The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-07 00:00:00

German Politics in Norfolk.

NORWICH, Oct, 6.
The annual meeting of the North Walsham Agri-
cultural Society was held last evening at that town,
and the chair at the dinner was occupied by Lord
Suffield, who was supported by Sir T. F. Buxton
(the Liberal candidate for Lynn), Sir H. Robinson,
Colonel Coke, M.P., Mr C. Buxton, M.P., Mr E.
Howes, M,P., Baron Bunsen (son of the late Cheva-
lier Bunsen, Prussian Ambassador), the lion. F.
Walpole (the Conservative candidate for Lynn),
Mr J. G. Hoare, the Hon. and Rev. J. Harbord, &c.
Colonel COKE, M.P., in responding for the army,
said no country had so small an army as England,
but no country had one so efficient. The introduc-
tion of breech loading rifles into the service, which
would shortly take place, would, he believed, make
the British army still more formidable.
Mr. C. BUXTON, M,P., replied for " The Voluns
teers,'' who had also been associated with the toast
of the army. The hon, gentleman said we had all
looked upon the American war with the deepest re.
gret, but it had shown us one thing, viz., the great
value a volunteer army would be in case of an in-
vasion. In America there were very few trained
soldiers at the outbreak of the war, and almost all
who were engaged in it were hurried quickly to the
field, very few of the men having had anything like
the training which our Volunteers have had, and
very few of the officers having had the means which
our Volunteer officers had enjoyed of studying the
theory of military movements. Yet we saw that at
the first great battle of Bull Run both sides fought
with wonderful courage, stubbornness, and energy,
conducting their movements on a colossal scale. We
also saw from what was going on in America, that
war was more and more giving the advantage to the
defence against the attack. This seemed to be the
result of those arms of precision now in use. With
them, if men did but stand on the defensive and
did not attempt to rush out, they could stand
against any amount of force. (Hear, hear.) In both
of these respects we had an encouraging example
set us as to what the volunteers of England might
do for England if her shores should be invaded, and
therefore we could look upon the volunteer force
with the greatest satisfaction. (Cheers.)
The PRESIDENT proposed the "County Mem-
bors." (Cheers.)

Colonel COKE, M.P., in reply, said he thought
the. absence of any great political excitement was
in a great measure owing to Lord Palmerston,
who smoothed down little difficulties and stilled
unquiet spirits in a manner p culiarly his
own. (Laughter.) Wi:11, regard to taxes,
without alluding to any particular tax, he re-
gretted that there was no chance of any change
taking place which was likely to materially affect
the farmers. Great expenditure had been neces-
sarily incurred in connection with our national de-
fences, and these were made the heavier from the
improvements introduced into the science of gun-
nery, for a new ship was no sooner constructed to
resist artillery than some gun was invented which
necessitated the construetion of a different class of
vessel. (Laughter.)
Mr. E. IrowEs, M.P., also responded, andtouched
upon the question of cottage accommodation, in
which, he said, every one—landlord, tenant, and
labourer—was interested ; at the same time, it was
a landlord's question, since its solution depended
principally upon an expenditure of money and at-
tention. Although his property was small, yet he
was afraid it woud take some years before all the
cottages on it could be brought into a state which
would be satisfactory to himself, and he feared many
other landlords must feel themselves in the same
position, Intimately connected with the question
of cottage accommodation was the subject of the
condition of the labourer, which depended not
only upon his home, but upon his general
treatment, and this mainly rested with the agricel.
turists, who had the immense advantage over the
commercial class of being individually acquainted
with their workpeople, and who were all the more
bound to accord them liberal, but at the same time
firm treatment. (Hear, hear.)
Sir F. BUXTON proposed " The Strangers," asso-
ciating with the toast the name of Baron Bunsen.
(Cheers.)

Baron BUNSEN, in responding, said that if any of
those whom he was addressing were to visit him at
home on the Rhine, although he should not be able
to show them much among the surrounding farms
which would be new to them, they would all be
pleased to see the increasing use of those, imple-
ments and appliances, and those habits which had
transformed the shallow, though not unfruitful, soil
of Norfolk into the very garden of Ecgland. He
had asked himself whether, appearing before them
as a German under the present circumstances,
they would not think it very mean of him if he
did not stand up in defence of his coun-
try. (Hear.) He should therefore state his opinions,
and he should be glad if they would kindly and for.
bearingly forgive him the sins of his countrymen,
and excuse him in what ho was about to say, from
friendship,what they would condemn in others. He
wished his voice were loud enough and his argil■
menta weighty enough to impress them with the
strong conviction he entertained, contrary to that
of the majority of Englishmen—namely, that the
Schleswig-Holsteiners had been at war in the right,
that the Danes were in the wrong, and that the
Germans were bound by every consideration of
self-respect and national duty to separate and save
the Schleswig-Holsteiners from the oppression of
the Dimes. He would say at the outset that they,
the Liberal, the National party of Germans, en-
tirely dieagreed,as much ae Englishmen did, with the
cause of Schleswig-Holstein having been taken up
by Austria and Prussia alone, to the exclusion of
the rest of Germany and the Schleswig-Holsteiners
themselves—those Powers having carried on the
war alone, in defiance of the interests of those who
had a strong interest in it. Bat was the cause itself
less sacred for this ? They were all grieved that the
Schleswig-Holsteiners had been prevented from
fighting the cause of their own liberation, which
they had.fought for two good years in 1848, 1849,
and 1850, at a fearful expense of treasure and blood,
but should they not rejoice in their deliverance,
and be glad to see the arrival of the day when a
complete and lasting separation would be pro-
nounced of them from the other parts of what used
to be one united kingdom ? He found it much
easier to talk of these things in conversation when

