The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—In presiding yesterday over the dinner
of the Royal Literary Fund, the Prince of Wales
introduced himself to the discharge of one of his
most appropriate and becoming functions. The
large number of distinguished men who met him,
from various ranks and from every walk of litera •
ture and art, represented the univereal welcome
with which he will be receited in these compare-
tively new duties. Every one Will rejoice at what
is almost his first appearance in the exercise of those
public acts which become him. The country cannot
afford to dispense with the presence and influence
of one who stands next to the Sovereign in the
Royal Family, yet the sphere within which he can
gratify this loyal and natural expectation is of ne-
cessity limited. The field in which Englishmen of
name and rank most instinctively display their in-
fluence or merits is one which he does prudently and
rightly to avoid. To the subjects of the Crown he
cannot act but as a Prince, while to the Sovereign
he is in the position of a subject. and to combine
these opposed characters in the excrelae of political
influence without damage to one or the other is a
matter which at least it is wise to consider as almost
impossible. The exercise, egain, of what may be con-
sidered the representative duties of Royalty cannot
appropriately be committed to any one but the So-
vereign ; and however excellently the Prince and
Princess of Wales may perform the part tempora-
rily assigned to them, every one laments the
necessity which has at present withdrawn the
Queen from her most familiar duties. There
remains, however, one large field in which the
influence, the abilities, and the sympathy of one
person in the position of the Prince of Wales may
be most usefully and happily employed. We have
spoken of examples to be, avoided, but there is one
conspicuous instance of the perfect discharge of
every duty and every grace which can be attached
to the difficult position we are considering. His
Royal Highness referred last night with the truth
of affection to the complete example which he has
inherited from his father. The occashen if nothing
else, could not fail to suggest these recollections, re-
calling, as it does, the very spirit and principle of the
work to the discharge of which the Prince Consort
set himself with so much patience and genius. There
are large and every day increasing interests, happily
now disengaged from all tinge and taint of political
passion, which yet concern the life and welfare of
the whole nation not less extensively and pro.
foundly than politics themselves. The happy cir-
cumstances of our country have brought us sooner
than other people beyond that stormy part of a
nation's history its which the struggle for liberty
and security absorbs all the energies and the pas-
sions of life. Political action and the laborious and
difficult duties of Government have ceased to be the
end, and have become the means of our progress.
In spite of the pernicious and retrograde incite-
ment applied to some classes by rhetorical politi-
cians, the great mass of Englishmen contentedly
enjoy the complete freedom, security, and justice
assured to them. They leave without anxiety the
guardianship and amendment of our Constitution
and laws to the authority which has so long main.
tained and exercised them, and devote all their
energies to the richer and more grateful fields of
commerce, science, literature, art, and religion.
Theee are the true interests of a nation. To these
politics, and government, and war, and diplomacy
are but the scaffolding and defences. Upon the
advance of these really depend the progress and hap-
piness of a people, and to further these by encourage-
ment and sympathy is a work far more truly Royal
than the most brilliant successes in statecraft or in
arms. To encourage these noble interests in all their
branches by his sympathy, while he helped them
by his advice, was the province which the Prince
Consort made his own ; and the Prince of Wales,
therefore, could not appear as the chairman of a
public assembly on a more appropriate, occasion than
on the anniversary of a Society the scope of which
concerns almost the whole range of the peaceful and
beneficent energies we have described. The name it
bears of the Royal Literary Fund conveys somewhat
too narrow an idea of its scope, and is to be inter-
preted by the language of a time when the various
branches of literary labour had not reached their
present vast development, and when they occupied,
therefore, less apparently exclusive fields. What-
ever labour can be considered as spent in the
increase of human knowledge, in any branch of
ramification may have a claim on the assistance cf
this Fund. And as human knowledge is coincident
with human power over that vast field of nature,
which the father of modern philosophy and litera-
ture opened up, the design of the Fund seems to
embrace the encouragement and assistance of genius
in every department of human energy. Its view
extends even further, for, as the Prince urged last
night, its help is not limited to Englishmen, but is
often extended to literary men of all nations. Such
a combination of all the " ministers and interpre-
ters of nature" for the assistance of the struggling
reembers of their brotherhood is a noble conception,
and the anniversary of its embodiment in this
society is a fit occasion for the gathering of all ranks
and interests. Ev-n the army finds its place, and
the Dike of Cambridge claims for it the use and
honour of being the guardian of the arts of peace.
