The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-31 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIDIES.--This last year we were in the very heat
of the conflict between Denmark and the great
German Power. We did not cease to remonstrate,
even after .hope had fled, or to point out how
shadowy were the advantages which it was
sought to gain at the expense of so much misery
and so much injustice. We exposed as well as
we could the shallow and shortsighted policy which
induced two Powers of the first rank to fall upon a
feeble and almost helpless adversary, and we never
ceased to urge the policy of referring all matters in
difference to a Conference, instead of casting aside
every principle upon which the safety of Europe is
founded, and opening a new period of revolution by
a series of acts of wrong and violence. The counsels
of all those who advised moderation and a respect
for treaties were disregarded. Prussia and Austria
believed they had found a great opportunity—the
one for consolidating and increasing her interest in
Germany, the other for raising her military reputa-
tion and acquiring a large portion of valuable terri-
tory • while the rest of the German Confederacy
looked on with bitter hostility at the brilliant part
played by the two belligerents—a hostility mainly
traceable to envy that they were not permitted to
share in the military glory to be reaped by the two
Powers. A year has passed, everything has succeeded
according to their wish, Austria and Prussia have
far transcended anything that could have been ex-
pected from them in rapacity and injustice. Plun-
dered of her territory, heavily amerced in large sums
of money for having exercised the most ordinary
rights of war, Denmark has been compelled to ac-
cept a peace in the condition of which nothing was
wanting that could ruin her resources or exasperate
her pride. It is worth considering, then, how far the
victorious States and the German Confederacy,
which originally goaded them on, have reason to
rejoice in the success their arms have achieved—
whether they have gained all that Denmark has lost,
or whether the whole affair has not been a profligate
and useless waste of honour, of character and of
human happiness. If any one ought to be happy
at the results of last year's war and negotiations, it
should surely be Prussia. She has not gained
much real glory to be sure, for there was very little
to be got ; but she has made the most of her vic-
tories, she has parodied Napoleon's proclamations,
and excited transports of admiration throughout the
whole of what used to be considered quiet and mo-
derate Germany. After her conquest of !Denmark
there is no enterprise, however hardy and desperate,
to which she is not believed to be more than ade-
quate. She is even now in possession of the terri-
tory which she conquered on behalf of the Confede-
racy, and has gained whatever gain there was to be
made out of a very shabby transaction. Surely
Prussia must be united at home, and glorious and
successful abroad? It is quite true that she holds
military possession of Schleswig-Holstein, but it is
equally true that she dares not annex the territory
she has acquired. She is beset by the jealousies of
all Germany, which stoutly resists the idea of allow-
ing Prussia to conquer for herself a member of the
Blind which had committed no other offence than
that of being estranged from the fatherland by the
power of an alien and hostile Prince. She is enjoy-
ing a feast of the Barmecide, or, rather, of Tantalus,
for the viands are displayed before her which she
is not permitted to eat. Schleswig and Holstein,
who have invited the invasion, are, we may say in
passing, just as unhappy as any one else. Their
prayers have been heard to the full, their wishes
have been granted, and yet we hear of nothing but
murmuring and repining. Schleswig is said, in de-
fiance of Prussian repression, to be getting up peti-
tions to the Emperor of the French to deliver her
from the hands of Prussia, and to restore her once
more to that Denmark from which she has been so
violently dissevered: Holstein views with abhorrence
the prospect of annexation to Prussia, and prays for
the Prince of Augustenburg to put an end to a weari-
some and harassing interregnum. But we have not
yet done with Prussia. We have seen what are her
external relations, and how little strength or satis-
faction she has obtained by her inglorious conquest;
but if we wish to see the full embarrassment which
she has created for herself we must look within.
It was supposed that by the success of his foreign
policy Count Bismark had so cajoled and over-
awed the Prussian Liberals that he had no fur-
ther opposition to fear, and that the nation was pre-
pared to accept the tinsel glories of Missunde and
Duppel as a complete satisfaction for the downfall
of Parliamentary Government and the loss of her
domestic liberties. This, however, does not appear
to have been the case. The Prussian Assembly was
not, indeed, wise enough to reject the honours of
an easy conquest, but all the glory of war has not
melted the hearts of those who hold in their hands
the purse-strings of the people. The whole quarrel
of the Budget is not a step nearer settlement than
it was three years ago. From. its Assembly the Go-
