The Sun.
London, England, 1855-01-13 00:00:00

PRUSSIA AND THE ALLIED POWERS.

We have as yet no reason to attach credit to the
statement, which some of our contemporaries have bor-
rowed from the Vienna press, that Prussia has signified
her adhesion to the treaty of the 2d of December, and
resumed without further difficulty her former relations
with the other great Powers. No authentic intelligence
to this effect has yet reached London, and the report to
which we allude probably proceeded from a Russian
source. If Prussia now joined the alliance of the Three
Powers it would be to defeat the object of that agree-
ment, and, if her voice were again admitted to the Euro-
pean conference, she would figure there only as the
accomplice of Russia. The events of the last few days
have, on the contrary, rendered the position of Prussia
more perplexing and anomalous than ever, and must
convince even the Court of Berlin of the results of the
policy it has hitherto pursued. After having sacrificed
everything to the hope of setting on foot a fresh nego-
-1 tion for peace, the King of Prussia finds not only
that a negotiation has been begun to which he
is not a party, but that even Russia has
signified her assent to propositions which Prussia
has not yet adopted. Prussia having declined to
join the treaty of the 2d of December is no party to its
conditions, or to the verbal note of the three other great
Powers by which the application of the sth article is
determined. Prussia having refused to place herself in
a position of military observation, or even to comply
with the requisition of Austria to array 100,000 men
upon her eastern frontier, in obedience to the military
convention of the 20th of April, is not entitled to be con-
sidered as a party to these transactions. She has thus
entirely forfeited her locus standi for the purposes of
diplomacy or of war ; and if, in the event of these nego-
tiations assuming a more serious character, she should
attempt to take part in them, such an offer would be
very coldly received by the Allied Powers, inasmuch as
the voice of Prussia in the conference would obviously
be altogether at the disposal of the enemy, and only used
to counteract the measures of the other Courts. It is
perhaps fortunate for us that Prussia has thus excluded
herself from these deliberations,since weknow that what-
ever influence she might have possessed would have been
used against us. At the Congress of Vienna in 1315 it
was mainly by the defection of Prussia that the Emperor
Alexander succeeded in carrying his point, against the
wishes of France, Austria, and Greatßritain; and we are not
surprised to learn that Russia attached so much import.
ance to this partnership that she proposed to the King
to make his admission to the conference a preliminary
condition. The King had, however, still sufficient in-
dependence of character to decline to hold as the no-
minee of Russia that position which he once filled as a
great European Power. The result is, that Russia is
dealing single-handed with the allied Courts, and that
Prussia is altogether left out of the game. She has, in
fact, entirely lost the confidence of the other Powers,
and, if her interest in the great questions now agitating
Europe is so remote that she can take refuge in a selfish
neutrality, she has no claim to be heard in a cause for
which she has not made the slightest sacrifice.
Such might be the result if the future condition of the
Turkish Empire and the definition of maritime rights in
the Black Sea were the only matters under consideration.
But the present
te
state
continent of
of affairs
Europehas
already
which affectgivenri the
etoe
upon h
ition of Germany, and may produce the
resultswhole
eoed
most important consequences to Prussia herself. Such
is more especially the intimate alliance of Austria and
France—an event entirely new in the political combina-
tions of the present generation, but which renews one of
the most important political combinations of the first
Napoleon, and realises under favourable auspices a
scheme which has frequently been entertained by the
greatest statesmen of both these countries. For the
last forty years Austria and Prussia have belonged to
one and the same political system • they acted together
in the Germanic Confederation ; they adhered steadily
to the compact which had been sealed by the battle of
Leipsic ; and, though differences have sometimes arisen
between them, they have been settled by the tutelary
arbitration of their great Northern ally. The events of
1848 and 1849 gave a rude shock to this near connexion,
for the policy of Prussia in Germany was hostile to the
rights of Austria, and her interference in the Danish
quarrel called forth the reprobation of all Europe. But
this deviation of Prussia was in some degree accounted
for by the revolutionary movement of the time, and it
was severely expiated by the check applied to it both
by Austria and by Russia. The Eastern question of
1854 has proved still more fatal to the Northern alli-
ance. Russia, which had hitherto been the moderat-
ing Power, now becomes the aggressor ; the inte-
rests of Germany are not only severed from, but
opposed to, those of her Northern neighbour ; the prin-
ciples for which the Western Powers take up arms
against Russia command and obtain the entire concur-
rence of Austria ; and before the end of the year the
Cabinet of Vienna forms an alliance with France, in
which neither Prussia nor any other portion of Germany
is at present included. The consequence of this impor.