The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-25 00:00:00

at the office, and therefore at its chief; and the im-
putation of having tampered, for political purposes,
with the information laid before Parliament, while

t has been fully removed from Mr. Lowe, rests,,in

undiminished weight upon Lord Granville's fame.
But Lord Granville, sitting in the House of Lords,
treats offences solemnly charged upon him in the
Journals of the House of Commons as idle scolding.
He is the guardian of his own reputation. There
is no doubt that the doctrine of vicarious resigna-

tion which he is now introducing has its con-
veniences. It is a marvellous device for two-anti-

ing the official tenacity of a censured Minister
with the doctrine of Parliamentary responsibility.

THE "EXAMINER" ON THE PROBABLE RESULT
OF THE DANO-GERMAN WAR.—Oa Wednesday

the representatives of all the Powers, parties to the
Treaty of 1852, met by appointment at Downing-
street, the Envoy chosen by the Federal Diet alone
being absent. Whereupon, the representatives of
Prussia and Austria refusing to act, a resolution
was taken to adjourn till Monday next. Should
Baron von Beust choose to assert the dignity of

his clients still further, by again omitting to ap-
pear, we should not be at all surprised if a new
pretext were devised for delay in commencing de-
liberations. Europe has stupidly looked on for
four months, during which the occupation and
conquest of the Duchies has been completed by
overwhelming force. Herr von Bismark now de-
clares, in a circular despatch addressed to the repre-
sentatives of Prussia at foreign Courts, and
ostentatiously published the day after the fall of
Dybbol, that Prussia considers the Treaty of 1852
as absolutely at an end; end that its terms are
wholly inadmissible as the groundwork or future
negotiations. There was only wanting this last
touch to complete the story of insolent and perfidious
aggression. Before crossing the Eider, and long
~.ttor its frontier banks had ban passed by the

invadrrs, Austria. and Prussia veheni.ntly aseerted
hit ail they wanted to Lilkiree the terms of that
European compact. Tnere were some of us who
dis'oelievccl these assurances, and who said so at the
time. Diplomacy put ou its spectacles and conned
over and over again the terms of these assurances,
in which, with its usual sagacity, it professed to be
much comforted. Well, where are these pledges

now P Unhappy Denmark herself does not any
longer think them worth insisting on. She has
naturally lost all faith in promises and moral
guarantees and so forth. Her heart is still right
within her, and she clings with undying con-
stancy to the eventual vindication of right and
justice. But she has been maimed and broken so

terribly by overwhelming might, and she feels her-
self to have been so deserted by those who might,

--- _ _
if they would, have served her without striking a
blow, that it is no marvel if she looks without hope
or trust to the results of diplomatic cogitations.

Her eyes are fixed elsewhere;and on the clay when
a new map of I:Uric...German frontiers shall be
settled and initialled by the Great Powers, as a
peaceful adjustment of the present difficulty, the
beginning will have bcen made of that national
movement which holds out the only real hope of

compensation to the Danes for their loss of territory
on the Eider. Sooner or later the various regiona

-
peopled by the Scandinavian race were certain te,be
united under one Government; and from the
nature of the case that government must be one
essentially popular.;;; The believers in the theory
of dynasties as opposed to that of nationalities,
ought to have striven to preserve the severalty of
Denmark as an ancient kingdom. But blindness
has fallen upon them ; and looking at the course of
recent events, and the darkness of the future, we
own that we see no probability of their being able
to retrieve their signal error.
THE " SPECTATOR" ON IMPERTINENCE AS A
PARLIAMENTARY WEAPJN.-oi, rEpi neXpifprov,
I he knot of young men of forty or thereabouts whom
Lord Palmerston, in default of a following, puts
into office and protects as if they belonged to him,
have amidst many differences ono quality in com-
mon. They all know the value of insolence as a
weapon in political warfare—all affect, even when
personally simple people, the hauteur which lies very
near the root of the character of their chief. All
entertain the conviction that the ability to snub
can be made a social breastplate, and that an off-
hand address compounded of quickness and imper-
tinence suggests in its victims a sense of reserved
power abiding in the assailant. When the house
sneers at Mr. Layard, be tells members to answer
instead of interrupting him, and keep silence till ho
has done. When an inconvenient question is asked
of Mr. Cowper, he taunts the house with its inabi-
lity to control expenditure, or build anything which
is not ugly, and bids his opponents to let him alone,
for the department will go on a great deal better
unassisted than if they persist in interfering. Mr.
Lowe's regular practice when assailed was to de-
Ecribe his assailant as a rather unscrupulous fool,

leading a knot of persons who either knew nothing
about the matter or had a sinister motive in press-
ing their own view. There is no doubt a certain
effectiveness in this style, as well as a certain justi-
fication for employing it. Englishmen of the better
class when excited are often brusque, and political
impertinence, particularly if clever impertinence,
usually suggests at once courage and frankness,
and earnestness in the matter under discussion. It

implies, too, when used by an official, special know
ledge, the existence of a quantity of facts with which
the speaker is familiar, which are essential to the
question, and which his opponent knows nothing
whatever about. Lord Palmerston almost always
makes this the basis of his impertinence—a weapon
he uses with real shill—talks of Mr. Cobden's ig-
norance of " politics," or refuses to give up his in-
formants, because if he did "he should soon kno w
as little of the matter in hand as the honourable
member." The average English mind, too—and
the mind of the collective House of Commons is
simply the average English mind a little puffed with
prosperity—does not easily distinguish between wit
and impertinence, has, indeed, invented a word—
" chaff," which is peculiar to itself, and which ex-
pressls the perfect combination of the two. The to
quoque always strikes a cabman or the gallery of the
Victoria as witty, and so it does the House of Colu-
mns, wideli receives Mr. thhcree's admiration ef
Mr. Layard " in his new capacity as an advocate for
common decency" w ith roars of hearty laughter.
The victim, too, is very apt, unless a very ready as
well as a very strong man, to quail and feel himself
beaten, at all events for the time. Most men are
cowards when isolated, and the laughter
around—laughter at the victim as well as the
joke—inspires a sense of isolation. We re-
member one almost perfect instance of this
confusion. Mr. Darby Griffith, with his usual in-
quisitiveness, one night asked the Foreign Secretary
it it were true, as the newspapers said, that Victor
Emmanuel had creased his frontier for an interview
with the Emperor. Lord John Russell, Nt ithout