The Sun.
London, England, 1848-05-22 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 22, 1848.

Germany is yearning for the consolidation of its
disjointed kingdoms and principalities into one solid
and durable nationality. Italy is agitated with a
similar ambition. Both will require an extraordinary
amount of patience, self-sacrifice, and resolution be-
fore their aspirations can be realised. Both will have
to surmount a multitude of unforeseen difficulties
before their several confederations can be established
with any degree of permanence. Before we can
thoroughly
demonstrate the existence of these obsta-
cles, and the certainty of these perils to the Germans
and Italians, it will be necessary to comment sepa-
rately and deliberately upon the circumstances which
have recently transpired in these two important divi-
sions of the European continent.

On Thursday, the 18th of May, 1848, the National
Parliament of Germany assembled in a temporary
structure raised within St. Paul's Church at Frankfort.

Regarded as an isolated fact, the convocation and first
assemblage of the Imperial Senate of Allemania is an
occurrence calculated to inspire the imagination with
a thousand sanguine and seductive visions of futurity.
The shouts which greeted the solemn inauguration of
the Legislature, the pomp of the ceremonial, the pa-
triotic energy of the deputies, the first sound of the
voice of the Provisional President announcing the
formal constitution of the new Parliament, even the
blazonry of the national banners—black, red, and
gold—suspended above the chair of the Doyen d'age
and tapestrying the walls of the edifice with their
symbols of fraternization—constituted in themselves a
spectacle before which the most phlegmatic must
experience emotions of enthusiasm. Looking,
however, beyond these mere preliminaries, and
not allowing our judgment to be dazzled
by gorgeousness of circumstances or grandeur
of design, we detect under the mask of this
new Parliament ample cause for alarm and
hesitation. It must not be .orgotten amidst what
Jculiar events the German Senate has been convoked,
that its convocation has been preceded by the over•
throw of the ancient fabric of the country by the
convulsions of an übiquitous revolution, that the
Prussian sovereignty has been degraded in Ber-
lin, and the Austrian sovereignty paralysed
at Vienna, that an internecine war has ravaged
the face of the minor principalities, that agra-
rian outrages have embittered the relations be-
tween the peasantry and the princes, that anarchy
has prepared the way for a general estrangement,
and that the prestige which had hitherto
encompassed the cause of German nationality
has been destroyed by the brutal and unjustifiable
invasion of the territories of Denmark. Grievous as
all these occurrences are, they fall into absolute in-
significance as preventives to the consolidation of the
Germanic Empire when contrasted with the one
paramount obstruction—the selfish and unprincipled
ambition of the Mcnarch of the PRUSSIANS. It is
the evil ambition of King FREDERICK WILHELM
IV. which must prove the arch-difficulty of the Ger-
manic Parliament. It is that ambition which has
alone, of all the olden attributes of the house of BRAN•
DENBURGH, survived the abasement of the memorable
19th of March. It is that ambition which neutra-

lised the sympathies of Austria and Bavaria in re-
gard to the unanimity of the Confederates ; and it is
that malign and execrable ambition which has already
plunged the cause of Germany into an abyss of
dangers by inciting her to the passage of the Eider
and the occupation of Schleswig. Were the ambitious
intentions of Prussia doubtful in regard to the pro-
♦ocation of this war of dismemberment, they would
be sufficiently manifest in the fact, that besides the
increase of the votes of Prussia in the national
senate by the union of Prussia Proper to the Con-
federation, its influence over the decisions of the
Federal Parliament will be very materially aug-
mented by the arrival of somewhere about sixteen
representatives from different localities in the duchies
of Holstein and Schleswig. Throughout every stage
of the federative movement of Germany the after-
thought of FREDERICK WILHELM has been percep-
tible—that afterthought being the investiture of
his own brows with an imperial diadem as
EMPEROR OF GERMANY. Every successive occur-
rence has proved this from the first massacre of the
burghers of Berlin, on the 18th of March, by the
soldiers stationed in the court-yards of the palace.
Nor should we be disposed to decry the notion of
selecting FREDERICK WthaELst as the federal chief-
tain, but that the religious opposition of northern and
southern Germany, the disinclination of the Catholics
to be subservient to a Protestant Government, and, vice
versa of the Protestants to obey the mandates of a
Catholic ruler, would render any such selection as
that of the descendant of the Great FREDERICK a sig-
nal for civil war, and a plea for the sudden and per-
manent separation of the country. Hence it is that
we cannot but view with indignation and distrust

the ruinous pretensions of the Sovereign of Prussia,
because in those pretensions we can only recognise
the doom of the great cause of Germany.
On Saturday, the 13th of May, there appeared in
the Milan Gazette a proclamation of the Provisiona
Government of that city, addressed to the population
of
immediate Lombardy. That proclamation was a demand for
theincorporation of the States of Lom-
bardy with the kingdom of Sardinia. Here, again,
to our thinking, a grand and possibly an insur-
mountable obstacle to the foundation of a nationality
—arising solely from the selfish ambition of one en-
tErprising and audacious Kum. While Verona is the
residence of no less than six Austrian Archdukes,
while Vienna is threatened with bombardment, while
NUGENT has not been driven beyond the Tagliamento,
while the German troops retain possession of Palma-
nova, and continue to nanceuvre without impediment
upon the banks of the Isonzo, while the Tyrol re-
mains open for the arrival of auxiliaries and the army
of reserve receives almost every day a considerable
augmentation—it does appear to
damage
ttohascaayutsheeofleteasht
of it, to be most impolitic to damg
war of independence by a precipitate advocacy of the
ambitious claims of CARLo ALBERTO. The fervour
of the Piedmontese soldiery may be very materially
confirmed, and in a great measure increased,
by the
junction of Lombardy to the dominions of this war-
like and enterprising Monarch, but with the soldiers
of Tuscany, of Naples, and of the Papal States, it
may be altogether different. They may naturally
feel a considerable abatement of ardour on finding
that they are fighting scarcely so much for the vindi-
cation of Italian nationality as for the augmentation
of the dominions of the King of PIEDMONT.
In what we have here remarked in reference to the
position of affairs in Italy and Germany, we have
been by no means actuated by a wish to depreciate
either the conduct of CARL() ALBERTO or the charac-
ter of FREDERICK WILHELM. We estimate both
the one and the other to the fullest extent, and we
have repeatedly taken occasion to commend, in the
warmest terms of eulogium, the spontaneous efforts
at political amelioration which have illustrated the
career of the reigning King of PAUSSIA. The mili-