The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-02 00:00:00

IMPERIAL AND ROYAL

SPEECHES !

On Monday next we fully expect to present our
readers with the Speech of the Emperor Louis
NAPOLEON to the French Chambers ; and, on
Tuesday, that of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen
VICTORIA to both Houses of the Imperial Parlia-
ment. May they be worthy of each, and fraught
with peace to,the nations !

Yesterday we had to draw attention to the
sinister designs of France in the direction of Syria.
To-day we have only too much reason to comment
in a similar strain upon the suspicious projects of
Prussia in the direction of Schleswig-Holstein. It
augurs but ill for the new reign that scarcely has
the Regent become KING, when the covetous grasp
of the Prussian Monarchy appears to be again
extended towards and again closing around those
southern provinces of the King of DENMARK. It
is as if the evil example set by France, in the
acquisition of the western provinces of the King-
dom of Sardinia, in the absorption into the Empire
of Nice and Savoy, in violation of all the laws
of territorial demarcation laid down by the
great Powers of Europe in solemn con-
clave assembled, in dereliction o all honour,
in defiance of all the most solemn and re-
iterated promises that no annexation of the kind
was even meditated—it is, we say, as though this
nefarious policy on the part of France had proved
so far contagious that it had revived anew in the
heart of the Prussian Government the old, shame-
less lust of spoliation for which that monarchy has,
so often before now in the annals of Europe, ren-
dered itself so discreditably noticeable. With
Prussia, as with Austria, the rise into existence of
a great Power has been the rise of robbery—
the rise of diplomatic fraud and military bri-
gandism. As with Prussia and with Austria
—so has it been also in this way
in the mightier instance of the great Russian
Autocracy. With each of these three among the
,great
powers of Europe it has been virtually as it
was literally in the instance of Ancient Rome. The
legendary and almost mythical narrative of the
rise of the Roman authority sets forth, as even the
proverbial schoolboy knows, with the clustering
together of a band of robbers, championed at first by
chieftians, nurtured by no less grimly foster-parents
than wolves. Reading the history of the rise and
growth and development of the three great northern
Powers of Europe, it would seem almost to be like a
repetition of the old familiar tale. There alike in
.amid, in Austria, in Prussia, as in the
antique pre-classic age when Rome •
sprang
into being id Central Italy, under the rival leader-
ship of REmus and ROMULUS—it is a little cluster
.of robbers, led on by chiefs as pitiless in their
apoliations as though they too had imbibed into
their being, in some mysterious manner, strictly
-wolfish temperaments. From the apparently
''trivial nucleus of an insignificant principality, the
Ncircumference (in each) of an expanding domi..
tiion has rapidly spread and spread around it in all

directions like a circle upon water when a stone
has been cast in to disturb its tranquillity. It has
thus been with Prussia—born from the little prin-

cipality of the House of BRANDENBURG. It has
thus been with Austria—born from the diminutive

State ruled over by the House of HAPSBURG. It
has thus been upon a grander scale yet, with the
original domains peopled by a race of serfs owning
allegiance to the House of ROMANOFF. Is it not
one of the most frightfully notorious incidents in
the modern annals of Europe, that these three

enlarging and despoiling Powers, having at length
extended their frontiers by piecemeal spoliations of
the most flagrant character, having at length
extended their frontiers until they pressed equally
from three different directions upon the boundaries

of the glorious but ill-fated kingdom of Poland—
then and there accomplished together, as the climax
of all their atrocious robberies, the partition of that
resplendent territory and of that heroic race—the
Barrier and the Champions of Christendom ! Since
which infamous crime—one of those heinous and
preternatural political crimes that cry aloud to
Heaven for vengeance—the accomplices in that

