The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-17 00:00:00

rate of unanimity upon the side of the Oppositio n
It is now known, from what Sir W. HEATIXCOTE
was permitted by the ex-Home Secretary (under
Lord DERBY'S regime) to say, that Mr. WALPOLE
—no mean authority in the general estimation of
the House, one whose opinions are listened to with
deference by all parties in that House, indis-
criminately—it is now known that that right hon.
gentleman thinks not with the mass of his col-
leagues and supporters upon the side of the Oppo-
sition, in respect to the constitutional question that
has been raised in this matter of the Financial
policy of her MAJESTY'S Government. Others
there may be, others there probably are, upon that
front bench of the Opposition who coincide in those
calm and dispassionate opinions of Lord DERBY'S
ex-Home Secretary. But, at eny rate, there is
Mr. WALPOLE, who is now known not to think
in this matter of the Constitutional difficulty with
the mass of the Opposition. The fact that such is
his view in that particular is now as visibly before
the house and the country as the kindred fact upon
the other particular, the question of the Paper
Duties and their remission in perference to the
diminution of the tax upon tea—that an ex-Ministe-
rial colleague of Mr. WALPOLE'S, namely, no other
than the right hon. baronet the ex-Secretary of
State for the Colonies in Lord DERBY'S Govern-
ment, paired upon the occasion of the last decisive
division in favour of the policy advocated in this
matter by the existing Administration. So that
upon the Constitutional Question and upon the
Question of the Paper Duties Abolition—there is
no prospect whatever of unanimity-of-antagonism
on the side of the Opposition. That is their bewil-
derment. Thence comes their hesitation as to
when and where they will for once and for all
have at the financial policy of the Government.
That they are determined to " have at" it, in some
way or another, was quite clearly avowed last
night by the Right Hon. Gentleman the Leader of
the Opposition. But it is not to be even now—imme-
diately. The holidays of Whitsuntide come to himself
and to the more eager among his followers as another
opportune breathing time, as another welcome in-
terval for serious reflection and for earnest premedi-
tation, What will come of it all after the Whit-
suntide recess has passed over, depends still very
much, we cannot but think, upon the Chapter of
Accidents. On Monday week the bill (last night
read a second time) will be brought into
Committee for consideration, there in that Com-
mittee of the whole House, clause by clause. Whe-
ther the Great Party Fight that is yet to " comeoff "
is to be taken upon one of its details or upon the
Budget scheme as a whole, we doubt very
much if even Mr. DISRAELI himself could
form a very shrewd conjecture. Cela de-
pend Yes, upon the before mentioned Chapter
of Accidents ! All that we know now, all that the
House and the country, all that the Government
and the Opposition know at this moment upon the
matter, is that it will in another ten or twelve
days " come off" definitively, that Great Party Fight
upon the financial policy of the Government. And
our only consolation under the irritating remem-
brance of all these past delays, our only consolation
at the present moment in this matter, is the know-
ledge of the fact that that long-threatened Great
Party Battle must come off, if it is to come off at
all, immediately after the close of this recess of
Whitsuntide,

A German writer in a letter to a contemporary has
given a picture of the politics of the minor Princes
of that singularly divided country, which will be
new to the generality of Englishmen. Unversed
as we all are here in the obscure proceedings of
these petty Courts and Governments, and having
little or no inducement to make a study of them,
we can neither confirm nor deny his statements—
we can only consider their probability in the light
of more generally known facts. Since the days of
LOLA MONTES,WhO knows anything about Bavaria?
and if a paragraph appears in our foreign intelli-
gence relating to Wurtemberg or Bavaria, or
Hanover, probably not one reader in a hundred,
when he sees the heading, thinks of mastering its
contents. We remember how all the little
Monarchs flew up in a hurry and flutter to watch
Louis NAPOLEON and the King of PRUSSIA, when
the former invited himself to meet the latter. They
were then doubtless alarmed with the apprehension
of being sold in their absence. Now, according to
our informant, they are plotting to sell them-
selves, and all that is called Germany too, to a
French protectorate, and the consummation of their
scheme is a German Heptarchy !
" The ideal of statesmen (!) in Dresden, Munich,
Stnttgardt, Hanover, and Darmstadt—says our in-
fcrmant—is a Heptarchy—the division of Germany
into seven kingdoms. The house of HAPSBURG
would, under this arrangement, obtain an Austro-
German kingdom out of the ruins of the empire.
The Prussian eagle would be shorn of its wings
and deprived of its foreign feathers, so that nothing
would remain to the house of Hohenzollern but a
throne of small dimensions, incapable of casting a
shadow over the rest.. By the side of these quon-
dam great States the Napoleonic kingdoms of
Bavaria, Saxony, Wurtemberg, and Hanover, the
ancient Guelphic domains, would take a splendid
rank as states enlarged and rounded by the ab-
sorption of their little neighbours, such as Olden-
burg, Thuringia, and Baden. The seventh kingdom
would be formed of the three Hesses, Nassau,
Waldeck, and such strigs of territory as can be torn
in this direction from Prussia."

The above-mentioned minor kingdoms live, we
are told, in daily fear of Prussia. Her policy has
been so mysterious that they know not what to
make of it. They only know that to them it seems to
threaten absorption or mediatisation. They believe
that France is as much as ever set upon the left
bank of the Rhine, that Prussia would not object
to parting with her share of it, if compensated from
other parts of Germany, and they are disposed
therefore rather to make a good bargain for them-
selves with France, than to leave Prussia to steal a
march in that direction upon them. NAPOLEON I.
formed a Confederation of the Rhine, by which he
gave to these Princes, what they chiefly covet,
absolutism at home. They had only to maintain a
few soldiers, and he secured them against their
subjects and constitutions. Why should not
NAPOLEON 111. be ready to confer a like favour on
them ? Independent they cannot be—
small for that ; absolute they ma they are too
be, if the half
million of French bayonets are held ready to
guarantee to the monarchs of the new Reptarchy
what they certainly do for their own Sovereign.
Strange as the conduct of Prussia has been, it is
quite certain that a large proportion of the Liberal
Germans, especially of those who desire the unity
of Germany, see no feasible road to it but that of a
Prussian Hegemony, Austria, no one can trust--
and to Englishmen, Prussia, with her sham Cham-
bers and Conservative KING, seems almost as un-
worthy of reliance. Still she demands the estab-
lishment of its lawful Constitution in Hesse Cassel
—blusters about Schleswig and Holstein—and has
been the prime mover and agent in the Zoliverein, ,
which all looks the right way. To Prussia the
Liberals seem constrained to look for want of a
better centre of union. Whither shall the Princes
look for the preservation of absolute power ?
When the fall of NAPOLEON I. brolo up the