The Sun.
London, England, 1866-07-03 00:00:00

facings of Prussia and the white with light-blue of
Austria lie side by side, butthe numbers of the latter
much preponderate, and on one part of the railway
three Prussian corpses opposite 19 Austrian form
a grisly trophy of the superiority of the needle-
gun. _ _ _

Close on 500 unwounded Austrian prisoners have
this morning been marched up to head-quarters,
and the Austrian loss in killed and wounded is very
considerable. The Prussians have lost two officers
dead, and seven or eight wounded. The medical
officers have officially reported that the proportion
of wounded Austrians to wounded Prussians is as
five to one. Thus has the needle-gun told both on
the battle-field and in the hospital.
To-day head-quarters have halted here. There
has been no skirmishing ; the Austrians appear to
be in full retreat, for while I write white smoke
curling up from beyond some fir woods beside the
Iser tells that the bridge of Mohelnitz, about five
miles below Podoll, which they have set on fire to
obstruct pursuit, is burning steadily.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—More than sixteen years have elapsed
since a King of Prussia stood before a vast multi-
tude assembled before the palace at Berlin, when

the people, who, like so many other people, had on
that eventful year " conquered their King," took
offence at the uncovered head of their Sovereign,
and compelled him to do obeisance by the mur-
mured threat, "Down with the hat or down with

the head." Only three days ago another Prussian
monarch stood bareheaded before the same throng
of his subjects, and, lifting high the brass helmet
which is his crown in warlike times, told his people
of the hard-won success of his armies in the field,
hinted at the arduous efforts that would still be de-

manded of them and of the nation, and called upon
the Prussians to rally round the standards with
" God for King and Fatherland." The King's
words sprang from an impulse of genuine emotion.
Moments of breathless anxiety have come for Prus-
sia and Germany, and the subjects of King William
gave answer to the royal appeal with a burst of
spontaneous acclamation. Prussia has seen rather
hard times of late. A nation patient, loyal, sub-
missive to a fault, has been treated with harshness
and indignity. The compact between the Sovereign
and his subjects—that " sheet of written paper"
which Frederick William IV. would never allow