It is a happy opportunity, therefore, which makes
such en occasion the first on which the Prince of
Wales performs the duties which he seems able to
discharge so well. It is a happy augury that he
follows his father's example not only in the general
conduct we have described, but in this particular
instance. The Prince Consort presided at the
annual dinner of this very Fund the second time he
spoke in publie in this country. Careers begun so
similarly will, wo trust, coincir'e in all but their
end. There is ample work to be done in fostering
the innumerable branches into which the com-
prehensive unity of this Literary Fund divides,
and if the Prince will pursue the course he has
just begun he will earn the gratitude of the country.
One of the speakers last night contrasted the bene-
volent sympathy for each other which is contem-
plated by this Fund with the unfriendly feelings
which once prevailed between literary men. The
present position of literature in all its branches
offers many contrasts to its position a century and
a half ego, but in no particular is the difference
more apparent than in the esteem which is now
shown for every bratieh of the literary profession,
Tne conventional prejudices which grudged praise
and recognition to tali but two or three liberal
professions have yielded to the truly liberal
spirit of the age, and men are gradeally coming to
recognise all professions or work to be alike honour-
able which fall within the scope of human intelli-
gence. The patronage of the Prince of Wales, after
the example of the Prince Consort, is but the
symbol and the expression of this larger and more
generous feeling, and its importance and value lie
in the sort of authenticity which it gives to this
growing impulse. Nothing can be of more im-
portance to the welfare of any branch of human
industry than that it should be assured of possessing
its natural dignity. The Prince paid an honourable
tribute to the memory of Mr. Tnackeray, who was
one of the committee of the Literary Fund. There
was nothing more characteristic of that writer than
the firm determination with which he always
asserted the same rights and the same duties for
the literary profession as for every other, and the
almost sternness with which he treaL.:d the tradi-
tional looseness with which the characte: of a
literary man was for some time invested. The san;.:'
dignity is due to every branch, however humble and
obscure, of human Intelligence and labour. But it
is part of the ingrained custom of English life to
associate this dignity with its public recognition
by the representative of all English honour ; and
the Prince of Wales has the opportunity for the
present, and, we trust, for many years to come, of
illustrating the nobleness of those arts and energies
on which depend his own, because his country'e,
greatness,

DAILY NE*g.—The Hospodar of Moldo-Walla.
chin and his Minister, M. Cogilniciano, have taken
a tlnid likoy to be attended with import-
ant consequencei. It is well known that some time
since the Prince's Government had prepared a new
electoral law, extending the franchise, and render-
ing it almost universal, but establishing the insti-
tution of election by two degrees'. The bill was
laid before the Assembly, which, elected after the
manner laid down by the European Commissioners,
is a body composed of three.fourths Boyards, or
great landed proprietors. We have often, depicted
the injustice of this electoral law, and the impossi-
bility in which the Prince found himself of govern-
ing either with or without the Assembly. gun of
adherents of former princes, it systematically
rejec!ed every motion and every budget, and
brought representative government to a dead-lock.
Once only was this state of things interrupted—
when the present minister, soon after taking office,
proposed a law for seizing the property of the
Greek convents, assigning the monks an indemnity.
This was voted by acclamation, the liberals joining
in the cry from sincere approbation, the Boy ards
delighted at the prospect of putting their Hospodar
at loggerheads with the Porte and with Russia.
The happy accord batween Prince and Assembly
was, however, of short duration. The seizure of
conventual property led to diplomatic remonstrance
indeed, but not to military occupation or open quar-
rel. It gave rise to much wordy war, and to a
concentration of troops almost on the frontier of
the Principalities; a measure to which the latter
replied by mustering troops and arming them,
while Hungarian and Polish officers appeared on
the scene, greatly to the annoyance of the Powers
interested in the Buppression of trove nationalities.
