The Express.
London, England, 1864-01-29 00:00:00

[TWOPENCE

THE DANISH QUESTION.

(mom on owx

FRANKFORT, Jee. 27.
There is a state of things now in this country
which has existed nowhere else at any time. Every-
body does as he pleases. The Prussian Chambers
refuse the budget year after year, and the govern-
ment goes on raising taxes and spending the money.
While violating the constitution in this essential
point, it maintains the constitution in all other re-
alt, even those most annoying to it. The
horn refuse the loan, and ministers borrow
the money privately on a deposit of railway
shares. In Austria the German deputies
blame the policy of the government, and the Polish
deputies object to pay anything for an intervention
in Slestrig which they consider a purely German
quarrel ; but if matters come before the Reicharath,
the fear lest Schmerling should resign dominates
every other feeling, and the funds asked for are
granted. In the rest of Germany the excitement
is intense. There governments not sailing with
the current are denounced as traitors by popular
assemblies and the press • and if you ask
what next, you are anewered,—" Certainly not
revolutionl m..wytiti be playing .
of our airmr- Milo want to bring brtirlCl
to bear upon us." In the public assemblies the
most violent speeches conclude with au injunction
to the audience to disperse quietly, and to give the
police no pretext for interference ; and then people
light their cigars and go home as orderly as from
the theatre.

The most pacific men plead for war against Den-
mark, and all its allies, as a certain means
of securing another fifty years of peace
for they say :—" Germany is made no account
of in foreign countries, being considered as
a clumsy mass, unable to move ; should we
give another lesson proving the contrary, the recol-
lection of it will last for a long time, and we shall
not bear any more of the usual gasconader about
an invasion on the Rhine." While, therefore, every-
body is convinced that it must come to blows should
Denmark not give in, the funds of the German
States—the Austrian, where large jobbing takes
place, excepted—have not fallen one quarter per
cent. In the Diet itself there are three different
parties. There are Austria and Prussia, who want
to screen Denmark, and who would be satisfied by
a personal union of the duchies; there are the king-
doms and a few other middle States, who would be
content to eliminate the foreign element from the
Confederation by securing Holstein to the Duke of
Angustenburg ; and there are the minor States,
backed by the people, who intend at any risk to
wrest the last Garman village from the Danish
crown. Still all parties are equally anxious to pre-
vent a definitive split in the Confederation. Thine
apparent contradictions can only be explained by
the peculiar tenacity of the German character
which never gives up a game as lost, even though it
cannot win for the moment. The very parties
who are loudest now in their clamours' against
any settlement which woule. not give them
all they wish for, readily admit that Austria and
Preena will carry their ends, but that efforts must
be commenced forthwith against the future settle-
ment. They believe that passive resistance will
render Danish rule impossible in the duchies, and
that if they find the means of assisting the sufferers
they will keep up the npposition until a more pro-
pitious opportunity. They advise the Sleswig-Hol-
eteiners not to pay taxes or accept office, and thus
force the Danes to break through their own engage-
ments. Disputes of fifty years standing are no novelty
in this country. There was that on the Salle
succesaion, which lasted for two hundred years, and
which was only finally settled by the treaty of
Vienna. The minor princes, who have more to
count with the people than the large military ones,
are aware of this, and their concurrence with the
most extreme views can only be explained by their
being convinced that peace can only be Lad at this
price. Still the prevailing opinion is that the end
will be a compromise, leaving Holstein to the Duke
of Augustenburg, and Sleawig to the Danes, under
certain guarantees for the German inhabitants.
Denmark would thereby recover her independence
from the Diet, and thus have got rid of one of her
two foreign elements. With regard to the other,
the patriotic party contend for Luxemburg being
given up to a junior prince of the Crania's family,
and the district of Dutch Limboorg, annexed in
1839 as a compensation for that part of Luxemburg
made over to lginm, given up to tbo Dutch, who
would subaceibe to such an arrangement with all their
hearts, in order not to be drawn henceforth into
German disputes. It must be admitted that no-
thing would better further peace than the nullifica-
tion of that amphibious position in which Denmark
and Holland were placed by the Vienna treaty,
which made them at the same time independent
states and members of the German Confederation.

