The Express.
London, England, 1867-09-06 00:00:00

THE ABYSSINIAN EXPEDITION.

There has been as yet no confirmation of the
telegram received on Wednesday respecting the liberation
of the Abyssinian prisoners, and though such an event is
nut improbable, the absence of official information on the
subject damps the hopes which the late news tended to
excite. The preparations must, the Times fears, go for-
ward, and the only matter for the consideration of govern-
ment is how the expedition may be made most effective
for obtaining its only just aim and object—the liberation
of the prisoners.
The contitmation of the good news from Abyssinia, re-
marks the Past, should it be received, will be matter of
sincere satisfaction. It will settle the urgent claims of
humanity, and afford, it is to be hoped, some wholesome
instruction. The release of the captives will prove to us
not inopportunely in the confusion and enervation of
ideas, that now, as in the old time, " the way of duty is
the path of honour."
Public anxiety as to the fate of the Abyssinian captives
has been heightened rather than relieved by the tantalising
message flashed from Constantinople on Tuesday, and it
increases every hour that the intelligence remains naveri-
fied. Under these circumstances the Telegraph rejoices
that the government ha: not seen fit to relax its prepara-
tions for the worst, hut is still hurrying them on as if war
were to be the certain issue.

C 8 TOPICS.

Writing on the Welsh Eisteddfod, the Daily News re-
marks that it would be easy, by ill-natured strictures, to
create in the hot-blooded Welsh an anti-Saxon feeling
analogous to that which exists in Ireland—weaker, per-
haps, from the absence of great political grievances, but
strong enough to be inconvenient. The fear sometimes
expressed of discouraging, by Eisteddfods, the diffusion of
the English tongue in the principality is altogether
gratuitous and foolish. The English tongue can pro-
tect itself. It is too useful to be set aside or kept
back. The Welsh are shrewd enough, as individuals, to
see where their Mt/yes', 16. 7,-„;;„ zni:zo. h.s its soda
and scientific congresses, and Wales has its Eisteddioci,
Ireland amuses itself with Orange and Roman catholic de-
monstrations, illustrated by banners and music, b► pistol-
shots and bludgeons, by homicides and mutilations, and
followed by committals and trials, and by punishment or
impunity, according as the polemical theology, very pro
perly so called, of the jury, may coincide or conflict with
that of the prisoners.6.Thia is one of the consequences of
the attempt, protracted over centuries, to make Ireland
English, to extirpate its traditions, to ignore its history,
and to suppress, with its political, its moral nationality.
A Welsh Eisteddfod is surely to be preferred to • party
procession of Irish Orangemen.
The Parisian public may soon look forward to • new but
harmless excitement. The remains of Napoleon 11. are,
it is stated, to be removed from their various resting.
places at Vienna, and laid in the newly-restored vaults of
the Abbey of St. Denis. The deputation on whom will
devolve the duty of conveying them has already been ap-
pointed, and consists of Manhal Regnault de St. Jean
d'Angely, the Duke of Rossano, M. de Cambroires, and
General Henry. Marshal Valliant is busy with the pro-
gramme of the funeral ceremony. The Times is of opinion
that it would be just as well to leave the remains of. the
Duke of Reichstailt where they are, and adds, in order to
account for their removal, that it seems to be • fixed idea
with the Emperor Napoleon that the French people, like
the Romans of old, must be supplied with the perpetual
stimulus of stirring news, and the arrival of this melan-
choly cortege will certainly give the Parisians something to
think of or to talk about. This may have been his pri-
macy object, and this may possibly also turn out to have
been the main, if not quite the only, practical result of
the visit to Snlabtirg.

The Herald thinis Lord Russell was certainly in the
right in declining to attend at the Working Men'. Reform
Banquet at the Crystal Palace. This meeting, if it ever
takes place, will be held on false pretences. The anomaly
is as glaring as would have been the fact of a beaten gene-
ral claiming the triumphal procession which the laws of
Rome awarded to a conqueror. The ridiculous upshot of
this latest of the whig manifestoes is this—that, in Lord
Russell's opinion, there are four great changes necesietry
for the well-being of the country, which Lord Derby's
government are prepared to "resist and suppress," but
that, in the case of two of them, the opposition of Lord
Russell has up to this year been as strongly pronounced as
that of Lord Derby ; and, in respect to the two others, the
conservative government have gone far in advance of Lord
Russell in the liberality of their propowds.

- -
It will scarcely be credited, but it is nevertheless a fact,
observes the Star, that Pmvoet-Iffarshal Ramsay has either
arrived or is about to arrive in England, to demand com-
pensation from the Colonial Minister for the loss of his
office. One of the first acts of Sir Henry Storks after his
arrival in Jamaica was to suspend Ramsey, who was an
inspector of police. He subsequently ordered his trial for
the murder of George Marshall. The grand jury
of course refused to find • true bill. Sir John
P. Grant, the present Governor of Jamaica, never-
theless dismissed Hammy from his office of inspector,
on the ground that in his reports to the govern-
ment be had admitted the murder of the unfortunate pri-
soner. Ramsay, however, believing that the protection
which the country justices have extended to Eyre, and the
grand jury of London to Nelson and Brand, shows • dispo-
sition to condone all the offences committed in Jamaica,
modestly comes forward to press his own claims to • com-
plete amnesty, and a comfortable provision for life at the
expense of his grateful country, and looking at the manner
in which both the present and the late governments have
dealt with the officers engaged in the brutal executions
there, Ramsay has a very strong case.

The Earl of Rilenborough is, it is stated, about
at once to commence the restoration of the chapel in
Gloucester Cathedral, commonly called St. Paulit Chapel.
When completed it will be a beautiful specimen of archi-
tecture.

Mr. Thomas Dixon, boat builder of Exmouth,
was, says the WriOrn Morning New, on Wednesday pre-
sented by Lady Whitlock with a handsome silver goblet as
a mark of her thankfulness for the valuable services ren-
dered by him on Monday in rescuing Sir G. Whitlock from
the perilous position in which he had been placed by the
collision of big boat with a yacht off Exmouth. Six men
who had assisted on the occasion were rewarded with U.
each.