The Express.
London, England, 1847-12-24 00:00:00

many a esureign determined to follow in the steps
of King Ran= of Hanover. The reigning family
of Huse Owed his been long known for the oddity,
avarioe, and capricious despotism of its princes. The
events of 1830 produced a great effervescence in
Hesse Cassel, which ended in the grant of a conetitu-
tion, the exile of the then reigning prince, lately
dead, and the elevation to the regency of his son,
who now succeeds to the electorate.
Although this prince was raised prematurely to
the throne, like Louts PHILIPPE, by a revolution
which he accepted, and a popular constitution that he
swore to, the Regent of Hesse Cassel has never ulna
to persecute the liberals,. The virtuous JORDAN,
President of the Chamber, and the chief author of the
constitution, was flung intoprison, and made to linger
there six long years.
This prince, now Elector, has determined, like the
King of HANOVER, to repudiate the constitution. The
states have got over the difficulty of his taking the
oath as king, by declaring that as he had already
taken the oath as Regent, there was no
use in repeating it. Not content with this
advantage, the new Elector called on the
troops to take an oath of fidelity to his person.
The little army of Hesse-Cassel mustered, and mur-
mured and communed together. AU declared they
had already taken the oath to the country and the
constitution, and that if there was a new oath to take,
it was for the prince to declare himself, and do so.
These murmurs and the resistance frightened the
general officers, and the army was informed that a
new oath of fidelity to its colours was all that was
demanded of it. The soldiers had no objection
to this, and instantly took it. But the Elector
remains angry. He has appealed, like King ERNEST,
to the German Diet, against his constitution. He has
seized several deputies, and caused prosecutions to be
commenced against them for writing in foreign jour-
nals. Wleeeast vs has scorned to deny his having
' written in the Heidelberg liberal journal, and the
imprisonment of JORDAN probably awaits him.
These event., as may be supposed, have caused con-
siderable effervescence in Germany, hut, unfortunately,
more in the citizen and enlightened class than
amongst the lower orders. It may be necessary
to state, for the information of these who do not
know the secrets of the map of Germany, that
the potentates of Hanover and Hesse-Cassel reign
over districts in which the language of LUTIIER, of
GOETHE, end of SCHILLER is, for the peasants, a
foreign idiom. The Hanoverian and Hessian boors do
not speak a mere patois, like the villagers in some
parts of Somersetebire and Yorkshire, which is unin-
telligible enough to ears polite. The Low German is a
language written as well as spoken, and possessing an
ancient literature, to say nothing of the belief of the
people (who have English taste to back them) that
their dialect is euphonoue, while the Frankish is
the reverse. The political result of this state
of things is, that tke peasants remain in-
different to changes, and often to progress which
does not assume a shape that immediately affects
their order. An indistinct perception of a ruling
and a ruled caste benumbs the political nerves of men
whom accident has deprived of the Ii gitimate means
of exerting intellectual power. This circumstance,
which recurs in many parts of Europe, alone explains
the little opposition made to the changes in Hanover,
where, if the peasants had no love for Eitaesir from
the knowledge they obtained of him at shooting par-
ties, they had yet little sympathy with the educated
classes who had extorted a constitution from his pre-
decessor.
The Elector of
from another

SSEL derives importance
Having, like his father,

married a subject, he leaves, indeed , a numerous
family, but no heir to his throne, when he dies.
The heir presumptive married a daughter of
the Emperor NICHOLAS, and, although a widower,
he is said to be entangled in the meshes of
Russian politics, of which one feature has ever been
the desire to assume the protectorate of the smaller
German powers against the encroachments of Prussia
or Austria. Berlin has never been decided in dealing
with Russia, and Austria has her hands full with
Hungary and Lombardy. At such a juncture does
this little prince, with 700,000 subjects, think fit to
throw down the gauntlet to all the constitutional
states of Germany, and to abiogate popular con-
cessions which he solemnly guaranteed when
assuming the post of CO-REGENT, in 1831,
by virtue of a vote of the Diet of Representatives at
Cassel. It is one mischief resulting from the con-
tinual playing at soldiers, in which continental princes
delight, that they lose all sense of the importance of
this arm which is entrusted by a confiding nation to
their command, and are disposed to attempt to wield
it on frivolous pretexts. Germany is, however, like
Switzerland in one respect. The armies are essenti-
ally national, and every man is a soldier. In such
cases, whatever is effected, or whatever is tolerated,
must be the wish of the majority, who have the means
of enforcing their will in their own hands. Should
the Elector of Cassel take the lead in an anti-liberal
crusade, he will lay the match to a train that promises
to cause no insignificant explosion.

