The Express.
London, England, 1857-09-07 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY. SEPT. 7.

ON the 12th of September last the Diligence
set oat from Tlemcen for Or= about three in the
morning. It was the ordinary public conveyance,
with its eight hones, two postilions, and a conductor.
The road is one of the mod frequented in Algeria,
and ought to be as safe as Hamad between Lemke
and Liverpool. Amongst the pmessigcra was the Aga
Bet• APDALL llt and his secretary. The Diligence
bad scarcely left the gates of Tlemcen than it was
overtaken by horsemen. Pistols are heard, bat at
first the shots are taken far a Aside in bower of
the great man inside. Hue A•DALLAII, it seres,
was a great chief, ruled over a large district, and
bad great influence • ith the French Generals in
supreme command of the district. He was on hi
way to Oran to complain to the General of the
condnet of Captain Ilot%r.ec, of whom we shall hear
more immediately. The mistake is soon disaipated.
The Asthma turns out to be • serious attack.
The Diligence is stopped. Some of the pas•
severs fly. BEN ADDALLAII and his secretary
axe brutally murdered, and in the fracas a
IL. VsLarre is mortally wounded. The Diligema
returns to Tlemcen with the dead bodies; the dis-
trict is in consternation.

Who can have dime it ? The widow of Bore
AIDALLMI, forgetting the cumin of her eanatep
mass into the street, with dishevelled hair and
issied with chains. She accuses one Bet HAN.
OsMal DE RC it'TORT reports the matter to
Go ma inquiries are set on foots
guathally minfeuions are made; and at length
Captain potnitte, the chief military oSteer of
the district, is amused of the mime. It is
known that for long he ham had differences with
BLS AIIDALLAII. of whose influence he is jesiosa
and that lately, instead of restoring some same
w►ich had been taken from BIN A EIDALLEIOI
paspie,flotnnio ordered them to be sold, and is up-
gued to hare shared the proceeds. Unless, there.
Pea. Ban namtiAtt die, DOINEW must be de-
assaseed, and probably ruined. Heiler, with eighteen
edam Dotnitit; IA put upon his trial before the
ciya Tribunal. The trial lasted more than a week,
and the result is that DoiNcit: hu been de-
emed from the Legion of Honour, and has been
assionned to death.

Without question this is one of the most re-
markable trials on record. Nor need we feel Bur-
prise at the intense interest which it has excited,
not only in Africa but in Paris. Officers, it seems,
flocked from all parts of Algeria to Oran, and
even an English corvette disembarked some of hers,
la order that they might be present. It was singular
enough to see a French military officer tried before
a civil tribunal. But this was not all. The trial of
DOETEM: and the facts detailed by the Arab
witnesses and French officers furnish the first
official revelation of that system of colonisation,
as it is culled, which has for so many years pre-
vailed in French .tfrica. Algeria is not a colony, it
is a Pala-stn. This ens long suspected : it is now
placed beyond doubt. The object which the French
Government has in occupying that territory is not to
civilise the natives and to bring them ander a better
government. Algeria is • school of war for French
soldiers; a safety-valve for enterprising spirits
impatient of inaction and peace—above all, a mine
of wealth to French officers without • sou, who,
so long as they exhibit vigour and ability, are
permitted to enrich themselves by plundering the
Arab tribes. No wonder the military men, from the
Generals downwards, were eager to screen their
comrade Dottleat . They knew that his cruel exac-
tions were no new thing. They remembered the
history of Sr. ARTAUD and a hundred others.
Perhaps Dot:save had been over-hold ; but it is
impossible to imagine a more perfect type of the
French African soldier.
The son of an officer who died utterly insolvent,
Dotteeau must Ric by his own resources. He has
lived in Africa from his childhood. He I. a perfect
master of Arabic ; knows the manners and customs
of the wild Arabs of the frontier ; and, according to
the testimony of those under whom he has served,
he is a man of consummate rigour and ability. He
knows his profession thoroughly, and may be
trusted to execute the most difficult operations. His
promotion has been rapid, and he is enrolled in the
Legion of Honour. lint he is insatiably ambitious ;
his temper is savage and arrogant. If any one
attempts to thwart him, he endeavours to over-
bear him. If that will not do he tries
deception. Though ono of the Generals said upon
the trial that his morality was without reproach,
he himself confesses that he is a gambler and dis-
sipated. As his advocate sulked—Who can expect a
Captain of Zouavee to be a mock Glory and
wealth are the end of this man's life, and to obtain
them everything must give way. He can bear un-
moved the charge of minder, but threaten to strip
him of the cresol of the Legion of Honour—a atiled
sob and his eyes raised to heaven attest his agony.
Now this man was the chief of what is called an
Arab Bureau. Practically, he was a despot

