The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-27 00:00:00

to say, between the great mass of the Prussian
people (at any rate of the electors) and the reigning
Sovereign—no words that could have been addressed
to the assembly at such a crisis could possibly
have breathed more the spirit of moderation
or of conciliation to all parties, and even
section of parties, than those which were spoken on
the 23d instant by M. GRABOW on his entering
upon his duties as President. Reading merely the
brief and fragmentary notes of that speech that have
as yet reached us here in England, we do not in any
way wonder that the member thus promptly selected
from all those recently returned by the various
constituencies to the Prussian Legislature should
have been chosen, nearly as we have in other words
already intimated, nemine contradicente. There,
literally, in M. GRaßow—standing in front of the
Presidential chair,and addressing the assembly—was
"the right man in the right place." Not—to employ
SYDNEY SMITH'S whimsical figure of speech (an
odd foreshadowing, by the way, of Mr. LAYARD'S
long-subsequent and now world-famous axiom just
quoted !)—not the square man in the round hole, or,
vice versa, the round man in the square hole, but,
as one may say, a hexagon or a rhomboid, or some
other exceedingly queer-shaped figure, presenting
a distinct side, as it were, to all the various
and complicating parties about him, and fitting in
there just to a nicety !

What really and truly, then, it may be asked, is
the light thus thrown by M. GRABOW'S peculiarly
conciliatory inaugural address upon the hitherto
gloomy and chaotic view taken, since the recent
elections throughout Prussia, of the political situa-
tion ? What is the light ? Why, truly, if it be
not tinged throughout with the most delicious
couleur do rose imaginable, it is, at any rate, of the
most charming and exhilarating character the veri-
est political optimist could have hoped for ! M.
GRABOW, after thanking the assembly for electing
him almost unanimously, promises—as we can see,
when we have read his speech, that he might safely
do, and with a clear conscience—distinctly and
emphatically promises " impartiality !" He then
advocates—[mark now, well, what it is precisely
that he does advocate]—he then advocates almost
in so many words the great and noble principle of
Prince and People ! The loyalty of the man is clearly
indestructible. It matters nothing that the Prince
and the People are in direct and visible antagonism to
each other throughout nearly the whole of the elec-
tions that have just terminated. It signifies
nothing that of this notorious antagonism, M.
GRABOW had before him, in the anti-ministerial
crowd of representatives who were then listening
to him, the most obvious and glaring attestation.
" All's one for that," to M. GRABOW, no less than
to Sir JOHN FALSTAFF. The late elections, to the
contrary, nevertheless, notwithstanding, he is still
con amore for the great and noble principle of the
Prince and People. And not only is it thus with
M. GRABOW—unconquerable in his loyalty—but it
is actually thus also with the anti-ministerial as-
sembly itself who have just chosen him for their
President. The representatives, at any rate, affect
it to be so ; they assume the virtue of this over-
weening and all-mastering loyalty, if they have it
not ! Their mode of doing this, moreover, is, in truth,
exemplary. For, hardly has M. GRABOW observed
among other things, that the unity he is speaking of
is one the Prussian nation will never allow to be
dist urbed ; that they, the representatives, will
always uphold alike the sworn rights of the People
and the constitutional rights of the Crown ; that
the late attempt to raise an election cry of "KING
or Parliament" had been answered by their all de-
claring for the Constitutional Monarchy in combi-
nation with the faithfully Constitutional Chamber
of Deputies : hardly had M. GRABOW capped the
climax of these loyal assertions by maintaining that
all Prussia had (in the recent elections) raised the
cry of " Long live King WILLIAM I. and the illus-
trious house of the HOHENZOLLERNS !"—when the
Deputies echoed back the cry with a ringing burst of
what we know so well in this country as a genuine
" three .times, three and one cheer more !" President
and Assembly are evidently bent alike upon letting
the KING down as softly as may be. His Minis-
ters, his political creatures, have been tumbled
into the dust—one and all of them—and
rolled there. With his MAJESTY himself, how-
ever, the chosen representatives of the people
—now that they have turned the Statesmer.
of his choice quietly to the right about—the
Deputies are prepared to deal only with
the courtliest good grace conceivable. A
wise and most judicious course certainly ; but none
the less amusing to all dispassionate lookers on—
after what has so very recently occurred. One
can't help feeling, for example, that if this is the
manner in which the Prussian people have been
raising these vaunted cries of loyalty to "King
WILLIAM and the illustrious House of the HOHEN-
ZOLLERNS," it is the oddest fashion of doing it that
the most fantastic lover of cross-purposes could well
have contrived. A homely adage smith, " Love me,
love my dog." The bran new axiom, now brought
to light by the Prussian elections, says, on the other
hand, in the name of whoever happens at any time
to be the reigning Monarch of that Kingdom, "Love
me, kick out my Ministry!" Bewildered though we
may be at the utterance—M. GRABOW has said it,
and the newly chosen Deputies of the Prussian
people have cheered it!

The election, by the way, on the 23d instant, at
Berlin, first of all of M. GRABOW as President, and
afterwards of M. BEHREND and of M. BocKum
DOLFFS as the two Vice-Presidents—ought to be
regarded only, in point of fact, according to the
strange usage there in vogue iu the Prussian Assem-
bly as a mere preliminary proceeding. For at the out-
set President and Vice-Presidcnta are only oilmen
for. the first four weeks, and have then to be either
set aside or re-elected. Under the peculiar circum-
stances of the case, however, wo cannot
for an instant doubt but that M. GRABOW
must as by a sort of necessity be re-elected, as he
has been already elected • that is, all but unani-
mously. And, for this sufficient reason, that—
" None but himself can be his parallel !"

Three bills will come before Parliament to night,
all of them testing ones on either civil or religious
liberty; hence, we
fear, none of them likely to meet
from the present Parliament with the reception
they deserve. One, indeed, is to be offered to the
House of Lords. Its object is
to save a large por-
tion of the clergy from what is equivalent to per-
jury. But, undoubtedly, the Lords will much pre-
fer clerical perjury to relaxation of the Act of
Uniformity.
The act, as is well-known,
requires
from the greater part of clergymen, not
Only an
engagement to use the Parliamentary Prayer-book-
but to declare their " unfeigned assent and
consent" to all contained in it. A declara-
tion which not only ejected the two thousand
two centuries ago, but which a PORSON, with his
thorough honesty, and hundreds, perhaps thou-
sands, of honest. Churchmen since, could not make;
and who have, in consequence,not taken holy orders.
Indeed, clergymen of the highest standing, bishops
included, have declared the literal "assent and con-
sent" to be so impracticable to any man of intelli-
gence that they sought refuge in some non-natural
interpretation. This means nothing else than
doing in religion, and in order to be a clergyman,