vernment cannot extract a single thaler, and yet it
is afraid to dissolve, because it believes that the
Assembly which would succeed it would be Rtill
more mutinous and rebellious than the body which
it finds at present so unmanageable. Affairs are at
a dead-lock, and, as far as we can see, there is no
extrication from them for anybody. We have as
yet said nothing of Austria—Austria who has been
so well content to aid Prussia in all her undertak-
ings, in the hope at once to consolidate her power
in the Federation, to check the revolutionary spirit
of Germany, and obtain by boundless concessions
to Prussia a firm and trustworthy ally. We need
not say how bitterly all these hopes have been dis-
appointed. The relations of Austria with Prussia
have been for a long time strained and uneasy. Per-
petual quarrels and remonstrances have been very
thinly concealed by hollow professions of amity and
goodwill. Austria has not abandoned her normal
and traditional policy ; she is intriguing against her
dear and faithful ally in the Federal Diet, according
to her immemorial use and wont ; nay, so little is
she satisfied with the proceedings of Prussia, that
we really believe nothing but the state of her
finances prevents her from altogether abandoning
the hollow and delusive alliance between herself
and Prussia. In the meanwhile, the Confederation
itself has just as little reason to be pleased as its
two leading States. It has seen itself set aside in a
struggle carried on in its name ; it sees Prussia in
wrongful possession of those Duchies for the sake
of which the war was waged ; and-as for the Duke
of Augustenburg, whose cause it has always vigo-
rously supported, he finds no more favour with
Prussia than he did with Denmark. Such are the
relations, such are the positions of Austria, Prussia,
the German Confederation, the Duchies, and the
Duke of Augustenburg, the principals, the accesso-
ries, and the abettors of the great iniquity of last
year. We may, almost reverse the Latin proverb,
and say " Vce victorious," instead of " Vcc victis."
They have broken into their neighbour's garden,
they have eaten his fruit, and are waking to the
conviction that it is sour and unwholesome. We
cannot wish things otherwise. It is the interest of
all mankind to support the principles of public
morality, and the example would have been too
tempting had this nefarious enterprise not ended, as
it seems likely to do, in general mortification and
disappointment.
POST.—A former ambassador of Austria at the
Porte, on learning another of the many concessions
which the late Sultan was making in favour of the
Rayahs, declared that there would thenceforth be
nothing more for his highness to do but to declare
himself a Christian. The successor of Abdul Medjid,
however, has found that the best models of Euro-
pean government may be yet further adopted in the
Turkish empire without going the length of a reli-
gious apostacy on the part of the Sovereign. An
official paper of great curiosity and importance has
just reached us, which promises a complete trans-
formation of the whole system of Turkish adminis-
tration. A change so comprehensive must of course
be a work of tune, and a work, too, dependent in
the nature - of things upon several contingencies.
But, nevertheless, there appears good reason to an-
ticipate that this organic change in the internal
government will be eventually carried into force
throughout the empire. This paper amounts to the
promulgation of a new constitutional law for a dis-
trict of European Turkey known as the Vilayet of
the Danube ; which is, however, by degrees, to be
extended to the whole of the empire. It would be
unnecessary, and would perhaps be tedious, to fol-
low this scheme of administration through all its
details. The most salient characteristic of it is that
it is drawn bodily from the systems of bureaucracy
prevailing in the West of Europe, with just so much
of decentralisation, in spite of the generally centra-
lised character of the scheme, so coincides with the
present efforts of the French Government to throw
a certain degree of local liberty and independent
authority into the administration of the depart-
ments. This Vilayet of the Danube—a Turkish
administrative term—is formed of the old province
of Silistria. The Vilayet is divided into seven
" Sandjaks," which coincide with the French
arrondissements ; and each Sandjak in turn is
divided into a certain number of Cazas, or cantons,
while the Caza again is subdivided into communes.
This is the fourfold territorial division compre-
hended in the new system. Into the province of
Silistria it is introduced as a permanent constitu-
tional change ; but it appears at the same• time, in
its relations with the whole empire, to be to a cer-
tain extent an experimental or rather preparatory
institution. The operation of the new system is first
to be tried in the Vilayet of the Danube, and it
will be afterwards applied elsewhere. The Govern-
ment of the Vilayet, as just decreed, may be re-
garded as a model to which the rest of the Turkish
internal government is to be conformed. At the
head of the Executive is a Governor-General,
termed, in local phraseology, the " Vali," and it is
easy to perceive that the Yali is another name for a

