The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-03 00:00:00

GERMANY

AND

THE NORTHERN STATES.

PRUSSIA.

The elections for electors to the first Chamber took
place at Berlin on the 29th ult. The number of persons
chosen to return the memtitrs to the first Chamber for
Berlin is 130 only. They are almost all reactionaries,
so that while the lower Chamber will have a Democratic
majority the reactionaries, thanks to the limitation of
the franchise, will reign supreme in the upper. At
Breslau, Stettin, Halle, and several other places, the re-
actionaries have secured the majority among the electors
to the upper Chamber. A collision between the two
Chambers would therefore appear to be inevitable.
The following in the note which has been addressed
by the Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs to the
Prussian diplomatic agents at the various Courts of
Germany on the subject of the Headship of the Ger-
man Empire:—

"The proceedings entered upon last April, by the German
National Assembly, convoked in Frankfort, for the purpose
of founding a new Constitution for Germany, are approach-
ing the crisis in which the German States will have to de-
clare themselves, concerning the result of the Assembly's
labours. At the time the Assembly met, the revision of the
Constitution of the Confederation, although already com-
menced, had not advanced far enough to enable the German
Governments to lav before the said Assembly a scheme of Con-
stitution concerted in common, or to be the prolocutors of this
scheme before the Assembly. The Assembly found itself
obliged to take the work of Constitution in hand on its own
account, while both the passive temper exhibited by the
Governments, many of which found their powers entirely
engrossed by internal affairs, and the palpable difficulty of
coming to an accord with thirty-seven different and inde-
pendent States, might contribute to raise to a high standard
the conceptions prevalent as to the extent of the political
powers of the Assembly. The Prussian Government also
thought itself bound to attach great importance to the situa-
tion in which the German States found themselves, whilst
thus opposed to an Assembly legally elected from the col-
lective body of the nation. It thought it ought to exert
itself to the utmost not to step forth with negations before
an Assembly before which the Governments of Germany
had laid no positive proposals. It thought that the German
nation had a right to demand protection from all ex-
traneous impediments while an attempt was being made
to arrive at unity in a way legally laid open in part by
the German Government, and in point conceded by them.
It was this point that the Prussian Government most espe-
cially kept in view alter its July proposals, for gaining a
basis for a collective representation if the German Govern-
ment had failed, and after other attempts also to bring
matters into the path of conciliatory understanding had
proved fruitless; and at the same time, while it was unhesi-
tatingly willing to retire awhile from the executive functions
of the Confederation, and to approve the conferment of
them upon his Imperial Highness the Archduke John of
Austria, it has, with no little devotion, and often with self-
denial, supported and sustained the Central Power of Ger-
many by the means and resources of Prussia. The aim has
been gained. The National Assembly in Frankfort has been
able freely to devote itself, for almost:eight months, to its
constituent labours, and, as these labours are apparently
approaching their end, every German Government will feel
itself called upon to co-operate in bringing these labours to
a happy issue, and to prevent any possible failure being laid
to the fault of the individual Governments. The Prussian
Government may cherish a hope that it is secure from such
culpation, but it is very well aware that its assent alone is
not sufficient to bring a remodelment of the German Con-
stitution into life, and that the failure of the great scheme
would not be the less lamentable even if it were proved be-
yond all doubt that Prussia was not the rock it had split upon.
" Induced by these contemplations, the Prussion Govern-
ment would have proceeded, at an earlier moment, to propose
the preparation of the declarations which are expected to be
made, within a short interval, by the States of the German
Confederation. But a momentuous epoch of development in
its own state coincided, in point of time, with a decisive turn
taken by the internal affairs in Austria, which, as being the
most powerful member of the Confederation, was the more
called upon to take the initiative, because the European posi-
tion, and the high vocation of the Austrian Imperial State,
added to the central constitutional direction taken by affairs,
would necessarily aggravate the difficulty of its entering
upon a number of those provisions regarding federal policy
in which the National Assembly in Frankfort thought to
discern the express wishes of the collective German na-
tion. The Austrian State is attached to Germany by an-
cient bonds, and in the most troubled period of the past
yestr it has given these bonds a new and closer signification
(eine neue Innigkeil), by a prince of the Imperial House of
Austria undertaking the conduct of the affairs of Ger-
many. On its part, again, the rest of Germany cannot
renounce the old connexion with Austria; and, least of all,
would the Prussian Government have been able to advance
a plan depending on the dissolution of the bonds of union
hitherto existing; on the contrary it was indispensable to
it to know the intentions of the Austrian Government in
relation to the Constitution of Germany after the internal
affairs of the Austrian State had been replaced on a firmer
basis.
now Niri
findst h
ith
ge
ugreatestdseadt i
thf aactt iAo nu
Austria,
ie
aregarding,
like
our-
selves the German Confederation as still in existence, wishes
to remain in the same, to take part in its vigorous develop-
ment, while she is ready to come to an understanding on
this subject with the National Assembly and the rest of the
German Governments. This understanding must un-
doubtedly be of such a nature as neither tc present obstacles
to Austria, while she endeavours, in the whole extent of her