throughout a certain district. Within that circle
he was supreme. Tho Arab people trembled
beueath his sway. They crouched before him.
They declared in court, Dot,icsr was our
Sultan. Ile was lord of 30,000 men. What be
ecunisaaded was law. Let that family be plundered—

it was dote. Let that man be shot—it was done.
Pacort these men! What do you mean, some of Lis
Blares would say. Pot them out of the way, I say.
This, as DoiricAu himself told the Court, meant—
Shoot them! If ho wanted money, nothing

was easier the* te get it. Nlarshal Iti‘cAnt,,
inked, bad leid down some humane revile.
thee . with respect to these Arab Bureau,
be the purpose it controlling Le exectioall
ts which the poor people were subjected. Bat th.;,we
were evaded. Besides the moneys unaccouteed for,
Lire were " caster funds, of which no seemint
was kept. It is easy to pick a quarrel. That is
done. The head of the family is murdered. The
wife and children are driven out. The property is
sold. The chief of the Bowie seizes the proceeds.

Such is the tyrannic system under which the
native Arabs groan. Toe witnesses on this trial
rove as much. And the fact that Ilotrmor had
amassed a sum of 38,000 f., of which he refused
to give any account, amply corroborates the wit-
nesses, if corroboration were needed. The only attempt
at an explanation of the Zouave Captain's having so
enormous a sum in his possession utterly failed. He
Ina said to have received it from his step-mother.
But, as the Arrotuticr-Orxrur said," Absorbed as
" our officers are in the pursuit of glory, even they
" would not neglect to invest so vast a sum." Under
a system so despotic, how many must hare perished
in order to satisfy the rapacity of this DOINSAV ?
As the Arabs in their figurative way said :
"If the bushes could only speak ! " Nor is
this system of plunder confined to the French—the
Arab Agee are no less exacting. One Khalifat is
worth 4,0001. a-year. This very BEN ADDALLAH ham
been shot at again and again by those whom he has
phindered : he died enormously rich. Nor can any
fflonsonstrate more clearly the insecurity of life
Mieria, caused by this tyrannous system, than
this—that the country cannot be traversed except
under noon, and that the widow of this man, Box
Anntrt. in, has already lost three husbands—all of
whom died by violence.
It is well that this trial of I)OtBEAt took place
before a civil tribunal. We doubt whether the
Arabs would have sy )ken out before a Court-
Martial, the tenor inspired by these African soldiers
is so great. If Doinr-v0 had escaped, it would
have been a dreary prospect for them. Even now it
is confidently stated that the extreme sentence of
the law will not be executed. DOINEtt: is a man
of family, and has good interest. Hut whether he
dies or lives, we have no great hopes of a reform in
Algeria. The system of administration may, no
doubt, be improved, but we fear that the administra-
tive instruments—the French African officers—are
canape beyond redemption.