execrable murder of Poland have still from time
to time so far obeyed the instincts of their nature
as to endeavour at least, upon every possible oppor-
tunity, to continue their system of annexation upon
annnexation. Russia, it is true, has long since
been almost too large for further expansion—lying
there extended in all her " lubber length"—like an
over-gorged boa-constrictor, across the width of the
two hemispheres. Austria, at once huge in her
dimensions an dheterogeneous in her character, being
composed of a mass of incongruous nationalities
incapable of cohesion, has long been threatening
to fall asunder, as she must inevitably fall
asunder eventually—either "dissolving in the
silence of decay" or separating abruptly in
the shock of some comprehensive catastrophe.
Prussia alone might yet—notwithstanding her
antecedents—Prussia alone of the three might yet,
if she could at length in real. earnest, but for once
and for all, assume that nobler role with which she
has so often been dallying—Prussia alone might
at last take her place securely and honourably
among the Constitutional Powers of Christendom.
Instead of which, so engrained in her nature
is the greed of annexation, so tainted is she
with the leprosy of spoliation that one
might as well attempt again, like the people in
the fable to scrub the Ethiopian white, as hope to
witness the adoption at last at Berlin of an honour-
able policy—a policy not tending as hitherto to a
greater or a lesser degree of territorial aggrandise-
ment —a policy, in fact, worthy of her late preten-
tions as an un-aggressive and strictly Constitutional
Government. As a Constitutional Government,
Prussia is, in truth, turning out once more to be
one of the veriest shams and impostures in all
Christendom. The new KING thus absolutely
appears, now upon the very morrow of his ascension
to the throne, to have taken a leaf—as.in other
words we have already intimated—out of the Bcok of
Fate of NAPOLEON 111. What the French EMPEROR
did in the absorption into his empire of Nice and
Savoy—fraudulently abstracted from the kingdom
of Sardinia ; the Prussian Sovereign seems now
bent upon imitating to the south-west of Germany,
namely, by the absorption of Schleswig and Hol-
stein, of one or the other, or of both, and with them
also of Lauenburg—fraudulently abstracting them
from the ancient Kingdom of Denmark. These
suspicious designs on the part of Prussia are, as we
all remember only too well of very old date. It is
a sinister project about which we have heard, and
read, and talked, and written at frequent intervals
during many years usque ad nauseam. It has been
again and again agitated—but now worst of all, it
is yet once more revived under the new Sovereign
and as we had hoped under his better regirne,and
under happier auspices alike for Prussia and
for Germany. The suspicious and sinister
situation of this unhappy question about
what is absurdly called by the blent title
of Schleswig-Holstein, may be understood upon a
merely casual glance down the correspondence
which not very long since took place upon this very
topic—a topic of vital interest to Europe generally,
but especially of vital interest and importance to
our ancient and loyal ally, Denmark. The
diplomatic correspondence which took place dur-
ing last October, November, and December,
between Lord BLOOMFIELD, her Majesty's Am-
bassador (then) at the Court of Vienna, and Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, her Majesty's Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, on the part of England, and
through the diplomatic intervention thus of Eng-
land, on the part also of Denmark—and on the
other side, the Baron SCHLEINITZ, the
Chief Minister of the Prussian Government.
This correspondence, it is true, as the date indicates,
took place prior to the death of the late King of
PRUSSIA, an event which only took place at the
very turn of the year 1860-1861. But Prussia was
then ruled by a Regency—the Regent being the
now reigning Sovereign of Prussia. The policy of
the kingdom is unchanged. It is the same to-day
that it was thus notoriously yesterday. It is a
policy most sinister, most suspicious. How
sinister, how suspicious it is in the direction of
Schleswig, and Holstein, and Lauenburg, will be
seen from the ominous despatches written by the
Prussian King's Prime Minister, Baron SCHLEI-
NITZ.