AN AMERICAN Carrlagat TPON TRACKERAT.••••
The New York Timer of Jan. II thus writes upon the death
of Tbackeray :—'• Theekeray is dead. This startling an-
nouncement seems to add an 'Meow chill to the facie.
manor of the season, es it strikes at the heart of so mud'
that has delighted zed reined the men of this generatices
in a thousand sketches ei life mad character vivified by the
pee of a man of masammete genius. Since Scott left the
world, thirty-twoyears ego, the English reading public bee
not been eailed to imam mob a loss; and if we would seek
se earlier premenst, we aremtgebask man than a centary,te
the day when prematurely worn out, at the age of forty.
semis, the novelbt Fielding died as exile in march of
health in Italy. Fiddled wad perhaps a greater maim
than Mechem, yet we have no impremion of his hems an
Lamented in that old England which lives to us, vital to
this day in his pegs as It does in no other man's writMm„
as donbtlssa Mechem will be sincerely mourned at this
preesat time. The difference is in the two period", their
mind sad character. We are softened now in com-
panies' with that hard-living age. when the tedium
of MOD mug have been somewhat blunted to mi-
-1 dure the merman they did. There war a sense
of humanity in Fielding, but rarely inch pathos
of • gentle meleacholy es is inwrought even in the satirical
pages—mid some have thought they are all satirical—of
Thackeray. The world has grown strangely syropetbetio
within this hundred years, •1111 Thackeray 4 writings rein.
sent the theme. . . . Death will wow sweep awaya
swarm of mosquito depreciaton, who buzzed about his
'fp:th, and all En land will riae to honour her Inrione hem-
Mar—for sochgthe author truly is who coinagthe best pro.
duct of heart and brain that others may be elevated sad
enjoy. When the measure of this man's life is fully takes.
it will be seen bow much we are indebted to his
love of art and literature, which always induced filaanth°
toit
ask after perfection in hie sphere. The style is the man;
and how bread and genial it is io his pages!—easy, cello,
• reeposisive to the einem shades of emotion, with •
shill in premed's the feelings of common life uesqualled
deco Sterne. His topics were of ten 44 worldly people.
mid he was frequently satirical, sometimes bitterly
se • but them ie a good motive in his satire.
sad the balance in the account is always es the
side of virtue. When his biography shall be
written, am we presume it will be by his daughter, who, la
the ' Stray of Elizabeth' end other writings, has exhibited
something of the talents of her father, the world will doubt-
less, as in the posthumous disclosures zoncerning lamb.
Campbell, and others, lad murk to admire in his oho.
ruder, much in his history to account for mid extenuate
what has seemed harsh in his representations of life. ?ak-
in him altogether, his thoroughly English character, and
what he has done for English literature, it would be no
mutest tribute far Westminster Abbey to offer her sacred
soil me a rating pises for his she."
MILITARY ENDIIIIANCIL—A writer in the Wash-
*toe Chronicle am that the greatest power of endanuice
of such hardships as Woes to a soldier's life belongs to
DIM over 33 yeas of ; that wee from 18 to 30 are Ma
time. no the site list where them older are only once ; that
the records of the hospitals around Washington develop the
fact that, aside hem surgical cases, the patients there under
36 are as 80 to I ever that age ; consequently, a sound mac
of 40, and of temperate habits, will endure more fatigue and
bard treat:mai than one squally sound at the me of 20.--
ilfiesouri Dentoestsl.

A filiza A CNURCW.—Tbe Dacca News
cbroultdas the ravages costaaitted by tigers in the villages
of the neiglabourhood of Tergong among the cattle of the
peasselay. A of se inquisitive time walked into the
&melt la breed day, the doom were closed, and be wen
abot deed before he could make bis escape. Oar eastern•
poeary rationimeeds an expedition being organised splint
Woo dastaoctiry asioals.