objections were raised one after the other, and
when one tried to arrive at the truth on both sides,
by testing the arguments employed. Many
of his friends at college were Schleswig-
Holsteiners, and this was the origin with
him, as with many others, of the side he took on
the subject. The Schleswig-Holsteiners were a
people closely allied to and were still of that stock

which came over to England and were called Anglo:
Saxon. They were small in number for the great
wealth of their country. They gave their sons the
best education they could, and consequently a very

disproportionate number of young Schleswig-Hof-
steiners were met with at the German universities,
and it was there that many Germans had gained
the love they had for that particular country, and

for the cause they had so unflinchingly advocated.

What the Schleswig-Holsteiners told them then,
and told them now, was that Schleswig-Holstein
was one country by right and therefore should not
be divided; that the law of succession in their

country was different from the law of succession in
the kingdom of Denmark ; and that whenever it
should happen that there was an absence of heirs

male to their King. Dukes, the throne should go to
the other branch of the royal family—the Angus-
tenburgs. This was as simple a statement as he
could give. Did his hearers consider it particularly
difEcult to understand ? To him it seemed very
simple, and he could never quite see why such emi-
nent statesmen had publicly pronounced it on diffe-
rent occasions to be totally unintelligible. Tne
question might be considered simple to understand,
and yet merely the production of a busybody set of
men in the Duchies, who wanted to get up new
pretensions to the throne, in order to break off two
of the provinces from the rest of the kingdom. That
was another 'new of the subject, and to it he might
oppose a number of dusty parchments, were it not
that do so would, he feared, exhaust the patience of
his audience. He would ask a few home questions,
which sometimes, he dare say, presented themselves

