The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-13 00:00:00

Tll3 WEATHER.—Finx Omer, Dic„ 13, 060,
THIIRMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
44—highest since noon yesterday.
33--lowest this morning and during the night.
42—this day at noon.(
BA.uourrEu-30.15 ; still rising.
WIND—North-Easterly ; fresh and cold, with dull hazy'
weather. Rain came on suddenly yesterday afternoon—
but now again the indications are frosty.

HIGH WATER ATLONDON BRIDGE.
ram DAY.—Morning, lh. L
59mternoon, 2h. 22m.
TO-3101tROW.-MollliLlg, 2h. 45m.—Afternoon,: 3h. Bm.

-- -
o.ras of
The FOUCHE of Prussia is STIEBER the Police
Director. In his grasp rather than in then p
the chief among the responsible
even of his Royal
Ministers of the
Crown, rather than in the grasp
Highness the Prince Regent, are gathered together
the converging reins of that so-called Constitutional
Government.
'
He is virtually above all authority
or administrative.
whatsoever, either judicial
More accurately than Sir JOHN FALSTAFF could
exclaim, on the accession to the throne of Prince
Hal, his late boon-companion, " The laws of England
are at my commanding !" far more accurately
might M. STIEBER declare the laws of Prussia to
be at hii behest upon an emergency.
It is only
..lust now, in fact, that the reality
of this suprenZ) and super-eminent autho-
rity appertaining
the Prussian Police
1,0
Director has—upon a b't.;mewhat extraordinary
occasion—been rather glai-inglY demonstrated.
Allusion being here made, elf course, to the
sudden close put mysteriously to the tl'ial of another
Prussian official, to wit, the Public Prose-,ntitor, the
tee` else
SCHWARCK. The :
tions of this said official—official now, however, 1'
longer, M. SCHWARCK having been dismissed from 1
his post very summarily, not to say ignominiously
—were becoming so inconvenient (to say the least
of it) upon the occasion of this trial that—wonder-
ful to relate—the trial itself was abruptly termi-
nated ! And how terminated ? By the premature
acquittal of the all-powerful Police Director afore-
said. M. STIEBER, in fact, was acquitted honour-
ably (?) at the end of these astounding proceedings.
M. SCHWARCK on the contrary was, as we have
said, summarily dismissed ! The Police Director
got the better (almost as a matter of course it will
now be understood—in Prussia!) of the Public
Presecutor. And this actually too after suck
revelations ! Revelations of a character so
flagrant and outrageous that the illegality
of the arbitrary acts authorized by M. i
STIEBER on the part of his subordinates in
their treatment of our fellow-countryman, Captain I
MACDONALD, sinking by comparison into absolute
insignificance when compared with the mass of
illegalities on the part of the Police Director now
brought to light opportunely or inopportunely as
the case may be regarded by M. STIEBER'S
antagonists or partizans. For example, has it not
now been " proven" that within an interval of no
more than eight months' duration, dating namely
from July, 1855, to February, 1856, the enormous
number of 387—close upon 400—illegal arrests and
detentions have been brought home to this energetic
FOUCHE of the Berlin Administration ! Seven
days being moreover the shortest period of
imprisonment noted in this dark catalogue of
illegal detentions ! Added to all which detestable
violations of the law relating to persons, there have
been numerous other scarcely less detestable out-
rages perpetrated at the instance of this police
inquisitor, with a view to the strangling of the
freedom of public opinion as expressed (surely in
the boldest instance yet upon record, in a very
moderate way) by the press of Prussia. Gladly do
we note, however, sufficientry significant indica-
tions that the press of Prussia is not quite so
readily tobe silenced as M. STIEBER appears to have
imagined. Instance the Cologne Anzeiger, that
upon the very morrow of its condemnation,
reverts to a manly discusssion of the pro
ceedings, for thus discussing which it has been
so very recently condemned. As incorrigibly in-
different to reproof, in truth, is this same out-
spoken and irrepressible Prussian contemporary of
ours, the Cologne Anzeiger, as even the unblenehing
Liberator himself when—the Speaker of the House
of Commons having formally notified to him the
stern reproof decided to be pronounced against
him (the Liberator) by that branch of the Im-
perial Legislature—O'CoNNELL rose, and pulling
I his wig over his ears as the indication of a long
speech coming, began thus, with oily accents and
his eye twinkling, " Sir, I have listened atten-
tively to every word that has fallen from your
lips, and I take leave to say to the House at once
that I don't feel in the least reproved, &c." It is
precisely thus with the Cologne Anzeiger. It has
hardly been twenty-four hours under sentence of
condemnation—when it is at it again !
However much STIEBEB. may be backed up by the
authorities at Berlin, and more or less throughout the
chief part of the Prussian Sovereignty, we take it
for certain that the policy of which that unscrupu-
lous °facial is the willing instrument cannot much
longer be persi3Lcd in nowadays with con-
tinued impunity. The Police of Naples was
scarcely more an outrage upon the spirit of the
age, the laws enforced against the Press through-
out the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were
scarcely more monstrously in defiance of the genius
of this latter half of the nineteenth century than
the Police and the Press policy sheltered and fos-
tered now for years and years past, so
perversely under the shadow of the mantle, so to
speak, of the nominally, and for the most part only
nominally, Constitutional Government of Prussia.
For the continuance of this haughty and grinding
system, to whom can the Prussians look as responsi-
ble? Not assuredly to that poor maundering fauseant
now dreaming away the last days of his life in
the galleries and gardens of Sans Souci—most
melancholy of all misnomers in the motley nomen-
clature of the royal palaces of Christendom ! No,
not to poor FREIDERICH WILHELM IV. can his
people now look as upon one in these matters in
any way responsible. It is elsewhere they must
look, it is elsewhere they will inevitably sooner or
`later look to discover and arraign the real possessor
\l
of this responsibility. Let the Prince Regent
therefore
see well to it—and this betimes.

Sir C.
i i rrtnsu vELTAN was
recalled for an act of
high civil bordin
ation, he has been some
time in England, and at
__
length he has published
a pamphlet in justification of his conduct. His
own views of the necessity of the course he
to the public,
i
adopted have never yet been given
and it is of course buc English fa 1 13=r- a 3, to give
him a patient hearing. It may well be that his
views were right, but that his mode of
Compel-
ling attention to them was wrong; So wrong
that the recal of Mr. WILSON, perhaps of Lord
CANNING also, or the recal of Sir C. TREVELYAN,
were the only alternatives. On the latter point
there can hardly be a doubt. If the man Was

. 4.
44 44% tto
• • I,„W
- ..,f , ,„„ • • _(•) • .;;4 'RR

THE SUN.
LONDON, THURSDAY, DEC. 13, 1860.