The Express.
London, England, 1847-01-11 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE,

life and judgment, have become fascinated and
entangled by the study of saints and fath,‘rs, seem
to have been struck by the novelty of tlin g.s there
disclosed to them. Their theological stu lies had
evidently not mule them acquainted with the histori-
cal course and developement of church opinion. They
dived into unopened volumes, penetrated int.' recesses
where the student's lamp never burned, and they were
fascinated by the pleasure of discovering what, if
familiar to them, they would have regarded cs trivial.
Defective theological studies aro the caus , of the
dizziness in the ideas, and change in the convictions,
of so many of the conscientious clergy. Oxford has
become a school of doubt, of ignorance, and of error,
and =mill stly abuses and misperforms that duty
entrusted to it by the state, of which it enjoys the
greater portion of the monopoly, and for which it is
monstrously and superfluously paid.
We cannot close these remarks without a favour-
able mention of the simple, lucid, and strong statement
of Dr. iiocie, published under the title of the Three
Reformations. For members of the Church of Eng-
land, who have paid little attention to its Tractarian
controversy, or in attending slightly, have cared or
comprehended little, such a brief expose as Dr. HOOK'S,
will prove highly valuable as information,—inde-
pendent of its controversial merits or truth.

THERE are many benevolent theorists who would
turn prisons into schools. It would be well if they
could change the direction of their labours, and set
about establishing schools, which might super-
sede prisons. In dealing with education, we are
apt to concentrate attention on the schools which ab-
sorb the bulk of the rising generation, such as the
national,or the British and Foreign. The chi! Iran who
attend these, belong to the lower classes of :he popu-
lation. But there lies under the strattna which
furnishes our national and British and Foreign
scholars, a lower deep, teeming with life,—all
the more active for the putrescence W-ich en-
genders it. In oar large towns, there arc
thousands of children, who never receive even such
education as the existing schools can furnish. They
are turned over to a different discipline. The streets
are their school-room ; the Fagins are their school-
masters; pilfering is the staple subject of their les-
smut Their inspections are carried on by the police.
Their universities are our gaols ; and their highest
degree is taken on the scaffold.
The prison can never be a school for these unhappy
Pariahs, except in crime. Parkhurst and Pentonville
are alike impotent with the youth and manhood of this
class. Besides, if their instruction were efficacious,
it is not wide enough. It takes in only a miserable
minority of those who need it. And even the best I
and honcstest of its converts arc found powerless to
resist the evil influences, amongst which they are
unavoidably thrown on the expiration of their term
of imprisonment. Reformatories may do much. but it
would be a great achievement to diminish the necessity
for them.

It is only recently that the raw material of crime
has been taken in hand. Industrial schools for
pauper children have, it is true, existed for some seven
or eight years at Norwood. They have always, how-
ever, been confined to the overflowing of the metro-
politan workhouses. The Children's Friend Society
had a similar establishment at Hackney Wick; but a
clamour, excited by some injudicious disposal of the
labour which they trained, has led to the suppression
of that society and the destruction of their schools.
But until the ragged-schools were set a-going, we
are not aware of any attempt having been made in
London to subject the young Arabs and Bohemians
of the streets to any disciplinal process, except of a
penal kind. It is within the last two years that the
hand of humanity first stirred the pestilent mud, that
stagnates round the basements of London life.
The work began amongst humble men. We are
not certain of the fact, but we have an impres-
sion that it was a Windsor chimney-sweep, who,
within the sound of royal carriage wheels,
the glitter of lordly equipages, and the sober
eplendours of episcopal liveries, at the very
focus of our mighty system of Church and State, first
drew together the juvenile rabble of Windsor va-
grancy, into a " ragged school ;" and there, unaided,
except by his own small knowledge, and great Chris-
tian love and devotion, began to teach those whom no
man had ever thought of teaching before.
Be this as it may, wherever the notion originated,
it is in process of being carried out in London and
elsewhere. We learn from an article in the Quar-
terly Review, based on the second annual report of
the Ragged School Union, that there are now open in
the metropolis about thirty of these schools,
with an average attendance of 3,000 chil-
dren. Of these schools, some are open on
Sunday evenings only, and in that case the instruc-
tion is entirely religious, and conducted by voluntary
and unpaid masters. Some are open two evenings in
the week ; others five, and in these cases the educa-
tion is conducted by a paid master. Not more than
two or three are open during the day. In the schools
which are open on week days, reading writing
and arithmetic are united to religious instruc-
tion and devotional exercises. It is apparent
that mere instruction in religion, even when accom-
panied with lessons in reading, writing, and arith-
metic, can do but little for a set of children, who are
generally dependent for the day's meal on the day's
precarious earnings or petty plunder. The lessons of
the school must receive a perpetual counteraction from
the life of the streets. Still the results of what has
been done are remarkable. They show a singular apti-
tude and eagerness to learn amongst a race, which has
been hitherto considered inaccessible to good influences
of any kind. When some of these establishments
were first opened, they were instantly filled by a rude I
rabble of children, who came, not to learn, but to
" have a lark." Lights were put out, benches and
forms overturned, books, slates, mud, and stones flung
at the teacher's head. He had no power to punish—the
notion of coercion was ridiculous. Yet, despite of the
previous training of the pupils, and of the utter power-
lessness of the teacher, except in that power which
glows of charity, and zeal, and earnestness, patience
and principle have, as the reviewer remarks, con-
quered these difficulties, "and now we may see, on
each evening of the week, hundreds of these young
maniacs engaged in diligent study, clothed and in
their right mind."
No praise caa be too high for the promoters and
teachers of these schools. We cannot conceive any
more Christian-like achievement than the establishing
of such a centre of industry, order, and knowledge,
amidst a population which has never had addressed
to it the words either of instruction or kindness.