The Road murder case may seem now to be
effectually shielded against all further legal in-
quiries, and the discovery of the murderer to be
left to one of those unlooked-for revelations which
have generated the common proverb that " murder
will out." The chief coroner of England, and the
judges with him, have unanimously refused the
writ for making a better inquiry than the one
which few will have the hardihood not to pro-
nounce one of the worst ever made in England.
We need not impute corrupt motives to the Coroner,
but it cannot be denied that in a matter calling so
imperatively for the utmost efforts of inquest he,
as it were, in "twice ten minutes, huddled up the
case, and with a well-bred whisper, closed the
scene. There was," to say the least, perfunctori-
ness, and rejecting of tendered evidence, which the
Lord Chief Justice himself admitted should have
been received. if it was not an error to refrain
from summoning suspected persons, it was certainly
an error to refrain from hearing the evidence of any
of the suspected who volunteered
,themselves for
examination. But the cardinal error was closing
the inquest. In a case so full of a strange combi-
nation of certainty and mystery, when almost every
one felt certain that the murderer was one of the
inmates of the house, and when yet the utmost un-
certainty existed as to which it could be, what
could be a more obvious course than to retain the
inquest open for almost any reasonable length of
time; and thus to have a court ready legally autho-
rised to assemble from time to time to consider and
examine into any fresh facts or incidents which
might occur. This is, we believe, the grievance
which is felt by the whole country. Individuals may
have their private opinions as to the motives of the
Coroner, but his closing the inquest in such an
atrocious and mysteriously certain case, is felt by all
to have been equivalent to a denial, or at least to
a miscarriage of justice.
It is now seen that the common law can do

nothing to satisfy the demands of the public ;
but can nothing special be done ? The sugges-

tion of a commission to be issued direct by the '
Crown has substantial objections to it. The
Constitution does not give the Crown such power ;
we all know how it was abused in the days of
the STUARTS ; the Star Chamber is become a sym-
bol for illegal oppression of private individuals
by the Crown ; nothing which could furnish a
precedent for the Head of the Executive, vexing
the subjects of the realm by a process at all
similar, could be tolerated for an hour. And,
though in this instance it would be done in
furtherance of the ends of justice, yet such evil
must not be done that good may come, nor a
little wrong done to do a great right.
But is there not a course open which is
not liable to this unanswerable objection. The
judges are irremoveable, duns bene se yesserint,
except upon address to the Crown by the louse of

Commons. It is felt that their irremoveability is I
one of the bulwarks of our liberty, our best security
for justice, when the feeble subject stands at the
bar with the Crown for his antagonist. Yet this
all-important security is considered safe in the
custody of the people's representatives. No judge
has ever entertained a moment's apprehension of
Royal vengeance in any charge he has been called
on to try; nor even in the other direction has he
ever feared that, in sustaining the legal rights of
the Crown, he should incur the displeasure of a
majority of the British House of Commons. Can-
not a similar course obtain for the country a
re-investigation of the Road murder case ? Par-
liament meets on Tuesday. Could not some member
competent to argue such a case give notice of moving
for an address to the QUEEN to appoint Commis-
sioners to sit and adjourn as long as they might
think it desiral3le, to reinvestigate the whole affair.
A Commission so appointed could never become a
dangerous precedent. No one would fear that the
House of Commons would use such a power arbitra •
rily ; while it would cure a defect in our law of the
existence of which the Lord Chief Justice has given
the clearest evidence.

We might go farther. If it should be alleged—for
who knows what quirks and quibbles lawyers will
not resort to—that the House of Commons and the
Crown together have no power thus to act ; that
witnesses might refuse to answer, and be
legally irresponsible, even this admits of
an easy remedy. A short Act of Parliament
might be passed to authorise the course suggested;
in any case in which the representatives of the
people might think that justice required inquiries
to be made beyond those which the present state of
the law permits, it is at least as important that a
commission should issue, as that one should be
granted to look into the details of a corrupt elec-
tion. Whatever the course adopted, it is to Par-
liament only the country can now look to redress an
acknowledged error. The poor little innocent, so
ruthlessly destroyed, has become a subject of deep
and tender interest in every family in Britain. No
atrocity has for a long time so deeply touched so
rcany hearts ; and the country looks to its repre-
sentatives to give effect to the demands of the
universal feeling.

