The Express.
London, England, 1861-03-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH 15.

THE independent opposition in the Corps Ligis-
latif over the water is understood to consist of no
less than five deputies. It is not by any of those
five deputies that Italy is attacked or England
insulted. Their sympathies, on the contrary, are
with Italian independence and the English
alliance—in other words, with liberty and justice
all over the world. But there is another and a
larger opposition in the Chamber, made up of the
must heterogeneous elements of civil and religious
faction, and composed for the most part of nomi-
nees of the administration, who have accepted
pay, livery, and service on condition of calum-
niating their Master once a year with impunity,
and exercising the right of insolence and ingrati-
tude without abandoning the privileges of servility.
This extremely miscellaneous party of resistance
has two irons in the fire just now—the defence of
the temporal power of the Pore, and hostility
to England and everything English. It comprises
some needy and pious Legitimists in its ranks ;
some surreptitious orleanists, a few Napoleonists
of a religious turn, afew out-and-out Ultramontane
fanatics, and a batch of bitter industrial protec•
bonista, who resent the Commercial Treaty as
fiercely as the partisans of the elder branch of the
BOURIONK resent their obligations by accusing
England of every crime in the political calendar.
England, we dare say, has a good conscience,
armed to bear all the shafts of malicious folly that
can be hurled against her acts, motives, and designs.
Besides, it is only fair to acknowledge that these
raging Deputies do but follow the example of evil-
speaking which members of the Roesvex and Bees-
wax species brought into fashion a year ago in OUT
own House of Commons. Many rash and reckless
words spoken last session in St. Stephen's are now
echoed fiercely on the banks of the Seine. On
the one aide and on the other the speakers are
men without a following, who represent nothing
save their own inordinate vanity and the vehe-
mence of irresponsible mischief. But whilst in the
Palace of Westminster the heat of debate has
sometimes served to excuse indiscretion and in-
temperance of language, in the Petals Bourbon
we find disguised partisans of fallen regimes
deliberately reading to the Chamber lucubrttions
charged with all the bile of the sacristy and all
the venom of royalist salons, seasoned with the
most injurious animosities, and spiced with the
most odious provocations. We take leave to
assure these acrimonious pamphleteers of the
Corps Ligislatif, that their lampblack eloquence
has no terrors for English ears. We only wish it
were a little more amusing. So long as the great
liberal heart and brain of France are with us, we
are supremely indifferent to the invective of a corps
of Papal &luxes in plain clothes. The worst
that could happen to liberal England would be to
deserve the good opinion of these furious admirers
of the " legendary hero" of Gaeta. Lord JOHN
Rrour.u. expressed the feeling of free Englishmen
when he declared that he rejoiced even in
the most violent speeches of the bitterest ene-
mies of England in the French Senate. It is in-
finitely better for the cause of peace be.
tween two great neighbouring nations that
the worst thoughts of the worst minds of
each should be published to the world
in the wont words, than that stupid
enmities should rankle under hypocritical profes-
sions. Friends across the Straits may perhaps
have noticed the calm and courteous tone of our
Parliamentary talk this Session whenever French
policy was mentioned, compared with the rabid
licence of the five or six fire-eaters who made so
many nights hideous with their harangues last
year. This is &natural and healthful reaction—the
subsidence that announces a return to sanity. We
therefore beg them to watch as we do the
eccentric and harmless ebullitions of the Papal
and royalist party, with something better than
patient pity—with positive satisfaction and
contentment. The reaction of disgust is sure
to follow, and when the Roman question
is disposed of, and the Suez Canal is cut and dry;
we shall not despair of exchanging civilities with
senators like M. nit BOINNT, and deputies like M.
Puri-Hoe. For the present, it is a hopeful sign
that these angry humours are at least expelled,
instead of festering beneath the surface and he-
mming bad blood. " Brother, brother, we are
" both in the wrong." This, after all, is the true
moral of mutual recriminations. France is the
dupe of England—England is the dupe of Frame ;
each is subservient to the other ; each is habi-
tually deceiving, supplanting, and opposing the
other. And yet the result is, that we under-
stand each other better every day, and that on all
great questions of European policy we are bound
by the very law of progress and civilization to
march side by side. No doubt the happy day has
not yet come for the disappearance of the last
traces of old jealousies and contentions. But the

day of petty- politics, of hollow cordialities, of
mean intrigues, of timid compromises, of empty
menaces and paltry influences, is gone with a
I ZOT and a THIESS ; and their puny followers
will hardly bring it back. Even duplicity wears
a certain adventurous frankness now-a-days, which
is more tolerable than the cautious cunning
of the doctrinaire school of Kings and Cabi-
nets, inasmuch as it makes " situations "
clearer, and solutions more decisive, and
brings great principles into play. History
will not refuse to the present Emperor of the
Fwasen the credit of having advanced the liberal
cause in Eurepe, whether by design or by fatality.
Nor could Lou.l N SIN IL SOK &Sin/ a more
honourable inscription on some future monument
of his reign than the abusive speeches of tho