The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-29 00:00:00

GERMANY AND THE SCHLESTVIG-110L-

STEIN QUESTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

45, Hyde-park-street, Glasgow, July 24.
Dev.r Sir,—l submit the following very interest-
ing letter from a well known German patriot, and
would impress on your readers' attention the diffe-
rent points so ably elucidated by him, regarding
our danger from the northern despotisms, and our
shameful neglect of the free Germans—our kindred
by one common origin, commercial interests, and
religious and political sympathies.—Respectfully
yours, JOHN MADAM.

23, Townshend-road, St. John's-wood,
London, N.W., July 22, 1862.
Dear Sir,—The friendly spirit you have evinced
towards the cause of down-trodden Schleswig-
Holstein, and the warm-hearted sympathy with
which you have interested yourself in the German
populace. movement at large, emboldens me to ad-
dress ;some remarks to you on the state and the pro-
spect , of our struggle for freedom and union.
Tb e present moment is one eminently calculated
to draw the attention of Englishmen to German
affairs. Russia and France are stated to have en-
tered into a mutual compact which may become a
d' anger to the security of all Europe, and force this
country to assume a position of great watchfulness.
Under these circumstances, the importance of Ger-
-many, as the great intermediate wedge that divides
the conspiring autocrats of the West and East, be-
comes at once apparent. The power that England
wields at sea, the 47 millions of Germans can com-
mend on land—provided their forces are rendered
efficient, and available for the right purpose, by a
Tplitical union reposing on the principle of self-
government—therefore it is that the popular move-
-meat which is now once more springing uP in my
:native country has a European significance apart
from the object it pursues of national regeneration.
The despots of Russia and France may desire a
divided Germany. They may strive to perpetuate
political weakness in the centre of Europe, er to
Promote the plan of a " First partition" by
urging Prussia into a path where she would be
at the mercy,of her western and eastern neighbours.
But Englishmen, looking at the question in a large
minded manner, will keep to a different policy.
England must know that the possession of the
German Rhinelands by their rightful owner, serv-
ing as it does as a protection to the independence
of the Low Countries, forms a bulwark to the
British shores themselves. In the same way, Eng-
land ought ever to recollect that on the day when
the designs are realised which Russia entertains on
the German Duchies, North of the Elbe, Muscovite
Power will be established in rather too close a
proximity to her own coasts.
Rightly, therefore, have you, sir, pointed to the
necessity of a powerful, free, united Germany, as
one of the great mainstays of European security
and human progress. There are those I know,
who, in the plenitude of their ignorance, doubt the
very existence of a German nation. They speak of
" Prussia," " Austria," and what they call the
" German States," as though they had to deal with
empires and nationalities utterly strange to each
other. They forget that, from the Alps to the
German Ocean and the Baltic, from the Rhine to
the Memel and March, we are a homogeneous race
—with but a few scattered fragments of foreign
speaking population on the outskirts of our eastern
and southern frontier, such, in fact, as is to be
found in every other country. They forget that,
Italy excepted, we are in race and language more
united than any other European people. They
forget that, eves now, the German Confederacy,
including upwards of 40 millions of inhabitants,
forms a political bond, weak and unsatisfactory, no
doubt, but still a bond for a population which,
during nearly a thousand years, was gathered in
the folds of an Empire. They forget that the
German nation, which produced the great maritime
and trading league, the Hansa, and the influential
confederations of free cities in the south, made
powerful strides during the epoch of the Reforma-
tion towards political regeneration, and that its
present division is mainly owing to the miseries
entailed upon it during a thirty years' war, in
which our country, sacrificing itself for the con-
quest of the right of free thought, was con-
verted into a battle-ground for the ambition of
her neighbours. They forgot that, like a hurri-
cane that had slept for a while, we indignantly
rose against the First Napoleon to recover a
national independence our worthless princes had
lost. They forget that, since the days of that
struggle, the idea of union and freedom has fired
the imagination of our youth, and occupied the
mind and the energies of our manhood ; that perse-
cutions the most frightful—the chain, the torture-
chamber, and the decrees of proscription---have not
been able to annihilate the " demagogic" propa-
ganda of national deliverance; that in 1830, and
the years immediately following, the patriotic spark
burst forth into a bright flame ; and that in 1848-9
revolution at Berlin and at Vienna, at Frankfort,
Dresden, and in the blood-soaked fields of Baden,
raised on high the banner of a free, united Ger-
many, which it cost the most frantic efforts of per-
jured princes to drag down to the ground.
Inveterate doubters abound in all parts of the
world—men who never believe except in what has
been already accomplished. You, Sir, who advo-
cated the cause of Italy at a time when it had to
struggle both against oppression and public scep-
ticism—you aro not of those that judge of aspira-
tions from the mere retrospective point of view of
success. You look to the righteousness of prin-
cip.es, and to the zeal of those that work for them.
Being satisfied on these points, you give your sym-
pathy and your active support, content to wait for
the success that follows in due course. I, there-
fore, confidently address you as one who hopes and
believes in the cause for which millions of German
hearts are beating—a cause to avenge which, I
trust, a forest of strong arms will be lifted at no
very distant time, bringing the doom to the usurp-
ing Alaebeths who have made away with our
liberties.
But I have been asked to treat to-day specially
of the question of the Duchies under Danish sway.
Let me here say at once that that question is
only a part of the general question of German
nationality and deliverance. Schleswig-Holstein
~N•ill be free when our nation at large has risen.
Schleswig-Holstein will remain enslaved as long
pettifogging Cabinet policy
as the of thirty
tyrants is in vogue. This may
seem extraordi-
ho are wont to combat
the demands nary to those w
of the Duchies
by pointing to the alleged am-
bition of the Prussian Court.
by
It has been often i
asserted, indeed, both Danish authors and by
such English writers as drew their information
from
merely Danish sources, that the Court of Berlin Was
at the bottom of the whole affair.
But surely, no allegation could be falser than this,
Schleswig-Holstein independence was first esta-
blished at a time when the kingdom of Prussia did
even exist. Schleswig-Holstein'snot rights date
back to a period when the Republican Ilansc Con-
federation ruled in the German Ocean and the
Baltic, and when the Duchies were considered as
one of the bulwarks of that League. So far from
the Hohenzollern dynasty having revived, in our
days, the agitation for the independence of the
I )achics, this movement arose spontaneously among
the population themselves. In 1848, when the
Schleswig-Holsteiners drove out the Danes, it re-
quired nothing less than a popular revolution at
Berlin to compel King Frederick William IV. to
send some succour to the struggling German bre-
thren. And no sooner had he reluctantly done so
than he played false to their cause. This a diplo-
matic note in existence, sent by the Prussian Court
through Mr. von Wildenhruch, to the Copenhagen
Government, in which King Frederick William
declared, in s 0 many words, that he had only sent
his troops to interfere in the struggle in order to
g, counteract the republican elements and preserve
the Duchies to their legitimate monarch."
Are these facts not remarkable when put side to
side, with the " interest" the Prussian Government
are so frequently supposed to have in the Schleswig-
Holstein affair ? But monarchs often entertain adif-
ferent conception of their interests to what other
mortals might
conceive them to be.
. Witness the
anurge the present 1:-.ing of Prussia pareues in his