TIM DAT. —Wein i. 14 Min. pest n; Afternoon, SO mi. port S.
To-llosnow—lfornlng, H min. past 9; Afternoon, SO min. past 9.

LONDON, MONDAY, JAN. 11.
THE English sulocription for the starving poor of
Ireland and of Scotland thrives and swells beyond the
utmost hopes of its originators. It is not a question
of party. The Standard and the Chronicle alike open
their columns to the appeal. Mr. Huou MscNt.lL is
as eloquent in its behalf as the warmest Anglo-Irish
Liberal.

-----
Amongst the suberriptions wo have much pleasure
in recording that of the QUEEN DOWAGER for one
thousand pounds.

Tux conversion to Catholicism of a knot of the
clergy of Leeds has given rise to very natural feelings
of impatience, sorrow, and dismay. When the wolf
so easily devours the shepherds, is the reflection,
=rely he will make but light work of the sheep.
The sheep, however, seem in no danger ; the "she-wolf
of Rome," so very dexterous fur the moment at run-
ning away with shepherds, is without power or
Late for preying on the flock.
Your great founders of religion and of sects were
wont to come forth and address the multitude, and
ling their nets wide amongst the shoals and masses of
mankind. The Romanisers of the day do not fish with
seta. They go forth to angle with a rod and a fly
which they fling on the ripple of the secluded stream.
Here they hook one or two solitary fish, which creates
much splash and some sport, and is a feat for the
angler. In the deep pools that run, or rather that
stagnate, under cloister walls, these anglers have of
late years caught some stupendous fish. Bat how can
such diminutive slaughter be considered to affect the
fortunes or the numbers of the finny tribe?
One of the great mistakes of the present age is the
tendency of certain callings and professions so to
practise and develope the science appertaining to
them, as to suit the whims and fancies of the adepts
of the profession, leaving the world and its welfare
out of the question. Thus we have law made for the
pleasure and advantage of lawyers, poetry written and j
praised that can only be admired by poets, and schools
of art landed as the only true ones, the works of
which none bat artists can comprehend.
Some doctors of Oxford have undertaken to
do the same by religion, to make a new one
for priests to glory on, rather than for the',
people to better in. Such selfish views are, per-
haps, hidden even to the eye which contemplates
them. For one part of the scheme is to create an
/Esthetic religion, which is to captivate men by their
tastes and senses more than by their reason. All
those aids, and enticements, and embellishments to
devotion, found useful in a period of ignorance and
darkness, are preposterously brought forward at the
very time when education is progressing so as to
render them roost useless. Never was • movement
made so directly contrary to the current of all things
and all ideas as this.
It would be idle to exaggerate the importance of
a school which, like Young Englandism in politics,
seeks to guide and reform fashion rather than creed,
and would put the clock of life back five centuries,
merely because it admired the cut of men's beards,
or the authority of the Vavassora of that time. There
is ooncealed in this, no doubt, • wish to restore feudal
authority, as corresponding to scrfish submission, in
Church and State. But the attempts are too puny
and too preposterous to be formidable. It captivates
the fancy and enlists the zeal of the would-be
reformers and professors, but it affects not the crowds
that walk the common paths of the world.
Though no precaution be required to preserve the
public from being converted to a merely dilettante
weed, something of the kind does seem requisite,
vindicate the" character of the University of Ox-
ford. It is found guilty of generating these puerihties,
and bow? In all probability, by too narrow
sad too dogmatical a course of theological edu-
cation. Those grave divines who, in mature

