The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-04-10

WIN sInail3 IL may 20 truly snld JnaJ tne Mn
peror Napoleon, with his great Exposition, is
at this moment very much in the position of a
fashionable lady who is determined TO carry
out picnic party in spite of the ugly cloud
banks rolling up along the horizon. The tenn
pest which began to gather in the European
skies on the morrow of the thunders of Sadowa
has been growing blacker with every week
which has passed since the peace of Nikols-
burg and, if we are to attach credit to the
muttered omens of the London and Continental
stock markets which reached us on Monday
over the wires of the Atlantic cable it is already
become seriously doubtful whether the twin
dows of Heaven will not be opened before
the doors of the Paris Exhibition close and the
showers come down in blood and fire before
the guests can fairly get home again from
their holiday. The form taken by the portents
of i'll which on Monday shook Wall street in
almost simultaneous sympathy with the
Royal Exchange and with the Bourses of
Paris and Frankfort is a clearly and peri
lousy practical one. 1t is no longer seriously
questioned, we believe, that, before the
outbreak of hostilities between Prussia and
Austria, Count Bismark endeavOred to secure
the acquiescence of Napoleon in his projected
extension of the Prussian sway by offering
to France such "rectifcation' of the French
frontiers towards the Rhine as would have
saved French supremacy in the West of
Europe from being fatally overshadowed by
the Prussian power. The propositions of
the Premier of King William were re-
iected by the Emperor of the French on
grounds which it will hereafter, perhaps,
interest the historian to examine and to
pronounce upon, but which need not at
all concern us in any examination of the
actual condition and the immediate prospects
of Europe. Whether Napoleon dsbelieved
in the destiny Of the daring Prussian, and so
refrained from needlessly compromising the
relations of France with Austria by bar
gain which he felt convinced the party of the
other part would never be in a position
to consummate, or whether he really shrank
from a frank revival of the good old plan by
which princes were wont to partition ''peo-
pies" according to the dictates of their own
convenience and their own policy, matters
but little just now. The result has been that
Prussia, in a campaign of unparalleled
brevity and brilliancy, made herself the head
of Germany that Germany, compelled to
\ acknowledge the leadership, has ever since
! been wavering towards a recognition of the
! sovereignty of Prussia; and that Napoleon, in
! stead of seeing France enthrOned as the arbiter
| of Central and Southern Europe, is now con-
! fronted by the imminent crystallization, from
| the Alps to the Baltic, and from the Vistula
to the Rhine, of power such as no Emperor
| of Germany since Frederic H., the "wOnder
of the world has ever welded. Great as
this power of Prussianized Germany threat
ems to be, it is yet not impossible for France
to array against it a power greater still.
To do this it will be necessary, however,
for the ruler of France to waive his
loudly professed respect for the "principle
of nationality" and to agglomerate, in one
way or another, with the homogeneous and
consolidated forty millions of the French
monarchy, the populations of Switzerland,
Holland, and Belgium. An imperial France,
resting on the Italian Alps on the one side
and upon the Northern Sea upon the other,
would hold the West of Europe by as indefea-
sibe a tenure as now gives over the East of
Europe to the predominance of Russia and it
must be admitted that the policy of Count
Bismark if it tends directly to the formation
of really united Germany, tends also just as
strongly, though indirectly, to provoke the
consolidation, on either flank of the German
Empire, of those two colossal dominions. Italy,
which owes to the Prussian arms as well as to
the French diplomacy her recent complete
emancipation from the Austrian sway, must
! look, of course, with some anxiety to the
approaches of so formidable a neighbOr as
France from the side of the Simplon and
! Mont Cents But Italy has traditional as well
as geographical and strategic reasons for re-
| garding with even greater distrust the forma-
! ton of a new German empire embracing Bava-
| ria and WuTtemburg practically under one
! sceptre with Posen and Hanover. Italian
! statesmen and the Italian people have not yet
! forgotten that it was the democratic United
! Germany of 1S4S which proclaimed Lom-
! hardy and Venice to be natural appendages of
| the Teuton power; and homogeneous Ger
many controlled from Berlin would probably
| he regarded in Italy as a more disagreeable
neighbor even than a heterogeneous Austria
controlled from Vienna. In shock OF war Tor
the supremacy over Western Europe, France,
even if she raised the banner OF the boundaries
| of the first empire north OF the Alps, would be
pretty clearly sure of the sympathy, If not of
! the aid. of the Italian Government. The
Hapsburgs, if only out of their abundant
faith in the blind female deity who has so often
befriended their house, would also throw all
| their weight against the PrussO-German En-
pire. and trust to the dice for their profits in
| case of its overthrow. Switzerland, Holland,
and Belgium, though they would cling tena-
| ciously to their national independence until
| the alternative was positively forced upon
| them have more and closer sympathles, on
the whole, with the populations of France than
with those beyond the Rhine and, objection
able as the practical administration Of the
| existing government in France in many
respects still is there is nothing in the regime
| established by Count BismaIk to reconcile
either Switzers or Dutchmen or Belgians to
the prospect of seeing themselves reduced to
the condition of Prussian provinces rather
than of French departments
In this state of European affairs, and III the
| presence of the eventualities thus hastily,
| though not we think, inaccurately sketched,
| il will be seen at once that a proposition for
| the transfer of Dutch Luxembourg to France
nav very Justly be regarded as the possible
l ,o,,f Of