The Express.
London, England, 1847-03-16 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 16.

SUCH of our readers as may have seen " Le Clerc's
Logic" will remember that he has added to his
chapter on the Sophisms a celebrated appendix on
the Aryumentum Theoloyieum all incidia &damn,
which he illustrates by that stupendous example of
theological rancour and unfairness, the Epistle of ST.
JEW)ME LOVIGILANTIUS, and Ithe nearest approach
then made to it, the Jesuit IMBOURG'S " History
of the League." In oar own day the Jekuits of
France have rivalled Sr. JEROME himself in the use
of this weapon against the national system of educa-
tion in France—a system which has only maintained
its ground by the united exertions of the Liberals of
all shades in that country ; but we confess that the
recent opponents of national education in England
threaten to rival the Jesuits in the use of this
weapon, which they wield with a very auspicious
similarity of manner.
A fierce attack on the national system in Franco
was put forth under the authority of the Propaganda,
in 1840, by the Abbe GAROT. This worthy Jesuit
undertook to prove that the national system of educa-
tion was devised by Atheists and Pantheists, and that
it was equally opposed to the principles of Catho-
licism and religions liberty. It so happened that the
Abbe knew nothing whatever about the origin or the
originators of the plan, but such want of knowledge
only rendered him more positive in his assertions,
just as the BAINES manifesto declares that the mi-
nutes of council were framed by Episcopal clergymen,
and the Patriot affirms that the educational articles
in the Daily Notes were written under Unitarian
influence; the Jesuit and the journalists hazarded
guesses on matters of which they knew nothing,
and, in the three instances, the guesses were
wrong ; but this did not prevent the de-
visers of these false assumptions from making them
the ground of elaborate argument. The public re-
cords of France refuted the Abbe • the Westminster
Review, the Atheneum, and Other liberal jour-
nals free from any suspicion of ecclesiastical influence,
which advocated measures similar to those proposed
in the minutes of the Committee of Privy Council long
before each a body had existence, furnish an answer
to the BAINES manifesto, and our own knowledge
enables us to give a direct contradiction to the Patriot.
But LE CLERC has taught us that one of the first
elements of Jesuit sophistry is the application of
unpopular nicknames at random.
The object of the Jesuits, set forth by Gunn and
his brethren, was to establish general education con-
ducted by voluntary associations; the interference of
the State, they said, would put an end to the exertions
of the pious, the humane, and the charitable ; exer-
tions which they averred to be adequate to cope with
the existing evils of society. " We believe," says
CARLE, " that there never was a time when the

world was less bad than it is now." And he had just as
good grounds for his assertion as the Leeds Merelfey
for its declaration that public aid, in the task of edam.
tioa, is not required.
The Jesuit advocates of civil and religions liberty
asserted that the chief difficulty in a national system
of education would be the recognition of every form
of religion, whether tree or false. " You must rs
ceive, says G.taeor, " all creeds, even the mat
opposite and divergent; you must admit them arid
jumble them together as clean and unclean beasts ia
your NOAH'S aih. You place them in permanent cos-
' filet and in suitable fermentation, to produce in the
minds of youth a monstrous amalgam of troth
and error." This, which the Alibi: facetiously calls "
religioio-chemical operation," be says must lead to the
results which his English imitators seem to dread,
when they complain that the measure proposed by the
government will exhibit its ministers " as engaged
the authoritative maintenance of all existing religious
systems, as if to them all were equally true, equally
false, or equally indifferent."
In every one of the Jesuit brochures we find the
claim of the state to inspection denounced as inconsis-
tent with freedom of instruction. This is the
great complaint of Father DESGARETS, w!. see work
was recommended to public attention by the Bishop
of CIIAItT7.ES. 'fo this GENIN made the conclusive
reply, that " Instruction includes education and
education, and that it was ns much the duty of a state
to prevent mis-education ar.d its fatal consequences,
as to check physical coetngion, forbid the sale of
poison, and prohibit the appearance of tainted provi-
sions in the markets." _ .

--TheJ;;;;C:tian, L' ['siren:, was as firmly Cel-
vineed of the unity of spirit in the professors of the
university, as the Leeds Mercury is of similar unity
in the corps of government inspectors. The only dif.
ferenec is, that the conductors of L' Univers had some
knowledge of the professors, while the opponents d
the Committee of Council in England have not tam
the trouble to make any inquiry about the inspector,.
The abbe CAP.LE anticipated Mr. BAINFA in the ob-
jection that interference with what he called liberty
of instruction, would justify interference with the
liberty of the press. " The press," said he, "is free;
but is not the press a teacher? Why then should
liberty be given to one form of instruction and not
to the other ? Will not the same reasoning justify a
censorship of both?" But the press is not free b
teach doctrines perilous to the community, so long se
courts of justice, its proper inspectors, exist in the
land. . .

