, 1874-12-19
T L "A. DENMARK.
From the Spectator.)

uio HA1u4oPc nOW III possession OF
o majority in one legislative Chamber,
seem to be very badly led, They waste
their force in silly tentatives dictated by
doctrlnaires. They manage to brighten
everybody, and to get just nothing at all.
The real demands Of those who elect
them are moderate agrarian changes, in
Guiding the compulsory sale to the State
OF certain feudaI privileges still retained
by the landlords {; a change in the method
OF appointing the clergy, who are now
nominated by the landlords, and whom the
electors wish either to have elected bv the
parishes or nominated by the King and
some reforms tending to raise the position
OF national acknowledgements one
would think, a very dangerous programme,
and certainly a programme which, if the
Radicals understood compromise, could be
substantially carried out. While urging
it, however, the Radical Deputies allow
q few of their number to say things which
strike panic into the propertied classes,
make proposals provocative of threats of o
dissolution which they admittedly are not
prepared to meet, and introduce Bills
which can by no possibility have any effect,
except to suggest that the party do not
want to reorganise, b%ut.only to level exist
ing institutions One of these, q bill for
the abolition of primogeniture, may be
sensible enough, if it is only intended as
an English Bill of the kind would be, to
abolish the legal sanction now given to an
injustice but its trainers, as if out. of
sheer perversity, have incorporated with it
another for the abolition of titles, which
is utterly useless, and exposes the party
to the suspicion of intending a radical
change in the whole social life of the coun-
try. They thus obtain credit for designs
which King, lords, property-holders, the
army, and Denmark's closest neighbours
would resist, while they are asking. things
which, if they got them, would bring
them no practical benefit whatever that
is, they arouse the maximum Of resistance
tor the sake of the minimum of positive
advantage, surely mism~anagement of the
most patent kind. Not to mention the
absurdify Of abolishing titles III a country
where it is not proposed to abolish horedi-
tary monarchy, what do the Danish Radi-
Gals expect to gain by their last effort?
They will doubtless say that they seek, if
not equality, at least a nearer approxima-
ton to it, that titles are opposed to their
ideal, and that as they can abolish them
without raising an angry cry about pro-
perty, they attempt the easier work first.
That argument seems, we dare say,
sound to men who have seen title and
privilege so long combined that they
scarcely know how to distinguish be-
tween them, as it once seemed sound
to Frenchmen, but it is to the last
degree impractical. # history shows
anything co~nclusively, it is that society
can abolish titles, but that Parliaments
cannot. and that it is easy to abolish
privileges which are substantial but near
ly impossible to abolish privileges which
are as uhsubstantial as the breath which
originally conferred them. The experiment
has been tried three times in modern history
under most favourable circumstances, and
has only succeeded once. The American
Republicans, not having any titled class
among them, prohibited in their Con-
s%titution the establishment of one, and
the Constitution being in this respect
supported by national feeling, has been
strictly obeyed. There are still families
in the Union whose claim of birth is
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