The Express.
London, England, 1863-12-29 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29.

THE King of DEHMAI I having to defend his
dominions against foreign invasion, finds himself
without constitutional advisers. M. Raz and
his colleagues tendered the resignation of their re-
spective offices on Christmas-day, and hitherto no
one has been foetid willing to accept them. The
late Ministers cannot be charged with having re-
tired because they were not ready to face the
dangers which threaten Denmark. They resigned
because they could not advise the Kura to follow
the counsel of the Powers which profess to be his
friends, and which recommend him to withdraw the
Constitution for Denmark Proper and Slesvig
which was promulgatedabout two months ago. Their
withdrawal left the field open to statesmen who
might be able to support the advice of those Powers.
But hitherto such statesmen have not been
found. The plan i iit9li gg yar ;Act situ by !
the Gym's Q"..airia would place Denmark under
tte power of a German minority; and the Consti-
tution of November, 1863, the abolition of which
is now demanded, is dear to the Danish
people because it opposes • barrier to the efforts
of those who would bring Denmark into vassalage
to foreigners. No Danish statesman can be found
to consent to its abandonment. The Kura has
therefore only two sets of advisers to consult—his
old Ministers, who bad no thought of deserting
him, and who only retired to give him an
opportunity of finding more useful men—and the
envoys and ambassadors of the foreign sovereigns
who profess friendship for him and his people. But
there is this difference between the two classes of
counsellors, that while the one give advice and
nothing more, declining to accept the least
responsibility for the consequences of its
acceptance, the other can promise men, money,
and arms. Our Government is at this moment
conspicuous among the advisers of King CHRISTIAN
IX. We are earnestly advising him to give up
the November Constitution; but we are careful to
declare, as we have been from the first, that in any
event he must not look to us for help. The incon-
venience of this policy is, that whereas the advice
is tendered on the ground of expediency rather
than on a judicial estimate of the merits
of the case, its rejection by Denmark has
the effect of exhibiting the policy of that
Government as condemned beforehand by
England, and the Government itself as obsti-
nately rejecting the advice of its beat friends.
We do not think that this is a position which we,
as • people, ought to occupy. If we cannot
help the Danes, our Government may at least
abstain from embarrassing them. But while the
foreign advisers of the Kiss only counsel sub-
mission, and say nothing of material assistance,
the constitutional Ministers of Denmark are sup-
ported by the entire people. It is true the po-
pulation is small. The Danes are but a handful
compared with the Germans. But when • nation
is menaced with destruction, brace men do not
count heads, and the Danes are the bravest of the
brave.

It is now too evident for doubt that the Germans
are bent on wresting not only Holstein, but
Sleavig, from Denmark. This end, which
has long been proclaimed in popular assemblies
is now avowed in Parliaments. It is in vain
that the King of Dinnvaar withdraws his troops
from Holstein, for the sake of peace. The
Federal Commissioners permit the proclamation of
a Pretender, and Prince FitZDZEICH of Augusten-
burg notifies his accession as Duke of Hourrinv,
under the protection of the very Powers which
signed the Treaty of London, and the Chambers
of the German kingdoms are calling for war as
an excuse for o►erunning Slesvig. Public feeling
and public decency are sacrificed to this fanatical
exaggeration of national spirit. The popular feel-
ing in Germany rises and rolls like a tide, and
threatens to carry even the most powerful govern-
ments before it. The King of Patens is hesitating
about breaking his word and renouncing his en-
gagements under the Treaty of London. It is in
vain to moon with men excited as the Germans
now are with passion, otherwise we might point
out the advantage which they give their powerful
enemies by the course they are following. If we
suggested that France was only waiting to see
Germany well involved in war in order to reclaim
the frontier of the Rhine, we should expect to be
told, as indeed we have been told, that the Ger-

man people are impatient to demonstrate their
military virtues once more in an encounter with
the Gaul.

Spectators who are not carried away by passion,
and who wish well alike to Germans, French, and
Danes, cannot look on the impending conflict with-
out apprehension. It is very unlikely indeed that
the flames of war once kindled will be confined to
the territory of Denmark. If Germany sets
the example of violating treaties and beginning
a war for territory, fortresses, ports and har-
bours, she does so at a greater risk than any other
country in Europe. Should Prussia attack Den-
mark, the Emperor of the FRENCH would have
every conceivable motive for attacking Germany.
It would be creditable to him to side with the
weaker country in defence of treaties and inter-
national right, and, as we all know, he is not
insensible to reputation. He might plausibly say
that the honour of France required that she
should not abandon a brave ally. The people of
France would back him as they have not hitherto
done, in an enterprise which had honour for its
spring and the Rhine frontier for its reward.
The prospect of that restoration would inflame
the national enthusiasm, and give the Mi-
riam a complete hold upon every element
of the national strength. Nor would be go
alone into the conflict. A war between France
and Germany would have a war between Italy
and Austria for its inevitable accompaniment.
Even now VICTOR EMMANUEL can with difficulty
keep the peace, and throughout Northern Italy
expectation is on tiptoe. It is probable that Eng-
land would not be engaged in the general war at
first. It is certain that our Government, sup-
ported by the country, will do all in its power to
preserve peace, a blessing which the observation
of every year is teaching us to prize. Our
heartiest maledictions will be bestowed on those,
whoever they may be, who wantonly break the
peace of Europe. But the war once engaged,
it is impossible to say that we shall not take part
in it. At any rate we shall wish well to Italy, and
shall not feel the slightest jealousy of France if
she punish by deprivation of territory the Ger-
mans, who, themselves submitting to the most
degrading Governments, pour forth their myriads
to overrun a gallant people, whose liberty they
might envy, and whose example they would have
done well to follow.