The " Moderator of Revolutions" has been at-
tempting to moderate between Kings. Long his
moderating efforts took the form of moderating
the fire of the Sardinians on Gaeta; now that he
has withdrawn his fleet, he has been attempting
to bend the obstinacy of the ex-King at Gaeta.
Using %General CIALDINI as his postman, he trans-
mitted, it seems, a letter to the KING,_ suggesting
to him the desirableness of giving in now, to
avoid the humiliation of a capitulation. The
advice was good, indeed, but how much better
had it been if he had given it before he enabled the
garrison to provide itself with supplies of all
kinds, and ammunition, by his three months'
cncouragement to resistance. Nothing can now
atone for having thus prolonged the unsettle-
ment of Italy. Nothing can excuse the bloodshed of
which he has thus been guilty, not at Gaeta only, but
in the Abruzzi, and in all places where reactionary
brigands pleaded the ex-King's name as a justifica-
tion for creating disturbance and plundering the
inhabitants. What answer FRANCIS ll.,late King
of Naples, returned, is not yet known, but as Y.
zeply had been forwarded on the 28th under a flag
of truce to Admiral FERSANO, and we have not
heard of a suspension of hostilities, it could hardly
have been one of assent.

Accounts vary much as to the effect of the
besiegers' fire. That much damage has been done to
the place may well be supposed true, though other
accounts deny it. The sea face of the batteries is
evidently very strong ; and it seems not improbable
that PERSANO'S chief services will be confined to a
blockade. His first attack was a very furious
one, but he seems neither to have sustained
nor inflicted much damage. The Cavalli guns
appear both in range and power to rival our Arm-
strongs. The Sardinians have several more batteries
ready to open fire soon, and the attack will then
be made, it is said, with not fewer than 180 guns.
As so little can be done by sea, a naval brigade,
like ours at Sebastopol, is talked of.

The duration of the siege will, however, be a
matter of little consequence if Venetia is to be let
alone this spring. The Sardinian Government,
bound over to keep the peace by the Emperor of
the FRENCH, is not likely to commence hostilities,
and the elections have gone by immense majorities
i❑ favour of CAVOUR. The Italians most certainly
cannot be charged with visionary enthusiasm, nor
even with yielding to their natural impulses in
regard to Venetia. The conduct of the EMPEROR,
of CAVOUR, and of Austria, all seem to
show in different ways, that they calculate
on peace for this year. Austrian reaction
in Hungary could hardly be explained
without it. Yet just in this last fact lies
the possible danger.. If Hungary persists in
fighting the legal battle with the perfidious and
revolutionary HAPSBURG Government, peace may
continue; but should Hungary be provoked to
insurrection, then GARIBALDI, and other patriots
too, would soon be at their posts; the Hungarian
and Croatian regiments in Venetia would render
the whole force there untrustworthy; Italy would
rush in, despite CAVOUR and LOUIS NAPOLEON ;
and we might have a vast political and milita►y
conflagration. Would that Austria might perish
in it! is the prayer of every Englishman.

ARYGLLL Rooms.—Mr. R. Bignall's Second
Subscription Ball takes place at the Argylle-rooms on
Monday evening, and will no doubt be fully attended.
The band under the direction of Mons. A. Lamotte will be
considerably increased on this occasion.

Astley's Royal Amphitheatre is announced for
sale by auction at the end of the present month.
Yesterday the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council granted Mr. Hoe. an American, a prolongation fa
five years of his patent for improved printing machines.
The fifth Royal Dramatic Performance took
place at Windsor Castle last evening. The Haymarket
company had the honour of performing Tom Taylor's
comedy, in three acts, "The Contested Election." Charles
Matthews sustained his original part of Dodgson.

The navigation on the Saone in the neighbourhood
of Lyons, which had been interrupted by the frost and the
high waters, is now resumed.
The cause of the resignation of M. Jacini, Pied-
montese Minister of Public Works, is said to be his not
having been returned at the late elections,