The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TZE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The speech with which the King of Den-
mark has just opened the Session of the Danish
Chamber is not calculated to encourage any rising
hopes of the preservation of peace. it is not ad-
dressed exclusively to the Danish representatives;
it is also a manifesto to Europe that the demands
made by the German Confederation cannot be met
by any further concessions on the part of Denmark
without sacrificing its independence, and aban
doning the internal government and policy of
the nation to the German Diet, dictating its mea-
sures from Frankfort. A conclave of German Sove-
reigns has just broken up and dispersed from the
same city, after discussing the Constitution of the
body still left with the power of embroiling Europe
by its dull pertinacity in wrong-doing. The debate
of the Royalties on the reform of the Bund proposed
by the Emperor of Austria proved conclusively that
the Diet, with all its clumsy political machinery,
has not the implicit confidence even of the Princes
of whose delegates it is composed. And having
sufficiently indicated an apprehension that under
the first strain of war the whole organisation would
break down, they left it unchanged, to continue a
course of proceedings directly tending to invite the
calamity they ought to dread and avoid with special
caution. The old German helplessness and stolid
endurance of a national evil can have no stronger
illustration than the mischief the Diet is still per-
mitted to work under the double condemnation of
Sovereigns and people. As an organisatian it may
be fairly considered as doomed, for the declared in-
tention of Austria to supersede it in the present
form will always impend over it. The certainty of
having been condemned, and the prospect of being
set aside at the first opportunity, would reduce any
ordinarily constituted body to, at least, harmless
inaction. But the German Federal Bund, without
any political strength derived from the people, who
have not the slightest influence over it, and not
trusted by the Sovereigns, who have themselves ex-
perienced its defects, still acts, like a piece of heavy
mechanism that nothing can stop. It has but one
kind of activity, one object that it pursues, without a
gleam of statesmanship or apparent perception of
the dangers it is plunging into. For a series of
years it has had no visible aim or purpose, except
that of invading, limiting, or absorbing the sove-
reign rights of Denmark. Knowing that the inde-
pendence of that Monarchy is under the solemn
guarantee of Francs and England, and now fully
apprised that Denmark " will not stand alone" in
case of attack, the Diet, with an arrogance that
looks like infatuation, is pushing Denmark to the
last extremity, endangering the peace of Europe,
utterly blind to what may be the consequences to
Germany itself, or what it is certain to lose by war.
It is only consistent with the heavy incapacity of
the Frankfort Diet to deal with facts intelligently
that it is doing the worst thing possible at the worst
possible time. The question of German " nation-
ality" does not stand where it did in 1849 and 1850.
Then Prussia was its champion, and when offering
to rescue any " oppressed " fragment of the race
from the dominion of its neighbours—France
cautiously excepted—it had some political freedom
to share with it. The relapse of Prussia into Abso-
lutism deprives the agitation of even the semblance
of excuse. Denmark is full justified in resisting
the attempt to impose on the Duchy of Schleswig any
constitutional changes by German influence in the
interest of the German population itself. The Diet
demands of Denmark a common Constitution for
"the whole Monarchy." The degree of political
freedom it is to confer is a matter the Diet must
decide, part of the Monarchy being a State of the
Confederation. As Prussia is the model State of
Germany, it could not permit the Diet to establish
any form of government contrasting too favourably
with its own ; and as the Prussian Chambers are
reduced to a nullity, the Germans now under the
sovereignty of Denmark will lose considerably by
the change. As a liberating process, it would now
be like inviting the thousands of Germans who are
politically freemen to forfeit their advantages, anti
share with the Prussian millions the subjection to
which the latter have been reduced. If the
German Sovereigns have any sense of their own
position, or of the condition of the Bund, they,
will restrain that body from provoking the inter-
ference of the Cabinets of Europe by persisting
in a policy as full of absurdity as of peril.
