The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE "LONDON REVIEW" ON MR. COBDEN'S
FAMILY.—We alluded last week, in paying our
tribute of respect to the memory of Mr. Cobden, to
the fact of the great Free-trader having, a few years
ago, refused the offer of a subscription, to which
there can be no doubt a large proportion of the
.
English people would have heartily contributed ;
and we added that such a subscription at the pre-
sent moment would be graceful, and perhaps not
ill-timed. Since then, the public have been made
aware that Mr. Cobden was unable to leave his
family in that position which every admirer of the
deceased legislator would wish to see them maintain,
and which even his generous enemies would not
begrudge. A letter from Mr. Hadfield, the fellow-
member with Mr. Roebuck in the representation of
Sheffield, has been published in a Manchester paper,
in which letter it is suggested that no fitter means
could be adopted of showing regard for the memory
of Mr. Cobden than by presenting his family with a
national gift of £lOO,OOO. A widow and five
daughters have been left behind, with a portion very
inadequate to the demands which must be made on
it ; and we cordially second Mr. Hadfield in ex-
horting England not to leave this work of tender-
ness and respect to be performed by France or
America, but to do it herself. At any rate, let us
do it mainly, and in the first instance: If France
and America like to join (as we can well under-
stand they may), so much the better—so much the
more complete the testimony to the man's cosmo-
politan character. But we must take the lead.
This is not a matter in which we can endure to see
ourselves tutored in.a national duty by those who
are beyond our pale. Nor is there any likelihood
that we shall require such tuition. We are seldom
backward in subscribing to 'testimonials ; we have
even a weakness that way ; and it is not to be sup-
posed that we shall hesitate when so gtrong a
case is presented to our sympathy and veneri:tien•
We fully expect, therefore, to see a large in-pouring
from all classes as soon as a subscription-list is
formally opened. Mr. Hadfield has already promised
a very munificent inaugural sum. " My £500," he

writes, "will be ready at the nation's call for it."
The nation, doubtless, will respond, and at the same
time act in a spirit of equal generosity. There are
but few sections of society, which are likely to hang
back from such a work. The commercial and
trading classes owe to the memory of Cobden that
which they could not repay in full if they would.
The agriculturists have by this time learnt that the
man who came of their own order was no malignant
enemy of their interests, as at one time many were
not ashamed to say, but that he has really done
them a service by freeing their enterprise from pri-
vileges which were but fetters in disguise, and restor-
ing them to the healthy stimulus of competition.
The aristocracy, placed beyond contest and jealous
rivalries, can afford to honour a man who made his
way from a humble station to the very pinnacle of
political fame by dint of genius, of industry, of
honesty, and of spotless character. The working-
man—how much is not due from him to the cham-
pion of cheap bread, the asserter of all broad and
progressive ideas ? And as for the clergy, will not
the Bishop of Oxford, who knew Mr. Cobden and
who wrote that touching letter which was read at
the funeral—will not he speak of a body of men
who, by the very nature of their calling as peace-
makers, are bound (setting aside the merely tem-
porary questions of politics) to respect and honour
Mr. Cobden for believing that the nations of Europe
may be brought some day to act in the spirit of
the religion they profess, and may beat their swords
into ploughshares, and their cannon into church-
bells ? May we not, then, look for the co-operation of
all these classes in doing a work of grace and good-
ness ?—that so the dissensions of twenty years ago
may be closed in peace and love, and we may know
in our own hearts, and show to all the world, that
we are not a horde of adverse tribes—commerce
against agriculture, and agriculture against com-
merce—but a well-knit nation, mutually helpful,
mutually respectful, honouring worth where we see
it, and succouring, where we can, the necessities
which self-sacrificing men too often leave behind
them. It was, indeed, owing to his spirit of self-
sacrifice that Mr. Cobden was overtaken by those
difficulties which made his life a constant struggle,
Thirty years ago he had an excellent business at
Manchester as a cotton-print manufacturer—a busi-
ness which, being managed with the energy and in-
telligence which he afterwards exhibited on a larger
field, brought in a considerable yearly profit to him
and his partners. But in 1838 a few far-sighted
men began the agitation for the repeal of the Corn
Laws, and from that time forward Mr. Cobden threw
himself so completely into public life that he was
unable to giye as much attention as he had formerly
done to his business in the north. The consequence
was that it languished, and at length sank so low as
to be seriously involved. Mr. Cobden at one time
thought of giving up politics, in order that he might
devote himself to the cotton-printing establishment,
and retrieve, if possible, its fallen fortunes ; but
from this he was happily dissuaded. For some years
past, we believe, he was entirely disconnected with
business, and lived .on his small property at Mid-
hurst like a country gentleman. But he was much
embarrassed, and it now lies with the country to
see that his embarrassments shall not descend to
those he held dear. The rich, we are persuaded,
will be ready with their hundreds ; and all will
share in one of those duties which are amongst our
highest honours.
THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE LICENSE OF
NOVELISTS.—A public man must be prepared to be
described, or even satirised, in a novel, just as much
as to be criticsied in a newspaper. And the same
law which applies to the newspaper will apply to the
novel also. The rule should be that nothing should
be admitted in either case which passes the bounds
of honourable political warfare—nothing which can',
in any way be construed as arising from personal
malignity. As for private matters, we shall pro-
bably make our meaning better understood by citing
examples. Thus, in the novels written by Mr. 1
Frond before he assumed his later and more famous
character, there were local and personal descriptions
which a large circle of people thoroughly under-
stood, and which gave great and reasonable offence
to many. The private nature of most of them
hinders their being quoted, but one will serve as
a specimen of what we call • unjustifiable license.
One of Mr. Froude's characters goes to a college
chapel in Oxford mentioned by name, and is there
witness to an immoral assignation on the part of a
member of the foundation. Now in so large a body
as all the residents in Oxford, or even all the resi-
dent members of foundations, it may be presumed
that all will not be virtuous men. No one will
quarrel with " Tom Brown" because several of his
characters are vicious in different ways. The sin
against reality and probability would have been if
all had been virtuous. But when it comes to Mr.
Froude's incident—to a charge of very aggravated
immorality brought against some one of so small a 1
body as the resident members of the foundation of
one college—the thing becomes libellous. He is
speaking of some one of ten or twenty known men,
whose names may be found in the calendar. A
scandal is therefore brought upon every one of
these ten or twenty men. Every one of them has a
right to be indignant on behalf of himself and his
friends. The incident is quite possible ; it may be
literally true ; but it is a thing which, true or false,
no one has a right to put in a book with the name
of a particular college attached. We will look next
at cases where nothing vicious or libellous is brought
in, where the heaviest charge that can be made
against the writer will be only bad taste or want of
taste. Thus, in Mr. Savage's novel of " Reuben
IVI edlycott," the scene, laid about the time of the
Reform Bill, runs backward and forward between
Hereford and Chichester, the two cities being men-
tioned by name. We do not know enough of the
society of those cities 35 years back to know whether
real people are intended, but one naturally takes for
granted that such is the .case. At any rate one
fancies an inhabitant of Chichester or Hereford, or
the neighbourhood of either, asking, sometimes with
no very agreeable' feelings, Is it my father or my
neighbour's father who is meant to be taken off in
this or that Canon or Alderman or M.P. for the
borough ? When Mrs. Wood minutely describes
Worcester under the name of Helstonleigh, or when,
in a smaller story which we lately took up, Norwich
is in the same way described as Eastminster, hardly
anything is gained by so thin a disguise. The only
difference is that, as far as people not living at
Worcester can judge, Mrs. Wood's stories are not
likely to make enemies in the same way as Mr.
Savage's very likely may. When we turn to a real
master in the art, we find the case utterly different.
Barchester is not a mere transparent veil like
Helstonleigh or Eastminster. Barchester in Barset-
shire sounds so natural that we almost begin to look
about to see whether there ever were any Barssetas
as well as Sumorsietas and Dorstas. But Barches-
ter is no place in particular. There are elements
from Winchester and elements from Wells, but
Barchester is neither Winchester nor Wells nor any
other one place. Even the constitution of the cathe-
dral body is, whether by design or by a happy acci-
dent, so described as to be different from that of
any actual church ; it is not exactly like either an
old or a new foundation. Therefore, though we may
suspect, and more than suspect, that particular
people are intended by Mr. Trollope's characters,
there is nothing locally unpleasant as there is in the
other cases. Who was Bishop, or Dean, or Canon,
or Mayor, or Alderman, at Hereford or Worcester
in a given year is known on the spot, and can, with
a little trouble, be found out off the spot. You
can put your finger on a definite name and say,
there is the man who is mentioned in the novel, or
else his official description is very unjustifiably used.
