The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOITESALS.

TIMES.—It is something to say for the Schleswig-
Holstein question that it has become actually amus-
ing. Everybody can now understand it, and every-
body, except the inhabitants of the two Duchies and
the people of Germany, must be greatly entertained
with it. To those who are spectators only it is as
good as a play. Last Saturday we were informed that
the play was over ; but that is not exactly the case.
The actors have only agreed to suspend the perfor-
mance, and have settled no more than the terms on
which they shall retain joint possession of the stage.
The first telegram apprised the world, in charac-
teristic phraseology, that M. Bismark and Count
Blome had arrived at an understanding " by which
the mutual reclamations and the Federal rights had
been vindicated,"—expressions which appeared to
imply that the claims of Austria and Prussia had
been satisfied, while due regard was paid to the pro-
tests of Germany. But this report was immediately
succeeded by another, which gave but a partial con-
firmation even of the first half of the statement, and
utterly destroyed the second. The " mutual recla-
mations " have been appeased for the moment, but
the "Federal rights," if by that term is meant the
demands of the Germanic Confederation, have only
I been " vindicated " by excluding them from consi-
deration altogether. The very latest intelligence
now explains what has really been done. There is
no " definite solution " of the question, but Austria
and Prussia have agreed to keep the question where
it is on the conditions following :—Schleswig and
Holstein are to be separated ; Schleswig is to be
given over to the " provisional " rule of Prussia ;
Holstein to the " provisional " rule of Austria, thus
to be occupied and governed until the occupying
Powers shall otherwise determine. In the meantime
Austria allows Prussia to take and keep Lauenburg
absolutely, in return for which cession of somebody
else's property Prussia pays Austria a handsome
sum of money. Those are the terms of the
"Austro-Prusso-Danish " Treaty, signed at Gas-
tein on the 14th instant, and followed by a cordial
meeting between the two contracting Sovereigns.
We hope the Germans are gratified with this
" vindication of Federal rights." For the last 20
years they have been striving to take Schleswig-
Holstein away from Denmark, and convert it into a
province of the Confederation, so as to strengthen
the Bund against Austria and Prussia by adding an
influential State to the Federal Body. Not content
with Holstein, which was really German, though
the patrimony of a Danish Duke, they wanted
Schleswig also, and with these views they elaborated
the theory of a mysterious and indissoluble union
between the two Duchies. Some centuries ago such
a scheme of union was really adopted to serve an
occasion, and the Germans maintained that this
little piece of accidental diplomacy possessed a sanc-
tity beyond any other treaty or convention ever
known to the world. States might vanish and
Empires disappear, but nothing could ever detach
Holstein from Schleswig. This one act of the Middle
Ages was to last for ever—all in order that Holstein,
when Germany could reclaim it, might draw Schles-
wig along with it into the Confederation, and add a
seaboard and a few harbours to its resources. That
was the end; and the means for attaining it were
soon devised. The German portion of the population
was first excited to disaffection, and then assured of
commiseration and sympathy. It was represented
as intolerable that the Germans should be " op-
pressed" by a foreign Prince, while Germany was
at hand to rescue them ; nationality was invoked,
and the cry was, " Germany for the Germans, and
Denmark for the Danes." Ultimately, when the
long-desired opportunity at length occurred, the
Germans decreed " Federal Execution" against the
King of Denmark, on the pretext of his refusal to
introduce sufficient unity of administration into
these compound territories, and invaded Holstein
with a Federal Army. A few weeks saw this Federal
army rudely ejected from the Duchies by Austria
and Prussia, who assumed to themselves the whole
control of the affair, and have now brought it "pro-
visionally" to a conclusion. Germany will not get a
new Prince, nor the confederation a new State.
All the claims of all the pretenders to the succession
the two Duchies have been thrown overboard together,
and it is declared that there is no rightful heir to be
put in possession of his own. But the cruellest cut of
all is the division of the " indivisible." All that
Germany has been maintaining and demonstrating
for an entire generation is upset and demolished.
The indissoluble union has been fairly dissolved.
The very name of the case is extinguished, and we
must talk of Schleswig Holstein no longer. Schles-
wig is one country, and Holstein is another. They
are not only under different administrations, but
under different sovereigns. They have nothing in
common except foreign occupation, and may be
actually at war with each other any day in the year.