Prussia is tho Power most identified with the
long persecution of Denmark in the name of Ger-
many. The part it played in the war of 1849 and
185 u does not furnish a very glorious page in its
annals. And since that period the Government has
lost influence abroad and popularity at home. It
has identified itself with Russia by its conduct to
the Polish insurgents, and with Russia it shares the
anger and irritation the issue of the negotiations
with that Power has created. It would be little less
than insanity for Prussia to place herself by a repe-
tition of the " nationality" crusade of 1849 in open
hostility with France, England, and the Scandi-
navian States, which would now give their hearty
support and co-operation to Denmark if attacked.
The real oppression of the Polish a nationality,"
with which the world has been sickened for the past
year, has made it intolerant of the petty, half-ima-
ginary grievances the Germans, with more senti-
ment than sense, have magnified into wrongs.
Europe has lost patience with the continually recur-
ring annoyance of this superfluous trouble in a cor-
ner of Europe that is prosperous and practically
self-governed. It cannot, for the sake of its own
peace, longer permit the Diet of Frankfort to keep
up a groundless agitation that has not a single valid
I claim to our sympathy. It knows that the Bund
has always been ready to strangle political freedom
in any German State in which the Sovereign was
not strong enough to apply the bowstring himself.
It has therefore no belief in the sincerity of its claim
on behalf of Danish subjects of wnat it has so com-
pletely suppressed at home. The last step may still
be arrested by a word from Prussia, which will pro-
bably be the agent of the violence with which Den-
mark is threatened. The note of Baron Mander-
strom, the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs, fully
confirms the intimations given in the King of Den-
mark's address to the Chamber. Negotiation with
Frankfort has ceased. The Federal Diet will demand
of the Danish Government the withdrawal, within
six weeks, of the patent of the 30th of last March,
though it conceded to the Duchy of Holstein all
the rights the Diet had required on its behalf. It
must,include the Duchy of Schleswig, in which the
Diet has no authority, to find acceptance. Such an
assumption no State can possibly submit to, and
against the invasion of its independent rights Den-
mark justly protests. Bat if the patent is not
withdrawn, the Diet threatens to send a body of
Federal troops to occupy Holstein—a process called
an " execution." Baron Manderstrom asserts that
every pretext for such a measure has been removed
by the repeated declarations of Denmark, which
will, therefore, consider the occupation an act of
hostility, and it will be " her duty to oppose it by
all the means at her disposal." The King treats it
as a violation " of the independence of Denmark,
which is firmly determined to protect herself against
any attack." This is the state of affairs that both
S weden and Denmark now submit to the Cabinets
of London and Paris, claiming protection against
German " aggression."
POST.—It would perhaps be unjust to the King
of Prussia and M. Bismark to ascribe the declara-
tion they have just made on Federal Reform to an
electioneering manoeuvre. Nevertheless, it would
be difficult to imagine any position more cleverly
taken up with the view of leading away the minds
of the Prussian constituencies from the main ques-
tion that is now before them. It reminds us of
Tadpole and Taper with " our young Queen and old
institutions." The King and his Minister put
themselves forward in this declaration as the cham-
pions of the dignity of Prussia, outraged by the
other German Sovereigns at Frankfort, and as the
supporters of a wider popular representation in the
Federal Diet, which these Princes are represented
as having attempted to crash. Thus the Prussian
constituencies are called upon altogether to forget
the great question, whether representative govern-
ment and political freedom in their own country are
to be a reality or a sham. They are simply to be-
lieve in King William and Count Bismark as indis-
pensable to the grandeur of Prussia and to its inter-
national dignity at the German Diet; add they are
expected to inculcate also the still greater paradox,
that the party which have been attempting to crush
public opinion in their own country are those on
whom Germany is to rely for a freedom which
the other Federal Princes would restrain. It
may be thought that such a palpable absurdity
would deceive no one. Nevertheless, we all know
from our own experience in this representative
country that nothing in electioneering times is too
preposterous to exert more or less weight in turning
the scales of public opinion. The King of Prussia,
accordingly, reduces his objections to a participa-
tion, at present, in the course taken by the other
