The Express.
London, England, 1850-05-29 00:00:00

Eke erpregigs.

OUTGOING MAIL&

The ensile for British North Amerces and the United
States will be made up on the evenbig of May 31.
The West India Meals. including Bsrasuds, H b,
Idursa, New °floras, and Menial, sad it:eluding
these for Madeira, Bt. Juan•de-Niceragua, New tirsisseta,
Chili, and Peru, will be =deep ou the evening of Jane 1.
Tim mails for Module, the Braids, and Buenos dyne, will
m made up on the evening of June 4.
The mails for Lisbon, Spain, and Gibraltar will In made
up on June 7.
The malls rid Marseilles, to the Mediterranean, Egypt,
Ceylon, India, Hong-Kong, &t., will be made up on the
evening of June 7.
The malls for Gibraltar, Malta, Grimes, the lonian Islands,
agypt, Ceylon, India, and Chins, via Southampton, will
be mode up on the morning of hum 20.

MOH WET= AT LOWDON BRIMS.
?4U ....lemon. 44.
T••••azow..118.11441. L. Ma Mimeos'. 44.315.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 29.

Ova neighbours, the French, have certainly a
most deplorable mania for rooting up political foun-
dations; they have tried all kinds of monarchic s and
governments. Their first was based on legitimacy :
we know what they did with it. Then came a mili-
tary one : what it cost and how it ended is in all
men's memories. Then came a charter granted by a
legitimate monarch, an admixture of rights, constitu-
tional and divine. This might have lasted till now,
but for the NIONTALEMBER'n of that day, who robed
the monarchy in a Jesuit's frock, and the people forth-
with kicked it oat of the country. Then came the
monarchy of the barricades and the middle classes.
The same opposition of professional men and
middle classes, wl,ich upset all its predeces-
sors, upset it. Last, though not least, came
universal suffrage, the broadest of base, surely.
But the same professional opposition is al-
ready burrowing into and undermining this basis.
After its uprooting, there will be nothing left to the
French but to scatter into tribes, like the Arabs, and
live each family under its tint ; so that, instead of
France civilising Algeria, it is Algeria that is re-
constituting France in its own image.
It cannot be pretended that universal suffrage comes
out at once a pure marble statue from the block. Much
might be fairly done to polish and to chip from it
those excrescences that but disfigure it. That eon.

elute, that mere vagrants, and the habitually house-
less, should be refused a vote, who will gainsay I' But
any amendment or tnodificition of universal suffrage
in a country like France, where in truth it is the sole
political anchor, ought to have been under taken calmly
and fairly ; for by making it a mere matter of ven-
geance, and retaliation, and party manceavre, it en-
sures the reversal one day or another of all that ha.,
been done, be it ever so wise or necemary.
Fur our part it is not so much the new electoral
law that disgusts us, as the occasion and the way in
which it has been introduced, the tote and the argu-
ments by which it has been supported. The conduct
of the conservatives and ministerialists in the Assem-
bly has been that, throughout, of the most extravagant
madmen, whilst the attitude of the Mountain,
as it is called, has been comparatively rational
and calm. No eloquence could be more magni-
ficent than that of VICTOR Moo, more simple
and conclusive than that Of CAVAIONAC, more prophetic
than that of LAMARTINg, who all three denounced
the new law. In reply, M. DE MONTALEN BERT
raged and denounced, more like an inquisitor of PHI-
LIP TUE SECOND, than an educated gentleman of the
nineteenth century. Nothing was more femible or
facile than to defend the law on the ground that it

improved universal suffrage, that it eicluded merely
the waifs and the enemies of society, that it did no
violence, concealed no revolution ; that it
was not introduced as vengeance or reprisal,
bat that it was the sober act of fair and reflecting and
unimpassioned men. Not one of the orators of the
right side of the Assembly, however, took such a line
as this. Not one of them stooped to reasoning or
even to plausibility. All mounted their war steeds,
drew their swords, and blew their trumpets. The
first Musuolmen in the days of MAW:MET were
not more furious or more fanatic.

M. DE MONTALEMBERT clearly spoke the senti-
ments that anima'ed him and his party, when in de-
scribing this law, he represented it es the first march
of a campaign—the first step "of the new Roman
expedition which it was requisite to make into
the interior of France." As Louis XIV., who
directed his dragonnadts to put down the protestants
of the Cevennes, so would the modern Louvois'
crush the political malcontentism, which is called
socialism. And this is to be done by the sword,
by violence, by war. So says the head of the reli-
gions party in France !
M. Aaaoo rose up to complain that by such a
speech as this, M. MONTALEMBERT was uttering pro-
vocations to civil war. Au observation more calm,
more lust, or more ailed for, was never uttered. Yet
up starts immediately the President Dueirt, battles
and insults M. ARAGO, calling him to order for his
remark, in a tissue of effrontery and falsehood that no
JET/TRIES or BRADSUAW amongst us, or nolt'oucn
THIN VILLE in France ever excelled. The blood of en
Englishman boils at reading such outrageous insults
offered to a whole side of an Assembly. Such brutal ty-
ranny explains that old and hitherto inexplicable in-
veteraoy which caused the members of the Conven-
tion to proscribe and decimate each other.
M. MILER in his speech accused the mob of Paris
of having hauled down NAPOLEON'S statue, and
dragged tt by the neck with a cord. What more
natural, than that M. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE should
start up in his place to contradict this, and to allege
that it was not the people of Paris, but the Allies, who
precipitated the statue of NAPOLEON from his column?
President Du PIN, however,was as furious agai n s' young
NAPOLEON for defending the popularity of his uncle,
as he had been spinet M. ARAOO for accusinz M.
Monseinuseier of preaching a holy war. And the
Assembly actually pa.eed • vote of censure against
M. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE for what in him was as
act of filial piety and historical fustiee!
The most singular speech uttered in the whole
course of the debate was that of WI. THUM M. ue
MONTALAMDEZT bad denounced socialism in his
usual way, as a specie which was to af-
fright, a monster that was to ( vour,
and as a legionary army ag anst wh'eh it was nem,-
eery to aim and to take the field. Following M. Hit
MONTALEMBERT, his friend, M. Tinges, undertook