The Express.
London, England, 1849-08-16 00:00:00

Cite ,v rameoo

OUTGOING MAILS.
Mails fir Br'dab North Ann rice and the United States
will be made up 0-morrow evening, August 17.
The West India Mails, excluding Bermuda, Havanna,
Nassau, Honduras, New Orleans, and Mexico, and excluding
those for !dad...lira, St. Juan-de Nicaragua, New Granada,
Chili, and Peru, will be made up to-morrow, August 17.
The mails f.r Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Madeira, Cadis, and
Gibraltar, will be made up to-morrow, August 17.
The mails for Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian Islands,
Egypt, Cryloo, India, and China, eio Southampton, will
be made up on the morning of the 20th of August.
The mails, via Marseilles, to the Mediterranean, Egypt.
Ctylcn, India, Hong-Kong, &c., will be made up on
August 24.
T Madeira, the Brazils, eta Buenos Ayres,
will
a bee
mtles ter
poru Sept. 4.

1110/1 WAWA AT LONDON 11111 DON.
Tor b..—Korelse. 0 stn. past ; Atteusus. N Ulu Put 0.
To iseaa•M—lioning, nal. NA It; Ahem" 111 ass. past 1.

LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST, 16.

AFTER all its coups cretat, states of siege, castiga-
tion of liberals, and manipulation of the electoral
lsw, the Prussian cabinet hes scarcely a majority in
its L.wer House of Parliament just assembled. A
majority of that house at its very opening wrs r.ady
mid eager to name fur president the chiet of that de-
putation from the Frankfort Assembly which came to
offer the imperial crown to the King of Pin Lt, and
who at another time had beadtd a deputation to
request the King of ParS,IA to dismiss his
present ministers. The King's cabinet only saved
ttrlf from this blow by publicly declaring that it
would compel ministers either to resign or dissolve
the chamber. As the litter would put an end to all
hopes of a constitutional eye-em, the Aftembly yielded,
but elected a very liberal man, Count SCHWERIN,
one too, who hid warmly taken part in tho prelimi-

