The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-05 00:00:00

virtues, and assured by the whole of Europe tha
its cause was a j
ust one, cannot be consoled for its
relegation to a role utterly unimportant in the great
European tragi-comedy by the insulting promise
.that its insignificance will save it from the neces-
sity of paying taxes to keep up an army and navy,
and the mocking assurance of the sympathies of the
nations who are mainly responsible for all the cala-
mities it mourns. The King of Denmark may be
satisfied•—he still has a throne to which he has now
no moral and hardly any legal right, and of which.
fifteen years ago he would not have ventured in his
most sanguine moods to dream. Holstein, Schleswig
and Lauenburg are gone;
he has signed them
away, but he is still a King, instead of a younger
brother of a younger branch of a younger house.
That he should hale had to commence his reign
by such a division of his kingdom is indeed hie
misfortune and not his fault; but the Danes mei
well curse the honr when, in reliance upon the
enegements of the European Powers, they altered
their law of succession. Better far would it have
been for them if they had refused to believe n the
i
promises of England—the principal agent %ul the
negotiation of that treaty of 1852 over the violation
of which Lord Palmerston, its author, new jokes the
o
pleasantly. They were told that by repealingth
Lex Re :a and electing to their throne a rocs
without the slightest claims to it they would insure
the undisputed union of all parts of the monarchl
after the extinction of the male descendants of Fre
de rick HI. And very much against their will they
did so. Their reward is. that they are saddled with
a Sovereign for whom, however estimable he me
be, they care little ; lose altogether provinces will'
have formed part of the Danish monarchy form ere
than five hundred years; have sacrificed the flowsof their r.
aynodutahr,ebautrdtheneemdetrheeyfoufteuTreerwyith hewspower whic
bilities,
pleases to insult or rob them. That is the result ( f
trusting to the pledges and the sympathy of t",O
peoples who profess to be at the head of Eur°Petlu
civilisation—who claim to have a decisive Part are,
the settlement of European questions, and who iiri;
the one a coward, except when dealing with effe°,
nate Asiatics ; and the other a mercenary, vit:',o,
pretending to fight for an idea, will only figlitsTvc":3,
there is a chance of despoiling somebody. airs
however as is the fate of the Danes. severe es
the conditions which Herr Von Bismark hes
posed, they have no reason to regret that they Cre;
fused the proposals of Earl Russell, and, after a lit:
struggle, have dealt directly with their eller"-
ey
Had they accepted Lord Russell's last proPell
would have retained only a small portion of °cl,/e
wig—a portion divided by no definite frontier inror,
the rest of the duchy, and a portion for which t'heei
many would always have been clamouring. M the
could not have the frontier of the Schlei ariu t-ion
Dannewerke, they are better without any Peri.;l3.-
of Schleswig. True, England proposed to gab bat
tee them the portion which they might retaint
all the world knows now the value of an English VG,
rantee. Another Earl Russell—if indeed anotb er.04109
could produce a Minister so vain, and so regg
alike of his own and his country's honour-- 'W°7,lO
apply to. Liberal lawofficers of the Crovvn,andleeehltia
the desired opinion that some act of Dermal rantee
liberated us from our obligation. The guaran-tdd
would have been perfectly worthless, and it Ivhave
have been extremely mischievous. It woe
given Earl Russell a pretext for continuing that
impertinent and ignorant interference in L is
affairs to which the dismemberment of Deem ark;nted
really due. The Danes must find the cup Ares eo
to
.them bitter enough to drain but they are 3 tinted
foolish as to allow its bitterness to be augur i to
by supposing that they would have done belt errrhe
have accepted the last scheme of Earl Russell.. "
form
Danes can find no compensation far their tn.i tied,
tunes in the divisions of their victors, nor, let.nde.,
ought Englishmen to join in that absurd and 1-d in
cent shout of exultation over German dise°r -ore
which our Liberal contemporaries indilige• ity
may have little reason to believe that the un
. Germany, if accomplished, would add to the ser
jc
eud
rity of European peace, and we may have
to despise the so-called constitutional party al u
many, but, after all, we cannot desire to see re_n.
like Herr Von Bismarck in possession of aecued
trolled power, or Hanover and Saxony escall°,„us.
up by the most aggressive, the most unscrupe""er;
the most treacherous of European Powers. Thick
are but two points in the present situation. w.u.en
can afford the slightest satisfaction to English° ci
and the satisfaction they would give, email aeof
personal as it is, would be shared by bones Wen re.
every nation. The fact is that the Angeet.enuti
pretender, who kindled this flame for big °AI; d
aggrandisement, and to gain a throne degraue _
himself to the level of the lowest trickster• see Me.
likely after all to meet tha fate due to
other, that
tures, and in the end miss the prize; the o
the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, his great ally, with
whose active interference not one of the lives riser':
ficed in this iniquitous war would have been °8"
has also missed his coup, and instead of beconainf
the leader and. the arbiter of Germany, has look
whatever real influence he possessed and lies at th°
mercy of Herr Von Bismarck. such creat