The Express.
London, England, 1850-07-15 00:00:00

than hesidsat Donn lies at them lilts a masa
barks. Mina aad merles, oils this member to seder,
floss onoesr, seeped@ another, prevents all sr any
hem epeirled, sad aoudads Meisel( more Mee the
aiminerris of wild beasts, than the psi-
trade siseling el urinal representatives.
. Boom, is minister of justice, who provoked
this sone, is a twelfth rats lawyer, a men,
mina to at In any post of authority, is in
OWN as Iseult to a country like Felipe.
Of assess sash a being as oily diettageisk Mas-
sif by lama, and can only acquire prosai-
sm* in the exeltement of a row. And yet we find
ante amine eepperted in his vulgar &abides by the
Peeddent of the Assembly and the republic.
)locals hr beta decorated with the legion of honour
be soled be vile he literally berms to be put
Meths stub.
11e worst of it is, that these disgusting examples
el abase, treasonable impedsnee, outrageous
pertiaty, and ruffianly violence, are set, not by the
repeblioans or socialists, but by those who represent
themselves as the cream and the imaservatives of
moiety. We never recollect or have ever read of, en
iatehrast and so impudent a majority, as that which
its ea the right of the French Hanalei Assembly.
Who the republicans had the upper hand, their
Mitt mad their management of the Aseem-
e a hundred times more fair, more conci-
Bakery, more equitable. They never kicked, fined,
sod hos.led the conservatives who spoke or who
pretested in that assembly. And M. MAXIM
was a model of all that was dignified and impar-
tial, compezed with the consummate brutality of M.
Dvent.
If the emblem of 1785 were to revive spin. they
sight view the tiers Itat with as mach real dislike
sed esolleapt, as the would be noblesse of 18.50,
bee Ow wadi ak least express this feeling with
nen ;lOW, mere consideration and more reserve.
The Irressa upper classes now really beat the lower
ores, se Spartans treated the Helots that had
rebelled against them. The whip is their weapon,
and the sentiments they otter can only spring in the
minds of those who wield the whip, and are bent on
the duties of the slave-driver.
The antagonistic sentiments excited by =nit( sta-
tions and purposes like these, are not the sentiments
of mere political opposition. They are sentiments
of social hatred, of outraged humanity, of all just
and honourable principle spurned. Men so trod-
den upon are driven to meditate something far worse
than revolution. The passions excited, fed, and com-
passed to ferment by such treatment, are
1111111111 than the traditional ones of the Celt against
the !lases, or the negro against the planter; for
in them some show of superiority, right, and supe-
rior intelligence may be shown ; whilst in the pre-
tences which the champions of one political creed in
France arrogate over their brethren of another, there
is really neither plea nor foundation for the moral
and physical tyranny which is hourly menaced and
daily more rigidly tightened and enforced.
We cannot but dread a future of which such are
the seeds. The probability, nay, the certitude is,
that France will yet see many vicissitudes. Even if
monarchy was decided upon in that country, monarchy
has half-a-dosen pretenders, and, at least, • score
of civil wars within itself. If these or any
other parties proceed to open violence, the mili-
tary must be the umpires of the quarrel. If so,
they will be masters. And here lire a whole cycle
of revolutions. As the great preparation for such a
future, we should think that a system of mutual
respect, even in the midst of political antagonisms,
ought to have been the first principle and example,
established and set by the well bred and better in-
structed classes. But, on the contrary, no party is
any country has ever given such example of unfair-
ness, insolence, and brutality, as the President and
majority of the French National Assembly at the
present time.

Ties fate of DONALD DONOVAN and WALTER
WATTS affords many migrations of serious import.
The career of the latter points its eloquent moral—
for the vain and the weak. A c3necience sacrificed
to champagne-suppers, and the pitiful ambition of
playing the lord behind the scenes—a career of pam-
pered misery, wound up by suicide in a felon's
closet! The acknowledged kindness of the man to
all who were in any way connected with him,
heightens the tragic darkness of the closing scene.