nary debate.
When it is considered that the great majority of
the electors of Prussia, perhaps three-four the, abstained
from taking any port in the late election, when it is
considered that these three-fourths are liberals,
and when in the Assembly elected by the
reuniting fourth, composed of the least liberal
portion of the population, there displays itself an
instant majority for choosing a liberal president—
from these plain fac's any one may draw an un-
erring conclusion as to the state of public opinion is
Prussia.
Everywhere, indeed, the Prussian troops have put
down disorder. There is everywhere a horror of
anarchic tendencies, and even of repnblican prin-
ciple; a fear aid a dislike to the winning even of
cherished liberty by the triumph of a mob over
constituted authorities —it being but too plainly proved
that the mob, when victorious, can neither govern,
nor organise, nor secure any one of the nrinciples for
which it gallantly but vainly fought. Street revolu-
tion is hence universally repudiated. But for all these
sat c convictions, Germans are not the mote recon-
ciled to military or despotic rule. Ae.d let any aa-
trembly of Germans—of any class of Germans—be
got together by any King, and after any electoral
law, this assembly will turn out to be liberal,
and earnest aspirers of er genuine consti-
tutional government. If the Kirg of Pelisses
were to collect an assembly of military officers, or an
assembly of civilian functionaries, or an assembly or
his nobles, wo do not believe that he would get from
any one of them any other answer than the universal
one of constitution, coratitut4m.
We, therefore, regret the abstinence of the liberal
portion of the Prussian population from three last
elections. We admit the enormity of the pro-
vocation, the folly of the gaverronen°, and the
perfect fairness of entertaining the conviction
that the KING and his councilors are too
insiacere and too vacillating for any honest liberal to
trust. But still the nowt had many reasons to plead,
the chief of which was the failureof universal suffrage
to produce an assembly of practicable sense, capacity,
or dee eam ; whilst the KING has now to plead the
utter isolation of the liberal principle in Europe. Dor-
male in Eneland, re pud'ated in France, popular libe-
ralism, were it proclaimed in Prussia, would find it-
self exported to the attacks of Austria and Russia, and
would have, nay, perhaps will have, to fight for the
rignt ofenjoying representative government. In such a
state of things one may conceive it to he good policy
and expediency to affect and wear a more ultra-
monarchic colour, than can harmonise wirsh Garman
op:n;on.
The great number of the Germane, and we mean of
intelligent Germans, do not make any such allow-
ance for their governments. And in nothing are our
ton- journalists more mistaken than when the v
repro stint the Germans as loyalists at all
p• ice, and as infected by that same conssteative
and terror-tericken spirit which pervades the French.
The universal senticnent of Germans, on the contrary,
is that of concentrated anger—silent, because unutter-
able disgust. Instead of being carried away by that
old respect for princes which made idols of them, the
Germans do not make sufficient allowance for the
difficult sitareion and trials of their sovereigns.
They look to principle. They expect the highest
honour, the most strict fidelity to a given word,
in kings. They look for disinterestedness, and for
that love of their subjects, so long professed,
but of which now is the time to give proofs
The kings of Germany are now upon their trial
before a solemn, a silent, an apparently submissive,
bat a really powerful and irrefragable jury. And it
the verdict of public opinion in Germany condemns
its prince., not all the armies of Europe can finally
save or absolve them.
Radical as we are called, and inimical as we are
to absolutism, we still think German liberals
are not sufficiently ready to make allow-
ances, or accept compromises. We see, with
more apprehension than they, the struggle that
is approaching and the enmity that impends.
If the million of Austrian and Russian soldiers do
not fail in their unequal and cowardly campaign
against a handful of Hungarian patriots, this million
of bayonets will at once threaten and oppress Ger-
many. Whether the resistance to these bayonets be
passive or in open war, it were better made
with a prince at its head, an old govern-
ment to regularise resistance, and a disciplined
army to support it. These, with popular adherence,
would suffice to awe even the millions of Austro-
Russians. The attitude would suffice to repel them,
and thus Germany would have breathing time for
constitutional development. But if the German
liberals enter upon a quarrel with their kings and
their military chiefs at the very time when the two
despots of the east are threatening, they fling their
own monarchs into the arms, and themselves into the
fetters of absolutism.
But however unsatisfactory the attitude assumed
by the muse of German and of Prussian liberals, who
have retired to a kind of Mons Sneer and refuse to
mingle in the public forum, still the Prussian Cham-
bers seem eagerly inclined to prosecute the scheme of
German unity, which at present is a league of consti-
tutional governments and principles against despotic
ones. If this plan be followed up frankly and zeal-
ously, and the Prussian government itself come to
consist of men that inspire more confidence; if military
executions are put an end to, and the legal persecu-
tions and proscriptions of liberal men cease, the Ger-
mane may be brought to trust in Prussia, to unite
with her, and support her in efforts for the founding
and knitting together of a common country on the
great buds of popular representation. The King of
PRUSSIA has thrown away many opportunities; if he
flings away the present, another will never be offered
him. It is the last appearance of the SybiL As
SCIIUSELKA, in a late pamphlet, expresses it, Deutsch
oiler Russisch—bin Majesty may make his selection
of being irrevocably Russ'an or German. To him,
and indeed to Europe, is now offered this great alter-
native.

Two of our morning contemporaries, the Times and
the Chronicle, present&d themselves yesterday to the
public in a lade of sore trepidation and dismay.
These earnest and consistent reformers are sadly
alarmed lest the movement for financial and parlia-
mentary reform should fail for lack of proper manage-
ment. The Chronicle expatiates on the defects of
our representative system; the Tones is eloquent on
the 'bum.. of our financial system; and both are
agreed that the leaders of the movement are sad
bunglers, and much in need of a lesson from them-
selves in the art of agitation.
There are people so predisposed to he suspicious as
to imatine that there may be some• hing of trickery in
this. Not having previously heard such explicit de.
clarations in favour of reform from these journals, and
hearing them begin the moment they join the reibrm