To affect surprise at the satisfaction, or rather
the exultation, with which the result of the
CRAWLEY Court-Martial has been welcomed in
high official circles, and more especially among the
ruling class of military functionaries, among the dis-
pensers of favour and the rewarder* of merit,
would be little less idle than to affect surprise and
anger at the reasonable probability that the some-
what too Ciceroni= oratory of Colonel Crueuir's
counsel is extolled to the skies by • large circle of
discerning friends, and that Lieut. -Colonel CRAWLIT
is himself pronounced by the same impartial judges
• martyr to discipline, and a victim of popular
clamour and injustice. The hero of so triumphant
an acquittal, we have no hesitation in acknowledg-
ing, deserves all the felicitations, not only of
his friends, but of his equals and superiors
in rank, and of the authorities who brought him
over with a cloud of witnesses from India, at •
vast expense to the British public, in the well-
founded hope of teaching that respectable civilian
public to mind its own business, and to leave
military law, and military justice, and military
humanity, to the higher wisdom of the Horse
Guards. Let all those who may naturally be ex-
pected to rejoice in the sentence of the CRAWLZT
Court-Martial enjoy it ea one of the special bless-
'this!esti lingo of present TO &MOM

This is all fair enough. We should be sorry
to vex with the faintest echo of a note of dis-
cord the mutual compliments of any family party.
But as we do not happen to represent the interests,
or the amour propre, of either client or counsel in
the case, it becomes our business and duty to look
a little beyond the oratory of the one or the injured
virtue of the other, and to ask our readers to con-
sider what effect the uncoutrsdictedcircumatancesof

this case are likely to have upon the minds of that
large and influential clam of the British public
from which the bone and sinew and the working
intelligence of the ranks—the private soldier
and the non•commissionedoffcer-4re teken.jhese

are not times in which the plain popular verdict
on the proceedings of the Court-Martial at Alder-
shot—the verdict of families from which
sergeant-majors may be supposed to be
derived—the verdict of the thousands to whom
the recruiting sergeant tells his tale—the verdict
of the unknown, unlettered heroes who fight the
"soldier's battles," and drag blundering com-
manders out of ignorant and fatal scrapes—can be
sneered away as vulgar ignorance. No doubt the
military spirit runs high in this country; our Volun-
teers show this. But the rank and file of our Volun-
teers are composed of professional and com-
mercial men, whose habits and occupations in life
are fixed, and who take to soldiering in their idle
hours as a manly sport. Against an invasion these
warlike civilians may be transformed in an instant
into a splendid army of reserve ; but they must
fight at home for their hearths and altars, their
counting-houses, their offices, and shops, and
farms. Our Volunteers cannot, as indeed the
authorities are never tired of insisting when
Army Estimates are in question, replace the
line in foreign fields, or even come forward,
like some militia regiments in the Russian war, to
garrison distant pests. In the event of European
war involving English interests, or of another
Indian mutiny, it is of course the army that must
go in and fight ; and it is the army that must be
recruited from our peasants and mechanics, from a
labour market growing scarcer, and consequently
dearer, every day, with the tide of emigration rising
round it like a flood, and teeming continents
yawning for the overflow of British pauperism and
Irish discontent. In Whitehall and Pall-mall it is
neither the fashion to speak, nor the habit to think,
of these things. The eminent philanthropists who
at agricultural dinners pat poor Gnu, whitelipped
andgnaried with rheumatism, on the back, and give
him a guinea for bringing up a family of ten chil-
dren on ten shillings a week, would doubtless, if war
should come, call upon GIL= to fight for the
glory of the country to which he owes so many
hearty meals. Only these benevolent patrons are
apt to forget that even Gnu is beginning to know
his market-value, and groping his way to some
promised land, in which there is less philanthropy
and more bread and mast; s land where everything

may possibly be better for the poor man than in ;
land where everything is for the beat—for the
rich. If these are dangerous lessons, they are the
lesson of an advancing and irresistible civiliza-
tion ; lessons that human eyes and ears are learn-
ing in every hamlet and in every hovel in the
land. Anyone who remembers how the news of
the starvation of our army in the brat Crimean
winter was discussed, not in the capital or the
centres of public opinion, but in country villages and
markets, will be at no lose to understand how the
question of justice and humanity towards the
" lower orders" of the army affects the question