prefect of a department. His immediate superior is
the Ottoman Porte itself, and he is charged with
administration of the whole province. He has, how-
ever, a staff of Ministers under him ; and so far,
perhaps, he has higher attributions than a prefect—
in proportion, however, only as the area of his juris-
diction is greater. These Executive officers are to
consist of a Minister of Finance, a Minister of
Public Works, a Minister of Agriculture and Com-
merce, and a principal Secretary—these personages
having, however, technically the titles of directors
instead of Ministers. Besides these four depart-
mental officers under the Vali, there is a Council of
Administration, who form, in fact, the Council of
the Vali. They consist of the above ex officio mem-
bers and of six others, of whom three are to be
chosen by the Mussulman, and three by the Chris-
tian population. This characteristic of the spirit of
national and religious liberality under which the
present reform has been projected, involves one of
the most important points in the whole scheme.
Hitherto the Turks have claimed for themselves an
exclusive position in their country. They have made
certain concessions, indeed, in recent times to the
Rayahs ; but these concessions have alviays borne
some debasing badge or other ; and the Rayahs have
never wrung a single exemption or privilege from
their masters without its carrying with it a convic-
tion that they were an inferior people. Now, how-
ever, the Christians appear to be put upon a nearly
equal footing with the Mussulman population
themselVes. Throughout the inferior administra-
tive organisations provided for this Vilayet, the
same corresponding privileges run as between the
Mahometan and the non-Mahometan. In the
administrative councils chosen for the inferior juris-
diction there is just the same equality; it is quite
true that the communal administration of Turkey
was never marked by any great illiberality ; and
there local self-government was the rule, although
the law in this respect was not always observed.
That that was so, arose chiefly from the fact that
there was a great want of the necessary staff of offi-
cials to form a regular bureaucratic system ; and it
was from much the same reason that the Turkish
revenues were generally framed, there being no
staff of collectors. Bureaucracy, however, is by no
means an unmixed advantage ; and we should be
sorry to see it everywhere established in Turkel,
even if it were proposed to do so, or the material
could be found for it. The constitutional law thus
promulgated for the province in question appears to
amount to what we might call, in the jargon of the
day, local " constitutional" government. It provides
responsible administrative officers, at the head of the
Vilayet, at the head of each Sandjak, and at the
head of each Caza ; and it then divides the authority
between the functionaries nominated by the Porte
and certain nominees of the community—in which
the dominant religion and the Christian and other
religions each participated in an equal degree. W°
look upon this change as one that is likely to pro-
duce two distinct classes of advantages, and both of
them of very great importance. In the first place,
it will tend to diminish the animosities, and als°,
the cause of inequality between Mussulman and
Christian, by placing them in a position of common
authority under the functionaries of the Porte, I.IIU
by accustoming them to work together for the com-
mon good. In the second place, it will tend to raise
the standard of local intelligence and activity. We
shall witness with great interest the effect of the
measure which now has its preparatory introduction
into the province of Silistria ; and we anticipate a
practical result that will encourage the Porte to
carry out the design of rendering it the general con-
stitution of the empire.

COUNTRY MARKETS

. ,q,_.._

BP IS T OL-THURSDAY.

On our market to-day there was a moderate supply of
English wheat, -which sold slowly at last week's prices•
In foreign but little doing ; prices unaltered. Malting
barley quite as dear. For grinding barley a good inquiry,
at an advance of 6d per qr. Fine oats fully as dear, while
black and tawny improved 3d to 6d per qr. Indian corn/
peas, and beans each is per qr. dearer.