MONTALEMBERT has similarly preceded Mr.
BAINES by threatening the deputies who support the
national system with vengeance at the hustings.
" The true Catholics," he says,:' will never obtain
anything until they become a serious embarrassment
to the government ; then and then only will they be
honoured with attention." So that Mr. BAINES'S
threat, disguised as a prophecy, has not even
the poor merit of originality. ".'iloNTAtenniticr
proceeds: "To subdue the common enemy, the ea.
tholies must enter the electoral arena with a fixed and
well-defined plan of action, and that should be to
reject all who are not prepared to work for them!"
This Jesuit advice has been borrowed by the Patriot
without yeknoti ismtment, owl given se aril.. to folds
the oonductcf nonconformists at the next election..

The cry that the " superintendence of education by
the state would give the state a monopoly of instruc-
tion" is actually the title of the very first pamphlet
issued by the Jesuits against the national system is
France; and is supported by showing that their semi-
naries will be injured, as they have resolved to resist
the application of inspection. " Our teachers, alone,
disarmed, tied hand and foot, cannot compete with
the teachers of state schools, numerous, disciplined,
and locked in steel," says the Jesuit Jaaor ; Mr.
Mules makes a similar appeal for his favourite
schools, but not in such poetic phrase.
Would that Le CLEEC could have seen " The
Objections to the Government Scheme of Public
Education" just issued by a central committee; it
would have supplied him with as striking Maitre-
' Cone of the argument am theologicte m a 6 inrid4
&worm, as he derived front Sr. JEnoME or the Jesuit
Maimnoutte; and when he saw the objections made
by the Jesuits to national education in France, faith-
fully reproduced by the opponents of national educa-
tion in England, he would have been disposed to
exclaim, "the bands verily are Esatfs hands, but the
voice is the voice of JACOB." These objections will
be found in another part of our paper with a running
commentary, they arc worthy of being preserved as a
new illustration of Le CLERC'S celebrated chapter.

A JOURNAL which closely follows and fairly
represents foreign policy in the opinions of Lord
ABERDEEN and the Tories, announced last week that
the alliance or understanding between England and
France was at an end, and that the place of the
latter by the side of England was now well filled by
Prussia. We have a love and respect for everythme
German, and for Prussia as the head and front et
what is liberal, religiously or politically, in G •
and none hailed in louder terms of approbat=
late acts of the King of PRUSSIA than we did.
But Prussia is not yet a first-rate power in the
balance of Europe, nor can it, except under very pe-
culiar circumstances, fill the part of either France or
of Ramie; in a great political alliance. In throe-fourths
of the important international questions, capable
of leading to dispute, and desirable to 'title by the
power and weight derived from alliance, Primal"
would be counted for noting. She is no naval power.
The received maxim in the diplomacy of Europe is,
that "there are but three countries which poems
the initiative of war,"—which can, in other
words, make war, or consequently menace it. These
are England, France, and Russia. For the great and
general purposes of political alliance, one of these
cannot be replaced by an inferior power, not even by
Austria.
Sir ROBERT PEEL uttered the other day a very solemn
andvery empty speech about Cracow, full of fine words,
fine sentiments, and plausibility, but strongly marked
by bad logic and false assertion. Sir ROBERT
wished to impress upon Parliament the idea, that
lie, as minister, bad played an even and impartial
part between the powers of the East and France;
that he had not allied with one against the other;
but had sat upon his English Olympus, enacting
Jupiter between them. This is very like his affecta-
tion of omniscience in domestic policy. Never was as
oyster a more passive creature, opening its respire-
tory organ to whatever the tide sent him, and depen-
dent even for locomotion on the caprice of the element
in which he found himself, than Sir ROBERT PEEL in
his foreign policy.
The fact is, that Sir ROBERT PEEL, who boasts d
being free milieu, has been always exaggerated in
his foreign policy. He of old defended the Aus-
trians' right to enter Naples, and to subjugate it. Had
Lord GEORGE BENTINCK fished up that speech d
PEEL'S, it would have served admirably, and Mitts
little change of phraseology, to defend the Aideled
absorption of Cracow. As to Sir ROBERT 'll
keeping an even hand between France and the
powers, it is notorious that daring his last
tration he leant to France in a way to disgust the
Northern and Eastern powers with England.
It is well known that the royal visit to En, and to
Windsor, betokening an intimate and family con-
nexion between the crowns, gave alarm both at St.
Petersburg and Vienna; and was one of the mese
which flung Prince NIETTERNICH irrecoverably into
the councils of Russia. At that very meeting Lord
ABERDEEN, he who had once supported the came d
lqitimacy in Spain and Portugal, conjointly with
METTERNICH, at En consented to a son of the Ringo(
FRANCE espousing a Spanish princess, on certain con-
tingcncies 'tis true, but contingencies easily set aside,
or broken through, as we have seen.
It is untrue, then, on the part of Sir ROBERT
PEEL to state that his government preserved neu-
trality betw ern the power and the prospects d east
and west. England, under the tories, as ander
.the
svhigs, leaned to France, and was right in se dank
if it had observed measure and prudence, and foram
the French King to be honest, to respect his word,
and not to tarn the alliance and the confidenee
arising from it to his own family gain. The result
of Lord ABERDEEN and Sir ROBERT PEEL'S }Bagging
LOUIS-PHILIPPE has been seen : it has produced a
breach between us and France, which will require mach
time and much good fortune to heal.
The Times, whilst admitting and sanctioning this
breach, recommends the government to make, at the
same time, as decided a breach with Russia, by with-
holding the interest on the Russo-Dutch loan. Thal
we are to quarrel at once with the two great naval
and military powers of Europe, and prompt them to
unite against us, whilst we are to oonnterbalanoe their
formidable alliance by increased cordiality with Prim-
SIC We shall not take the trouble to expose or refute

