The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-30 00:00:00

TIMES.—A telegram from Prague conveys some
obscure intelligence of an attempt upon the life of
the Emperor of Austria. The news only reaches us
two days after the event, although the alleged of-
fence was committed in the midst of a crowd, and
the would-be assassin, whose name is not given, was
arrested in the act. The execution of the " proba-
ble design" was prevented by the presence of mind
of an Englishman, Captain Palmer. We must
await further particulars to enable us to appreciate
the real importance of this sinister incident. In the
meanwhile the letter of our correspondent from
Prague, which we published yesterday, is well cal-
culated to prepare us for any melancholy tidings
from that city. It is written in flat contradiction
to the accounts by which the progress of the Em-
peror Francis Joseph through his northern provinces
had been described as triumphantly successful.
" Whatever may have happened at Baunn, Olmutz,
and Troppau," we read, there seems no doubt that" at
Prague, the great and ancient city, the King of Bohe-
mia was received with such cutting coldness as would
break the heart of a British monarch." It is with
a painful sensation that we read the too vivid de-
scription of the whole scene. There seem to rise
before us " that careworn face, that sad, anxious
look, that emaciated form which could move a
generous people, even in their bitterest and most
vindictive rage, to forget the monarch in the man."
We fancy we can see that bard-tried Sovereign
" making his appearance amid a dead silence in the
streets"—a silence so dead that, "as the carriage
passed, the click of the horses' hoofs on the stone
and the jingle of the couriers' swords were as dis-
tinctly heard as if the Emperor were alone and at
midnight: And it was midnight around him—
black, lowering, cold, and starless •, the night in
which monarchs move when the sun of their people's
love has set." There is, indeed, deep gloom gather-
ing round the throne of that ill-starred Francis
Joseph, and it seems as if every step he took only
plunged him deeper into his sea of troubles. Baron
von Beust, we are told, has really been placed at
the head of the Imperial Cabinet. The intelligence
of that ominous appointment, which was scouted
as too absurd to deserve credit, receives now the
fullest confirmation, and it is even asserted that the
new Foreign Minister took his oath of office at
Prague yesterday. We say nothing of the open
defiance thus hurled at Prussia and Bistnark. The
Emperor is an independent Sovereign, and the choice
of his advisers is no concern of his neighbours ;
but the Emperor's subjects are not likely to share
his confidence in a man who, whatever may be his
abilities, has invariably ruined every cause he took
in hand. Baron von Beust will be looked upon as
a stranger even by the German party at whose head
he will be placed; but his appearance in the Cabi-
net can hardly fail to be received as a declaration
of hostilities by the rival nationalities of Czechs,
Magyars, and Sclaves, now so irreconcilably ar-
rayed against the Government. We have seen
how the nomination of Count Goluchowsky to the
Governorship of Galicia has been like a firebrand
thrown .into that province to light up the worst
passions of the Polish and Ruthenian population.
The flame of civil discord threatens the Empire on
ov.cry side ; and, as if there were not enough of Mag-
yar and German, Sclave and Saxon, and the whole
confusion of hostile races, the runaway Jesuits from
Venetia have now conic for a refuge-to the Emperor,
and have roused among the people of Vienna and
Prague the enmity which that holy militia seldom
fails to excite in every European community. Aus-
_

tria has had at all tunes a great many friends in this
country. Since the cession of Venetia, we will ven-
ture to say, she has hardly an enemy. It is difficult
to withhold sympathy from a Sovereign-the butt of
such constant and undeserved adversity. But to
suggest an escape for him out of his present difficul-
ties seems a task beyond the power of man. Austria
is an empire out of date. The House of Hapsburg
was put in possession of vast estates at a time in
which the idea of nationality conveyed no meaning.
It was said of the Princes of the House of Savoy
that " geography did not allow them to be honest
men." It may be said of the Austrian Emperors that
their position rendered any other form of govern-
ment than absolutism impossible in their States.
Austria was a mere abstraction—a dynasty, a Court,
a bureaucracy, an army. What she has been from
the beginning she will probably continue to the end.
The discordant races under her sceptre can hardly
be kept together upon free and equal constitutional
principles. Austria must seek her basis in one of her
nationalities to the detriment of all the others. It
was on the German hitherto that her strength was
grounded. Should the ruling power depart from her
present centre at Vienna, should the sceptre fall from
the German, where is there another hand in the
Empire able to wield it ? As in the Ottoman Em-
pire, so in the Austrian, nothing seems easier than to
drive out the ruling race ; but nothing is more diffi-
cult than either to substitute another race in its
stead, or to keep together the various races on terms
of freedom and equality. There is no course for the
Emperor to follow that is not open to objection, to
serious, almost insurmountable objection. L is easy to
find fault with everything he may do ; almost impos-
sible to advise the thing he should do. The Magyar
and the Czech will henceforth be scarcely amenable to
any other rule than that of absolute force, and it is not
clear whence sufficient force for their subjugation
is to come. Schemes of confederacies, of personal
unions, may look very plausible in theory, but
practically they will baffle the efforts of the w isest
ruler. Should even the means be found to recon-
cile the aspirations of the Czech and the Magyar
with the interests of the Monarchy, the virtual in-
dependence of the main nationalities with the
authority of the central Government, violence
would still probably have to be exercised upon the
sub-nationalities, among whom dissatisfaction is
equally rife. We have seen how any measure in-
tended to win popularity with the Poles of Galicia
has turned out obnoxious to the Ruthenians living
side by side with the Poles on the same territory.
In the same manner the Magyar in Hungary can
hardly be propitiated without giving offence to his-
Croatian fellow-subject, and any favour shown to
the Czech in Bohemia is resented as an outrage by
his German neighbour. The only safety for the
Government has hitherto been sought and found
either in pitting the hostile races one against
another, or in mustering up a sufficient military
force to crush them all. Our age hardly ad-
mits of either policy, and it may, therefore, be
questioned how long it will admit of such a State as
the Austrian Empire. The battle of Sadowa has
revealed the existence of another " sick man" in
Europe. Sick men, it is true, do not always die at
once ;• there are chronic and there are even curable
infirmities ; but all the symptoms exhibited by the
new patient seem to point either to the necessity of
violent remedies or to inevitable dissolution.