The Express.
London, England, 1851-09-01 00:00:00

Of proteetantism, the court of Berlin has given up
the championship. The KING himself is a political
Puseylte, and deems the Roman catholic church a
much more convenient one than the protestant, much
more useful to restrain and to manage the people,
'The protestant pastor does notexereme the moral police
with the minuteness that despotism requires. And
hence the King of PRUSSIA treats the protestant
clergy and prelates with sworn. All his smiles and
genuflexions are for the Roman catholic prelates and
persuasion. Ile is the favourer of reaction in reli-
gion and in politics. Whether such an idea may not,
suit the Emperor of AUSTRIA is a question. But
such conduct in a Prussian monarch, is simply un-
ravelling the entire web that his ancestors have been
weaving through centuries of patience and success.
Another claim of Prussia to pee-eminence was its
free development of intellect, its education, and uni-
versities. But all intellectual movement the King
of PRUSSIA has turned his back upon as decidedly as
upon religious freedotn, in order to fall back upon the-
Austrian system of ignorantism. No man of learn-
ing now looks with aught but shame towards the
court of Berlin ; and indeed the most intellectually
eminent meu of Germany are one by one avowing
themselves republicans, not from any theoretic pre-
ference of republic to monarchy, but from the unde-
niable experience that German monarchs arc not to
be trusted, that they aro not men of their word, and
are utterly devoid of principle. Having lost its
military parity with Austria, its political weight at
the head•of the minor states, its religious position as
the bulwark of protestautiam, its intellectual cha-
racter as the friend of letters and enlightenment, all
that remains for Prussia to throw away or be de-
prived of, is her commercial supremacy. And this
indubitably else cannot keep. Fortunately for her
the affairs of the ZOlNClein have been patched to-
gether so us to last till 1853 ; patched up, how-
ever, „in. each a way that set aside all the
recent proposals of Prussia, and left the regu-
lations and the tariff much as they were before. But
the states of the Zollverein arc little interested in
holding together. Whatever of its ground and
motive was political has vanished with the prestige of
Prussia. The southern states, dependent politically
upon Austria, must fall into ber commercial Land.
Prussia herself cares little now for keeping WOrtem-
berg and Bavaria, to which she made financial sacri-
fices, no longer compensated by political influence or
connection. In short, the prophecy of Prussia's
giving up the ghost, and being lust in the entity of
Germany, is coming to pen, not iu the way or the
spirit prophesied, by her adoption and furtherance of
German unity, but by the establishment and demon-
stration of Prussian nullity.
Such is the state of things in which the King of
Peussis has thought fit to make a tour through his
dominions. If ever it became a prince to be silent
and modest, to seek to throw upon dire and painful
necessities the weaknesses and treacheries of an in-
glorious reign, that prince is the King of Pitt•ssiA.
For him to come forth and face the sun like a conqueror,
for him to assume airs of pride and triumph, whilst
his people crouch in the sack-cloth and ashes of
national humiliation, evinces a rare fatuity. His
MAJESTY has just made a tour through his Rhine
provinces. He prefaced his coming by displacing
the liberal president or governor, and appointing
in his stead one of the most notorious of the
Juoker, or ultra-tory party. This done, his
MAJESTY appeared, and declared that the great,
reason of his coming was to put down that
constitutional press which had taken root and
flourished in the wealthy provinces of the Rhine.
! The KING has made a coup d7tat against the Co' -
logos Gazette. Such is the great achievement of the
, hero of Schleswig and Hesse Cassel.
I There can be no more striking proof of the mode-
rate and wholesome state of political opinion through-
, out Germany, even in those wild years of turmoil, than
that the great and successful journals were those set
on foot by men of large capital and liberal
but moderate ideas. The most successful of these
was the Cologne Gazette, ever the opponent of wild
democracy, of republicanism, and persisting to put
' faith up to the last moment in the sincerity of
prince', and the possibility of satisfying the nation,
however excited, by strictly constitutional institu-
' tions and concessions. If ever there was in the
piss a true friend of monarchyj, such friends
' were to be found in the Clyne Gazette,
or in BROCIEHAUS'S Leipzig Journal. The
former could not be accused of a want of pliability to
circumstances. Since Prussia's flag of unity, and its
' ancient right to protect and safeguard North Ger- '
many, were given up by MsYret:FFEL, still the
Cologne Gazette dared to hope that the constitution
would be respected.
Its moderation has not saved it. The Kiso
is determined to have no press in Prussia, no
' parliament save local and consultative ones, and, in
short, no voice throughout the land save his own.
The law in Prussia—the KING'S own law—declares
that a paper can only be punished after conviction
the government aseordingly prosecuted the Cologne
Gazette, but the result was an aequittal. The KING
therefore asses *rward to declare that he will use
his sziseplogoi authority to pat down the press, by
rui sod eissaiksi the brevet of any printer
Wth OA
L, en daterday the dignified protest of
this leader deb Garman press against the brutality,
ille g
es
of its suppression. We fully
eyes ge ibthapation. But, after all, a free
perm weld Dot hope to survive a free constitution.
• Theirieseeity et complying with the exigencids of
dospotion,in attempting to conciliate its susceptibility,
vela have indelibly injured the character of a free
• Better that there should be complete and
tmhsehw de:knees throughout North Germany—the
pew the aside% esti the professional chair all slimmed
—and nothing seen to stalk abroad save the sentinel
did the gaoler. Such is the present state of Ger-
many: To consider such a system endowed with the
"Witte' of eldest permanence, security, or order,
meet be the rook et either sheer stupidity or rare
11111111 ii.

BIRMINGHAM AND OXFORD JCNCTION.—The half-
yearly mating of this company was held at Birmingham,
Mt re
Pla%4 . No port was road, and, as the line to now
Met oil the Great Weetera Company, the proceed-
ile Vann . The Chairman expressed his belief that
by*. Ow their next meeting the line would be nearly
MM. Hig opiodag. Mr. T. Hadley expressed a hope that
isedd mot run a ruinous competition with the London
=stem by which the shareholders would be