The Express.
London, England, 1866-08-16 00:00:00

PRINSIA AND THE FRENCH DEVAND.

Tho Emperor Napoleon, observes the Times, has
disappointed the lovers of mischief. lie has given the
world the welcome assurance that " the good relations
between Prussia and France shall in no case be distut bed."
The Emperor professes to have put forward his claims
merely out of deference to what he looked upon as
public opinion in France. He might with greater pro-
priety have said, out of regard for a restless and
exacting opposition. Tho Emperor only wished to
put the illiberal theories of the " libend " opposi-
tion to the test of the popular sense. For his own
part, he bad no doubt on the subject. His own
real mind was revealed yeaterds.7 and the Times has
no doubt public opinion will ardently support him. There is
now no longer any check upon the great career of Count Bis-
marck. With such a hurricane of good luck as Count Bismarck
commands no man ever sailed. Yet at the moment which
is to crown the work of years his heart, it seems, Wine-
what misgives hint. There is a hitch somewhere. The
bill for the annexation of the conquered Northern States
is not forthcoming. The action of the government is
paralysed by the influence of " some illustrious personage
at court." In other words, the softer nature of tLe sove-
reign resists the iron will of the minister. The Time
hopes that the golden opportunity may not be suffered to
escape ; that the mover of the great enterprise may
not shrink back from that craven word " impossible.''
The views of the great statesman of lte;ll should aim at
somewhat higher than the mean Kleist-Deutschland policy
of the Erfurt Assembly of 1849. It is not the annexation
of half Hanover or all Cassel to Prussia that is worth all
the bloodshed through which Count Bismarck has waded
to his present supremacy. It is the merging of Prussia in
Germany, the constitution of a great and strong comma-
! pity, the work of a Cavour on an infinitely larger scale.
Men who undertake such a task as Count Bistitarck's cannot
afford to go back, much less to stop half-way.
Had Count Bismarck, says the Daily News, failed in
any one of his designs ; had he wasted the blood of his
countrymen and the honour of the state for insufficient or
unworthy objects, to divert the public mind from his
domestic policy or to minister to the restless vanity of a
military caste ; had he brought disaster or disgrace upon
his country's flag, he could never again, with all his auda-
city, have faced the representatives of the people. That in
the hour of his triumph be has advised the sovereigu to
come down to the Lower Hoase and propose an indemnity
to the crown for the past, which shall be also a security to
the parliament for the future, is, ou the face of it
at least, an act not so much of gracious conde-
scension as of sovereign magnanimity, which only
envious rivals will reject. If it was a comedy, it
was one of those comedies which are only played in
madhouses. The Daily News has too much faith in Count
Bismarck's acuteness and foresight to distrust his mean-
ing when he committed his sovereign to an irrevocable
avowal of responsibility ; and it is too well persuaded
of the discernment and discretion of the constitutional
liberal party in Prussia to doubt that they will meet the
King in no paltry or resentful spirit, and will seize gladly
this unique opportunity of consolidating free institutions
which are stronger national frontiers in the nineteenth
century than a line of border fortresses or a mountain chain.
The Herald is of opinion that a little persistence on the
part of the French Emperor may gain Saarlouis from
Prussia, or even Landau from Bavaria and the two frontier
towns from Belgium. The Prussian government is said
to have declared that it will not yield an inch of German
soil to the foreigner. The Herald does not imagine that
the Emperor Napoleon will go to war about it, but cannot
help thinking that it would be politic on the part of King
William to yield this trifling point and avoid future cause
of disputes and discontents which may ripen into war.
There are Frenchmen who maintain that Saarlouie is not
! German soil but French, that it was French from the
time of Lou. XIV. to 1815 ; and the Herald thinks it may
be French again without injury to Prussia or loss to
the German Fatherland.

It is satisfactory to the Telegraph to observe that en
affair which at one time appeared to assume formidable
dimensions has been settled, and the public mind will
thus be relieved from much of the anxiety which not un-
reasonably affected it. Vagueness and uncertainty are,
however, the characteristics of the existing state of affairs
throughout Europe, and the peace now promised bears en
unpleasant resemblance to those settlements which leave
everything more unsettled than they found them. As an
instance of the difficulties that may arise at any moment,
the Telegraph points to the delay which has arisen in the
presenting the bill for annexation to the Prussian chain.
ben. This means, the Telegraph supposes, that Prince
Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, who has arrived in Eerlin on a
visit to his brother-in-law, the Crown Prince of Prussia,
has been pleading for his threatened inheritance in the
Grand Duchy, and that the fiat for its absorption is for the
present stayed. It may further mean that Russia, who
has also something to say about the little principality,
and has nearly a million of bayonets to support her us-