The Express.
London, England, 1848-11-03 00:00:00

and the" Marts Cenrenfionelle," or, if you iike it I
better, • ClosfestierieUe." he Korean law meets
wits no more favour at his hands than the Roman
chemistry, or the Roman natural pbilesopky. The
charter, with its pinderstion of powers, is a balance
Evp.videil in the air : oce of the make contains a
weight, the other a sponge. In dry weather the
ere,tc ascends, and the weight falls; in wet weather
the contrary takes place. Such a charter deco not
appear to the author the highest expression of the
aortal and prchological laws of humanity Leaving,
therefore, the discus...ion of the foundations and right
of property, the author contents himself f.r the pre
sent with "the exposition of an ancient system of
governno nt in which property consisted in a simple
usufruct, where estated (.Icomanial) right was rerlaced
po,ssional right, coaforombly to those natural
principoa which constitute the relation of men to
thing,." This naturally leads to the consideration of
the Sabbath, which is spoken of in the following
- .

terms :
The ,lif•atical institution, or week); festal calibration.
agreed, .ie than :1,000 yen ago, as pivot and centre of a
politico relos system, the profundity sad sagacity ;o1
which p eat
has never bees weariad of admiring. lathe
*each' Moses the observation f the Sabbath was ta
the great springs: the:mov:cg principle, of Hebrew society.
Pali teal ties of public
administration. educa-
tion. prictiee of religion, morals, public health, relatione of
the Ista.ty and the sity, liberty, (quality, (intercity, all these
thing., •f re supposed by the Sabbath. It enstained them
all, dies loped them all, and coustituted the t srmosious
unity ef all. The Sunday, a transformation of the Sabbath,
was destined to play the same part, to introduce the same
remelt.
Up to this point M. Proudhon travels on the same
road as the religious admirers of the institutio, but
in the very next sentence he paru apecoy with them,
without holding oat any h 'pee of unio The
reader will perceive at once the introduction of the
theory to which we bare alluded,—the denial of any-
thing higher than man. " The highest being is man,"
says one of the advocates of this school. Thrology
is anthropology.' " Nothing will be done," says
another, " until we get rid of the old prejudice that
any true God exists oat of humanity." M.Proudhon's
doctrine resolves itself ire o formula.
The divon of time into weeks anterior to Moses and he
all historical epochs, sprung without doubt tram that asps-
rior spontaneous instinct i.hich discover,d the first sate„ de-
veloped 'wigwags., invented writing, created system* of
renal ni and philosophy : that 'marvellous faculty which
roilcsioa—• 'Oral but pragressive (scatty—is weakening from
day to day, hat cannot annihilate. Now, imagine the con-
aptioas dais eryeauic agss coUgeted together as • body of
doctrine by a pswerfel miens, sad thus pasaing from the
eisselition of spsalaneons whoa to that of a.ienees senb•
Wed by reflection klatin if SOOKU roll-chits), and you will
has* the Moseical legislatien, of which the Sabbath is the
symbol, the mysterious and sacred exprs anon.
The kernel of the modern atheism is contained in
the weeds which we have distinguished by italics,
which we leave to the consideration of those of our
readers who are unacquainted with the system. The
principle of M. Proudhon's method is also to be ga-
thered from the latter quotations. That he made
out a ease on the principles of resew alone for as
the in-
ititution of the Sabbath, is undeniable, and so far a
theologian may think the author has done good ser-
vice to the world. For ourselves, we rise from the
perusal of the work with adairatim at th
texte
manner in which M. Proudhon has managed his ,
and wonder at the coolness with which he endeavours
to excite hopes of the generation of society in the
minds a those for whom he has destroyed all the
ordinary foundations of such hopes; how he, who has
to his own satisfaction removed God from the world,
destroyci: the object of faith, and denied the utter
validity of all principles of government which op to
the present time have passed current in the world, can
finish his trenti.e with writing down as the final for-
mula of humanity, Gnus Dna, one fides, no tins irn-