",

each nonsense as this, ?which. it would be too great a
compliment to call policy, limiting ourselves to ob-
serve, that, oonld a statesman entertain the idea of
'ding upon such, he would deserve to be sent at once
to Bedlam.
Bat although Prussia is not a power of that com-
manding voice which can impose upon other countries,
it may become so. And the king seems to discern
clearly the right path to that moral aggrandisement.
Prussia places itself at the head not merely of the
commercial, but the constitutional movement of Ger-
many, and thereby sums up German feeling, force,
and sympathies in herself, then indeed the voice of
Germany, spoken through one potent mouth, mast
be listened to. Tne chief obstacle to Prassia's seizing
this supremacy, has been her own backwardness.
Austria is an inert log that is every day hurled more
and more out of the circumference of the German
father-land. Bavaria, indeed, kept up some ri-
valry with Prussia, supported ultra-Catholicism in
opposition to Prussian Protestantism, and a reign of
semi-absolutism in opposition to the general tendon-
aim of Germany. The King of BAVARIA, however,
long sick of Jesuit predominance,gained courage
to break with them from the exhortations and pique
of the celebrated LOLA MoriTEs. Hers is not the
first female influence that has emancipated a court
and routed the clergy ; and, however morality may
be shocked by -the origin of her influence,
liberal principles profit by its exertion. An
absolutist and semi-Austrian cabinet in Bavaria,
headed by one of the old enslavers of Greece, has
been put to the rout, and the court of Munich, freed
from Austrian influence, may unite in political sym-
pathies with Prussia, and give impulse and extension
to the new current of German feeling.
But whilst hailing any symptom of the resurrection
and unity of Germany, we do not conceal from our-
selves the fact, that the English or their policy are far
from popular in that country. For this we may thank
ourselves in part, and in part the considerate kindness
of Lord ABERDEEN'S friend, Lot B PHILIPPE, who
has for 'ears suborned the press of Germany to malign
us. And herenaturallysuggesta i:self,the singular fact,
that the two most honest and simple populations in
Europe, the Germans and the Spaniards, have been
blessed with the most corrupt press, and that the
press in both countries has been suborned by the poli-
tical enemies of England to undermine our popu-
larity and deny our worth.
For a variety of reasons, therefore, much as we love
and respect Germany and Prussia, the time, we
should say, is not yet come for a British minister to
wrap himself up and go to sleep in the folds of a
Prussian alliance. It may one day be a most valu-
able One ; but Germany, we repeat, is, as a first-rate
rower, unformed and undeveloped. France and
are, en the contrary, Minervas armed and full
grown. To quarrel with both, as is coolly proposed, is
to place England in a position that would require
mare statesmanlike science to make good and secure
than is at all apparent in the late debates of thr;
Hasse of Commons.