But something more is wanted to convert these
lehmaelites into useful members of society. They
must be taught not merely to read but to work, and
not only must they be instructed and habituated to
employ themselves, but, when this habit is formed,
masters must be found to employ them. Whatever be
their ultimate fate, it is better they should meet it
taught, however imperfectly, than altogether untaught ;
and we may even be tolerably, certain that once
taught, their names will be found less frequently. in
police sheets and prison registers. Take the criminal
returns of 1845. We find that out of the total of
59,123 persons taken into custody, 15,263 could neither
write nor read; 39,659 could read only and write im-
perfectly! Significant as these figures are, however,
it is an idle dream that mere instruction in lettters
or religion will remove crime in a country like
England, where, without work, a man must beg, pilfer,
or starve, or take up the pauper existence, in which
these three resources alternate with life in the work-
house. On considering these facts, industrial schools
appear to involve great, and comparatively unde-
veloped, means of good. Industrial classes have, as
we learn from the reviewer, been established in one
only of the ragged schools. After four days
of study, on the British and Foreign school system,
on the fifth day all the girls are set to needlework,
the boys to tailoring and shoemaking. Admission to
these class. sis treated as a reward. Yet such is the
rambling life which these children often necessarily
lead, that out of 283 received into this school, tho
average attendance goes no higher than 53 boys and 71
girls. 'the expenses are moderate : about 3d. a week
for each child on the average attendance of 124. We
have introduce.' the subject of industrial schools in
connexion with the lowest and most neglected class
of the population. We shall return to the matter at
the earliest opportunity, directing attention to the
effects of industrial training as they are illustrated by
the examples of the Norwood, Aberdeen, and other
schools of thes character at home and abroad.

THE late action at Torres Vedras was certainly a
very gallant feat. That 3000 Portuguese should ad.
vance through a defile, and against batteries well
served, wig manned by a force equal to their own,
and in the at tempt suffer without flinching a loss of

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 11, lad.

six or seven hundred men, forms a respectable page
in the annals of Portuguese warfare.
Setting aside the immediate political results, such an
event is likely to have every salutary influence in restor-
ing to civil war and insurrection that seriousness, which
in Portugal it had almost lost. Nothing can be more
fatal to a country than the habit of insurrection, with-
out object, without result, and without any serious
consequence to victors or vanquished. Although one
cannot but applaud the generosity which spares life
after contention, nevertheless, certain impunity ren-
dere insurrection a pastime, which, however amusing
' and tinhurtful to the originators and actors, is most
painful and destructive to the commonwealth which it
undermines. The sacrifice of one thousand men in a
sanguinary action, the death of one leader, the capture
of another, however lamentable such circumstances in
themselves? are not altogether thrown away for the
1 peace of the country.
At the same time, the Queen and court, rendered
triumphant by this action, seem most foolish and
short-sighted in their policy—contenting none, conci-
liating none—offending alike the grandees and the
1 citizens, alienating every friendly power abroad, and
every powerful class at home : grinding the people
by the must onerous taxes, and frighting away com-
merce from the ports by almost prohibitive customs
duties. In fact, Donna MARIA seems to have con-
centrated, under a mock constitutional system, the
worst defects of the administration of the most imbe-
cile of her ancestors.

And what do we see at present, but a repetition of
what has taken place twenty times before,—the two
great cities of the kingdom occupied by hostile parties;
Lisbon for the court, Oporto for the opposition, the
army divided between them, with all the concomi-
tants of sieges, blockades, embargoes, destruction of
property and life. No matter what the government
at Lisbon, Oporto is ready to hatch and bring forth
an insurrection against it. CABRAL marched from it
some years back to restore the court to power, ai
DAB ANTAS not long since left it to crush the same '
court.

One would think that no government in Portugal
could have attained power without making some effort
fbr effecting some union and similarity of feeling be-
tween the two cities. The first and simplest requisite
for this would be to open a road between them, and
thereby create a channel of communication. These
two principal towns of Portugal are about as far
asunder as London and Liverpool; yet there is not
what can be called a high road between them. There
being no facile road, of course there is no communica-
tion. And because there is little communication,
government sees no necessity for making the road
practicable. When a railroad was talked of, it was met
by the same objection. Our steamers by no means
supply the place of land communication; for, whilst
none can get over the bar of Oporto, few can even
land the mails in that tempestuous sea. So that the
two chief towns of one of the oldest and proudest
European empires, which concentrated within itself
at once the choice wealth of the two worlds, have no
more facile or general communication between each
other than Bahia and Rio.