There is thus not a single pretension advanced by
Germany throughout this controversy which is not
absolutely subverted by its conclusion ' • and, to
improve the matter, the whole advantage which
Germany had anticipated for herself is carried to the
account of those two Powers which it regards with
the greatest jealousy, and against which it sought
for support. This is the vindication which the
Federal rights have received. It is certainly as
much as they merited, but we should not think the
Germans would much admire the result. We cannot
pretend to regret that we are free from entangle-
ment in these proceedings, but we are not sure that
the reflections of European politicians on the case
will be altogether satisfactory. The strong have
been allowed to substitute might for right without
interference. Nobody can pretend to say that
Austria and Prussia had the least right whatever to
take the territory of the Duchies from Denmark and
divide it between themselves. They had not adopted
even the pretext put forward by Germany, or pro-
moted the restoration of an alleged heir to the pro-
perty. They have declared that there is no such
heir to he found, and have partitioned the inheri-
tance in default. But by what title, then, except
that of Conquest, are they now acting ? And in what
cause did they commence the war ? Germany, at
least, pretended to support the pretensions of a
rightful heir in the person of the Duke of Augusten-
burg, and to insist on unity of administration in an
indivisible inheritance. But Austria and Prussia
recognise no heir and no unity of either inheritance
Or administration. They have not deigned to con-
sult the people of the Duchies, and they set the doctrine
of nationalities at utter defiance. Prussia has esta-
blished herself as sovereign in the Danish province
of Schleswig, and is not very likely to retire from
the position. Probably, in the end, she will get
Holstein too, in consideration either of money paid
down or cessions elsewhere. Nor is this policy dis-
approved by the educated and frugal people of
Prussia, for the price is gratifying, and the love of
territory overpowers all other thoughts. This, how-
ever, is precisely the passion which in times past it
was thought desirable to control by political concert
and combined authority. One State could not en-
croach upon another except at the risk of being
punished by the rest in the common interest of the
whole. This risk appears now to be removed, and
we see a specimen of the consequences. True, we
have escaped a war which, indeed, as affairs actually
stood, we were entitled to decline, but an unwel-
come precedent has been established, and it has
been plainly shown that international justice may
be completely dissociated from international peace.
HERALD.—America is given over to Nemesis.
The people of the Northern States, who rushed so
madly into an unjust and fratricidal war, are now
suffering from the evils their work has wrought.
The latest accounts from the Empire City seem al-
most to compel the belief that law and order have
lost their power in the land of the Stars and Stripes.
From the narrative of our correspondent the entire
territory of the Union seems smitten with a moral
epidemic, as desolating al, and infinitely more sad-
dening than, the ravages of the dreaded pestilence
or the fell swoop of the avenging angel. It is not
that here and there great crimes are committed or
murders of a peculiarly shocking and revolting cha-
racter are perpetrated. It is not that, as in the
case of Pritchard, or Forwood, or Currie, a wretch
is to be found here and there to whose bosom hu-
manity and tenderness are strangers. It is not that
society is now and then shocked by an atrocious
homicide, or startled by a tremendous fraud, or
scandalised by an exceptionally abominable instance
of social depravity. Of such offences every State
will furnish some, and it would be extremely un-
fair to argue from individual iniquity to national
corruption. But the intelligence from the land of
freedom does not tell us of isolated cases. We
read of crimes at which humanity shudders, fur-
nishing the newspapers with their daily staple, and
newspaper readers with their most valued mental
pabulum. Our American intelligence comes from
a land in which murder, arson, robbery, and brutal
violence to the weaker sex are holding high car-
nival. The press teems with narratives revolting
in their details, and appalling in their frequency.
Society resounds with tales of the abominations
done by every rank and order ; by ragged rascals
who beg their bread in the streets, and by aspiring
members of the shoddy aristocracy. Horrors come
thick and threefold with every morning's post.