WE are honoured by numerous ]utters from corres-
pondents, each recommending a different mode of
alleviating the present scarcity of food. The proposal
mast frequently made is to have a general massacre
timeless animals. One would hang all the dogs,
another all useless horses, beginning with
race-horses. Even the Jere natura,, though
=preserved, excite the animosity of some.
Sparrows are denounced as .a voracious nui-
sance, and the Bendier in ELIA who refused to
poison them, would, no doubt, in these days, be
scouted as a bad political economist. Our religious
reformers make war upon all the idle embellishments
of religious edifices. The economists, who give in
their adviece through the medium of the penny
postage, would make a fell swoop of all that is orna-
mental in animal life. And when hares have perished
with the game-laws, no greyhound tan survive, not
even for the sake of his symmetrical beauty.
Once for all, we must beg to dissent from our
humane correspondents. We deprecate any whole-
sale slaughter of dogs. We would let even race-
horses run. And we must eschew any cleee inquiry ,
into which are the useful, aad which the useless, class
of animals, lest the same form of reasoning and dis-
tinguishing might come to be applied to men. If all'
mouths, but of those of beings who are of some profit
to the age, ore to be closed by the executioner, what
is to become of our unproductive classes ? Are the
gentlemen, who keep and bet on race-horses, much
more useful than the animals which form
the subject matter of their calculation and liveli-
hood? Is the lap-dog owner always a more
industrious member of society than the lapdog?
Our correspondent, who would feed the dray-horse,
and cut the throat of the winner of the Derby, is, in
principle, the French sans culotte of 1792, who
placed a carpenter at the head of the state, and sent
every lord to the guillotine.
We do not say, that it is decorous of an Irish gen-
tleman to keep a large and well-fed pack of hounds,
when the peasantry are starving around him. But a
deg, the friend of man, can be fed on the refuse of
man's daily food ; and the horse, being herbivorous,
can be fed on what does not constitute man's food.
Even game, although the preservation of it in thickly
populated and agricultural districts, produces an in-
-rable damage to the farmer, and an irresistible
temptation to the peasant, whom it introduces to gaols
and to crime—still we would be indulgent even to
game, amidst their homesteads on the moors, where
there is no need of a rigid game-law to preserve
them.
The rich who support dogs, who feed pheasants
and parrots, have abundance fur charity, as well as
for their private wants. And that charity can be
better stimulated, than by curtailing their amuse-
ments, and forcing them to hoard. Where there_aro
large fortunes, there must be expenditure in show and
vanity and valeta ; nor has a sumptuary law ever been
found productive of abundance or morality. The
severest sumptuar7 laws against the external display
of pride existed in Venice, where great wealth was
accumulated, with few objects on which it could, be
expended. The result was, the most ruthless and
leaden tyranny that ever a poor population laboured
under. _ I

In the Dublin Erening Post of Saturday is an
article descriptive of the wide and deeply felt distress
inflicted on every branch of trade by the landed pro-
prietors being obliged to limit their expenses to strict
necessaries, to their turning off their servants, aban-
cloning even the semblance of hoepitaliy, themselves
and tbeir families entering no shops. AU those'
expenses that they have thus discontinued were in
one sense useless ones, yet their cessation has occa-
sioned proportionately as much misery and ruin in
the towns, u that with which the failure of the po-
tato crop has afflicted the country.
A deeper insight into our social organisation would
reader our correspondents more indulgent to things
which they consider useless. What powers bath not
nature shown in producing flowers, the utility of
whose beauty is beyond our comprehension, yet which
aso connected with the principles of reproduction,
that we cannot proscribe the flowers without losing
the fruit. Nor are the dumb animals, which are
admitted to our hearths and grow in our affections,
without qualities which plead for them even in the
hour of famine.

The Paris journals and correspondence of Sunday
have arrived, but bring no intelligence of muck
interest. The Chamber had decided in favour of the
establishment of a line of steamers, between Havre
and New York, on Saturday.
A curious question was raised in the course of the
debate on this project. In the documents, the Minis-
ter of Finance is designated " his Excellency." To
this the opposition took exeeption, declaring that such
a title was abolished after the last revolution. M.
Lacave-Laplague, however, refused to give up the
obnoxions prefix, and the debate was accordingly
adtoarned to Monday.
The journals of Sunday are mach occupied with
the debate in the House of Commons on Mr. Hume's
motion on Thursday.
The price of bread in Paris for the last fortnight
of March has risen to 68 centimes per kilogramme,
being equivalent to 100. for the 41b. loaf.
Lord Normanby has not appeared at the soirees of
M. Guizot since the mete;og at Count D'Appony's.
The appointment of Herbert to be Minister of
Jultic!! Proves M. Guizot's power to be firm as ever.
M.bresson, who is at present at Paris, has, it is
said, positively declared to the government his inten-
tion of not returning to Madrid. The entreaties of
M. Guizot and of a still more influential personage
have proved unavailing in overcoming this resolution
of M. Breason, whose eyes are opened to the difficul-
ties of his future position at the Spanish court. This
steP of M. Brillion causes the more embarrassment to'