The Express.
London, England, 1866-08-18 00:00:00

',E4%, SATURDAY

issillicoryofsor the eon, nor .Its aspire to unattainable
o ; to do wept to tbs Ihaymees am-
nion sense. French opinion was in earnsst'in pro-
moting the demand on Prussia, French opinion will have
something to say—and that something may be a very
serious utterance—about the result ; which anyhow comes
to this—either that the wishes of France have been be-
trayed by the ruler of France, or that their ruler is not
strong enough to enforce them, or not skilful enough to
attain them by those arts which have hitherto retained
him a place in their confidence. •
In an article on reform and its prospects the Saturday
Beriew says :—The liberal party is not really ready for
office. It wants the two things without which a party in
office can never be successful—men and ideas. Mr. Glad-
, stone is an admirable speaker, and has some of the highest
qualities of a statesmen, but he has one fatal defect as
the leader of the liberal party—he is not a liberal. When
Mr. Gladstone has been named, the liberals have no other
leaden. They have not even respectable administrators
to do them a faint amount of credit. It would be a dread-
ful abuse of the mere numerical strength of the party to
insist that the navy shall again be committed to the Duke
of Somerset, the army to Lord Hartington, and India to
Lord De Grey. And, short as the liberal party
is of men, it is still more deficient in ideas.
The three most important political subjects of the
day, perhaps, are reform, Ireland, and the efficiency of
the public service. On no one of the three have the libe-
rals anything like a well-seasoned creed or a coherent
theory. They are all subjects that need to be thought
out, and the liberals have not thought them out. That
the conservatives are no forwarder may be true, but that
is nothing to the purpose. The liberals are the party of
progress, and should know what they want and why they
want it. In order to carry reform, the liberals ought to
be prepared to show that there are very grievous evils in
our present system of government, and that a reform act
would tend to remove or mitigate these evils. This is the
only satisfactory basis for reform, and it is a basis on
which we are convinced reform might be established.
• Mr. Eyre, says the Spectator, has published an elaborate
defence of himself, in the form of a reply to an address
from the Bishop and certain clergy of Jamaica, in which
he declares that although dismissed, he "his the consola-
tion of feeling that there has been nothing in his conduct
to merit dismissal, nothing to occasion self-reproach,
nothing to regret." As for the killing of Mr. Gordon,
"he suffered justly," as the " proximate occasion " of the
riots, and his execution was moat beneficial. As to the
excesses under martial law, "excesses must always take
place under martial law," and as for the time during
which that law was allowed to continue, if he had at-
tempted to shorten it be should have spread consternation
among the whites. This is substantially Mr. Eyre's de-
fence, and on the strength of this defence and others like
it, a defence fund of 6,000 f. has been raised for Mr. Eyre,
and Southamptonis about togive him a grand banquet—cats
of piano-wire beside each plate. One man indeed writes to
the Standard to suggest a testimonial, and the Spectator re-
oommendsa mouu went, the design—Governor Eyreas Jus-
tice, trampling down negroes, triumphant, undaunted, and
blind.

Referring to the French claim on Prussia and its with-
drawal, the Spectator says, Righteousness and Peace have
kissed each other in the persons of the Emperor of the
French and the King of Prussia. Napoleon demanded of
Prussia the restoration of the frontiers of 1814. The King
of Prussia, after a long council, attended by one or two
general*, replied that Germany could not surrender German
territory, whereupon the Emperor received the Prussian
Ambassador, and assured him that his Majesty,
though considering the " wish" for new frontiers
just, had only expressed it in deference to the
opinion of France, and promised that good rela-
tions between the two powers shoud in no case be dis-
turbed. He hoped, however, that Prussia would not over-
step the line of the Main. The Emperor has also written
to the King of the Belgians, saying he esteems him a great
deal too much to take away any of his territory ; so there
is a kind of diplomatic millennium, which would be quite
nice if anybody could say what it all means. If the
Emperor expected refusal, why did he make the demand?
If he did not expect it, why does he display so unusally
Christian a spirit' It looks very much as if Napoleon bad
received assurances which enabled him to endure his
apparent loss of prestige with great tranquillity.
The bank directors, says the Erwomi at, were quite JUL
tifierl in reducing their rate of discount on Thursday last.
Such a step would have been wise several weeks since, but
then it would have been an experimental policy. The
justification for it would have been that the foreign drain
of bullion was a drain arising from discredit—aggravated
by a high rate of interest and likely to be alleviated by a
low rate of interest. But the present reduction is not ex-
perimental. The foreign exchanges have now been turned
notwithstanding the discredit drain. They are now such
es to bring gold here and to take it to the Bank. We have
shown that we can do without the money we have been
lately in the habit of borrowing of foreign nations. We
have gone through much to obtain this result, but now at
least we have obtained it.

•
EVE G, AUGUST::

LATEST INTELLIGENCE. ff

THE FRENCH DEMANDS.

The Paris liberal journals received this day are sin-
gularly, perhaps significantly, silent on the subject
of the interview between the Emperor and Count
von Goltz, The Debdts merely copies Reuter's
telegram from the London journals, which it does
" under entire reservation." The &Me and Temps
are totally silent. The Avettir National alludes to
the telegram, and appends the following remark :
" The English journals could receive no more wel-
come news : accordingly the Times, the Daily News,
and Telegraph hasten to overload the French go-
vernment for the wisdom and disinterestedness of
which it has given proof."