The Express.
London, England, 1851-01-21 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 21. 1851.

like those we have already named availiag themselves GERMANY.
of the tensions that cannot fail to be presented ere
long, to lead opinion boldly, and to vie with their for- The German papers bring no news of importsn
midable but faltering rivals for tie reward of popular The coronatton anniversary of the King of Prussial\
esteem. Bit an army may be kept in winter guar- was celebrated ea the 181 h at Berlin. The King bad
tees too long ; and it cannot march without • 8 tg. on the ccmisioo devirsted about 230 parent, at the
What the Newcasie standaediehkely wise we khow head of whom was M. Manteuffel, with valise' orders.
not, but sure we are that it is high time it should be A banquet afterwards took Oiliest the palace, and the
unfurled. -.King, a proposing* teat, imegretulsted the country
- that the disastrous principles of the year 1848 bad not
Ix America has been tried the great experiment of reached the heart of the people. The Austrian troops
allowleg not merely the tallest freedom of Tell:zit-Ass had LIU t4-' cross le. Ahmt 360 mad had
opinions, but the fullest development and organise, crolood Oa the 17th. Tue Schleswig-Holstein &raw
were retiring behind the Eyder, and the Danish out-
tion of sects and churches, formed by, or bps
twos, those opinions. In France there seems to he pests bad fallen back. The disbanding of the Schles-
going on a hied of analogous experiment, which is wig-Holstein forces will commence almost imme-
not merely the toleration of all kinds of political diately.
opinion, but the liberty for these several political •
sees to form clubs and parties, and to strive, the one
for a certain kind of government and king,
the other for a different government and a
different king. Each political votary is allowed
to pour forth his vows before the throne of his choice.
And DI. BERSTER claims the right of going to Wies-
baden, and M. Titans to Claremont, without affront
or prejudice to the heir of NAPOLEON as the chief of
the republic. In order to complete this political coe-
mopolitiam, it would be necessary to extend the same
tolerance to the socialists : but it seems that no poll-
ti ;al creed is to erjoy toleration there, unless it Can
prove that it belongs to In bonne sot-lief. General
CAVATONAC may declare himself a republican, M.
BERRTER a legitimist ; but if any one should think fit
to cry Vice la Seriale, he is to be forthwith sabred or

The Minister of Commerce had an interview on the
16th, at Berlin, with the Premier, on the subject of
Zollverein affairs. It is the general belief that on
this point M. Menteuffel will not yield to Austria;
bat it is much to be desired that an understanding
should be come to with the S!ener Verein, of which,
also, there is a good proe;:ect. There is another good
bit of news, if it should be confirmed, viz., that agri-
cultural and commercial affairs. instead of being re-
presented, u new, by two ministries, are about to be
placed under one and the same central adminis-
tration. . . . . . .

-----
The government has submitted to the chambers a
new press law, which increases the strictness of the
octroyed laws of June 30, 1849, and June 8, 1850.
The old laws and the new bill await alike the discus-
sion of the chamber, since the former have no legality
without its sanction. The chief grievances of the
press, besides the censorship, consist in the excessive
responsibility exacted of editor, printer, and pub-
lisher; the hindrances opposed to the dispersion of
newspapers through the post; and the withdrawal
of offences against the press laws from the cognisance
of a jury. The ordinance of June, 1849, knows nei-
ther caution-money, nor exclusion from the Poet-
Office. The supplementary ordinance of Jane, 183 ),
on the other hated, provides that the postal admini-
stration may decline the receipt and execution of
orders to supply newspapers, according to circum-
stances. Whether this provision shall be maintained
in the new press law depends upon whether the ordi-
nance of Jane, 1850, may be adopted in connexion
with the law of December, 1850, or not. In the
draught of the new law, a paragraph provides that
only such newspapers as have been once con-
victed shall be liable to exclusion from the
Post-Office. According to the ordinance of
June, 1849, the editor of a journal is re-
quired to send in an early impressson signed with
his name, to the chief of the local police. The new
law extends this obligation to the publisher or agent.
The ordinance of June, 1849, requires the ad-
dress of the printer and pubtisher to be printed on
every journal. The new law requires that the name
of a certain editor shall be affixed to every paper.
Such person must be in fall possession of civil rights,
and live within the jurisdiction of the Prussian courts.
The ordnance of 1849 cowslip, as provisions on the
subject of caution money, those first introduced
in the supplementary ordinance of Inns, 1850, and are
retained an the new law. Periodicals not treating of
political or social questions are exempt from the
necessity of caution deposits. The ordinance of 1849
refers a great number press offences to a jury ; the
new law makes all offences, the punishment of which
is less than imprisoment of six weeks or a fine of fifty
dollars, and are brought within the competence of
the police court.