They fill the papers to overflowing, and supply the
cessation of news from the seat of war or the lack
of political rumours. Great crimes have become
recognised institutions. The record of their com-
mission is a feature which has attained to the dignity
of a " standing heading" in Transatlantic journals,
as if it were devoted to chronicling European
arrivals or Wall-street dealings. One of the most
successful New York papers makes " The Criminal
Era" a prominent feature, and under tliis apt
description serves up from two to five columns of
objectionable details to feed the morbid appetites of
its readers and minister to their unhealthy craving
for demoralising sensations. In short, American

respect for law and regard for virtue seems to be
things of the past, and rowdyism runs rampant
through every State which owned the sway of
President Lincoln. In our yesterday's impression
we briefly glanced at a few of the recent occur-,
rences which have called forth these remarks. Be
it remembered that we are only dealing with the
criminal chronicle of something like a week. In
one case two children had been murdered at Rox-
burg, Massachusetts, and in another a matricide
and sororicide had been committed at Manchester,
Connecticut, by a fellow whose impelling motive
was a desire to get possession of a few hundred
pounds by imbruing his hands in the blood of his
nearest relatives. In Broadway, New York, a
drunken reprobate avenged an old family feud
by shooting his brother through the heart. In
Wisconsin a farmer's wife poisoned her husband
because he had taken a pretty girl to a circus. At
Louisville a squad of soldiers literally ran a-muck
through the town, firing at random upon peaceful
citizens. At Chicago a free fight among bowie-
knife-armed Amazons ended in the death of one and
the serious injury of two others. And the irrepres-
sible negro comes out in a new but not an unex-
pected character. The blacks, whom Republicans
and Democrats alike are proposing to enfranchise,
are proving their fitness for freedom by outraging
their liberator's wives and daughters, while the
boatmen of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal have
been equally merciless-to the coloured women living
on its banks. As showing the practical value of
emancipation theories, we may mention that the
black offenders have ,een lynched, or handed over
to the police, while white delinquents of the same
class enjoy a practical immunity. Suicides are un-
precedentedly frequent. The burglars are busy.
Coiners and currency counterfeiters are hard at
work manufacturing their spurious capital, or forcing
it into circulation with true Yankee perseverance
and ingenuity. Gamblers lay in wait for simple-
tons at every turn. As the sun goes down garrot-
ters and footpads start from every corner. In New
York, with a population less than one-fourth that
of London, the police arrested twenty thousand
persons in the space of three months, a proportion
which would make every tenth person in the city
an inmate of a prison in the course of the year.
No wonder that the gaols are crowded, the lawyers
busy, the judges overworked, and the criminal
courts overdone, when the dangerous classes are
so numerous. But even this redundancy of de-
tected crime in the commercial capital is not so
bad as the impunity enjoyed by murderers and
felons in other parts of the Union. We read of
states where law is impotent, and of wide regions
in which society seems resolved into its elements
—of large districts where constitutional authority
is at an end, and extensive territories where the
anarchy of mob rule is checked only by the fit-
ful and arbitrary administration of martial law.
All this is very lamentable, but not at all won-
derful. Our American cousins have sown the
wind, and they must now be content to reap the
whirlwind. The war in which they engaged was a
blunder, whose effects they are probably only now
beginning to feel. Their attempt to subjugate the
South was a crime, which by a moral necessity carried
with it its own punishment. The Providence-which
goes with great battalions insured to the Federal
forces an undeserved and inglorious victory. The
North sung paeans of triumph over a conquest
achieved by brute force over moral power; by over-
whelming numbers over skilful generalship ; by
favouring circumstances over dogged determination.
When Richmond fell, when Lee surrendered, when
Jefferson Davis was taken prisoner, the men who
went to war for the idea of Union were fiercely ex-
ultant. They would wreak their vengeance on their
fallen foe, and hurl defiance against every power of
Christendom. They would reconstruct the Union
on the bases of universal liberty and military despo-
tism, of emancipation to the negro and enslavement
of the Southern. They would steep their gallant
antagonists to the lips in humiliation, would rob
them of their property, deprive them of their citizen-
ship, and send them penniless, homeless, and hope-
less, to earn their bread by servile toil. They have
attained a success as unexpected as it was unde-
served. So far as effective resistance goes the South
is as powerless as Poland or Denmark. According
to its own confident calculations the North should
now have nothing to do but to take its ease, to eat,
drink, and be merry. But neither nations nor in-
dividuals can hope to practise iniquity with impu-
nity. We speak not now of theloss the Federals have
sustained in the countless hecatombs of unreturning
brave, who lie on the fields their blood, for any noble
purpose, reddened in vain. We pass over the misery,
past, present, and to come, endured by the wounded
and maimed of the Northern armies. Purposely
leaving Southern suffering of this nature out of the
calculation, we are willing also to ignore for the pre-
sent the frightful incubus of Federal debt, the impo-
verishment of Federal finances, the curtailment of
Northern commerce by converting those who might
have been excellent customers into bitter and beg-
gared foes. We speak only of the demoralisation
the war has wrought, of the national virtues it has
sapped, the thirst for blood it has created, the dis-
regard for reason, humanity, and religion it has
engendered. In details such as these we published
yesterday we see how deeply and widely the virus
has penetrated in every portion of the Great Re-
public's body corporate. The more closely we
observe it, the more attentively we scrutinise it, the
more deeply do we regret the infatuation which
occasioned it ; but the more completely also do we
recognise the justice of the moral retribution which
has followed it.