The Express.
London, England, 1851-01-15 00:00:00

thwarting its development, wasting its res.—
giving away its territories, rit erly preventing its nutty,
and in fact nullifying it as a cation.
Prussia has endeavoured, with smaller means and
humbler pretensions, to fill the part that Austria might
have filled, and in fact would have filled, bad she bad
the great first quality of being German. Prussia in the
first place created a counterpoise to Austria in the west.
She with this protected the independence of the minor
pricers. She has acted as a bar to the etcreach-
merits of Russia on one side as of France on the other.
In the great effort of flinging off the French yoke,
Austria changed the colours ar.d the attitude of her
armies; but Prussia routed Germany, and excited that
national sentiment and enthusiasm without which
not all the legions nor the strategy of Vienna
and St. Petersburg would have overthrown NAPOLEON.
Since 1815 the statesmen of Piussia proposed to
Austria and to the att all the measures of progress
that might unite and develop the country.
Overawed by the two despotic courts, it durst not
provoke them then by developing constitutional
governmen,, any mere than it durst provoke them
now by maintaining it, but every principle
of material progress, of commercial unity, of
a federal tribunal, of a Gaines military I
system—all these were proposed and re-proposed to
the Diet and to Austria, year after year. And it was
only when Austria absolutely refused to stir in them,
that Prussia undertook alone to develop the Z
mein. That Prussia has been the progressive,
Austria the retrograde power, the annals of ea• h year
amply prove. Ar.d that they will still cou'inue
so, despite the retrogression of the =meet, will
infallibly be seen.
Such movements and such policy do not, in fact,
depend on men. STADION was a liberal man and an
acute minister; but despite of STADION, Austria has
passed a sponge over ber constitution, and established
a despotism, federal and individual. MANTRUPPEL is
• retrograde and despotic minister, and he will thy,
no doubt, to put down the Prussian constitution, end
subject Prussia itself to some legislative power, to be
exercised by princely delegates at Frankfort. But
the attempt will prove v in. North Germany cannot
be put under an extinguisher, no more than Sclavonia
rendered a shinier; and a liberal light to guide Get-
many in the way of constitutionalism.
As to ItADOWITZ and FREDERICK WILLIAM,
both, we believe, hove the full knowledge and per-
ception of the invincible tendencies of the country and
of the age. Itabowlrr was for following out the
principles of progress, end for sticking to them even at
the risk of war. the King would not undergo the risk.
The fate of CHARLES ALBERT was before his eyes. He
saw Austria and ltuisia leagued against him with
potent armies. lie had neither the skill nor courage
to head his own army, nor confidence in any com-
mander. He has yielded with pusillanimity and with
a degree ot humiliation likely to prove fatal to hie
dynasty and to Prussia itself. But this matters little.
The great north German cause, though abandoned
for the time, though trodden down with ignominy
in Holstein and in Hesse, survives rot the lees and
will find champions within or without Prussia. And
northern lll.teimen, be they Rahowirrzes or FREDE-
RICK WILLIAMS, will be forced into that inevitable al-
ternative of resistance to Austria, to despotism, and to
the extinction of German civilisation by Sarmatian
barbarism, which is ser deist the age, and the'
progress of events. When these new events take
place, the limes, or i.s writers of that day, will pat
on their spectacles and put forth their feelers, and alter
having arrived at the opinion of which side was
lik Ay to prevail for the time, they will abet tbat side
in the belief that their readers will always trust those
who know best to choose the winning side. The
Qiureteely Resiew, if such& journal then exists, will
not imitate this eaatious prescience of the diurnal
press. It will merely labour to discover what were
the opinions which the ghosts of the last century
might entertain of the policy ot this; and it will,
as in the article we have alluded to, treat the world
to posthumous judgments on passicg events.

[We had written this ➢revious to receiving the new ram•
ber of the Edinburgh Ervin/4 which contains en admirable
article on Radovits sad Pumas.)

