The Express.
London, England, 1851-09-24 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 24, 1851.

them their 5001., and ninny their 1001., for the par-
, poses of education. Nothing can more strongly
' prove their zeal, their disinterestedness, their ardour
r to impart to all the blessings of education. Yet
these same generous Men garble from society In
the mass doing, what they have done in particular--
that is, clubbing their means and uniting their
efforts to organise a system of education, and raise
up fit instruments to work it. Undeniably the body
of society, represented if not by the state, at least by
municipal or elected bodies, would do the work
with far more efficiency. But education in common
would, it is feared, become religion in common, nn-
stamped and undistinguished by the peculiar views
and doctriaes of each sect.
We must say that we think such fears ill-founded,
and most ill-placed in the minds of those whew
chief prospect must be to profit by the breaking up
of state churches. It is, however, undeniable that a
system of mixed or secular education, uni-
versally established and actively working, would,
in the midst of the immense intellectual im-
provement of the national mind, require great
and corresponding efforts on the part of
relgious teachers. Take an Italian peasant boy,
and send him to a convent school to learn his lesson
of immortality, and it is certain that it will require a
very different teaching from the monk than if you
took an English boy from a good school, where his
reason had been formed by grammar, sharpened by
mathematics, elevated by natural philosophy, and
rendered inquisitive by history, and undertook to
teach him the principles of religion.
It is for ecclesiastical teachers to rise to the
height of that modern mission. And in our opinion
it requires all the undivided powers of a clergy-
man who has not only made himself master of theo-
logy and of the learning of his profession, but who
has also studied the science of imparting and impress-
ing it, to give efficient religious instruction to the
youth who has gone through almost any degree of
the improved modern courses of education.
The feeling at present prevalent is, that the school-
master, if not an ecclesiastic, must be a semi-eeck-
siastie ; that his duty is, first of all, to inculcate cer-
tain religious tenets, and then make his scientific or
other teaching square with them. This, however, is
in truth but a loose and casual way of teaching re-
ligion, a mere instilment of respect for dogmas,
that is not enough to protect the faith of man in the
bury, thinking, questioning, reel bens asking world
in which we move.

The Roman catholic bishop pretends, that by
keeping the youth of his persuasion in exclusive
schools, surrounded by merely their own atmosphere,
be may succeed in so imbuing them with the prin-
ciple of authority, that they will never dare to
reason on the subject of religion, but believe without
further question, thought, or reflection, the lesson
of childhood. If the Roman catholic bishop
socested, he will produce but a lukewarm
end indifferent flock. In old times, in a
world of ignorance and simplicity, imagination
made the devotee. In our age it is no longer fancy
or credulity which kindles enthusiasm, but reason-
ing. All the men of the present day, who have
gone mad on the subject of religion, have done so by
a ratiocinating. process. Forbid men to reason in our
day on any ono subject or compartment of know-
ledge, and they soon become lukewarm and in-
different to it.
No sect or no religion will henceforth proeper or
even keep its ground by the old system of religious
teaching, which seized on the child and neglected
the man, which instilled dogmas, and then trusted
to exclusive society and closed ears to keep the
grown man firm to it. This is Dr. CULLEN'S
plan of faith and education. We ought to
scorn any such old worldism in England.
And instead of fearing mixed education, we ought
to court it, give the young all the advantage of that
acuteness and quick reasoning which secular learn-
ing bestows, and then create a religious teaching,
simultaneous and apart, which should have its science,
its profission, and be equal to the task of combining
religious belief with the freest and highest activity
of intellect. Seven centuries back there was
really very little difference between the ideas, the
knowledge, the beliefs of the boy and the man.
And the education of the man was precisely that of
the boy. What vast difference is there now between
all that a boy can know, and all that a man must?
The teaching of everything has made strides except
the teaching of religion.
We should recommend the application to it of the
great principle of division of labour. Let it be one
profession to teach reading and arithmetic and the
sciences ; another profession to lay in tho young
mind the foundation of religious knowledge. The
religion that is learned from the horn-book, and the
grammar that is learned from the Bible, arc both
defective. Better separate them, and in truth
they arc separated; for religious teaching as it is is a
thing of rote. No man enters to it, no power of
mind directs or inspires it.
Fully imprened with this belief, we have per-
waived with deep regret the tendency to make the
new profession of teacher a mere second rate
sacerdotalism. And hence, instead of a body of
teen, independent, united, free from the hypocrisy
and subserviency which necessarily invade a calling
where men keep place or make way by professions of
faith—instead, in fact, of a lay professorial body,
we shall have a class vexed by all the divisions, and
tortured by all the dissensions, of sects and schisms.
Every creed will have its own schoolmasters to
teach mathematics as well as divinity. And the re-
sult, we cannot but prognosticate, will be fatal to
secular teaching and its profession, without the least
advantage to the intworb of religion.