But a Bishop of Barchester is an abstraction ; you
may shrewdly guess that Bishop Proudie and his
wife mean such or such a bishop and his wife, but
you can only guess it ; you cannot put your finger
on a particular name in a list of bishops and feel
that you have, or ought to have, caught your man.
Of course the passages where Mr. Trollope intro-
duces public satire, portraits of well-known public
men, whether bishops or anything else, come under
a different head and must stand or fall by a diffe-
rent standard. We have been led into this train of
thought by the casual sight of a novel, or rather
what we believe is called a novelette, which, though
in a mild form, carries the faults of art of which we
speak further than any other book that we ever saw.
The story is laid partly in the writer's own neigh-
bourhood, partly elsewhere. We have a northern
city mentioned by name ; the Bishop of thirty years
ago and his daughters, the Dean of thirty years ago
and his daughter—why do all our storytellers harp
so on bishops and deans and their families ?—the
clergy of the town, and other persons, all come in.
Now what is easier than to find out who was Bishop
or Dean of any English see thirty years ago ? And
though the Bishop and Dean are probably them-
selves dead their daughters are perhaps still living,
and they may reasonably complain if among their
portraits they find one which is no means amiable.
The chief character of the story is then carried into
another part of England. which the book itself
shows to be the writer's own neighbourhood. Till
we reach that neighbourhood all the names of places
are real ; but the writer's county fluctuates between
its real name and an imaginary one; one chief town
of that county appears by its real name, another by
an alias. Now nothing can be worse in point of
art than this last inconsistency. If Mrs. Wood
moved into the next county to her own, she might
perhaps call Gloucester Severnbridge and Bristol
Avonborough, but a railway journey from Gloiaces-
ter to Avonborough—possibly, to fall in with the
prevailing taste, a Bishop of Gloucester and Avon-
borough—would be beyond all human endurance.
In our story the city is veiled by so thin a disguise
tit every reader everywhere must recognise it; the
natural.' features, the villages, and so forth, round
about the c;:v are so exactly described that any one

in that neighbourhood must recognise them. You
have a hill and a village, a parsonage, and a squire's
house, all drawn to the life. But then comes the rub;
there are the parsonage and the squire's house, but
where are:the parson and the squire ? The writer is
afraid to introduce her own neighbours bodily ; so
she peoples her real houses with imaginary inmates,
only, with singular poverty of invention, she gives
them names, not indeed from the immediate neigh-
bourhood, but names well known in other parts of
the same county. Other names, Christian names
and surnames, which to dwellers in the particular
neighbourhood cannot help suggesting particular
persons, are also brought in freely. A word or two
in this matter of names, and we have done. Some
names, both Christian and surnames, are public pro-
perty. It is not personal to write about Tom Brown
and Mary Porter. In another way, though it is
rather cheap wit, it is at least not personal to call a
physician and a surgeon Dr. Fillgrave and Mr.
Rerechild. So there are a crowd of Christian names,
some so common in real life, some so set apart as it
were for story-books, that they may be used in a
book under all circumstances. You have a friend
named Smith, but you do not scruple to put Mr.
Smith in a book, and your friend Smith, if a sensible
man, will not be offended. You put in a book the
whole conventional flight of Herberts, Ediths, Con-
stances, and what not, and you need not be sup-
posed to be satirising the Herbert or Edith next
door. If you write in Cornwall and introduce Mr.