camp to cavil at the taelcs of the leaders, such persons
fear their object may in reality be to stir up dissen-
sion and mutiny. We will not be so uncharitable.
We will, as long aawe can, attribute their sweercilious
behaviour to that pragmatical spirit which inr:ucca
some men to fancy they can do everything better than
any other tenon, and encourages them to give
everybody, from a shoemaker to a statesman, instruc-
tions in his own art or handicraft. We will leave their
advice and criticism to tell for what they are worth,
and avail ourselves of their testimony to the indis-
pensable necessity of reforms, political and financial.
The present movement is a :witted by the Chronicle
to be (we use its own elegant phraseology) " a ge-
nuine one." That journal is of opinion that " a cen-
bsth of the safety and the desirableness of
further electoral reforMis is entertained by a nume-
rous and increasing class;" that "the removal or gross
and palpable inequalities," end " the extension of po-
litical fresuchises to class's of the people mentally quali-
fied for their exercise, and eagerly solicittma for their
onjoyment," are so obviously and imperatively called
fur, that " no British:mlnister can be said to be fit for
his office" who does not know how "to realise the
natural and healthy popular demand for the extension
' and improvement of popular institutions."
The Times, again' solemnly declares that "there is
both ample room and abundant necessity for retrench-
ment ;" that " the system of taxation is unjust r that
the income-tax is " ill-distributed r and that gen-
t nll7 our burdens are not " adjusted with all the con-
venience of which the load is susceptible." The
Times is, moreover, of opinion that ou many occa-
sions " the dry formality of a ministerial veto is rather
too coolly opposed to the arguments of one class and
the interests of all."
The organ of Downirg-strcet advocates financial
reform, and the organ of the Lincolnites advocates
parliamentary reform. We wonder what effect this
spindling phenomenon hashed on the nerves of the in-
mates of tic inner sanctum of either political sect.
BALAAM'S astonishment when his faithful four-footed
servant addressed bim in the voice of a reasoning and
rational man could scarcely exceed that of the leaders '
of the whig and liberal conservative parties when sa-
toted at their imitating meal by the sonorous and
" shockingly human!' bray of their respective
donkeys.
We are not so sanguine as to hope that
Lord JOAN ltussut will b• cured of the bad habit
of "coolly opposing the dry formality of a ministerial
veto to the true interests of all " by the lecturing of
the Times. And equally faint are our expectations
of wring Lord LINCOLN, or Messrs. GLADSTONE,
CIItUWELL, and SIDNEY HERBEItT converted into
parliamentary reformers by the arguments of the
Chremicle. But the admissions of these journals can
scarcely fail to ere mrage earnest reformers to go on,
and timid waverer' to take the plunge. It is clear
that the gentlemen who do the thinking and writ-
ing for our political notabilities are in their own
minds convinced of the necessity of pariiamemtary
and financial reform, and only wait the per-
'lesion of their masters to become the zealous

advocates of both.__ There is a strong de.iire
to capitulate among the private soldiers of the ob-
structive garrison. The leaders of the army of re-
sistance cannot count upon-the resolution of their fol-
lowers. Meetings like that of Drury-lane—where
upwards of 4,000 intelligent, respectable, earnest
men were congregated to declare their adhesion to the
cause of reform—in Birmingham, Manchester, and
Liverpool, in Edinburgh and Glasgow, will have a
wonderful effect upon the nerves and convictions of
ministiTe and would-be ministers.
But if they would carry their pckt, reformers
must beware of allowing themselves to be seduced into
compromises and halt-measures. The great secret of
the strengthof the Anti-corn-law League was the per
with which it adhered to its demand for " total,
immediate, unconditional repeal." Had the Anti-corn-
law leaders abated one jot of their claim,
the league, so unanimous, would immediately have
b.,eu broken up into a multitude of hollow and help-
less factions. And to preserve union and cordiality
in the new reform movement there must be uo
flinchirg from its first, programme. The ultimate
object is a thcreugh-going financial reform. The
means are the re-construction of the House of Corn-
mine by the instrumentality of extended suffrage,
re-distribution of the eitotoral districts, vote by
bahot, end triennial parliaments. Aud the first
move to strengthen the hinds of the reform party in
psrliement for the accomplishment of this work is the
augmentat'on of the clam of forty-shilling freeholders.
The associated reforms ra have come together upon
the express understanding that these are the objects
and these the means of their league; and it is only
by an honest and steadfast adherence to this the
m iginal compact that they can be kept together, and
their numbers increased.