ONE cannot but be sorry to be indebted to rivalry
for advancement in such sacred questions as those of
religion and education. But unfortunately experi-
ence shows that education makes little progress, and
th►t religion itself is very apt to slumber, unless when
stirred by antagonism and emulation. It cannot be
said, indeed, that such antagonism is the beat pro-
motant for either religious ideas or educational
efforts. It has driven the one too often into the
extravagance of theological hatred, and narrowed the
other within the pious ignorance of monkdom.
If, however, there is a rivalry of exclusiveness and
bigotry, a species bat too prevalent heretofore, there
is also a more generous kind of rivalry, that of libe-
ralism and comprehensiveness. And it is in a great
degree this better kind of rivalry which has jest dis-
played itself in Manchester between the patrons of
exclusively secular, and of mitigated religious edu-
cation.
We should have no hesitation which to prefer, were
parliament and populu opinion an opea high road,
and not a very narrow one, obstructed by prejudices
and party. To make the acquirement of the means
of receiving and communicating knowledge a differ-
ent task from the instilment of principles, would, we
think, be of great advantage to the dh•velopment of
religious belief, at least of protestant belief. But in-
' flnential minds think otherwise ;andso strong runs

the current at present of moral and religious conserva-
tism, that there never was an epoei, perhaps, when a
system of at owe purely eecular and statutory educa-
tion would be less likely either to wind by concilia-
tion, or force by even wealth and numbers, its way
through parliament.
It was therefore that we hailed with much, though
with not nnmiugled satisfaction, the proposals of
several members of the Manchester clergy, to agree
to a plan of education based on the large popular
principle of a general rate, lay control through the
municipal body, and free schools, in which no dis-
tinctive religious creed or formnlary should be taught.
The latter rule might indeed be difficult to reduce to
practice. But nothing of the kind is impossible,
when people are animated by a sincere desire to
remove difficulties, not to raise them.
In any scheme likely to become national or largely
useful, great concessions must be made by el the
parties that occupy different camps, with respect to
religious and educational questions. Admitting the
justice of the objections made by the purely seculars
to there systems, in which state and church acquire
ascendancy. objections so ably stated in the last num-
ber of the 'Westminster Review, still we agree with
' Mr. COBDEN, that a puritanical adhesion to the werd
secular, or an absolute prohibition of the Bible in
free schools, would be injurious, as raising unjust
suspicion, for the purpose of attaining no
important aim. The Bible may not be the
best horn-book, but the Bible conveys secu-
lar, as well as religioas information. It is
history, it is morality, it is poetry. And if sect,
can agree upon the use of the holy scriptures in
schools, it would be monstrous arrogance to pre-
vent them.
If the " seculars" mast cease to object to books, or
to the great book of religions history teing made
part of popular education, those of the voluntaries,
who object to state aid or public provision for educa-
tion as interfering with private judgment, must
abate of that narrow opposition, which their own
co-religionists tell them can only in effect be to throw
the entire machinery and influence of education into
the hands of state and church. The Manchester

Eirovnimer, , examining the project of Mr. Ricusote,
takes this view, lad perceiving clearly that something
mast and will be done in founding institutions for popu-
lar education, it adjures Mr. BAINZS and his party
to desist from their blind opposition, and from the
belief that even Lancashire and Yorkshire will be
content to leave its population at the mercy of volun-
tary efforts foe education.
If arguments were wanting to illustrate the great
deficiency of the principle of voluntary education,
they would be found in abundance In the " Congre-
gational Year-book "just published, in which, although
sneak+ education, and any education ease that given
by clergy, is denounced, it is admitted throughout
that not only are the means of education wanting, but
the very principle is objected to by many.
"Should it be objected to their demands for funds,"
says the Congregational Board," that congregational-
lets do not retain in their ranks the educated classes,
and that education does not seem to favour them ? '
The report then gots on to combat such a prejudice,
of which, however, it admits the existmce. It
speaks of the" comparatively small amount of con-