The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-21 00:00:00

P.ROCLAMAION OF IHE ICING OF

PRUSsIA.

BERLIN, MARCH 20 (EvENING.)
The official Staatsanzeiger of to-day publishes
the following decree addressed by the King to the
Ministry:—

" I request the Ministry of State to immediately
take the necessary steps for carrying out the elec-
tions. It is the mission of my public authorities
not only to secure the conscientious fulfilment of
the prescriptions of the law, but also to afford to the
electors explanations which leave no doubt as to
the principles of my Government, and to oppose the
influence of hostile parties who endeavour to un-
settle the natural tendencies of the public mind,
as was manifest on the occasion of the last elec-
tions. I firmly adhere to the principles which I
stated in November, 1868, to the Ministry of State.
These principles rightly interpreted still remain to
direct the policy of my Government; but the inter-
pretations which have been erroneously attached to
these principles have produced complications, the
happy solution of which is the next task of the
present Government. In order to bring about the
further development of the present Constitution, the
legislation and administration are to start from
liberal principles ; but we can only hope to obtain
the blessing of progress if, after ripe and quiet
examination of the present state of things, we know
how to satisfy real wants, and to render available
those elements of existing institutions which possess
vitality. Then only will the reform of the laws bear
a real Conservative character, while haste and too
great rapidity only have a destructive effect. It is
my duty and my earnest wish to insure the complete
effectiveness of the Constitution to which I have
taken an oath, and of the representative rights
of the country, but also in the same measure to
maintain the rights of the Crown, and to maintain
them in that undiminished strength which is neces-
sary to Prussia for the execution of her mission.
The weakening of the Crown would be greatly in-
jurious to the Fatherland. This conviction also
lives in the hearts of my subjects. It is only ne-
cessary for me to explain clearly and openly to them
my real thoughts for their welfare. As regards my
foreign policy, especially towards Germany, I main-
tain without any change the policy which I have
followed up to the present time. The Ministry of
State will take care that the principles which I have
stated are duly carried out during the approaching
elections. Then I can expect with confidence that
all electors who are faithful to me and my house
will support my Government with united strength.
I enjoin my Ministry of State to give instructions
to the authorities according to these views, and to
recall to all my functionaries their special duties.
WILHELM."

Countersigned by all the Ministers.
The Stern Zeitung of today contains a compre-
hensive leader upon the political situation. It
says :
" The change in the Ministry and the dissolu-
tion of the Chamber were acts of the extremest
necessity. The Chamber was destined from the
commencement to come iuto collision with the
Government. The incidents which occurred at
the elections plainly demonstrated this. Symptoms
of dangerous illusion, of passionate desire for
practically unattainable ideals, were manifest at
that period in many of the constituencies. They
displayed their preference for those men whose poli-
tical programme, setting aside all the monarchical
traditions of Prussia, consisted in endeavouring to
connect the country with the movements of
1848 and 1849. They favoured those who further
agreed in organising an opposition to the measures
for army reform already initiated, and which had
been recognised by the wisdom of the Sovereign,
in conjunction with all his Ceuncillors, us an indis-
pensable condition for the power of Prussia. Under
these auspices the Chamber of Deputies cam° into

If we may take a homely and approximate illus-
tration of a Newcastle coal mine, let us conceive
St. Paul's and the Monument of London to repre-
sent the two shafts, and ourselves and the streets
we traverse the workmen and the interior of the
pit. St. Paul's Churchyard and the Monument-
yard shall be the busy spaces at the bottom of the
shafts ; Cheapside shall be the main-way of the pit,
and the numerous streets branching off right and
left from it—as Bread-street, Queen-street, etc.—
may be the side passages. The streets crossing
these again give us an idea of the narrow continu-
ous excavations of the smaller dimensions ; and if
we could make these in both cases regular, we should
in both have a system of panel-work. The blocks
of houses in the city would be as pillars in the pit,
and could we but suddenly let down a thick
covering over the roofs, and exclude light and air,
we should have the counterpart of a northern
coal-pit, even as we have it very nearly upon a
foggy November or December day. More than
twice or thrice recently we have thought our com-
parison not inapt as we tramped along Cheapside
and by St. Paul's : city and coal-pit were equally
dark, equally miry, and equally perilous ; for the
dangers of the road, arising from omnibuses and
careering cabs, are hardly much less in a city mist
than the dangers from falls and fire damp in a coal-
pit.
The distance from St. Paul's to the Monument,
however, conveys no adequate notion of the extent
of a large coal mine. We ourselves have paced
along some four miles underground in direct lines,
and some five miles in winding and intersecting
passages. Yet, as we have been informed, we had
but entered into the far interior, had but trod the
suburbs of the vast howling wilderness of pit-
waste, had but passed through the peat main pas-
sages, and a few side passages, leaving miles upon.
miles of close and damp darkness untrodden.
Tracing our progress afterwards upon a colliery
map, we ha-ie come to understand how little we
had explored ; and there is one old pit, not many
miles from Newcastle,
in which, if all the passages
had to be passed through by a human _being,_ be
would be required to travel more than 50 miles.
There is, indeed, a saying current in the North,
that the pits at Killingworth have more than a
hundred miles of excavation ; this, however, we
doubt, not from actual knowledge, but from the
very magnitude of the space. Remembering how
difficult it is to cut through even one mile of solid
and dense coal strata, we cm hardly credit that
any one mine has more than one hundred miles of
gallery excavation ! In the process of working out
the strata for 50 or 60 years, of [course vast hollows
would be made, and a mile a year would certainly
not be an excessive estimate for a very busy mine.
It must be remembered that the whole of these
excavations have been, and are being made by
human hands. No coal-cutting machinery has yet
been brought into operation below the surface, at
least to any extent ; and we might well be asto-
nished if we could reckon the entire aggregate of
coal-mining excavation in the north of England.
That it exceeds:by much one thousand miles we have
no doubt. Twenty or thirty of the older and larger
collieries could make up this amount of mileage,
and if we should add together all the excavations
in the vicinity of the Tyne, the Wear, and the
Tees, we should probably be quite safe in assuming
the subterranean streets and ways as extending, in
all over fifteen hundred miles; that is, by piecing
together every hollow way from first to last, and
from Tyne to Tees. Think, then, of these fifteen
hundred miles as the handiwork of thousands of
human beings who have wrought in darkness,
simply because there alone, far from sunbeam and
flowers and glittering streams, could they earn
their honest wages, and hardly win the bread that
should support home and family.—Good Words for
March.