Twopenny in Northumberland, it may chance that
you wound the feelings of a real Northumbrian
Twopenny. If so, you are very sorry, but you really
cannot help it ; the homicide was purely by misad-
venture. But if you had a Twopenny living within
a mile of you, common decency would hinder you
from putting Mr. Twopenny or even Mr. Halfpenny
into your book. So the fathers, brothers, or lovers,
of a dozen Ediths or Constances must endure to see
their pet names in book after book. But if you
have a daughter or a sister bearing the name of
Quinctilia, you keep a more diligent look-out. If
Quinctilia figures as the heroine of a book by some-
body you never heard of, you think it an odd coin-
cidence and no more. But if your near neighbour
writes a book, and puts a Quinctilia, and a not very
amiable Quinctilia, into his or her book, you na-
turally draw up a little. Nothing will persuade you
that the name was not at least suggested by your own
Quinctilia. You naturelly feel that this is something
of a liberty, and you are not easily persuaded that
it is mere accident—that the writer was not at all
thinking of your Quinctilia, that he meant some other
Quinctilia a great way off, or that he merely got the
name out of the Dictionary aßiography. Such acci-
dents can be avoided by any one of moderate good taste
and moderate artistic power. A name that is
likely to suggest a particular person should, unless
avowed satire is intended, be rejected. If the real
person is unlike the homonym in the story, that is
one reason for rejecting it ; if the real person is like
the homonym, that is another reason. As with
persons, so with places. London is public property;
as all sorts of people are to be found there, any-
body may be introduced as living, or anything as
happening, in London. But Hereford, Chichester,
and Worcester need rather more delicate care. If
one chanced to be grandson of a bishop of one of
those cities, it would be unpleasant to take up a
book and find that the author had stuck. in, per-
haps purely at random, what might at first sight
seem to be a satirical portrait of one's .grandmother.

THE " SPECTATOR" ON METROPOLITAN ELECTIONS.
—The true charge against the London consti-
tuencies is not exactly that of electing inferior re-
presentatives. Some of them are bad enough no
doubt, but the majority would, if they sat for other
boroughs, pass muster very well in the crowd.
Three at least of the City members are far above
the average, Mr. Craufurd being as able a speci-
men of the merchant prince as it would be easy to
find, Mr. Goschen a man who will be a Cabinet
Minister, and Baron Rothschild the fitting repre-
sentative of the plutocracy whose capital has made
the City the pivot of all the world's monetary
affairs. Then Finsbury, though it elects Mr. Cox,
sends up also Sir Morton Peto, the very type and
model of the prosperous Nonconformist, and de-
cidedly useful besides, and though few men have
heard of Mr. C. Salisburyßutler, of the Tower Ham-
lets, Mr. Ayrton still adds a flavour to the Parlia-
mentary punch. Southwark sent us Sir William
Molesworth, thereby doing more for the colonies
than most of the statesmen of England, and
now. finds a place for Mr. Layard, who, though
sadly given to rhodomontade, possesses a spe-
cial knowledge which the House of Commons
would regret to miss. Besides it is creditable to
any constituency to consider that the discovery of
Nineveh bulls is a disqualification for Parliament.
Mr. Doulton's election, say for Sheffield, would not
excite a remark, and poor Mr. Williams, whom
Punch makes such fun of, tried very hard to per-
form a ' ery much-needed function—that of wife to
the House of Commons. Westminster has seated
one of the very few Radical generals in England,
and a Radical general is a most useful person, a
type of character which in a House full of Whip
captains and Conservative colonels adds a new ele-
ment to debate. The metropolitan boroughs, too,
are exceedingly faithful to their men, never change
them if they can help it, and recognise experience
as a qualification more openly than any other elec-
tors. A county will keep on its member as long as
he keeps his property, but a London borough will
stick to him, as in Mr. Duncombe's case, long after
he has ceased to be able to pay for his own elections.
The Tories are very fond of talking about their
constancy, but we shall compare with some inte-
rest the treatment of Mr. Duncombe by his Ra-
dical followers and of Major W. Beresford by
the Church-and-State farmers of Essex under
circumstances very nearly identical. The apparent
failure of the London boroughs is due, we believe,
to the dissonance between their position and what
they themselves think that position is. They con-
sider themselves mere boroughs, with vast local in-
terests no doubt, but with no special position, while
the-world looks to them to be model boroughs, the
best instead of the average among constituencies.
They have never caught the idea of their true func-
tion in the Parliamentary scheme, which is to place
in the House of Commons the men who ought to be
there, but who, precisely representing no constit-
uency, can never obtain a seat. This function be-
longs to them not only from the imaginary head-
ship conferred by locality, but from the fact that
alone among English boroughs they can never be
represented. They are not entities at all, not even
so much so as English cities, the least vital of all
municipalities, but are simply districts covered with
houses filled with men who know for the most part
nothing of each other, care nothing for each
other, are totally apart even in their local inte-
rests. Nobody dreams of saying, " I am a Mary-
lebonian, or a Finsbury man, or a Southwarker ;"
even a name to express such identities still
waits to be invented, and nobody living in one of
these encampments feels any the closer to another
man because he lives in the same one. The voters
are Englishmen merely, not consciously members of
any municipal organisation. England they care
about perhaps more than most constituencies, Lon-
doners of all grades being keen politicians, and very
apt to support Government in great acts about which
other cities are more than doubtful, but nobody
tries to beautify Finsbury at his own cost, or leaves
money to Marylebone, or feels humiliated because
Lambeth as Lambeth does something silly or mean.