For our part we entertain great doubts of the pos-
sibility of political tolerance, carried to the degree
claimed by Menem BaRRTER and TRIERS, at least
in a country and amidst a population that is at all in
earnest in these matters. But in France, where the
great mass of the population care and know as little
of the Duke of BORDEAUX as they do of the
Lyme of THIBET, and where no class of the popula-
tion feels for the ORLEANS family aught but indiffe-
rence, an individual declaration of allegiance to them
is not more daemons than Mormonism or socialism
would be with us. Napoleoniem was a popular sen-
timent of other importance and magnitude, and
one that might have been appealed to for
any purpose or to any extent. From the revelations
of M. Tutees in his speech, it is evident that Louts
NAPOLEON was fully sensible of what he ought to do,
and how he could beet evoke this sentiment, which
was by a military demonstration abroad, the liberat-
ing Italy for example, or a great conciliatory and po-
pular policy at hums. M. TRIERS avows that he
and his friends strenuously dissuaded the President
from entering upon such policy. He recommended
Louts NAPOLEON to take to pleasiart the Assembly,
not the people. The result LOUIS NAPOLEON now
finds to be, that he has lost ground with the people,
destroyed the Napoleonic sentiment in the masses,
arid allowed it to evaporate, whilst all his obsequious-
ness to the majority of the Assembly has not won
for him either gratitude or attachment.
Seldom has there been pronounced a more able or
plausible speech than that of M. TIIIERS. For its
complete success this alone wee requisite, that people
should forget every other speech that M. Times had
ever made. This pliant orator came forward on
this, his last exhibition, as the champion of true republi-
canism. The republic, he acid, was the only neutral
ground on which conflicting parties could agree. And
the crime of Louts NAPOLEON, according to M.
THIER4, was hie being false to this neutrality, and
to the abnegation which all other parties observed
in their adhesion to the republic. But who does not
recollect M. THIERS'S speeches of one and two years
back, in which he reiterated every contemptuous and
hostile expression towards the republican form of
government ? These denunciations of the republic were
followed up by M. THIERS'S pilgrimage to Claremont,
which could not have been a mere pretext of friend.
ship; for no two men hated each wher, or vilipended
each other more, than Louis PHILIPPE and M.
Tnteas. Their meeting was a reconciliation, not a
continuance of friendship, and that reconciliation must
have been for political ends. The pretence that M.
TUTEES went to Claremont and sate between the
Duchess of ORLEANS and the Comte de PARIS, with--
out such an act or position bearing a political mean-
ing, is one of those barefaced pieces of hypocrisy and
humbug that would not be tolerated in any other lati•
tude save that of Paris.
We see nothing in Louts 'NAPOLEON'S conduct that
was not infinitely fairer and more constitutional than
the conduct of Messrs. BERRTER and THIERS. lodepen-
bat of their pilgrimage to pretenders,their whole policy
has been to base the government upon the army, to
sesupy the; great towns by an overwhelming military
force, and, under cover of this military force, abro-
gate the popular rights guaranteed by the constitu-
tion. In the present debate M. TRIERS avowed that
to have aided this, and rendered it possible, was the
great merit of CHANGARNIER.
And yet, whilst MM. THIERS and OUIZOT'S friends
thus bared their influence and their policy on military