IT is a hopeful sign of progress in sanitary matters
that we see the ministers of religion coming forward
iu the cause of public health. Still more remarkable
is it to find a bishop addressing to his clergy a pets.
toml letter, of which two-thirds are occupied with
the precautions by which the possible arrival of
cholera should be anticipated. It is a still more sig-
nificant fact, that this episcopal sanitary reformer
should be COARLES JAMES LONDON. HIS grace hes
always shown a disposition to plunge somewhat
hastily into opinions, and often to scramble oat el
them as hastily.
For example, he dived into the doctrines of the
formalists and symbolisers of Oxford, with as much
intrepidity as an enthusiastic swimmer into the
Serpentine on a breezy April morning, and
scuttled out again into the high and dry land of
old-fashioned orthodoxy as precipitately as the same
swimmer seeking the kink, with a strong but un-
comfortable conviction that his plunge has been pre-
mature. We do not apprehend any such rapid
revolution in his grace's sanitary opinions. No
university has yet thought of looking for symbols in
sewers, or deep doctrinal significance in drains. We
have had no mischievous battle-cry of " secular sani-
tary measures," and " religious sanitary measures.°
Fighting about words has, in this question, not yet
distracted men from fighting for things. We have
had no new terms, in dealing with this important
subject, so fixed, to use the words of BACON, that
whereas the meaning ought to govern the term, the
term in effect governeth the meaning." But if sani-
tary reform has not yet, like education, arrayed
opposing bodies under misleading banners, its advo-
cates have to overcome the external resistance of
apathy, and vested interests, all the more active fee
their narrowness.
It is of the greatest importance, as against both
these adversaries, that the clergy should he interested
in the cause of sanitary improvement. They come in
contact, at many points, with that part of the com-
munity which suffers most from filth and pestilence.
They carry into ;their agency all the weight which
spiritual authority can add to benevolence and com-
mon sense. If they need any inducement to aid the
sanitary reformer, besides those which their expe•
risme of the sufferings and wants of the poor must
supply, they have it in the fact that their spiritual
ministrations are little better than mockery, among a
population, whose habitual life puts decency oat of
the queetiea, destroys self-respect, and all bat
justifies intemperance. It is gratifying to think that
many of the clergy have notwaited for episcopal exhor-
tation to commence their sanitary labour. That cause
numbers few more active supporters than many of our
metropolitan clergy, pastors of rural parishes like the
Rev. CH klars GIUDLESTONE; labourers in gaols and
towns, like the Rev. J. CLAY, the chaplain of the
Preston House of Correction; and the Rev. W. J.
ODOEM, whose excellent papers on the sanitary con-
dition of Plymouth we have Just received and read.
We are pleased also to notice that in the numerous
sanitary associations now springing up through the
provinces, the names of the ministers of religion are
ir[eortry where prominent. And now that episcopal
auction is given to such labours, they will become a
of professional duty, at least in the diocese of
London.

The bishop bases his appeal mainly on the cholera.
It is probably to the apprehensions roused by the ap-
proach of this dreaded visitant that we owe the
marked increase lately observable both in the interest
about sanitary questions, and the organisation for
sanitary purposes. Whatever their spring, the effect
of snob efforts must be good. But it should be re-
membered that fever is more fatal as an inmate, than
cholera will be as a guest. We record every year
more deaths from our pet plague, the caressed of cor-