There are no means, either, under the present
organisation of creating municipal feeling, and the
only local pride must arise from sole benefit con-
ferred by the locality upon the nation. Finsbury
cannot make of itself a true city m the sense in
which Bristol, or Liverpool, or par excellence Paris
is a city, but it can if it likes make of itself an elect-
ing body of very marked and emphatic value to the
Empire. We can hardly imagine a greater addition
to the working force of the Constitution than would
be added to it were London in the habit of seating
eminent men of all kinds who must otherwise be
absent from the national deliberations, great jurists,
great scholars, great colonists, great Indians, great
English Catholics, any one who by general consent
can benefit the State, yet has no local connection or
power of swallowing shibboleths, or it may be funds
to stand the expense attendant on a borough election,
This is the idea which Westminster has caught
proposing Mr. John Stuart Mill, and it ought at
the next election to be extended over the whole body
of metropolitan boroughs. Not that we would ask
them for the self-sacrifice involved in any neglect
their local interests, whatever they consider them to
be. Let the second member be, if they like, a local
notability, a mere business man, a person who can
give an opinion on Mr. Thwaites's conduct, or argue
for the right of swimming in the Regent's Canal,
or fight improvement bills which threaten whole
streets of shopkeepers with ruin—it is odd, by
the way, how shamefully this class is treated, and
how little anybody remonstrates—but a borough
does not require both members to do work of
this kind. The man who " works" will find his task
all the easier and more effective because his col-
league who " talks" hasthe ear both of the house and
the Government bench. The possibility of achieving
some such result is the true and in our eyes ,
almost the only merit of the scheme intro-
duced
by Mr. Hare to the Law Amendment Society
on Monday night. He proposes to adapt his scheme,
drawn up originally for all England, to the metro-
politan constituencies,, with Surrey and Middlesex
thrown in, giving 22 members in all. The whole
body of electors would vote for all these in the order
of their preference, and each candidate who had a
twenty-second part of the number of persons
actually voting would be declared elected. If, for
example, there are 140,000 electors, and 88,000
vote, then every man who obtains 4,000 votes will
be one of " the members for —." what are they

to be called, Mr. Hare ? It is clear that under such
a system a man known to the immense mass of
voters for his great services would stand the best
chance, local claims being altogether eliminated.
That would for a group of boroughs so peculiar an
the metropolitan be a great deal, but it is secured
by a very cumbrous and, as it seems to us, needless
machinery. We quite agree with Mr Mill thatliving•
under the Constitution we do, with its exquisitely-
balanced forces, it is rather late in the day to talk
about simplicity, which we nowhere either seek or
obtain, but Englishmen are wise in preferring to
build upon their old foundations. Not to mention
the absurdity of throwing in Middlesex and Surrey,
that is, of destroying two very special and useful
constituencies, to increase a mass already enormous.
Mr. Hare's would throw the election inevitably
into the hands of a caucus." One or two cele-
brated men would get Mill, for example,
. would have a chance, and so would John Law-
rence have had—but for eighteen out of i;;;YentY-
two the voters would trust to the decision of Boni:,
club or committee wbich told them how to throw
their votes to the best effect. The " Liberal list"
would be the guide, and the Liberal list would be
drawn up by the most astute, most active, and least
scrupulous of mankind, clever electioneering agents,
whose interest is to put in nominees or political
partizans, and not men whom they can neither con-
trol nor guide. No such man, for example, would
nominate Mr. Mill if he thought it safe to avoid it.
Besides localism in a constitution like ours is real and
sound principle, if only it is not pushed too far, and
we do not see why Westminster is to give it up en-
tirely any more than any other constituency. Under
Mr. Hare's plan the second member would be en-
tirely eliminated, and the members elected would
represent only classes and not places at all. If the
same end could be attained without attacking the
existing system at its root the gain would be veil
much greater, and if Londoners will but once recog-
nise what their function in the Constitution is we
do not even yet despair. The boroughs are weary-
ing evidently of the dictation of cliques, and the
pride of seating men who are valued by the whole
nation may well compensate even greengrocers for
the absence of one of their members from the
Vestry Hall.

