The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-05 00:00:00

graces, that otherwise degraded designation which
is now hers by rigl_t—i,e., her name, style, and
title as the Hon. Mrs. YELVERTON.

The complete documents which create the New
Austrian Constitution are now before Europe; and
those of our readers N4'ho have patience enough to
study such subjects probably examined tlilem last
evening. It may not be easy in this country to
judge of the meaning awl effect of each particular
clause and article, but still the tendency of the
whole can be readily seen. That it is a Constitu-
tion, and that it is even intended to give an amount
of political liberty unthought of before the battle
of Solferino, we may consider undeniable ; but
that it contains clauses which, whether we perceive
it or not, are intended to facilitate the restraint of
Representative liberty, should the court again be-
come strong enough, no ene can doubt. The HArs-
BURGS, aided by their Jesuit tutors and confessors,
have ever been adepts at this kind of political
duplicity and villany—indeell, their horrid thirty
years' war began through it.
The Vienna correspondent of a contemporary
thus sums up the points which are considered there
as unfavourable to the free working of the New
Constitution, and to the undue influence of the
Crown and the Administration. In the statutes for
the Reichsrath it is not said that the EMPEROR
will issue no more Patent Laws—that is, laws
drawn up by the Cabinet and sanctioned by the
Sovereign without the concurrence of the repre-
sentation of the empire. 2. By Paragraph 13 the
Cabinet is made irresponsible, inasmuch as it is
only bound to communicate to the Reichsrath the
reasons for its acts and their results. Of the neces-
sity for a Bill of indemnity there is no mention.
3. It is not said that if the Reichsrath should
be dissolved it shall be reconstituted and con-
voked within a certain time. 4. The ultra-Con-
servative party will be composed of high nobles and
ecclesiastical dignitaries, and very many noble lay-
land proprietors will have seat and voice in the
Lower House. 5. The Chambers of Deputies will
be elected by the Provincial Diets, and not by
the nation at large. 6. As the EMPEROR has
reserved to himself the right to dissolve any of
the Provincial Diets, it may happen that one or
other of the provinces will not be represented at
all in the Reichsrath. 7. It is nowhere said that
the deputies shall not be called to account for
the expressions they may use or the speeches
they may make in the Reichsrath. 8. As a rule,
the sittings of the two Houses are to be public,
but there is a passage in paragraph 20 of the
fundamental laws which gives to either Chamber
the right to exclude strangers—a privilege which
is almost sure to be abused in a country the
inhabitants of which have not been accustomed to
public proceedings of any kind.
Most of these seem to be fair grounds of excep-
tion. A HAPSBURG and his tools would well know
how to avail themselves of any one of them ; the
only question is whether, with the concessidns on
the subject of finance and conscription, the Council
could not make its power felt if it had the public
spirit to do so. We read in the "fundamental law"
thus :

" 10. In accordance with Article 2 of the diploma
of the 20th of October, 1860, the following matters
are to be within the sphere of action of the Reich-
srath :—(a) Matters connected with military con-
scription. (b) Matters connected with the currency,
public credit, coinage, banks empowered to issue
notes, customs, commercial matters, post, railroads,
and telegraphs. (c) All those financial matters
which concern the empire at large ; such as the
budget, the State balance-sheet, the results of the
manipulations of the finance department, the raising
of new loans, the conversion (convertirung) of State
debts, the sale, change, or mortgage of the real
property of the State; the augmentation of the
present taxes, and the imposition of new ones. The
present taxes to be levied until repealed in a consti-
tutional way. The National Debt is under the
control of the Reichsrath,"
Now it seems difficult to conceive that Anglo-
Saxons at least, with such a weapon in their hands
would not ultimately bid defiance to any Court
and Administration. Even were the EMPEROR, like
our STUARTS, to determine to do without Parlia-
ments, yet his want of credit, the sole ultimate
cause of the offer now made, would bring him again
as a beggar to the feet of the Nation's Represen-
tatives. But Austrian subjects are not Anglo-
Saxons.

But whether the new constitution will work
is not, we apprehend, a question of details. It
is a question of men and of principles. Suppose it
a fair arrangement, if fairly worked, the great point
to settle 'will be, can the peoples of the Austrian
Empire, as it is called, trust the man and the men
at their head. The iniquity of many generations is
now culminating in one of the race who shares and
exemplifies all the blindness, wilfulness, supersti-
tion, and bad faith of his forefathers—a race whose
creed has been that peoples are made to be fleeced,
cheated, enslaved, lied to, sworn falsely to, and shot
down or hang if they resist, and rulers, by right
divine, to do all these divine things to them. It is
no exaggeration to say that Hungary has found all

this to be quite true to the letter in the used up
race which is now marching its armies into the
country to restore, if possible, its old despotism, or
to enforce the acceptance of the new Constitution.

Some fourteen or fifteen provinces, most of them

different nations, speaking different languages, are
enumerated in these documents themselves. They
are to be brought together by representatives into
one council of 343 members. They have been
hitherto all kept as much as possible alienated
from each other by the Government, lest
they should combine and tear their oppressor
to pieces—now, they are all to meet to find
—what ? that each has a quarrel with
its neighbour, but all with the dynasty and the
man who have duped, cheated, and maltreated them
through all their history. Must they not either
prove a helpless political Babel, or else a combination
united by a sense of common wrong which will be
more formidable in the heart of the empire than
150,000 Frenchmen outside it ?
But there is the great question of the principles
of the Constitution. It is intended to meet the
Hungarian difficulty ; it utterly ignores it ! Hun-
gary has legally and consistently demanded, first
of all and before everything, the cessation, of
illegality. Every thing now in Hungary is illegal.
The de facto King is a usurper with not the shadow
of a title to the crown, but that given by Marshal
PASKIEWITCH, under the orders of the brutal

NICHOLAS, who had no right to bestow
it. The army in Hungary is an illegality,
the Church is an illegality, the taxes are an ille-

gality, the administration of justice is an illegality,
the currency itself is an illegality—everything

governmental indeed is, not technically and acci

den tally, but substantially and in the broad ♦iew,

an illegality. Let this first cease, say the Hun-

garians—let the Diet meet—let the abdication of

FERDINAND be legally accepted by it—let the sew

King be solemnly sworn, and a Palatine named
legally—let the unlawful Austrian soldiers quit
the country—let the taxes and currency be voted

by the Diet, and then let the Diet and King

proceed to make such reforms in the laws as both

may agree on.

Instead of this Hungarians are merely presented
with an order on the Diet for 85 members out of

343, when they are nearly half the population, and