The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-04 00:00:00

(From the Times.)
Five years ago we were informed, on the very
highest authority, that the Constitution of England
was on its trial. War had come, and, as the wont
of war is, had tested everything, and found many
things wanting. Our military organisation, depend-
ent on the traditions of the Peninsula, had crumbled
away into a hideous ruin of blundering incapacity,
and superannuated tradition. Strategy was un-
known, the commanders of our fleets did very little
to remind us of the days of Nelson, our diplomatists
blundered, and our departments did their best to
shuffle their responsibilities from one to the other.
Certainly the British Constitution was on its trial,
and so was the temper of the nation. However,
we worked through the difficulty after our own
blundering insular manner ; some things we left
as they were, some things we altered without
amending ; some things we actually did correct, a
few men we punished, and many we rewarded.
We whitewashed our Generals, expelled our Minis-
ters, and compensated ourselves for having starved
our army during one year by gorging it to reple-
tion the next. These things we did, but what-
ever else we lost we never were for a moment in
danger of losing the British Constitution. •It bore
this trial as it has borne so many others, and came
out of it in no degree perceptibly the worse.
Possibly, when the Prim* Consort was giving
utterance to his apprehension as to the durability
of our institutions, he had in his mind another
model formed on far different principles, and sup-
posed to enjoy more' of his sympathies. Unencum-
bered by the ponderous machinery of a Parlia-
ment, delivered from the perpetual blister of a free
press, with councils silent as the pave, with sub-
jects drilled to passive submission, and troops
trained to the precision of automata, Austria
preserited in every respect a shining contrast to
noisy, turbulent, democratic England. If consi-
derations of a high and sublime policy, unfathom-
able by vulgar minds, had not withheld her from
participation in the Crimean War, how marvellous
would have been the example which we should
have derived from the land of Metternich_ and

Schwartzenberg ; how soon should we have been
driven to admit the superiority of the paternal over
the popular, of the orderly over the progressive
element. Such we may imagine to have been the
speculations which passed through the mind of the
Prince Consort when he weighed our institutions in
the balance, and only did not find them wanting.
Well, the wheel of fortune has revolved, and it
is the turn of England to be
,neutral, while Aus-
tria, in her turn, has to undergo the fiery ordeal of
war. We will not speak at length of the manner
in which her' military system has encountered the
shock, and how infinitely inferior to their reputa-
tion have proved all the apparatus and appliances
of war with which she has surrounded herself.
Her troops have shown a stubborn and manly cou-
rage, but they are evidently wanting in individual
intelligence, and, as they are only fighting for his
Imperial Royal Apostolic Majesty, and not at all
for themselves, or anything that concerns their own
vulgar existence or happiness, they
display an tn-
tire want of dash or enthusiasm. Battle after battle
they fight and they lose with a mechanical perse-
verance Which might deserve. our admiration if it
did not appeal so strongly to our pity. It has been
the policy of Austria to make her subjects into one
nation, and that policy has been illustrated by the
fact that her Italian regiments, on whom she has
strangely relied to assist her in keeping down her
Italian subjects, desert her by fifties at a time, and
that her soldiers, when prisoners of war in the
hands of the French, can scarcely be prevented
from flying at each other's throats. Her tactics
turn out to be old-fashioned and obsolete, and the
Monarchy which has devoted itself more than any
other to the development of its military system
finds its clumsy manoeuvres quite unable to encounter
its active and enterprising enemy. The Generals
of Austria have shown a wonderful deficiency of in-
telligence. The victory of Magenta was their own,
could they only have prevailed on themselves to bring
up the fresh troops who were ready to win it, and the
bloody day of Solferino might have had a different
ending if the Emperor had not retained two corps
of his army at Mantua, for fear the place should be
surprised by the army of Prince Napoleon, which
was at that time reposing in the pastoral realms of
Parma. For military affairs paternal government
seems to answer no better than limited monarchy.
Let us see if it is more successful in civil adminis-
tration.. Of course, things will go wrong under
the very best Governments and institutions ; but
what is peculiar to Austria
,is that to her Govern-
ment and institutions her misfortunes are directly
' traceable. If her Generals have been inefficient, she
has.the consolation of knowing that they are all
men of the very best families, and if she has lost the
counsels of Hess, the chief of the Staff of Marshal
Radetzky; it is because the ancestors of Hess have
not hitherto been considered sufficiently illustrious
to permit the State to enjoy the full benefit of his
talents. But surely Vienna, the chosen seat of
Imperial Royal Apostolic Majesty, is one sound
spot amid so much that is rotten, an oasis in the
desert of this paternal I.egiine. Who can doubt it ?
Has not Vienna offered to place its garrison at the
disposal of the Emperor by manning its walls with
its own Burgher Guard ? The offer is patriotic,
but the Minister of the Interior has refused it, be-
cause he feels that without the protection of a re-
gularly disciplined military force his own official
and perhaps corporeal existence would not be safe.
Vienna has no free press to expose the blunders of
her -War-office, but her Ministers dare no more strip
themselves of a guard than the tyrant of some an-
cient Greek city. The Tyrolese are supposed still
to stand firm and to be prepared to shed their blood
in defence of their homes and their mountains; but
their feeling is rather national than loyal, and if
they fight under the standard of their Emperor it is
with the express mental reservation that they will
not lay down those arms which they. wield against
the public enemy until they have extorted from
their domestic foes, the Emperor and his Council, a
full redress of their grievances and oppressions.
When this is the attitude assumed by the loyal
inhabitants of the Tyrol it may easily be 'guessed
what are the feelings of the
Hungarians. This
kingdom is lest to the Empire,
we are informed,
unless a complete change of system takes place, and
of that change of system there is as yet no appear-
ance.
It is probable that the young Emperor of Aus-
tria has learnt during the last two months more
truth than in all the previous part of his reign.
That truth is everywhere the same. If his army
be ill-commanded and his troops ill-fed, it is the
system. If his capital be only kept in subjection
by armed force, it is because the system has driven
it to desperation. If his provinces are rebellious
and his exchequer empty, the system has goaded
the one to resistance and drained the other to the
last florin. The vain dream of suppressing human
thought and the intercourse of mind with mind in