The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-28 00:00:00

land. We bethink ourselves at once of our own
national share in the guarantee solemnly entered
into by the eight leading Powers of Europe, in the
92d article of the Treaty of Vienna. Remarking
which—no wonder the member for Horsham,
addressed those urgent inquiries of his to the
noble lord her Majesty's Foreign Secretary.
As we have intimated, Lord J. RUSSELL'S reply
to these inquiries yesterday in the House of Com-
mons will be found, upon examination, to have
resolved itself into a Ministerial statement of the
very last importance. "It is proposed," said the
noble lord, " that there should be a Conference of
the Powers of Europe who signed the Treaty of
Vienna on a particular subject, and that subject
is, as it is stated by the French Government, to
reconcile the 92d article of the Treaty of Vienna,
to which all the Powers of Europe who signed
that treaty are parties, with the second article
of the Treaty of Turin, which has lately been
concluded between the Emperor of the FRENCH
and the King of SARDINIA." The noble lord
observes further on in his statement, that "From
communications I have received, and from the de-
clarations which the Emperor of the FRENCH has
made from time to time, I conceive that to any
measures that may be properly called the dismem-
berment of Savoy we should find in the Conference
that the present Government would be decidedly
opposed ; but it is obvious that there may be other
measures which would not amount to dismember-
ment, but which would yet give a military fron-
tier to Switzerland, which might be pro-
posed by Switzerland." That is the glim-
mering of a possible compromise in the
hereafter. But, meanwhile are these not
ominous portents of a difference already spring-
ing up between France .and England ? Let Lord
JOHN RUSSELL'S own remarks yet further be our
answer—" We have stated," he says, " more than
once at Paris, and Lord COWLEY has stated it even
since his return to Paris, that, in our opinion, it is
most desirable that no civil or military occupation
by France should take place until the Conference
has considered this question of the neutralised
parts of Savoy, and under what restrictions those
neutralised portions shall be hereafter held, and in
what manner they shall be disposed of. The
French Government, however, I must say, on the
other side, state that they see great difficulty in as-
senting to such a proposition, because it would
seem to assume that the Treaty of Turin did not
perfectly do what it purported to do—namely,
transfer the whole sovereignty of Savoy from the
King of SARDINIA, its late or present Sove-
reign, to the Emperor of the FRENCH." So
that already—before the proposed Conference
is decided upon being held—the two Governments'
are avowedly at cross purposes. Bearing which
significant fact in our remembrance, we cannot but
apply to this question of Savoy those solemn and
impressive words with which Sir E. B. LYT-
TON closed his masterly speech upon Re-
form upon the preceding evening, when the
right hon. gentleman referred to the visible and
awful necessity fast coming upon us, namely, that
threatening to render, very speedily, imperative
" the cautious consideration of dangers which
would alarm the boldest statesman and menace the
strongest thrones ! " Happily, we can all bear in
mind in these emergencies the epitomized encou-
ragement which the wisdom of ages has condensed
into a proverb that familiar proverb, which
avers that those are " Forearmed who are Fore-
warned !"

In the district of Yorkshire whence the sandstone
flags of our. pavements are largely brought a pecu-
liar mode of building even large houses prevails.
Each wall is composed of two comparatively thin
facings of stone, an outside and inside one, perfectly
independent of each other ; the intervening space is
filled with small loose stone or rubble. The two
walls, which thus should form but one, would of
course bulge out with the weight and pressure of
the rabble, and soon totter and full ; but they are
connected at proper intervals by longer stones
called " throughs," which, passing from the front
casing-wall to the back one, connect the two firmly
together, and make the whole fabric very strong.
Germany is just now much like one of these
walls, with the sad difference that it wants the
" throughs." There are the two principal States,
Austria and Prussia, and the abundant rubble of
smaller States between them. The Diet should
answer to the " throughs ;" but, failing in its object,
it rather aids than otherwise the lateral action of•
the rubble states, and instead of serving to bind all
together into one strong fabric—one which might
resist the shock which threatens the western front
of the "Fatherland"—it rather serves to invite the
Emperor of the FRENCH to try whether the experi•
ment of the ram's horns might not be again suc-
cessful. Austria and Prussia combined, and
strengthened by the states otherwise insignificant,
might bid defiance to the legion:, on the other side
of the Rhine. In their present relation to each
other they almost call upon an ambitious military
power to give them the ruinous push.

The debate in the Prussian Chamber, an account
of which appeared in The Sun of Thursday, shews
that Prussia still aspires to the lead of Germany.
The Diet, under Austrian influence, does not
favour Prussian ambition. Prussians, therefore, are
prepared to treat the Diet as a dead and buried
thing. While it confines itself to words she will
take no active steps, but if the Diet seeks to con
strain Hesse again by violence, it may be necessary
for Prussia too to draw the sword. Such is the
language of speakers who support the present
Government of Prussia. They acknowledge that
he whom we may now call the late King did de•
grade his country by a crouching submission to
Austria, and to despotic counsels, at the instigation
of the puppy aristocracy which then controlled his
vacillating mind. They have now a firmer hand at
the helm of affairs, and the REGENT, if very far
from a liberal in the English notion of the word, is
liberal for a German Prince, and seems to feel with
his Chambers the necessity of having the German
nations, and not their rulers only, well affected to-
wards the Headship of Prussia. This cannot be
unless Prussia avow herself the friend of free in-
stitutions. To these the people, after almost half
a century of falsified promises, still look as to
their right. The resolution of confidence in
the Government was carried by an overwhelming
majority after what must be called, for Germany,
a thoroughly radical debate ; one in which—Prussia
at the head of the German peoples—was the domi-
nant idea. If we may recur to the illustration with
which we commenced, Prussia is trying to cement
to her the loose rubble of States between her and
Austria, by pouring in the cohesive strength of
liberal sympathies.
Meantime what is Austria doing ? Falling to
pieces. Her military strength is disorganised. Her
exchequer bankrupt. Her finance Minister, after
years of fraud on the State's behalf and on his own,
has dismissed himself from the world, after his
Sovereign had dismissed him from office. Venetia
paralyses alike her army and her Exchequer. Hun-
gary would do both, but that coercion.has extorted,
there, ruinous loans from the people. But the co-
ercion itself probably costs almost if not quite as
much as it extorts. The states around the heredi-