Prince Mcreitanten
wrote to London that " nukes the Upper Novarese,
" or at least the province of Dome d'Ossola, were to
" be united to the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, the
" fortress of Piacenza would be an insufficient pro-
" teetion, because if the King of SARDINIA were to
" be allied with France he would always be able to
" invade Lombardy." "In like manner," writes Signor
FARIN I, Austria designed to make new sequisitions in
" Italy, believing that the stipulations of 1811 which
" had been just concluded might be altered for her
" advantage." At that time Austria was engaged
iii promoting a confederation of the Italian States
under her sovereign patronage, not to say suzerainty,
and Lord CASTLEREAGH recommended the Sardinian
Government to secede to the confederation in order
that Austria might be induced to desist from her
pretensions to the Upper Novenae. It is worthy of
remarkatthie moment, when it anneal' that proposes
a Commas for the discussion of the Italian question,
that it was ALI:KANDER L who, in 1816, resisted
the Austrian proposals, both as to the Upper
' Nevares., ard as to the Confederation of the Italian
States, on the ground that they were encroachments