The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-05-25 00:00:00

THE WELKLY PRESS.

THE PRUSSIAN MARRIAGE.

If there ever were recommendations to alliance
with Prussia, those recommendations have been
materially changed of late years. When the British
crown passed to George the First his daughter
Dorothea was married to King Frederick William
of Prussia. An alliance was contemplated between
the eldest son of that Frederick William, afterwards
Frederick the Great, and the English Princess
Maria, but the ma oh was broken off by Austrian
intrigues, At that time the Prussian alliance
appeared to be a gain to the British government ;
for Prussia was then the chief leader of the Pro-
testant interest on the continent—the de facto head
of the Evangelical Church. But how materially
has her position altered within the last half century.
In the first place it was broken up by Napoleon, who
conquered and almost confiscated the dominions of
the house of Hohenzollern; and the trimming of
Prussia during the war is never forgotten. The first
of Napoleon's great combined army who went over
to the Czar in 1812 was the Prussian General
Yorke The Treaty of Vienna did not simply re-
store the original relations to Prussia. In annex-
ing to it the provinces of the Rhine with a Roman
Catholic population, it greatly modified the politi-
cal balance in Germany. The older provinces of
Prussia were purely Protestant, and as long as that
was the case, the King could not but stand for
Protestantism. As soon as he acquired Roman
Catholic provinces, he had their interest to conci-
liate ; good feeling as well as selfishness would
engage him to do so. There is, too, that sense of
" impartiality" which was dramatised by the pre-
sent King when he inaugurated the neutral Cathe-
dral of Cologne, with a still keener sense that pro-
vinces bordering on Romanist foreign states de-
manded a peculiar tact in preserving their
allegiance to the Hohenzollern crown. These,
perhaps, are grounds for what would otherwise
appear to be a superfluous zeal of that house iu
conciliating the Roman Catholic portion of its popu-
lation. There was another ground. By doing so,
it satisfied the demands of a highly influential
clergy, and obtained their agency on its behalf.
The instances of this progress may be culled from
the last twenty years .of Prussian history. In
brief, the political power of Prussia has been gra.
dually sliding under the overlying shadow of
Russsia, and the spiritual power has been more or
less assimilating itself to the church of Rome. On
purely political grounds, therefore, apart from the
personal reasons and the happiness of a young
princess, the alliance is not one of which the expe-
diency can be assumed. Attention is challenged to
these points by the very peculiar and public manner
in which the alliances of our royal family are con-
tracted. The Royal Marriage Act, cruel in its ope-
ration upon individuals, forces upon the sovereign a
special jurisdiction, and upon the country a special
recognition of the royal relationships ; so that we
are compelled to meddle in what might other-
wise be the private affairs of that family. It
is this meddling which drags the country
into the affair at all ; otherwise it might
consider itself quit of thee() obligations upon suffi-
ciently providing for the royal persons, without
any reference to the unions that they may contract.
We do not now consider whether £400,000 a year
is or is not enough for the royal household. It
may be sufficient or not sufficient ; since the state
itself fastens upon the royal household large and
unavoidable expenses, with many other circum
stances which leave the Sovereign no thorough
control over the outlay. Taking all these things
into account, there may not he sufficient money
for the parents in that house to make suitable pro-
vision when the children marry. If so, the deficiency
should be made good in the first instance.
The family should be put in the way to
support itself, without coming, on the occasion
of marrying individual daughters, for parish
provision. If the reasoning in this direc-
tion were pushed to an extreme, it might be
a question whether the public would not be the
better for being released from any necessary recoga
nition of such unions. There would then be no
necessity to raise disagreeable and peculiar ques-
tions, when nothing but good feeling and good
wishes should prevail ; the country remaining
absolved from any public responsibility, or from
any political engagements as the consequence. It
is a matter for consideration, whether this plan
would not be consistent with the irresponsible posi-
tion of our court, with the " entangling alliances"
that subsist between courts to the embarrassment
sometimes of States, and with the preservation of
our national independence and our natural poli-
tical alliance.—Spectator.

MR. DISRAELI-THE RATE OF DISCOUNT.

Mr. Disraeli has come forth at the farmers' ordi-
nary at Newport Pagnell, as an expounder of poli-
tical economy. We are glad to meet the right hon.
gentleman on such neutral ground, where there is
room for controversy, not party conflicts. The right
hon. gentleman stated that " the position of the
nation has become one of a sound and healthy de-
scription." To that fact we copy his testimony
with satisfaction, although we dissent from
his conclusion, that it has become so in con-
sequence of the recent discoveries of the
precious metals. That these discoveries haVe given
an extraordinary impulse to trade, to enterprise,
and even to society generally, is an undoubted
fact ; but they have also brought into existence a
.gaeat amount of wild ansl visionary speculation,
and all that is unsound in our condition—the
necessary accompaniment of rapidly extended
enterprise--is due to them. The country was
steadily advancing under theinfluence.of a superior
commerical policy before they occurred ; and the
soundness of its present condition, as contradis-
tinguished from its wonderful activity, is certainly
not due, as Mr. Disraeli alleges, to the gold dis-
coveries: With him we agree that they have had
a powerful influence in stimulating consuming
power, in causing many great works to be
undertaken, and, as a consequence, in raising the
price of many commodities; But seeing these
effects of the gold discoveries, why Mr. Disraeli
should be surprised at the increase in the rate of
interest—the natural consequence of increased
industry, increased consumption, and advanced
prices ;—and why as he sees this effect of the
discoveries, which has followed them almost from
the time of their being known to the present
moment, he should infer that hereafter the ultimate
result of theta will be to diminish" the rate Ofinterest
on money," we do not comprehend. These discoveries
have not aided one particle to the capital of society,.
which men really want to borrow when they borrow
money as the means of commanding it; on the
contrary, they have much increased the demand
for it, and, as long as any great addition is con-
tinually made to the supplies of gold, it will con-
tinue to stimulate enterprise an increase the
demand for food and clothing, and for comforts
and luxuries. It will keep up prices and keep up
profits ; and while prices and profits remain high,
it is vain to hope for a considerable reduction in
the interest of money. There is at present a pro-
bability that it will decline. But why ? Because,
in part at least, some branches of trade,
in consequence of •the high prices of the
raw materials, have ceased to. yield large
profits. To carry them • on, money can
no longer be advantageouSly borrowed at the cur-
rent rate ; operations are accordingly relaxed, the
demand for money becomes less, consumption will
be checked, prices will not advance, and the rate
of interest may slightly decline. For three years
and six months it has been, with some slight de-
erease in one or two short periods, 5 per cent. and
upwards, reaching at times 7 and 6,1 ner cent.,
which is more like the high rate of interest in the
newly explored and profitable country of the
United States than our old and long-developed
country. When such phenomena have hitherto
followed from the gold discoveries, that Mr. Dis-
raeli should hereafter expect a different and even
a contradictory series of effects from the same
cause, is at least unphilosophical. The right hon
gentleman seems to have gone no further in his
analysis of capital than to reduce it to money. He
regards the gold discoveries. as adding so much to