to English minds. How was it that if the view he
took of the matter was false, there had not
been during the last 13 years of undisturbed Danish
rule in the Duchies--a 'tile that was tolerably, some
said intolerably, strict—one single newspaper in the
Duchies which advocated the Danish view ? How
was it also that during that time the Duchies had
failed by aey devices of the electoral law to obtain
anything like a majority in either of the Parlia-
ments ? How was it, likewise, at the present mo-
ment, as one by one the political refugees returned
to their country from almost every town and village
in Germany, where they had been earning their
livelihood as well as they could during the last 13
years, they were received by all classes of the people
with every mark of respect, while the Danes, on the
contrary, according to their own reports, had at all
times been received with feelings so expressed that
they could only with difficulty be restrained from
taking a most unworthy vengeance? He would
assume, for the sake of argument, that his hearers
would go so far with him as to wish well to the
SchleswigeHolsteiners, and that they should have
their due as they once wished to have. If
they went thus far, there doubtless remained in
their minds a whole string of objections. They
might say, supposing it had been a war of
deliverance from the Duchies, yet the result hadbeen
obtained only by sheer numbers, and not by any
bravery of the troops employed. They might also
say that the war had been carried on mercilessly
towards the Danes—(hear, hear) ; that it had been
carried on very harshly towards the Schleswig-
Holsteiners themselves; and, finally, that the King
of Prussia, after having once entered the country,
was going to keep it for himself. (Hear, hear.)
To every one of these accusations he (Baron Bunsen)
offered the most unqualified contradiction.. As to
sheer numbers, he would say what the Germans
felt about that much-abused army. They were all,
of whatever political creed, proud of possessing
young soldiers who, when suddenly called out in
the midst of a winter of great and unusual
severity, had left their comfortable homes and
proved themselves superior to all difficulties they
encountered, and who had marched day after
day through snow and sleet, and bivouacked
many consecutive nights on the bare ice,
totally unsheltered from the merciless winds.
The Germans were proud of an army which, after
an uninterrupted peace of about 50 years, had
been able to show that steadiness in its marches
and that selfsreliance which was only to be ex-
pected in the third or fourth year of a campaign.
They thought that if such were the calibre of
their men and officers they could look with very
different eyes than before towards their western
neighbour. He spoke from experience; because,
daring the months he had spent on the Rhine this
summer, he had often heard the question asked,
"If the French were to oppose the Fatherland ?"
and the feeling was now one of much greater con-
fidence in their army and in their weapons—those
breech-loaders and rifled cannon—which were the
astonishment of the world, who, he would ask,
should rejoice at this result more than the Eng-
lish? (Hear, hear.) In his opinion it was the
English who ought most to rejoice at any increase
of strength to Germany outwardly and inwardly,
because, whatever might happen, Germany and
England together would have to keep the peace of
the world. (Hear, hear.) It was Germany and
England standing together that were the real pro-
tectors of peace and the promoters of civilisation
and progress. (Hear, hear,) As to the question
of merciless treatment towards the Danes, he
knew that his hearers would hardly accept the cons
tradiction on his part, because they had never had
any accounts which did not speak of it. But he
would ask them, had they ever done anything in
the case of that English general who commanded
the bombardment of Sweaborg ? Did they call him
a barbarian who had ordered Kagosima to be set
on fire, or did they set him outside the pale of civi-
lisation who in 1807 felt constrained by good and
weighty reasons to destroy the Danish fleet of war,
the English admiral at the same time co-operating
and destroying numberless trading vessels, thus
ruining no end of small traders ? War at
the best was a most horrible thing. (Hear,
hear.) When Englishmen read of constant
vexations which took place in an enemy's pro-
vince occupied by troops, let them not forget
that these things were mutual, The soldiers who
were obliged by their discipline to stand still when
they were hooted and dogged by the populace some-
times lost that self-command which they usually
possessed ; but, from all the cases where he had
been able to collect facts, he could say honestly that,
in his opinion, it would be impossible to prove in-
stances which could bring home to the German
soldiers and generals the infamous taint of cruelty.
With regard to the levies made for the cost of war,
the money had mostly been spent in the country, so
that the country was rather better off than before.
(Laughter.) The inhabitants of Schleswigello!stein
considered themselves, in fact, very cheaply delivered
from their oppressors,
and if any Schleswig-Hol-
steiner was asked how he liked the result, he would
say that he and his fellow-countrymen would be
delighted to pay the expense, because they would
otherwise have had to expend much more money
and an indefinite amount of blood, which they were
ready to have shed, but which they had been spared.
He next came to the question of the course taken by
the King of Prussia. Seme of those present might
be :aware that he was a member of his present
Majesty's loyal but very strenuous Opposition. If
he were a diplomatist, he hoped he should not have
had applied to him the old definition of a diplomatist,
according to which it was his duty to lie abroad in
his country's service—(laughter)—but he was not a
diplomatist, and therefore he was free to say simply
the truth. But he could speak with positive cers
tainty when he said that the King of Prussia had

never for a moment listened to the shameful and

abominable idea of annexing the Duchies of Schles-
wig and Holstein ; and although the matter was

not yet at an end, he was certain that his Majesty
never would annex the Duchies. He had firm hopes
in spite of all the difficulties which beset the ques-
tion, that in a few weeks—at least in n few months

—the man, who, in his view, was the rightful Duke
of Schleswig-Holstein, viz., the Hereditary Prince
of Augustenburg, would be proclaimed the duke.
He had the advantage, when a young man, of
being at college with this future Duke of Schles•

wig-Holstein; and he was convinced, knowing his
character, that his would be a model State in the

north of Germany. "It is my hope," said the baron,

who spoke excellent English, " that we shall there

have a second edition of your English constitutional
rule. Now, I must really jump across from the
green and glorious fields of Schleswig-Holstein to
the green and glorious fields of East Norfolk, and
I wish all your enterprises every kind of success
and happiness." (Cheers.)
Mr C. BUXTON, M.P., gave " The Successful Ex.
hibitors," and availed himself of the opportunity of
submitting what he considered a simple and satin•
factory mode of preventing injury to the tenant
farmer from the preservation of game. It was not
pheasants and partridges which were injurious to
the farmer—his greatest enemies were rabbits and
hares. An average of the number of hares and rab-
bits killed on an estate should be taken for five or
ten years, and then there should be a regular agree-
ment, as in any other matter of business, that the
number up to the average number should belong to
the landlord, and that all hares and rabbits killed
beyond that number should be handed over to the
farmer. The hon. member also touched upon the
question of middle class education, and said that,
generally speaking, the education given to the eons
of farmers was very bad indeed. Ho had had an
opportunity of examining a middle class school the
other day, and if he found the little rascals in the

ragged school in Shoreditch half so defective as
were the pupils in this highly endowed middle class
school he should be of opinion that the master should
be at once dismissed. The hon. member commended
the scheme adopted by Lord Fortescue and others in
Devonshire, with a considerable amount of success,
by which central collegiate schools were established
by companies, and an excellent education was se-
cured to the sons of agriculturists. (Cheers.)
Other toasts and speeches followed.

FORTIFICATIONS AT MILFORD.—It is expected
that important and extensive works will shortly be com-
menced at the Stack, Milford, in ordor to render that rock a
valuable addition to the defences of the Pembrokeshire
coast. From the commanding position of the Stack, a
better site for a fort could not be selected.