The Express.
London, England, 1851-08-29 00:00:00

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incolr al the spiritual welkro of tboasands of his
tens Arc or fellow creatures. But it Is well to reale
a, itlrriolleet the outrage; for a day of reckoning
come, and before long too, when Lord C•nonan
and such people will be taught better. Meanwhile,
let us mark, learn, and intlardly died, that- all this
occurs in a church professing to have • Divine Mis-
sion, claiming apostolic authority, haring bishops in
I the louse of Lords, and requiring a monopoly of na-
tional education!

TIIE accounts of the harvest which have reached
us from the continent and from America hardly
warrant us, perhaps, in venturing to form very posi-
tive ideas as to the commercial position in which our
neighbours on either side of the Atlantic are likely
relatively to stand during the next winter and spring
towards each other and ourselves. But enough is
already ascertained to lead the least thoughtful to
the anticipation of consequences which, though they
may be materially modified by many contingencies,
can scarcely fail to stamp their form and pressure on
the coming year.
In the South of France the wheat crop is said to
have proved abundant. But in extensive districts of
the north and east the yield is reported to be defi-
cient in quantity. And though for a week or two
prices arc more likely to fall tnan to advance, a well-
founded anticipation prevails that during the winter
the cost of bread in many departments of the repub-
lic will be considerably greater than it has been
during the last twelve months. In ]'aria this may
not be so perceptible. Its supplies are drawn from
a wider range than any country town; and in-
finite pains will no doubt be taken to equalise
betimes the supply with the demand. But even
though the market notes should indicate no
fluctuation whatever, it does not therefore follow
that l'aris may not sympathise indirectly in the pres-
sure which the circumjacent communities feel. To
the capital, as to the heart, the industrial circulation
of an over-centralised country naturally returns,
when by any cause repelled from the extremities. It
was the congestion of artisan labour in the end of
Isl 7 and beginning of INV; that facilitated the irrup-
tion of February. Absorbents on a great scale for,
particular kinds of labour have, indeed, been pro-
vided by recent measures of splendid improvement,
to be executed at the cost of the municipality
of the tasteful metropolis on both sides of the
Seine. But whether the influx of hands sure to
be attracted by the announcement of these magnifi-
cent undertakings, together with the many contribu-
tive streams which an advance in the cost of living
is sure to cause silently and gradually to flow to-
wards the great centre, whether these in the aggre-
gate may not more than counterbalance the extra-
employment we have adverted to, remains to be
seen.

It is fortunate for France, looking. at her national
reckonings as a whole, that she is just now called
upon to execute more than an usually large
amount of orders for manufactured goods for Ame-
rica, whence she will probably look for the supply
of her own unusual wants in the shape of corn. The
manufacturers seldom have had upon their books a
larger number of unexceuted orders for the United
States. Money is abundant on the western side of
the Atlantic, and J(INATHAN is emphatically enj old
by nature When he has plenty he is ready to spend
like a prince. He happens to have more of " the
yellow magnet" in his pockets at present than he
ever remembers to have had in the whole course of
his uncommonly prosperous existence. And as
in addition thereto lie has more breadstuffs
this full than he can by env possibility con-
sume himself, he is determined that wives and
daughters, sisters and nieces, shall each and every
single one of them have, by Christmas-day, oneor more
of those matchless silks and velvets which all man-
kind have seen and coveted in the Great Exhibition,
but which his womankind alone arc, generally speak-
ing, likely ever to possess. The non-revolutionary
tendency of which seemingly idle and casual circum-
stance is certain, though perhaps not easily made
obvious to impatient politicians or diplomatic
dandies, who believe in nothing as a cause
of change or of commotion but a parliamentary
cabal or a socialist plot. The really great changes of
society come by no set of schemers' contrivance.
Every day in the onward destiny of the world such
machinations, whether of high-born reactionaries or
impostor democrats, will have less and less influence
on the march of events. Sudden drains of gold out
of a country, paralysing for the time all banking
operations and thereby suspending to a vast amount
the cash payment of daily wages, this, which
in an artificial state of society is as much a
famine as the failure of the rice crop in
Hindustan ; this is a far more formidable
source of danger and disaster than any
dynastic conspiracy or face-blackened scheme for
promoting the community of goods. It is such a
danger that the lavish indulgence of American love
of " silk attire" is likely to avert during the ensuing
winter from France. It the latter requires to im-
port half a million quarters of wheat and flour from
the western States of the former, she must of course
pay for it. either in the first instance in money, as
we did in 1847, or in manufactured goods, as
we did last year. In the end it may come to the
same thing, according to our hyper-philosophical
economists; but in the meantime it makes all the
difference to the daily comfort and content of thou-
sands of industrious workmen, to the peace of so-
ciety, and to the equanimity of the state.
'l'urning our glance towards central Europe, it is
difficult to regard without more or less concern the
results of the harvest, as far as they are known. In
Iseveral portions of northern Germany the corn crop
is said to have suffered so materially from rust and
mildew as to cause a belief at Hamburg and else-
where, that instead of a surplus for exportation,
there will hardly lie enough for home consumption.
And while the king of PrirssiA has been scolding
the citizens of the western provinces of his realm,
and sanctioning measures of religious persecution
directed against the dissenters front the church esta-
blished by law in other parts of his dominions, a
vulgar and apparently scarce noticed circumstance
has been taking place which might well cause the
infatuated monarch to pause in his present suicidal
career. The potato blight is said to have fallen
with peculiar severity on the fields of the Lower
Illhinc—a district where land, being much di-
vided, the loss occasioned by such a calamity
is brought home to every peasant-farmer's
icor. To political discontent, physical privation
may thus, in many instances, be sailed; and while
the citizens and higher classes chafe with hourly
heightening rage at the reckleatt prostration of the
cabinet of Berlin before the insolent domination of
that of Vienna, the rural communities are about to
be tried in temper by misfortunes which in days of
national prosperity and hopefulness are sufficiently
hard to bear. At such a moment it is that the go-
vernment of Prussia persists in the convocation of '
the abrogated oligarchic assemblies in each province,
for the particularly popular purpose of arranging
and authorising the levy of direct taxes. To shut
out every suspicion of justice or fair play, the doors
of these provincial diets are ordered to be closed,
their illegal and unconstitutional decrees only being
designed for publication.