The Express.
London, England, 1861-12-02 00:00:00

PRINCESS'S.

Te• Bram JEAN MET rt:4 w EDDI NO.—And OTIILLI.O.
Meson. rechter, Ity.ter, J.,rdrn. Putter. :them aa4 Cathcart;
Mom V. le,kreq, Y LacJeraN, and Ilaworthy.

JANITII.

Tun Emma. A WITC4 JOVRYAL Yr. O. Vining and
yew Kate Terry —TUE POOR NOBLILICAN. Mr. A. %Viotti.
TIII: HIS %KIANG SCHOOL lliours. 0. Charles.
&lure, . M u Herbert and Mn. F. Mattltews..—thtunts..uce at 74.

NIIITANNIA.

Twei Evionwo, TUE B% Notr QUItN. Mks E. Clayton.-
lootanl.-Eroupe nt Ii nci and Monkey's-M. Eittalr.-51‘111r. C.
V.epitius.-Mr. J. Illumptuo.-An4 TUK WIDOW'S PON. lin.
P. Lana -Coalman at M.

NIGH MATRit AT LONDON MUDD&

TI DAT—Mondag. Aftemoes. lh.
to-aissam—llonfty !► mosarts.2b. 4.las.

LONDON, MONDAY, DEC. 2.

ALTHOUGH instructions were sent out to Lord
LYONS three days after the news from the Old
Bahama Channel reached England, Christmas will
probably arrive quite as soon as President LINCOLN'S
reply. We miss now the services which the
Atlantic Telegraph was once expected to render.
We bare before us a month of expectation and
uncertainty. From time to time as the American
mad comes in, we shall receive information upon
which inference and observation may be based with
more or leas probability ; but while we are without
the formal reply of Mr. lancout to the demands
of our Government for reparation, it will be unfair
and unwise to prejndge its character. We are not to
assume that the American Governmentcannot or will
not disavow and condemn the rash act of an officer
fresh from the coast of Africa, and therefore igno-
fast of much which might have influenced the
course of an agent better informed. Indeed, the
rule by which our thoughts and words should be
governed while the event is contingent is very
clear. We ought to do by the American Govern-
ment as we should wish that Government to do by
us under the same circumstances ; and certainly
we should think anyone unfriendly who said that
England in such a ease would refuse to admit the
claims of law and justice. We ask no more than
law and justice of the United States Government.
Although we are the proper guardians of our
own dignity, we do not set up for judges in our
own quarrel : we do not resent the fair exercise of
those rights of the American Government whisk
spring out of a state of war. We do not complain
of the right of search ; we could not do so, for, each
as it is, we more than others have made it ; and
although, as neutrals, we feel its oppressiveness
to-day, to-morrow we may be belligerents, and
may find it conveeient. It is on the written law,
acknowledged by lbe maritime states of the eivi-
lined world, that oar demands upon the Gown-
ment at Washington are based ; to it we appeal,
and by it we are ready to abide. Ho far from
complaining that the character of the act of Captain
Wiiira turns upon dry points of law, we find is
that fed the best ground of our hopes of the main-
tresses of peace. The more we can throw the can
of the Trent upon harmonious precedent and re-
seeded decision, the better is the peeped of avoid-
fag a conflict over which every friend of Christian
eivilizaties would mourn.
Either war exists in the United States between
the North and the South, or it does not. If
war does not exist, there is no right of
search and no right of blockade. All the British
ships which have been captured for breach of
the blockade must be restored, and the Sea
Jacinto in exercising the right of search
exercised a right which had no exist-
ence. If war does not exist—that is, if
the North refuse to acknowledge belligerent rights
—let them say so, and henceforth no American
cruiser will be allowed to search any English mer-
chantman. Messrs. Suugu and MASON must be
restored because taken by the exercise of a non-
existent right, and the blockade of the Southern
ports must be raised. But if there is war, then
the Southerners are enemies, and must be treated
as such on board English ships. No English jurist
or diplomatist has ever maintained that an came
can be taken on board a neutral ship, and there-
fore no English practice can justify the captain
of the San Jacinto in what he has done. If the
Federal Government persist in regarding the
Southerners as subjects, there is no enemy and no
war : if the Federal Government are willing to
regard tho Southerners as public enemies, they are
not liable to be seized as persons who owe allegi-
ance to the Federal Governiuent.

Tea events of the pest week have produced a
degree of excitement in the commercial and finan-
cial world unknown for years past. Men's minds
have been forcibly diverted from the works of
peace to the contemplation of the dread con-
tingency of war. Although the quarrel is with
the Government of • great people, one with us in
language, religion, and blood, and with whom, until
very recently, we have maintained exceedingly
clam and extensive commercial relations, there has
scarcely ever been a great public question on
which commercial opinion has been marked by the
unanimity displayed on the present occasion. The
community !Live been unanimous in des:ring that
the utmost forbearanos should be observed, es long
as the Americans confine themselves to the exer-
cise of their rights ; that limit weld, they cannot
but require that the dignity of the country be up-
held. The present is a question of the security
of maritime intercourse, and of the exemption of
our ocean-scattered mercantile marine from moles-
tation by the force:nen The British flag, if once
suffered to ho trailed in the dirt, will convey no
protection 'whatever.

It will not seem unnatural, or even unreason-
able, that the commercial community, having got
over their first excitement, are considenng their
altered prom/sea. This is not to prejudge the
question of peaco or war, or to distrust either the
ability of Lord Ligon, or the candour of Mr. LIN-
I'OLN ; it is simply prudence. And the result is
a confident feeling that war, though at all times
to be sarueetly deprecated as most pernicious,
and often more injurious to the victor than the
vanquished, would prejudice at least mercantile
interests in a far less degree than at former pe-
riods. The first consideration is that war would
put a stop to our American trade. lint, so far as
the export of our goods is concerned, it is already
Dearly stopped by the set of the Americans them-
selves. What with their civil war in the first
butane, and their hostile tariff towards ourselves
in the next, our cousigumenta to America hays