The Express.
London, England, 1858-12-31 00:00:00

Bemire, and his/dee judgment in regard to hie psi-
tie. as Ally, aggravated the general suspicion and
apprehension of what hst may do. His interest ap-
pears to us clear enough i and in his place, we should
say it wu impossible to go into any avoidable war :
but his whole wares is one of contravention of all
received ideas of good government and good neigh-
bourhood ; and therefore the general feeling of our
country, and no doubt of Europe, is that the only way
to get on with him is to preserve scrupulous good
faith without permitting any entangling intimacy ;
and to exercise such a vigilance agahist encroach-
ment, and such preparedness for the caprices of des-
potism or desperation, as may protect oar honour on
the one hand, and our safety on the other.
Such being the national mood, as a consequence of
the menaces of invasion in the summer, the slave
trade of a long period, and the high-handed aggres-
sion on Portugal (our really close ally), oar minds
are pretty well made up as to the proper conduct of
the French alliance ; and our opinion of the ex-
ministers who have accepted an invitation to Com-
piegne has been frankly declared. If Lords Pal-
merston and Clarendon had had nal reason to hope
for restoration to office next year, they would have
destroyed their thence by carrying their homage to
a Court which was injuring and insulting Portugal,
and thereby shattering the international good faith
and security of all Europe. With this view
of the visitor to Compiegne, and with admiring
sympathy with M. de Montalembert, the present
year of our French alliance concludes ; and we
shall begin the next, as every former one since 1851,
with hearty feelings of sympathy and good-will to-
wards the people of France, with whom we are
sincerely disposed for &perpetual alliance.
It is with pain and anxiety that we look round on
the great group of states which make up the civil-
ised world. Russia advances rapidly, but with bot-
tomless gulfs of danger across her way. The
retrieval of Prussia, in consequence of the change of
a healthy ruler for a morbid one, is perhaps the
brightest spectacle on the Continent at this moment.
We dread the consequences of our connexion
with Austria, in whose peril and probable disaatem
we are by no rightful obligations called to shark
Oar sympathies as a people are so strongly with
Piedmont, that mean. will no doubt be taken to
impress ministers with the fact, so as to prevent
mischief and misapprehension when the Italian
war breaks out. As a people, we have no great
expectation from that Italian war. Our testi-
mony will be expressed clearly enough, no
doubt, on behalf of free government wherever it is
proposed; but we must be more assured than we are
now of what can be expected and done before we go
to war. That the idiotcy, the barbarity, the cor-
rupting degradation of Neapolitan and Papal rule
an have gone on thus long is a painful evidence to
us that it is not in our power to set it right. At
such a time—a time when bigotry and cant are
rampant, and the rights of conscience ere every-
where violated, even in Protestant Sweden, and
through the whole range of Catholic and Musulman
States, so that in Austria Protestants cannot bury
their dead, and in France Protestant congregations
cannot meet for worship—our course seems plain :
to bear witness to liberty, before the world, by our
own conduct and fortunes. We are the only free
nation from whom the world can take a lesson ;'
for the American Republic is neither what it
was, nor what it ought to have been, in
character and reputation, and in practical liberties.
By carrying out our resolution to reform our House
of Clonintow, by amending our laws, and bringing
government more and more into connexion with the
largest classes of our people, we may do more for the
liberties of other 1111ti0011 than by fighting for them
while the call t. arms is not express and Way liable.
Already it is clear to all despotic rulers throughout
Europe that the British are the most prosperous and
contented of nations, and the Queen of England the
safest and most tranquil of Sovereign'. Our beet
service, to allies and to society at large, will be in
exalting this evidence by still extending our popular
liberties. As the case of Chetty, the Madras con-
vent, is to that of the child Mortara in Italy, so is
our active political existence to the ennui of Austrian
rule in Lombardy, and oar free press to the dreary
silence of French opinion. Time and oar steady
endeavours after progress will enhance such con-
trasts, carrying more conviction to the hearts of
other nations than was ever brought by fire and
sword, even on the right side of a cause. We hope
therefore for peace, while peace is the honest and
beneficent course ; but we intend to be ready to enter
upon war at the first moment of peace ceasing to be
honest.

' It remains to sum up our chief looses by death.
It must be a mournful review as long as war is
going on in any part of the empire ; and the opening
of the year was darkened by the death of Havelock
in the midst of oar rejoicing for the relief of Luck-
now. The pliant Hodson fell some months later;
and Sir William Peel, and Adrian Hope ; and re.
aunty that hero of the Russian war, Lord Lyons.
At home, our losses have been in the departments of
scienos, literature, and the arts, for the most
part, though some professional men of emi-
nence have departed—am Sir William Mauls,
the Lord Justice Clerk Hope, and Sir John
Dodson, in the law; and in medicine, Ben-

jamin Travers, the great surgeon, Sir Philip
Cramptee, and Dr. Bright. From political life, in
the sense of parliamentary, we have lost only retired
veterans, as Henry Warburton and 'Lord Dunferm-
line ; for Sir Edward Buxton was more regarded in
his philanthropical relations. Considering his kindly
earesr, we might oleos the life Doge of Devon-
shire among the social benefactors. In science
and literature, we have lost Major-Osneral Sir Wm.
Reid, whose book with its wonderful The
Law of Storms," was an event in the life of mare
preisesions than one ; Robert Brown, the father of
modern botany, and Dr. Hoyle, distinguished in the
same misses; Dr. Gregory, Professor of Chemistry
at Edinburgh, and eminent as the author of the
most popular text-books in that science; sad Dr.
Peacock, the Dean of Ely, one of our most seem-
plished mathematicians and astronomers. In litera-
ture, the Mist losses bare bees Mr. Feed, unique in
his knowledge of the topography and literature of
Spain, and is other provisoes of leaning; sad the
apd antiquaries, Dawson Tenon who might also
claim a place smog the botanists. When we come
to the department of Art, we cannot mown for oar
countrymen and countrywomen alone. Seliefkr in
pawing, and Bash& in the drama, and Labiate* in
opers, and the Obrraher Neuman as a oomposer,
are the world's lasses. As for ourselves, we have to
lenient oar medallist, Banjo. Wyon, and Hogan, the
sculptor; and Bartley and Harley, the actors. The,'
Dualism of Oaken, revered and beloved, • ties
pri Dem la all herrelations, breathed her hat amongst
us in the land of Mile, where she had surrounded
hermit with hiss&
From this may of deaths, let us tarn to greet the
birth of the sew year. A broad sad

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