might lead to some regratibie disembowels of the
pease, the representative d the Lando othoeted his
audience to offer no resistakee, bat to &spans quietly
alter giving a cheer for des septhile. Thus termi-
nated this extraordinary smile, wbWi exhibits in a
striking light the degree of libeetylnjoyed under the
passing phase of the French re ic.
A semi-official denial is given to the report that
the Chancellor of the Legion of Honour had refused
to
registerpromotiontepret thdeentrankof has
appears that that
h
the right, in recompensing distinguished services, et
commander.l‘i M.
Leonlt aF
omitting grades of promotion. The elevation of Count
Mole from simple officer to Grand Cordon, by Louis
Philippe, without passing through the intermediate'
ranks, is quoted as a precedent of this extraordinary
distinction.
Colonel Couston, who presided at the court martial
which tried the plot of Lyons, has been made com-
mander of the Legion of Honour.
General ()raison, after reviewing three squadrons of
the Bth Lancers at St. Quentin, made them a speech,
little calculated to dissipate the rumours of coups
ff,,tat which have lately produced so much effect at
the Bourse. lie told them never to forget that bad
times might return, when France would rely upon
them to pursue the course of her glorious destinies.
Ho wished his words to be well heard and well un-
derstood, when he said that if ever demagogy should
again rear its rebel head, it was not with the steel
of their lances, but under the hoofs of their horses,
that they would reduce it to impotence. This is not
a solitary symptom of a desire to familiarise the
mind of the army with the idea of civil war. Two
or three days ago General Goyon. commanding the
cavalry school at Saumur, placazded the walls of that
town with an order of the day, certifying that the
young men under his command would be ever ready
to make " dragonnadcs" against demagogues. The
generals assume that some rising of the people is to
be the occasion of that trampling them under the
feet of their horses for which they scent to be champ-
ing the bit somewhat impatiently. But a privileged
journal has been much more explicit, and has ex-
pressed itself as follows: "We desire the mainte-
nance of the law of May 31, the re-election of the
President, and that no assembly whatsoever
may be permitted to erect itself into a conven-
tion. In order to obtain these results we
are resolved to march against insurrection, and to
trample under foot the articles of the constitution by
the help of which it is
.thought to fetter our will;
we will not shrink even before an 18th Brumaire;
and we will advise Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to
stifle the republic on the day when it shall attempt
to execute any one of its threats."
When such incendiary writing as this is winked
at, if not instigated, by authority, at the same time
that M. Victor Hugo's letter is tortured by the public
prosecutor into an " excitation of citizens to take up
arms against one another," it will certainly not be
owing to the wisdom of her present rulers if France
escape the horrors of the civil war so much talked of.
M. Emile do Girardin has called the special atten-
tion of the Seine jury, who are to-morrow to try the
editors of the Preset and the A renemcni, to the above
paragraph, reminding them that the undisguised at-
tack upon the constitution has not been prosecuted.
The statue of General 3larceau was inaugurated at
Chartres on Sunday. The weather was very unfa-
vourable, as it rained nearly the whole day ; still a
great number of strangers had flocked in to witness
the ceremony. The part of the town where the sta-
tue stands is the Place des Epurs, and there nt the
appointed hour the authorities assembled, in the pre-
sence of the national guard and of a vast crowd of
spectators. At a signal from the mayor, the linen
cloth which covered the statue was removed, and
immediately the troops iwesented anus, and the
drums and trumpets sounded a charge. The mayor
then pronounced an address, in which he gave a
sketch of the young general's brilliant career. The
prefect afterwards spoke a few words, in which he
congratulated the town of Chartres on being able to
boast of having given birth to such a man ; and
then, on the part of the President of the Republic,
presented the cross of the Legion of Honour to M.
ltogi•ard, an old comrade of General 31arceau. and
for many years an inhabitant of Chartres. The au-
thorities then repaired to a covered tribune close by,
and the troops flied off before them, with which act
the proceedings terminated.
M. Langluts, ex-director of the lottery of the
Lingots d'Or, publishes a long defence of his admi-
nistration in the Sleek. Few new facts appear in
these revelations, which impute wholly to the dif-
ferences between N. Clement lteyre, the secretary of
the prefect of police, and M. I,anglois, the dismissal
of the latter from his poet. lie -re is accused of
I having deprived the ex-director of hk right to trans-
port the .100 emigrants to California, in order to give
it to the society of Jesuits.
The democratic party have decided to abstain from
voting in the approaching election of the Finis-
terre to return a representative in the place of Ad-
miral I)efoss4.
M. de la Guerronli.,re has written in the Pays an
emphatic contradiction of the report that he was
about to assume the direction of any Bonapartist
journal. lie intends to remain at his post as n po-
litical ally of M. Lamartine, of whose confidence,
which he claims to merit, he is proud.
The Monitear publishes the text of the postal
treaty just concluded between France and Tuscany,
which is to come into force on the Ist of October.
By this treaty, the postage of letters not weighing
more than 74 grammes, and carried by the French
packets, is 90 centimes, and may be prepaid or not
at will. From 71 to 13 grammes, the postage is
double, and so on in the same proportion. Registered
letters pay double postage, which is exacted before-
hand. Journals, books, &c., are prepaid at the rate
of 12 centimes for any weight not exceeding 45
grammes, provided they be put sous &mule, unbound,
and do not contain any writing or written mark
whatsoever. All regulations contrary to this treaty
are repealed.
Lord Brougham has arrived in Paris, on his way
to Cannes.
N. Arago, in the course of an interesting lecture,
even yesterday at the Academy of Sciences, upon
use of the electric telegraph, mentioned that as
sock as the submarine telegraph across the channel
was completed, it was in contemplation to place the
observatories of Paris and Greenwich in electric
communication, which would furnish, besides num-
berless other valuable results, a much easier and
more accurate means than by geodesic measurement
of ascertaining the difference of longitude of the two
stations, from the simultaneous observation of chro-
nometers on either side.
At the Bourse the Five per Cents. fell 10c., closing
at 91.73; the Threes fell 30c., and closed at 30-13.
Most of the railways have maintained the rise of
yesterday, but the Northern fell 3.13, and tho Stras-
bourg 1.'23.