The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-22 00:00:00

PRUSSIA.

A letter from. Vienna, of March 18, says—" The
affairs of Prussia continue to attract more atten-
tion, even in Vienna, than those of Austria, and it
cannot be denied that their interest entitles them
to the preference. From the dreary financial strug-
figeleits,oefneMt.aVraosn,
wPilethnea fer,pelluinngg ing a slough of
ofde-
ficit,
positive relief, to
the animated political contest waging on the banks
of the Spree, and which the new elections doubtless
will soon spread over Prussia. Not in all respects,
however, is the spectacle presented an edifying one.
King who tfehwro
One cannot behold without a feeling of regret, with
which some contempt will mingle, the weakness
wSosvereigns. It
and elunsdueerhs
as
sf
are a away oppor-
tunitiesis in his power to make himself the idol of his peo-
ple—already traditionally loyal and loving subjects
—greatly to augment his importance in Europe, and
to win for hie, name and his reign an amount of re-
nown such as by no other means can he hope ever
to attain. Instead of that, slighting the counsels
of those who, for his own good, disinterestedly ad-
vise him, he resigns himself to the impulse of a
clique, and follows the guidance of a handful of
military courtiers. Such, at least, up to the pre-
sent moment is the only construction that can be
put upon his conduct since the commencement of
the crisis which began with an adverse vote of the
Prussian Chamber of Deputies. Liberal only in
name, he is no sooner furnished with an opportu-
nity to realise his professions than he acts in a
manner completely at variance with them. We
have but to consider the steps he has hitherto taken,
and which certainly are not of a nature to encou-
rage a hope that he still will elect the better and,
in the end, the safer of the two paths open to him.
His summons of Prince Hohenlohe to the presi-
dency of the Ministry, an appointment which he is
said to have written out with his own hand, and to
have had countersigned by M. Von der Heydt
without the knowledge of the other members of
the Cabinet, is certainly not calculated to raise the •
hopes of the Liberaliparty, the whole of which,
without distinction of -shades, look upon a tho-
rough reform of the Chamber of Peers as an indis-
pensable preliminary to any real progress. To such
reform it is not be expected that Prince Hohen-
lohe, the President of that Chamber, will lend his
assistance. As a politician he is a man of little
mark, but his sympathies are well known to be with
the reactionary party, and his accession to office is
a strengthening to that element in the Cabinet.
That the Liberal members of the Government enter-
tain little hopes of gaining the ascendant and of see-
ing their policy followed is proved by their having
again, since Prince Hohenlohe's appointment, ten-
dered their resignation, which the King, however,
again refused to accept. His Majesty's frequent
conferences with the other section, which includes,
besides Prince Hohenlohe, Messrs. Von der Heydt
and Beinstorff and, General Von Roon, are con-
sidered to leave little doubt as to which way he in-
clines. To-day news reaches us from Berlin that
Baron Bismark Schonhausen has been sent for in
all haste from St. Petersburg, and the natural sup-
position is that he is to be offered a seat in the
Cabinet. This would, of course, imply the retire-
ment of the five so-called Liberal Ministers. It is
said that each section of the Cabinet has submitted
its programme and proposed its candidates for the
completion of the Government, and that both are
waiting the King's choice. The prevailing opinion
seems to be, however, that the Liberal fraction will
go to the wall. The undecided, do-little policy
followed by Messrs. Auerswald, Schwerin, and Co.
during their term of office warrants a belief that,
in the present critical circumstances, they will be
unable to resolve upon the straightforward and re-
solute course which alone could save their political
reputation and restore to them some prestige in
the eyes of the great Liberal party. It has been
suggested that the policy of the Court might be to
carry out the new elections under a seemingly
Liberal Ministry, still possessed of an amount of
popularity among the electors for which, small
though it might be, a decidedly retrograde Cabi-
net could not hope. The elections over, the Liberal
Ministers would be allowed to resign, or rather
invited to go. It is hardly to be supposed, how-
ever, that Schwerin and his colleagues would
allow themselves to be thus made cat's-paws of,
to the utter ruin of any hopes they may enter-
tain of being hereafter again supported by the
Liberal party as candidates for office. With re-
spect to M. Auerswald, his personal intimacy with
Prince Hohenlohe induces some to believe that he
might remain in power, even though Schwerin,
Patow, Bernuth, and Fackler retired. This is in
opposition to the generally credited report that those
five Ministers have resolved to stand or fall toge-
ther.
The situation of affairs at Berlin, as it to-day pre-
sents itself, viewed by the light of all the informa-
tion that up to this time has reached us, is peculiar
and complicated. We behold a vacillating King, a
divided Cabinet, a disolved Chamber, and an Op-
position majority which is confident of gaining in-
stead of losing it. the new elections, so long as no
reactionary change in the electoral law is promul-
gated in the interim. Apprehensions, it would
seem, are entertained by some of a measure of this
nature; but, on the other hand, it is said that the
King is determined to adhere to the programme of
1858, and that he will have recourse to nothing of
the nature of a mg.) detat, although he is determined
to resist, even to the edge of the sword, any encroach-
ments of what the people who surround him love to
call the subversive or destructive party. You will
have seen reports of extraordinary precautions of a
military nature lately taken at Berlin, of sealed in-
structions confided to the officers commanding posts,
and other measures denoting apprehension of dis-
turbances. To those rumours there seems no
ground for attaching weight. No doubt, there are
a number of persons in the higher and military
circles of Berlin who would be delighted to see
pretext afforded for a little blood-letting among the
populace of that capital, whose most riotous de-
monstration up to the present time, however, has
amounted only to vociferous cheering of the' popu-
lar Radical deputy, Schulze_Delitech, when he left
the Chamber on the day of its dissolution. Both
the attitude and the position of the decidedly
Liberal party in Prussia seem to be good. The