The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-24 00:00:00

PRUSSIAN LIBERTY;

•
It was not to be expected that the tide of Liberal
tendencies which seems to be setting in at Berlin
should flow smoothly and steadily a t once, Many
eddies will be formed by the still strong ULT.=
current which runs towards despotism, and at some
points it will be doubtful whether there is really
any advance of the stream. The last news is that
the Prussian GOvernment has somewhat yielded to
the loud outcry which has risen from the partisans
of the late system. The Minister of the Interior
has issued a circular, which though its terms are
obscure enough can only be regarded as a check to
the more advanced Constitutionalists. They arc
informed that certain meetings have given rise
to " expression of wishes and hopes the fulfil-
ment of which it is the duty of the present
Government distinctly to refuse." The provin-
cial Governments are counselled to resist " such
erroneous opinions, and all expectations which go
beyond the just limit of a fair appreciation of the
relations and requirements of the time." " The Go-
vernment," it is added, "is aware that its business
is not to renounce all those traditions which are
the greatness and strength of Prussia." These
vague and somewhat verbose sentences convey,
however, a sufficient meaning to Prussian ears. It
is understood that the Government regrets and
almost fears to see how much is expected of it.
Prussia and Europe have taken too seriously the
Regent's accession, his reference to the Constitution
in his first proclamation, his dismissal of the old
Ministry, and his summoning of the Legislative
Chambers. The Regent is somewhat alarmed at his
own popularity. He has become a patriot ruler
rather too rapidly for his own self-possession. He
has called up the fair form of Liberty, and
she has so suddenly answered the invocation
that the Royal magician starts back amazed.
The goddess appears to his bewildered eyes in the
guise which has alienated so many of her worship-
pers. The Regent fancies, and those around him
second the delusion, that she wears a blood red
mantle, that her head is surmounted with a
Phrygian cap, that she stands sword in hand on a
barricade, and points to a guillotine. The fact is,
that the recent events in Prussia have frightened
&large class of very worthy people. We need
hardly speak of the reigning Houses. Whatever
may be their professions, it may be taken for
granted that nearly every " Highness" in Ger-
many, Royal or Serene, is against the change which
is to bring Radicals, and writers of books, and in-
fidels and Communists, and Vulgar traders on to
the floor of a Legislative Chamber, there to utter
their revolutionary or levelling opinions, and to
hamper the authority of a God-ordained German
Sovereign. Then there is the Queen with the whole
of the party which has for so many years ruled
Prussia ; there are the army, the landowners, a
large number of the functionaries, and even a part
of the philosophical and professorial world. These
form the regular Tory party, and their resistance
to the establishment of a liberal Chamber as a con-
trolling power in the State might be looked for
from the first But we cannot help thinking that
the Regent and his advisers are swayed by the im-
pulses of a more numerous class. The terrors which
1848 has implanted in continental minds are some-
thing which we in this country cannot conceive.
There are in medical books histories of children or
women who have been frightened by some object,
and, though subsequently living to an old age,
have never seen a similar object or heard it spoken
of without exhibiting the deepest agitation. The
spectre of 1848 is thus ever .present to the large
class who would rather bear the ills they have
than fly to others which they fancy they know too
well. A large majority of the people are, without
doubt, on the side of the Regent and a more
liberal and national system. Th retrograde party
cannot hope for any return to power. Every
one' is tired of the weakness, the cant, and the
affectation of the late King's advisers, and their
hobby of paternal government. The wish is
general that the Regent should call steady, sensible,
men around him ; that he should take a high posi-
tion on international questions, and make Prussia
the leading Power of Germany. But the more
timid, and they are a large party, would rather
that this should be done by the Royal authority
than by any machinery of popular discussion and
control. The old comparisons common to Conser-
vatives everywhere, about "getting in' the thin
end of the wedge" andlopening the "floodgates of
democracy," are more than ever in the mouths of
the trembling politicians of Prussia. When it is
remembered, however, what anticipations were
formed of our Reform. Bill it is easy to imagine
that the memory of a shaken throne, a humiliated
Sovereign, and a mob-ruled capital has a deep in-
fluence on a society which has never really made
an essay in free government.
nut these fears are groundless we fully believe.
Nothing can be more different from the situation
ten years since than the situation now. The first
point of distinction, we may say with somewhat of
pride, is that in 1848 the model of Prussia was
Prance, and now it is England. Since the wild
outbreak of Parisian violence a whole genera-
tion of politicians has passed away. The De-
mocrats who followed in Berlin and Vienna
the example of Paris were the [product of thirty
years of uneasy tranquillity and smothered hopes.
The first French Revolution had been crushed, it
was alleged, by Monarchs who afterwards cheated
their subjects of the liberty they had promised.
The good work was unfinished, and was to be pro-
ceeded with on the first opportunity. Great writers
in France preached the coming renewal of the
struggle, while a school of Communistic philoso-
phers imbued vast masses of the population with
the theories afterwards set in action at the Luxem-
bourg. In short, 1848 was the result of a whole
age of mawkish philanthropy and spurious science,
veiling the ambitions and discontents of a band of
unscrupulous aspirants. Now the cloud bas dis-
charged its gathered electricity, the sky is clear,
and the air purged of its deadly vapours. The
temperate liberty of this country is receiving the
recognition of the world, and it is this which the
Constitutional party wish to reproduce in their own
land.

Perhaps it would be giving too much importance
to M. Flottwell's circular if we were to take it as
an official denial of the imputation of popular ten-
dencies. But, if such be the Regent's intention, the
act is certainly far from politic. It is a mistake to
appear to tamper with a people, to encourage them
to expect changes from a legislative session,
and then to forbid them to cherish the hopes
which the promise awakens. There is no reasen
to believe that any of the men returned will be
more than Constitutionalists—the " Left Centre"

ofcontinental assemblies. The people, well governed
in the main, are not enthusiastic, and those who do

busy themselves are more anxious to return good
men of business and creditable speakers than repre-
sentatives of extreme views. So calm an exercise
of popular rights can be terrible only to nerves
shattered by recollections of the barricades, and to
distrust it. is unworthy of statesmen who have be-
fore them, in the two great States of Western
Europe, the spectacle of what free government and
despotism tend to produce.—Times.