THE " EXAMINER" ON THE GERMAN CRISIS.--
The Prussian War Minister, von Roon, declared
publicly that it was the intention of the Govern-
ment to keep and fortify the harbour of Kiel. No
sooner did his words reach Vienna by telegraph,
than the same quick mode of communication ordered
3,000 Austrian soldiers to proceed from the nor-
thern fortresses of Bohemia to Altona. Railways
enabled this move to be made in a few hours. No
language can be plainer than this expression of Aus-
tria's determination not to allow Prussia to appro-
priate the Duchies. Nothing, indeed, can be more
absurd and more dangerous, or indeed more need-
less, than the grasping and provocative character of
Bismark's policy. There is nothing whatever to pre-
vent his seizing Kiel and fortifying it in the name of
the German Confederation. In the command and
in the execution, Prussia would necessarily be the
first Power of that Confederation. But this does
not satisfy Bismark. The Duchies and Kiel must
not only be all German, but all Prussian. And y 6
Prussia, which is but a second-rate Power, could .
not hold or defend either Kiel or the Duchies against
the hostility of the maritime States. The only
chance or possibility of retaining what has been
robbed, is to make all Germany an accomplice after
as well as before the fact. As Austria alleges, no
Power will attack and make an enemy of all Ger-
many. Prussia, or its Government, thinks in oppo-
sition to this—it does not speak, the character of
the Berlin people being never to speak out—but it
thinks that by appropriating Kiel and the Duchies
it will have made a step towards treating the other
States of Northern Germany in the same fashion.
This is a great mistake. If Germany is to be re-
volutionized, it must be by an appeal to the people,
and with their support and adherence. The at-
tempt to accomplish a Prussian empire over even
the north of Germany by military violence can onif
lead to war, in which Prussia will be alone against
a combination of States, and without the people tO
support her. The German will never really be a
purely military and anti-parliamentary Govern,"
ment. Austria, therefore, knows her power. And
if Prussia persists, the Court of Vienna will pilau
that of Berlin out of the Confederation, and form a
new one without it. If, in forming this new Confede-
ration, Austria intends really liberal reform, whilst
the Prussian King and his Parliament are a')
at loggerheads, Prussia will be sent to Covent*
and reduced to an isolation mostmenacing to soNcreal
a State. We English certainly look with great in'
difference upon these proceedings. Were we a
malignant people we should take pleasure in the
perils, embarrassments, and oppressions of the
Duchies. We take no such pleasure. Our feelings
are now of indifference. And yet the state of things
in Germany is not calculated to make us contented.
As long as the States of that great country Pull
amicably together, there is no fear of either French
or Russian aggression. But if the Germans will
fall out, will enact over again the follies of the thirty
years' war, or even of the seven years' ditto, it
impossible but that their powerful neighbour will be
tempted to intrude and take advantage of German
weakness and division. Napoleon the Third nly
be a very pacific monarch, but he is not the prine?
to keep his mouth shut with a ripe pear dangling i!,,"
his lips. The most impudent thing on record
certainly Prussia's putting in a claim upon the
Duchies for herself. Had such a pretension been
threatened before, neither Austria nor the German
States would have aided the Court of Berlin in
war for its own private aggrandizement. To thrust
forward such an undreamt-of claim at the eleventh
hour is a mostjdangerous attempt to dupe and chew,',
both Austria and Germany. Both so strongly re;
sent it, that it will be long ere they can again tri.ll
Prussia or enter into common design or league vill"
her. When that sovereign of Prussia who was con
sidered by some people the most straightforward e'
men, has been induced to take part in some trickery'
who can trust a Prussian statesman or prince 1,
Such is the general feeling of reprobation throughoo
Germany and at Vienna, that the great probability
is, as we have hinted, the formation of an universa'
anti-Prussian League. Should such a League he,
knit, Prussia can in no wise defend herself, excel)"
by flinging herself into the arms of France or Ruael°'
and paying for material support by cession a 6
province. That is what Bismark's policy is leading
to. The conquest of Sleswig was a great infringe,'
ment of the existing balance of power ; but if it Teal;
to Prussia's parting either with Konigsberg
Cologne, how much more will that balance
damaged and destroyed. Our Government is na
blind to such untoward prospects. We fear, half;
ever, that its influence mGermany is slight, en'
not likely to be used or wasted in vain efforts.