29 JULY 1865, Page 2

Herr Von Bismark has gone a step further towards the

estab- lishment of absolutism in Prussia. The city of Cologne resolved to give a banquet to the Liberal members of the Chamber, a pro- ceeding formally authorized by Article 23 of the Constitution. The festival was, however, prohibited by the police, and although the judge of the Provincial Court quashed the order as manifestly illegal, the prohibition was not withdrawn. The Deputies of course resolved to hold their festival, and on the 22nd inst. attended in the Zoological Gardens. Authority, however, unable to bear the consequences which might flow from the after-dinner speeches of members of Parliament, sent troops into the garden and dispersed the guests by force. The eatables, strange to say, were not analyzed by the police, with the view of discovering grains of treason in the pate:s or elixir of sedition in the Rhine wine, though of course they must have existed. On the following day the members attended a similar banquet at Deutz, but were again dispersed, and finally proceeded to Oberlahnstein, in the Dukedom of Nassau, where, as they thought, they might dine in peace. The wretched little potentate, however, who bears a title once borne by William the Deliverer, went out of his mind with fright, and actually sent an express to Wiesbaden for all his army to go and disperse a knot of quiet merchants, lawyers, and professors. Of course they went, and the members steamed by the Rhine to Cologne, passing bridge after bridge lined with troops, and town after town filled with a sympathizing population, and went home filled with love for the Hohenzollerns, and fall of the belief that the German is the only free man in the *world. They will of course do nothing, but the workmen's corporations are more practical, and are organizing mass meetings in order to "establish the right of association." If soldiers are sent to disperse them they will probably be ordered to fire, in which case, soldiers being also workmen— ?