The giving to a country a free press before it is
given roads, and constitutional government before it
cares to read, is a difficult task. We do not say that,
it is beginning at the wrong end, for if not begun at
this end, it will not be begun at all. But a court, and
a Cortex, and a government, which wrangle and fuss
about the merest trifles, which raise and which ex-
pend a very large revenue, and which toss and
winnow as much speculative theories and political
systems as might suffice the most advanced of coun-
tries—for them to proceed thus without providing for
the very elements of material life and political union,
is most preposterous.
At present, however, the fate and conduct of the
country have fallen into a single hand, that of SAL-
DANIIA. If be had wisdom equal to his vigour, with
a fair and grateful recollection of those liberal princi-
ples by which he rose, SALDANIIA might now secure
his own reputation and his country's liberties. This,
however, can only be done by generosity to the con-
quered party, and by perseverance in a system
of true though moderate Liberalism. Should the
Marshal give himself up blindly to the guidance of
the court and its French agent, Dierz should
he summon back the detested and inquisitorial
CABRAL, who turned Lisbon into what Venice was
in the last century—should he repose his whole trust
in courtiers and soldiers, and do nothing in the
mean time for the country or its industrious classes,
then SALDANIIA'S name will but go down with those of
so many other Portuguese statesmen, who wasted in
selfish indulgence and idle resentment that power,
which might have been employed for the regeneration
of their country.

The following programme of the proceeding of
the Chambers for Monday (this day), and on the suc-
ceeding days, which corresponds in substance with
what we ourselves announced some days since, hu
appeared in the French papers:
To-day the session of the chambers will opened by a
royal speech. This year there will be no provisional bu-
reaux. The session having simply been prorogued. the
bureau of the two chambers remains the same so in August
I ist. At the Chamber of Peers, therefore, to-morrow
(Tuesday) preliminary steps for nominating the commission
on the address will be taken, and as the drawing up of the
form is rapidly executed by this commission, the debat es
may commence before the end of the week. It is, there-
fore, before the Chamber of Peers that the first ministerial
explanations will be given.
At the Chamber of Deputies, the first day will be devoted
to ballotting for the formation of the bureaux. The nomi-
nation for the commission on the address will take place on
Wednesday.
The chamber will then be occupied with examining the
validity of some of the returns of deputies elected since the
prorug ition. They are ten in number: MM. Bethmont,
Gen. de Lemariciire, Marquis de Roure, Hennecart,Guerrin,
and Portalis (the two latter replace MM. Genoux and
Fortelle, deceased since the hat elections) t MM. Conyers.
Draulc. and Hallez•Claparele, whose elections had been
annulled by the Chamber. M. Trete submitted to reelec-
tion, owing to his having accepted office as a public tune-
tior ary.
The election of M. Fortelle will probably be declared in-
valid, as he was not of age at the time of his election. The
other nominations will scarcely give rise to a debate, but the
Chamber will have to investigate the election of M. Drou-
illard, whose admis•ion was adjourned.
The. college of Condom is convoked at the present moment
owmg to the promotion of M. Jules Persil to the bench of
judges. The college of Lectoure in the department du Oen
will deo he shortly convoked. owing to M. Selyandy's having
de pied for Wrens. This choice will be official only after
ha, in- been announced to the Chamber. M. Berger has
de ided for Paris, and General Thiard for Chilon-surthone.
These were double returns, and the Colleges of Thiers and
of Laudon will have to be convoked. The number of
deputies present at Paris is estimated at 300.
his not likely that the discussion on the address will com-
mence till the 26th at the Chamber of Deputies.
It has been announced that the ministry intends present-
ing to the Chamber, at the commencement of this second
part of the session, the budget of 1848, and the laws and re-
gulations of the grants of 1844 and 1846.
The near approach of the great Parliamentary con-
flict sustains the system of reciprocal skirmishing
between the outposts of the two parties in the press.
Whether there be or not a schism in the ministry on
the one hand, or in the opposition on the other, con-
tinues to be debated. Most English readers of foreign
policies know that the division of the chamber to the
Left of the Centre is led by M. Thiers, and is that
section of the opposition whose principles differ least
from the present Conservative cabinet. Further to
the Left of that, and differing still more,is the division
in which MM. Billault, Defame, and others are
prominent. Between these sections government parties
wish G. prove that there prevails at present view so
discordant on some of the leading topics of the day,
that they cannot co-operate. This, on the other hand,
iv loudly end emphatically disavowed by the organs
of the Centre-left, while those of the Left are more
reserve d. In short, that there are differences of more
or less weight both in the Ministerial party—nay, in
the Cabinet itself—and in the Opposition, is certain ;
hut whether these differences will prevail over the
great personal interests which lIIILit induce to
parliamentary co-operation is another question. A
portion of the Cabinet disapproves of the precipitation ,
in the accomplishment of the Spanish marriages, or
rather of the Montpensier marriage, for that of the
Queen has in reality nothing to do with the question
which produced the rupture with the cabinet of St.
James's. While the Centre-left differs from the Left
section in attaching greater importance, and in a wil-
lingness to make greater sacrifices for an alliance
with England. All this is very apparent to any one
who views with sufficient proximity the workings of
party in Paris.
The strong measure adopted by the Spanish cabinet
in arresting M. Olozsga has excited a feeling so una-
nimously indignant in Patis that the organs of the
cabinet themselves have been compelled to express
their disapprobation of it

The Madrid nail, with the correspondence and