TIM reallaita which we centered to make on the
absents of the Cabinet from the seat of Government,
and at the withdrawal of the Court to a very distant
part at the kingdom, have thrown the ultra-minis-
terial loathes into a flutter. It is quite scandalous
for a respectable paper, says one, to talk in this way.
It is altogether a mistake to suppose Ministers are
not in London, says another. "The best of them
"are here ; their Alifest, the PRINZ MINIsTER, at
"their head." Notwithstanding these rebukes, and
this strange explanation (in stranger English), ws

return to the .object.
During the first campaign in the Russian war the
ABIRDZEN Cabinet dispersed exactly in the cams

way that the PALMERSTON Cabinet has now dome.
In like manner the Court betook itself to Balmoral.
What was the consequence ? The conduct of the
war, directed and supported from the country seats
of one or two members of the Government, lan-
gaoled. One member of the Cabinet alone, Iced
1. RUSSELL, saw from the banks of the Clyde this
abasase of vigour. He urged Lord ABERDEEN to
&asp the War Minister and re-aseemble the Go-
vomment in London. Lord ABERDEEN rudely de-
stined to do so; and when the disasters became
"horrible and heartrending," there followed one burst
of national indignation at the neglect which had cha-
racterised the ABLIDEIN Cabinet. That which
occurred in 1834 ought, we submit, to be a warning
for 1837. It does not, however, appear to be so.
The Court is again away, and the Cabinet is again
dispersed. No one knows or can tell when the latter
will meet again.
Now, there is each a thing in this world, though
some of our contemporaries don't appear to be swam
of it, as a sense of propriety. The most terrible and
afflicting calamity that ever befell a great country has
befallen England. It is a calamity that has wrong
hundreds of the best hearts in the country for the
loss of their dearest and nearest relatives and friends
ander circumstances of appalling atrocity and on-

paralleled surprise ; and of this calamity no human
being can at present foresee the molt. The Govern-
ment has, no doubt, sent out large masses of troops,
and is raising great reinforcements to subdue the
mutiny, and to reconquer Central India. But these
troops will not reach the scene of disturbance sad
insurrection for upwards of three months after their
departure from England. It is exactly during that
period that the suspense is most dreadful, that the
news is most important, and that public feeling is
most roused and excitable.

Now, we will pat to the most ardent admirers of
the Court, and the most devoted adherents of the
present Government, if the withdrawal of the one to
Balmoral or the abandonment of London by the other
can, as a mere matter of good taste and propriety,
convey any agreeable impression to the general pub-
lic. There are, it seems, persons whose minds are so
constituted, or who regard the scenes passing in India
as occurrences of such ordinary importance, as to
approve of the Court and Cabinet absenting them-
selves from London as if nothing unusual had taken
place. Not so the great body of the public, or
the sincere and independent friends of the Crown and
the Cabinet. By them the fact is noticed in another
sense. It is accepted as evidence of the absence of
that deep feeling for the honour and glory of Eng-
land which might have been expected to prevail now
if ever, and of that want of that earnestness in pub-
lic affairs which the direst calamity has failed in
some quarters to arouse.

The question is not what the Court and the va-
rious absent members of the Cabinet can personally
do in London. Is no offensive point involved in
the monstrous assumption that there is nothing to
do, nothing to consult about, nothing to deliberate
on, nothing even to talk about, or to think about?
that Ministers may be just as well and as usefully
occupied in deer stalking or partridge shooting in
all parts of the kiogdom, as in attending in London
to this dreadful business? that everything that can
possibly be suggested has been done, and that the
whole duty of the Cabinet is to wait the result in
the country? This, we repeat, is not decent. If
the Cabinet be composed of three or four able men
and a dozen nonentities, surely the latter class
might have the good taste not to proclaim their
own incapacity.
But we will not do the great body of the Cabinet
that injustice. No doubt, on such an occasion as this,
Lord PALMERSTON is vastly superior to his col-
leagues. In nothing does he show his superiority
more than in his present devotion to public busi-
ness. Hut even a man of his 'capacity would
derive support, encouragement, suggestions, and
evangel from the common deliberations of the
colleagues he has chosen. He selected them, we
have a right to assume, for their capacity and useful-
ness, their ability to aid and co-operate with him—
not for their incapacity or uselessness, or because of