His inordinate vanity, uncontrolled by strong prin-
ciple, gives at once a key to the career and the
catastrophe. Rather death than the shame of a
felon's banishment. Here is the argument contained
in this trite history. How does it tally s ith the
dogmas of those sagacious logicians who advocate
the wholesome terrors of the scaffold? Death was
clearly less terrible to him than the life of shame
marked out for him by the law. It may be urged
that there are special and peculiar circumstances
connected with this case which remove it from the
ordinary routine of crime; and that, therefore,
no general argument can fairly be bawd upon it.
Even if we admit this, an argument against the scaf-
fold remains in force, since there can be nothing
special nor extraordinary in the came of DONOVAN.
Ile began life as a pugilist—was, throughout his
career, a low drunkard (though, according to hie
brother's evidence at the inquest, a quiet and honest
man when sober), and showed in his brutal behaviour
towards his wife, that oebased state of moral feeling
which is the most disheartening result of protra
debauchery. Yet this man, bru'e as he undoubtedly
was, as regards all moral sentiment, deliberately pre-
ferred the halter to the hulks. It is clear, therefore,
that Norfolk Island had more terrors for him than the
scaffold of the old Bailey.
These two melancholy instances rmy well induce
those gentlemen who side with Sir GEORGE GREY to
reconsider their verdict on capital punishment. The
rules of oar prison', which expressly guard against ,
suicide; which enjoin the removal of all instruments
that may enable convicts to commit self murder, sad
compel the vigilant supervision of the turnkeys, are
only so many powerful arguments against the scaf-
fold. That men fear death only as children are afraid
to go in the dark, is one of the wisest sentences that
Lord Ream penned. The experience of a thou-
sand years goes to prove that there are many
fears which master and overwhelm that of death.
Perpetual solitude, irrevocable shame, life-long
slavery, have greater terrors for most men than that
mystery which hangs over all, whether criminal or
I saint. Oar religion would teach us to regard the
closing passage of our lives with gladness; our laws
would paint that final hour only as the malefactor's
heaviest doom. What says the malefactor in reply ?
The scenes of the scaffold will remind us. He mounts
the steps, for the most part, firmly. He is told to
!fellers that he is going before a tribunal infinitely
more merciful than that which ham doomed him to
die ; he believes the teacher, and resigns himself
quietly to his fate. Nineteen times out of twenty the
world doses upon the doomed murderer in this
fashion. In the prison he is regarded in the light ef
a martyr. His crime is forgotten in the awe attend-
ing his doom. In the eyes of his fellow-prisoners,
the halter has sanctified his memory : be is no longer
a vulgar felon.
The frequent attempts at suicide which may be
set down in the history of our prisons (and a return of
which would be a most useful and powerful document
in the hands of the abolitionists) have not boa
noticed in their true light. The lesson they should
have taught has not been conned. No particular is-
terest has hitherto attached to these hapless suicides.
Just as it is necessary that a person of distinction
should have suffered by some abuse or some danger-
ous habit, before we may reasonably expect the re-
moral of that abase, or that a check will be put upon
that habit, so in this instance gaol suicides have not
excited the attention of the legislature, because no
criminal of mark has yet been numbered with them.
But now that two criminals have lain violent hands
upon themselves within A hours of each other, and
that one of them was a fallen gentleman, perhaps the
import of these examples may suggest itself to the
houses of parliament. They teach nothing if net,l
that a sense of shame, a fear of degraded labour and
rigid confinement, are as repulsive to the criminal
mind, as the premature consummation of the mimes
end of all of us. All who would approach this terri-
ble phase of criminal experience must be prepared to
thro w aside those prejudices of society whM have
set the criminal apart from his fellows, as a Greaten
who has nothing in common with the rest el
mankind. They must rather be prepared to admit with
Dr. JOHNSON and the good BOZZHAAVE, that they
have never met with a crime which they might net
commit themselves=—that is to say, that they are
sensible of a common nature, with even the most
abject of their fellow-creatures. This benevolent
view of guilt more merely =ducts to a tree theory