support, it was to be denied to Louts NAPOLEON to
endeavour to conciliate or gain military voters.
Louts NAPOLEON wants to be re-elected ; it is not an ti-
republican to entertain such a wish. He has canvassed
provincial populations and the military masses, of
which each soldier has a vote; whilst the general offi-
cers, NEI:MATER and CHANGARNIER, forbade any
military favours or acclamations on the part of the
soldiers towards the PRESIDENT.
We admit that his mode of winning the soldiers
was no very noble one. Sendirg them to Rome to
wash Italian freedom, and then dose them with
ebampagne on the plains of Versailles, are not the
reads to greetings or heroism. But the ways of the
majority of the Assembly were just as mean, just
as illiberal, just as criminal, in making power depend
on military support, and far more treasonable to the
form of government which prevailed, and to which
in conformity they had sworn allegiance.
The result of the debate appears to us favourable to
the PRESIDENT, and damning to the monarchists. In
the first place the latter have only carried a vote of
censure on the ministry by means of the democratic
arid socialist votes ; secondly, in knocking down
ministers they have knocked down but so many nine-
pins. For as the rule is to employ second-rate men,
a relay of such ministers can be found every week.
But the most striking phenomenon is the small sym-
pathy that exists between the Assembly and the pun-
lie. With a tempest in the one, a perfect calm reigns
in the other. Whilst the barometer in the Hall of
Sitting sinks to a point denoting the fiercest convulsion
of the elements, stocks rise upon 'change. And
whilst parliamentary politicians declare that all is
lost wish CLIANCARNIRR, monied and mercantile
folk congratulate themselves on having got rid of
a troublesome fellow.
The PRESIDENT of the REPUBLIC is thus beginning
to appeal to, and find support from, a clam hitherto
averse to him. His first policy on his promotion
ought certainly to Dave been a popular and a con-
ciliatory one. He trusted M. TIIIERS, however, and
thus disgusted the people. The next class that LOUIS
NAPOLEON devoted himself to please were the con-
servative and monarchist politicians of the Assembly.
In this, too, he failed, for their allegiance and aspi-
rations were elsewhere. He has now the chance of
appealing to and winning a third clue, that of the
independent citizens. 1 his neither can he succeed in,
if he display a contempt for civic virtue. Prodigality,
disorder, tastes that are military without being
heroic, and domestic without being moral, in-
fallibly disgust the middle class. And without
winning the support and the respect of some large
civic class, altogether independent of the suspicious
adherence of mere soldiers, Louts NAPOLEON will
not succeed even in his re-election as president. His
conduct his, however, of late, been marked by great
prudence and firmness; and even his words are
fraught with sagacity. When it was antounced to
bins that the Assenab:y would place CHANGAR-
sun at the head of fifty thousand men, the
pßialover is said to have replied, that CHAN-
T GARNISH. would find no army to combat, and that if
the Assembly surrounded itself by 50,000 men, he
would dismiss his very sentinels, and trust to the
people of Paris for hie defence. There is a temper
' and a policy in such replies, which constitute Loom
iNarottoN as no ordinary antagonist. And we meat
say that his recent acts and words display him in a
light superior to the brawl, the passion, and hypo-
crisy of the chiefs of the Assembly.
the

