The Express.
London, England, 1861-05-17 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(PROs ous owl,

PARIS, THURSDAY EVIIIING.

In my opinion there is no reason why IL Bil-
lault's speech which satisfied the Senate should
not satisfy England. I can see nothing alarming
in it. We have gained our point. France ac-
knowledges the force of treaty obligations, and is
prepared at once to act upon them. That which
the French papers have been boasting all the spring
would not be done is to be done immediately.
Orders have been given for the evacuation of
Syria, and not a French soldier will be there after
June 5. It is true that in making this declaration
in the most unequivocal manner M. Billault made
use of certain expressions which are supposed in
some quarters to indicate that France shakes off
the dust from her feet as a testimony against Eng-
land ; and that, once free from the trammels of the
convention which she is called upon to execute,
she means to have it all her own way in the East,
even at the risk of war. This, I suppose,
is M. Oueroult's notion, who says in the Opinion
Nationale to-night :—" By the vote of yesterday
the Syrian question may be said to be terminated,
unless indeed it is the Eastern question which
begins No doubt the policy of the Emperor,
both in the Kest and elsewhere, is unreliable, and
will require as constant watching as heretofore.
But that there is any special and immediate danger
seems to me improbable. I cannot think that he
now affects extreme deference to the opinion of
Europe merely as a preparation to running riot
and taking his own line of country a month or
two hence. What IC Billault and M. Thouvenel
mean exactly when they speak of the " entire
liberty of judgment and conduct" which France
will enjoy with respect to events in Syria, as soon
as the present convention shall have terminated, I
do not pretend to say. I suspect that a great
deal was meant for "bunkum." It is, however,
quite natural and reasonable that the French go-
vernment should put forth to the fullest extent
that old claim which it has time out of mind in-
sisted upon, and which it calls its " secular tradi-
tion," to exercise a sort of guardianship over the
Christians of Lebanon. This " secular tradition"
is nowhere very clearly defined, and does not
appear by the documents read by M. Laroche-
jaquelin—for the purpose, as M. Billault said, of
contrasting the Bonaparte' disadvantageously with
the Bourbons—to have ever been anything more
than the right of a powerful monarch to give advice
to a neighbour. At all events, France is bound by
the treaty of Paris not to interfere alone in Turkey,
and that obligation, as the Gazette& France very
well points out, will subsist as strongly on June 6
as on the day before. How is she, therefore, to be
more free after the expiration of the existing con-
vention than she was on the day when she signed
it 1 Evidently her obligations towards other powers
will remain the same.

Letters from Toulon state that, owing to recent
events in the United States, the French govern-
ment is going to reinforce its squadron on the
coasts of that country. Rear-Admiral d'Herbitig-
hem, it is said, has been selected for the command.

At the Bonrae the Rente declined in the morn-
ing about 15c. on the news that the Bank of Eng-
land had raised its discount, but it recovered after-
wards, and closed with much firmness at yesterday's
prices-69fr. 45c. and 69fr. 55c. Mobilier rose sfr.
The Lyons Railway rose 3fr. 75c.; Orleans and
Southern fell 3fr. 75c. each ; iu the other lines there
was little change.

M. Mires Las been removed from Muse to an
infirmary (maiaon de sant4) on a certificate given by
the prison physicians.
M. Proudhon bas not yet been able to find a
publisher willing to run the risk of bringing out his
new book.

M. Senator Velma, who is specially commissioned
to perform the functions of Prefect of the Rhone,
has just made what I conceive to be an extraor-
dinary exercise of his extraordinary power+. In a
recent circular he charges the mayors of his depart-
meet to keep a very sharp look-out after little boys
who take birds'-nests, it being • matter of public
policy to encourage the multiplication of small
birds, because they destroy caterpillars. Thus a
paternal government relieves the fanners of the
necessity of considering for themselves what birds,
beasts, and insects are most inimical to their
products. I remember "sparrow-clubs" in England,
I when I was a boy, which used to set • pries (per
hundred) upon the heads of small birds, and it
was thought by agriculturists highly meritorious to
snare, shoot, and net them. Whether these notions
were right or wrong may be a subject for discus-
sion with the Royal or any other learned society,
but I apprehend it will never take up the time of
Downing-street. Humanity has nothing to do
with the matter, because the physical and moral
feelings of a mole, a rat, or a caterpillar (which the
Prefect of the Rhone would allow to be destroyed),
are as much entitled to consideration as those of a
linnet, • lark, or a nightingale.
Don Gabriel Garcia Moreno, who has just been
elected President of the Republic of the Equator,
was formerly a pupil of the Polytechnic School in
Paris.

The Levant Herald says :—" Lest week a party
of Prwk surveyors, well provided with iftstrnmente,
started from Pen for Asia Minor, on the ostensible mission
to *muftis* and mop old Roman roads, for tie purpose of •
• History at Cesar,' on which the Emperor Napoleon is
soppd. The expedition is at the expesse of his Majesty,
sad it likely to hue useful results."