The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-17 00:00:00

tions, and who have stigmatised themselves by the
grossest and most deliberate insults to the repre-
sentatives of the people. Perhaps, however, on a
charitable view, we may exempt the Prussian
Ministers from responsibility for a great blunder, on
the supposition that their devoted loyalty led them
to love their Sovereign better than themselves. But
when an absolutist Ministry come forward as peni-
tent converts to a constitutional policy, they simply
find that there is no locus pecnitentice for them. The
theory of the constitution at once offers up these
very Ministers as a sacrifice for the errors of the
Sovereign, who is supposed to have acted under
the influenee'of their advice. That is the only
safety valve for monarchy under representative go-
vernment. The alternative, therefore, seems to lie
between the abandonment by King William either
of his administration or of his constitutional pro-
gramme. But if, on the other hand, we are really
to suppose that Count Bismark intends to meet the
forthcoming Prussian Parliament as the imperso-
nation of a new and constitutional policy, we must
expect to see his- Ministerial career cut short by the
verdict of the tribunal to which he will then have
acknowledged obedience. Probably, in three cases
out of four, the same representatives will be returned
by the constituencies to the new Parliament. These
gentlemen, on their return to Berlin, are not very
likely to perceive the necessity of their having been
sent to the country merely to register the recan-
tation of an intriguing Ministry, who, after having
hoped to carry out an absolutist policy with a high
hand, find themselves in the predicament of being
obliged to court the favour of the people. There
is little doubt that one of the first acts of the new
Prussian Parliament will be to ratify the positions
assumed by its predecessor, and to assert the rights
of the public on all those matters on which the King
and the late Parliament were at issue. This will
lead to a state of things which it is hardly possible
that the present Ministry can brook, even if the
Lower Chamber does not go the constitutional
length of petitioning the Crown to dismiss its ad-
visers. It offends the first principle of parliamen-
tary government that the same administration, after
violating constitutional rights in one year, should
pretend to identify itself with them in another.
But whatever attitude the Ministers may assume
on the constitutional question that is at issue in
regard so the home government of Prussia, nothing
will be felt as more ludicrous by the whole Prussian
public than their ad captandum effort to represent
themselves as the vindicators of Prussian dignity
against the reformers of the German Band. The
Prussians too well know with whom the compro-
mise of their national dignity has originated. It
can have escaped none of them that but for the
dead lock to which the constitutional relations be-
tween the King and the Parliament had been brought
by the folly and arrogance of the present ad•
visers of the Crown, there would have been no
attempt made at Frankfort to legislate for Germany
without the concurrence of the Court of Berlin.
The dignity of Prussia, both within and without the
King's own dominions, has been simply betrayed
by Count Bismark, Gen. von Roon, and the other
members of the present Cabinet, who, in an incre-
dibly short space of time, have contrived to cut off
the Throne from all sympathy end alliance, whether
in the bosom of foreign Courts or in the hearts of
the Prussian people. The coldness with which Eng-
land, France, and Austria now regard the Prussian
Court is only equal to the animosity which its vio-
lence and faithfulness have provoked at home. If,
however, the Bismark Ministry innocently antici-
pate that the new Parliament will accord the same
forgiveness to those who have so ill advised the
Sovereign, as that which they will doubtless be
ready to offer to the Sovereign himself, they are
perhaps really prepared to transfer their alliance
from the German Princes who have betrayed them
to the Prussian public whom they themselves be-
trayed. It will then be an edifying spectacle of
political humiliation to see these Ministers wading
through the terrible quagmire of their own abso-
lutist pretensions, and calmly discussing first the
budget, then the reorganisation of the army, and
finally the period of military service in the Land-
wehr, with a retrenching, economising, and possibly
a domineering Parliament. There will then be no
limit to their career of eating their own words and
revoking their own policy. This is the phase which
one contingency will present. But it is quite as
probable, on the other, that Ministers will meet
Parliament with no direct concessions of questions
heretofore in dispute, but will attempt to turn pub-
lic attention to "Prussian ascendancy in the Con-
federation," and to put themselves forward as the
supporters of the traditionary pretensions of their
country. Should this be the course they mean to
take we need hardly predict its certain failure. We
have no doubt that the Chamber will refuse to be
led away by specious arguments from the real ques
tion at issue at Berlin, which is whether the Parlia-
ment shall share in the government of the country,
or whether the Crown shall dictate to the Parlia-
ment.