" to stand between him and his people," but to
which he, nevertheless, found it necessary to append
his signature—has, indeed, been lately held of no
more worth than mere waste paper, and the King
and his overbearing unscrupulous Minister have fol-
lowed no other rule of action save their own abso-
lute, irresponsible, iron will. Yet the leave-taking
of that Monarch and that statesman from the
Berlin people the other day bore all the marks
of reciprocal regard, and even tenderness. The
Prussians were deeply penetrated with the magni-
tude of the task William I. had taken upon
himself, and, although the result of the elections
proves their firm determination to fight out their
constitutional battle against the Government with
their wonted stubbornness, it is certain that they
will never alloW domestic embarrassments to para-
lyse the energy with which the State will now have
to meet foreign complications. Whatever may come
to pass after the close of the war, there is no doubt
that the Government and the people of Prussia are
at one for the present. " Count Bismarck," our
Berlin correspondent informs us, " on leaving the
Palace, became, like his Royal master, the object of
a regular ovation, and Herr von Roon, the Minister
of War, had people shouting and hurrahing in front
of his hotel all day long." We should by no means
be surprised if this same Count Bismarck were soon
to be a demigod not only in the eyes of the Prus-
sians, but of all patriotic Germans. However loud
the outcry of all men may have been against the
means against which that crafty and violent states-
man was compassing his end, it is impossible to deny
that he was, and is, the only man in Germany who
knows what he is about and what he wants. Nay, he
is, perhaps, the only one who knows what everybody
in Germany wants. There are " Unitarian ten-
dencies at work among the German people, which
would never have found an utterance among that
undemonstrative and morally timid people, unless a
man high in rank and power had taken the initiative.
The great scheme of the reconstitution of a German
empire, which foundered in 1848, weighed down by
the imbecility of the Frankfort Professors, has been
all along the dream of every, man in Germany.
Since 1860, when the success oelltrily re-awakened
aspirations for national unity north of the Alps,
German tenacity has taken up the question where
1849 had left it. It was German patriotism which
stood up for that old cause of Schleswig-Holstein,
which Austria and Prussia first turned to their joint
advantage, and which Prussia will now turn to her
own benefit. Count Bismarck is, indeed, a singular
and rather forbiddinc, type of a liberal patriot ; but
all the unpopularity of''' Charles Albert between 1831
and 1816 did not prevent Piedmont being the focus
of Italian aspirations from 1848 to 1859. What
Piedmont was to Italy, Prussia, and Prussia alone,
can be to Germany. This is a truth of which,
theoretically, every man, north of the Main, at
least, has been long convinced. The Germans,
however, for good or for evil need a leader, and
they could not have found one who went straighter
to his goal 'or bent men's will more forcibly to his
own. So far as the North of Germany is concerned,
it is very evident that Prussia has now gained the
victory over the people's mind no less than over their
armies` Even where the Prussian Government is
most strongly detested, the Prussian people are the
object of sympathy, and Prussian troops are received
with open arms. In Hanover, in Hesse, in Saxony
the past is blotted out as thoroughly and rapidly as
it was in Tuscany, Modena, or Parma in 1860.
Kings and Electors are gone ; and, whatever may
be the chances of war, they either will never come
back or only on such terms as Prussia may dictate.
There is no such frantic joy at Hanover, at Dresden,
or Cassel as there was at Florence or Lucca, for the
people in Germany are not demonstrative, and
their Princes were not so unpopular as the Italian
80-urbons and Austrian Estes. But the Germans
are no less fain to merge their puny States into a
great common Fatherland. Many might have pre-
ferred a Federal unity compatible with their local
independence; but unity they must have—with their
Princes, if practicable ; if not, without them.
The warlike events now impending cannot greatly
modify the conditions' in which the northern di-
vision of the country has been lately placed. The
battle which, after the junction of the two Prus-
sian armies consequent on the storming of Gitschin,
may be expected every hour may decide whether
Prussia's influence is to extend to the south as
well as to the north of the Main ; but from
this time there would be no great rashness in
the assertion that the formation of a kingdom at
least of Northern Germany has become a necessity.
The latest news conveys ample confirmation of the
anticipated junction of the Prussian armies, conse-
quent upon the occupation of Gitschin. For
" strategical reasons," Marshal Benedek has been
induced to execute one of those movements which
have signalized the annals of the Austrian armies
on more than one former occasion. He has fallen
back on his strongholds, taking up a position be-
tween Josephstadt and Koniggriitz. The Prussians,
according to the Austrian accounts, are thoroughly
exhausted by their own success, and some time may
elapse before either army ventures on an action
which may be decisive. All the forces of the two
great military States are, however, now in presence ;
and " important events," the Austrian telegram con-
cludes, "are expected within the next few days."
HERALD.—Systematic slander is generally the ex-
treme resource of a bad cause on its last legs ; and
the more violent and more extravagant the falsehood
the more desperate is commonly the condition of
those who utter it. Judged by this claim, Liberalism
must be even in worse strains than we should have
been inclined to suppose; must be conscious of weak-
ness and decay beyond anything that has yet become
apparent to the public; for never was calumny so
furious, so unscrupulous and so ridiculous in its
disregard of notorious facts and common probability,
as that which has recently been heaped upon .the
Conservatives. The example was set in the house of
Commons, where Mr. Bright began the Reform con-
troversy by denouncing the opponents of the Ministry
as enemies of the working class, and followed up
the charge by a published letter in which he re-
viled them as " dirty conspirators." Mr. Bright has
never been scrupulous in his employment of
vituperative terms, which he selects with as little
regard to propriety or applicability as a fourth-
form schoolboy shows in picking epithets from the
Gradus for a copy of Latin verses ; but it is
worthy of notice that the Liberal party made them-
selves tacitly responsible for his his language by the
deference they paid to him, and by their total
omission to rebuke or repudiate his violence. That
there was no foundation for the attack will be plain
to the silliest fellow that ever cheered in Trafalgar-
square or howled in Palace-yard, if ho will take the
trouble to recal the compliments which Mr. Bright,
a few days afterwards, paid to the chief author of
the " conspiracy" and the fact that the greatest
boon which legislation has conferred on the work-
ing man during the present century—the Ten
Hours' Factory Act—was carried by Conservative
votes in the teeth of Mr. Bright's most strenuous
opposition. 'Was this the act of enemies to the
working class? The question of free trade was an
intricate one; there was room beforehand for the
widest divergence of opinion as to its effect ; but