.Oar correspondent writing from Dresden on Jan.

16, says : -
" Prussia may be said really to poems' nice lives;
for while its existence is not merely threatened, but
has actually received what in any other German state
would be a death blow, the commercial arrangements
for Germany provide a test to heal the wound and to
restore strength to the political frame. The death-
blow I speak of is not so much in the concession
which Prussia has been compelled to make to Austria
in Heise, and in the reorganisation of the confede-
ration, but in the introduction of an Austrian army
into territories north of Prussia, which were formerly
declared to be entirely under its influences, and in
the spparent exclusion of Prussia from the negotia-
tions which are pending with Denmark. The Pens-
sism commissioner seems to possess equal authority
with the Austrian in Holstein, but the Prussian am-
bassador in Copenhagen is said to know nothing of
the negotiations which are being carried on between
that city and Vienna. This expulsion of Prussia from
a question which her ministers and her generals
have swayed for more than two years, is Edna reward
for their pusillanimous and absurd conduct in refer-
ence to it ; bat the humiliation of the national feelings
of honour and self-respect which is conveyed in the
employment of Prussian soldiers to build the bridge
across the Elbe for the Austrians to march into Hol-
stein, which the bayonets of the Prussian army
would have united to Schleswig had the government
acted honestly and manly—the deep humiliation
which lies in these acts could alone be inflicted
under circumstances in which the majority of a
nation look with apathy on the acts of its gorerr-
meat. These acts, however, have not that effect on
the existence of Prussia which the calling :n of
French aid to assist in quelling an outbreak in Ire-
land, and the conveyance of French troops in English
steamers for this purpose, would have on England.
To us it would be a deathblow ; but to Prussia it is
not. Austria cannot subject or confine the elasticity
of which the independence of Prussia is possessed;
and though her Slavonic bayonets put down constitu-
tional quarrels in Hesse and Schleswig Holstein—
though her diplomatists oust their Prussian colleagues
from negotiations which the latter have hitherto led,
and though her political influence in the smith and
central Germany reigns paramoent, the spiri: of com-
merce watches over Prussia, and lends her monarch
and his councillors the ways and means by which to
escape the consequences. Surely no monarch and
no ministers of modern times have more disgracefully
or more short-sightedly neglected the advantages
which nature has placed in their hands."

DENMARK AND THE DUCHIES.

It seems that at the urgent request of the Stadt-
holder Bef,eler, the state council resolved that before
they came to any decision they would inform them-
selves distinctly as to the state of the army, and of
the military chances in their favour in cue of resist-
sues. Sealer travelled with the minister of war to
Itendsburg. Here on the evening of the Bth a council
of war was held. It was composed of the Commander-
in-Chief Horst, of brigade chiefs, and other officers of
high rank. Three questions were put to them : Ist,
du attack upon the Danes? 2nd, if resistance towards
the executive forces was possible? 3rd, what was the
temper of the army? The answers were as follows:
let, offensive operations against the Danes in the pre-
sent weather could not be undertaken; 2nd, that the
army consisted of 40,000 men; that part of this force
must garrison Hendsburg ; that with the remainder a
strong position might be taken up at Odesloe, where
defence against a much more numerous force might
be maintained; but that 3rd, the political sentiments
of the great majority of the officers were such that
they would not bear arms against the German confe-
derate troops. Such was the result of the council of
war. Henry von Gagers drew up the report of it.
Semler returned to Kiel, and the breach which caused
his retirement immediately took place between him
and the other Stadtholder, Revertlow.

The following is the answer of the Statdtholdera
to the Diets' Commissioners :

The regency of the duchies of Schleswig and Hol-
stein has submitted the communication received from
the honourable commissioners empowered by the
German Bond to • conscientious examination, and,
in accordance with the with of the National Assembly,
loses no time in acquainting the honourable commis-
sioners with the resolutions they have adopted.
The rights of those lands and of their princes, vio-
lated by Denmark, have been acknowledged by Ger-
many, and defended by German arms.
The treaty of pew concluded July 21st, 18d0, is
the name of the German Bond, reserved these rights,
and left the duchies to make them good against Den-
' mark by their own valour. The contest has been
continued almost to this hour. The duchies remain
firm and true to the assertion of their irrefragable
rights. Seeieg that the German Bond now feels k-
eel, called on to a xecute the proviei mu of this treaty,
and has promised to guard the rights of the duchy
of Holstein, and to maintain the ancient and rightful
connexion between the duchy of Schleswig and the
duchy of Holstein, the regency has no hesitation in
declaring its readiness to comply with the summons

San DRAGOONS. This reginatct, which left
Unimak w October for avekete, is to remain at Woeo•tr-
bd to replete the 9 h Lesesre, and is sot to proceed to
aesthete. os the burseks at that station an hot yet fit In
owspation by ths troop.