Clerms.n Sovereigns, to three heads. He demands,
first, that the veto of either Austria or Prussia
should be sufficient to debar the Diet from making
a declaration of war, except in the event of the
German territory being actually invaded. This is
pretty nearly equivalent to leaving things as they
were; for the Germanic Confederation being essen-
tially a defensive body, it is hardly probable that it
would collectively declare war with any other ob-
ject than that of defending its own territories; and
during the near fifty years of its existence it has
never yet declared war at all against any consider-
able Power. But the object of this proviso, which
has the sounding character of maintaining the
"dignity of Prussia," and the tendency of thus
appealing to the sympathy, of all true Prussians in
the approaching elections, is clearly a very different
one, The King- of Prussia is determined that
Fiance and Austria shall cat drag the minor States

of Germany into any war with Russia on account
of Poland, into which he has been from the first
resolved not to be himself dragged either. He there-
fore provides, in the first place, that if he is to take
any part in Federal Reform, it will be solely on the
understanding that be is to have the power of clog-
ging the wheels of the Diet in any attempt which
they may make to go to war with his brother
despot. This is the first of King William's condi-
tions, and the second is like unto it. It is that
Austria and Prussia are to hold a position of equal
dignity in the Diet, both as regards their relative
power and their nominal presidency over its sit-
tings. Here, however,
we see a plausible position
taken up. It is quite true that the King of Prussia
is not so powerful a Sovereign as the Emperor of
Austria, taking all their respective territories into
account. But, on the other hand, Prussia has an
actually greater number of inhabitants within the
limits of the Confederation than Austria has. The
disproportion, to be sure, is not great, but it is
somewhat on the side of Prussia. Austria, how-
ever, has made from time to time very considerable
arrogations, on the ground of her traditionary
tenure of the imperial sceptre of Germany; and
perhaps, when we consider that that dignity was,
after all, merely an elective one, though the House
of Hapsburg contrived to keep it for many gene-
rations in their own hands, the pretension was not
equal to the foundation for it, as applying to a
Germanic Confederation in which these imperial
distinctions of authority have now long ceased to
exist. But we do not apprehend that there is, on
the present occasion, any serious intention on the
part of Austria to claim a superior place in the Diet
to that which would be assigned to Prussia. The
Emperor of Austria, indeed, was offered the presi-
dency in the recent deliberation of the German
Princes, partly because the King of Prussia refused
to take part in them. Probably, if the Diet should
ever be re-established on a new basis with the con-
currence of Prussia, the Austrian and Prussian
monarchs would divide the presidency between them
in alternate years. But the third condition made
by the King of Prussia of his acceptance of a Fede-
ral Reform comes with very indifferent grace from
such a quarter. The Austrian Emperor had pro-
posed that the Federal Chamber of Deputies should
be composed of delegates from the chambers of
each component State of the Federation. They
would, therefore, be indirectly elected by the Ger-
man people. One advantage of this scheme—and
it was no slight one—was that its adoption would
in a manner compel all the German Princes to adopt
representative government in their own States. For
it would be only through the existence of a Cham-
ber of Deputies in each State that that State could
become represented in the Third Estate of the Fede-
ration. But the King of Prussia requires that the
deputies, in place of being chosen thus, should be
directly elected by the German constituencies, and
should bear no .relation whatever to the Chambers
of Deputies in each State of the Confederation.
This is no doubt, on the face of it, a much more
liberal proposition; and it would be inconceivable
that it could represent the real opinions of the King
of Prussia as they are to be gathered from his
domestic policy. Such a body would at once as-
sume that the whole and direct popular authority
of Germany,' and the King of Prussia's life would
be spent in dissolving them. We have long enter-
tained a repugnance to indirect election as applied
to the House of Representatives in a simple State.
But in a Federal Government direct election is
nearly equivalent to a setting aside of the Lower
Chambers of the component States; and we believe
that such a principle could lead to little short of a
revival of the " Frankfort Parliament" of 1848,
and of all the antagonism between Kings and Com-
mons that ended in its destruction.