The enmity of Constantinople, Of Vienna, and of
St. Petersburg to the Muldo-Wallachian Minis-
ter did not induce the Assembly to rally to the

Prince. The Boyard party became again recalci-
trant, and resumedits old policy of throwing
every obstacle at the way of the Prince
and his Administration, The Hospodar had often
represented the disorganized state of the constitue
tion, and its bad working, to the several members
of the old Conference. He had often entreated them
to take the matter into consideration, and enable
him to promulgate a rational electoral law. The
request, of course, was made in vain. Despairing,
therefore, of help from the European Powers, Prince
Couza and his bold Minister have resolved to effect
the change themselves. The Reform Bill proposed
to the Assembly was rejected, and thereupon the
Assembly itself has been dissolved. The Prince has
appealed to the general vote of the people,abrogat-
ing the constitution, and setting aside the present
Assembly altogether. Now, strong as may have
been the provocation which Prince Couza and his
Government had received—however absurd and per,:
nicious the old system, and however fair and liberal
the new—this coup d'etat is of French origin, and
certainly not of French liberal opinion, It savours
of Napoleon, and is no doubt a Napoleonic idea. It
is the great political panacea of the Tuileries, to be
applied one day at Bucharest, and the next at Kiel.
And its success in these places may at a future time
warrant similar experiments at Cologne or Liege.
We cannot but regard England as to blame for
allowing matters to come to such a pass. Had our
Government been more generous to the Principali-
ties, and more just to Prince Couza, he would in re-
turn have felt confidence in our counsels, and not
precipitated himself into rash and extreme projects
at the sole suggestion of France. But when he saw
England making common canee with Russia and
with Turkey against the fair requirements of the
Principalities, he turned exci.afivelY to Paris for
political advice. And the result wt find to be a
plebiscite. We cannot but think that the .
assembly
of diplomatists, which regulated the affairs Of the
Principalities, did wrong in the first instance izi
not acceding to the two chief demands of its in-
habitants. These were the union of the Provinces,
and the election or nomination of an hereditary So-
vereign. Had the latter request been granted and
the Prince been selected from one of the reigning
families of Europe, the intrigues against the Hospo-
dar would have fallen to the ground. The Boyards
would have rallied to a new dynasty. The Prince,
feeling that the fortunes of his family were con-
cerned in the stability of his new throne, would not
have needed to recur to such schemes ae Prince
Couza has found it necessary to adopt, and in at-
tempting which he has had only a life interest to
risk. The Porte, too, accepting an hereditary
Prince, subject to its suzerainty, and not jealous of
him because in possession of its full rights, would
not have engaged in that idle antagonism which has
rekindled the old enmity between Christain and
Mohammedan, but would quietly and wisely have
allowed things to take their course in the Christian
Principalities. And the settlement would have been
permanent. But instead of this, to soothe the fears
and jealousies of the neighbouring Powers, the
Commissioners built up a merely temporary politi-
cal fabric north of the Danube, which it has so soon
been necessary to take down and rebuild, in order
to prevent its falling. A plebiscite is not a right
which in such hands is likely to lie dormant. If it
resorted to one day in order to sanction a constitu-
tion, it will be employed to eject one sovereign and
set up another the next. The election of a Prince
even by a Senate is bad enough, but periodical elec-
tions taking place amongst a rude people, surrounded
by unscrupulous despotic and military Powers,
would have results easy to anticipate. They would
prove permanent pretexts for interference, for in-
trigue, and for civil war. Even supposing the
most happy issue Id the plebiscite now proposed,
we greatly fear that the introduction of such a
law and such a habit, instead of consolidating re-
presentative government, will shatter it. There is
far more to be feared than hoped from
so premature a development of popular freedom in
a country so little used to or prepared for it. We
fear it may foster a troublous spirit, and leave a
largo opening for the treacherous agents of despotic
Powers to create disturbance. Should trouble occur
—and the Boyards will as readily lend their hands
to support it as Russia and Austria to excite it—
then these military Powers will have acquired a
pretext for armed interference, and for playing upon
the Danube the game which they played in the last
century upon the Vistula. We may deplore events
of this kind, which we cannot every day go to war
to prevent. We took up arms on one such occasion.
But that will prove a very strong argument against
our doing so again, when the countries that were
liberated by the valour and the blood of cur sol-
diers shall appear to have been so neglected and
mismanaged by our statesmen and diplomatists that
precisely the old dangers and the old grievances
crop up again ; and when we find that this south-
eastern corner of Europe has profited so little in
respect of peace or independence by our counsels
And our arms.